The more you possess, the harder it is to believe. Most of the time it was those who lacked money, power, and status who heard Jesus and believed. What does that mean for us today?

Eureka Moments – Finding Gold in God’s Word (pt 5)

Friday, November 4, 2011





Side by side, John 3 and 4 are two of the greatest chapters in all the Bible. Chapter 3 is about a man, Chapter 4 is about a woman. Chapter 3 takes place at night, chapter 4 at noon. Chapter 3, a prominent leader, chapter 4 a prostitute or adulteress woman.

Swell

John 3 and John 4 are two of the greatest chapters in all the Bible. In chapter 3 the ruler Nicodemus comes with questions looking for answers. In chapter 4, it is Jesus who comes to the woman and asks her the questions. The leader in chapter 3 is a Jew, the woman at the well in chapter 4 is a Samaritan. She believed in Jesus. He did not, at least that night. He heard great preaching, but there is no word at all of his immediate response to it.
Welcome to HT, I’m CM sharing the GS that’s all about Jesus and a program this Friday, the final program in our series called Eureka Moments – Finding Gold in God’s Word.
Israel Trip
All week, we’ve been mining for gold out of The Expanded Bible.
Mark Strauss clip
SONG – I Surrender All – Jadon Lavik

John 3 and John 4, side by side, two of the greatest chapters in all the Bible.
How happy Christ must have been in the conversation with Nicodemus to realize that the Jewish leader had real understanding of some spiritual truths. We know from when He was a child at the temple He liked to discuss deep spiritual matters. Nicodemus, probably a member of the Sanhedrin, had come to Jesus by night with his question. He was aware of the work that Jesus was doing and he had verified the reports concerning the works of the Lord Jesus. He had become convinced intellectually of the supernatural reality of these words. He said, and I’m going to the expanded Bible in John 3, “Teacher (or Rabbi), we know you are a teacher sent from God, but no one can do the miracles you do unless God is with him.” There are times when the longest way round is the quickest way home and Jesus took that way. He did not start to discuss the question of his deity. He went to the very heart of the matter and said to Nicodemus, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot be in God's kingdom.” Here is the place where Nicodemus showed that a flash of spiritual truth had reached his heart and that he was being awakened by the Spirit of God to true understanding. Most people then and even today, if we are told we must be born again, might answer, “Well, why must I be born again? What is wrong with me as I am? Did I not come into this world without my consent, and have I not made a pretty good job of my life? Why should God require anything supernatural of me? I have lived a good life. I pay my bills. I am faithful to my family. I pay my taxes. Why should a person have to be born again?” You may not have asked all those questions today, but I bet you’ve said some of them. At least to yourself. But Nicodemus was not so thickheaded. There was a flash of real spiritual vision that shows the presence of the enlightening Spirit of God. The question of Nicodemus was” how can a person be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Nicodemus would certainly have challenged the Lord’s statement unless he had understood the necessity of the new birth. The fact that he asked as to the method carries with it a belief in the need for such a work. Many today deny Christ's claim that a person must be born again, or regenerated. People today are as people have always been. If a person does not understand the necessity of the new birth, it is because he's failed to understand the holiness of God and the real nature of humanity, born into and living in sin. We read in the book of Job,” how can a person be justified with God? Or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?” All of us have to realize the truth of the statement of Jesus,”human life comes from human parents, but spiritual life comes from the Spirit.” All of us today as well as then must realize the vast distance that separates us from God and know that that distance has been bridged only in one place, at the cross of Calvary where the Lord Jesus Christ took our place and paid the price of our redemption, that we might have eternal new life through his shed blood. It was in this powerful chapter three of the Gospel of John that there is this often-quoted statement by Christ regarding the new birth. "God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him may not be lost, but have eternal life.” John 3:16. And while that may be the most memorized verse in all scripture, it’s important to remember that Jesus keeps talking to Nicodemus. Just before John 3:16, "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, the Son of Man must also be lifted up. So that everyone who believes can have eternal life in him.” And then right after John 3:16, “God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world guilty, but to save the world through him. People who believe in God's Son are not judged guilty. Those who do not believe have already been judged guilty, because they have not believed in God's one and only Son. They are judged by this fact: The Light has come into the world, but they did not want light. They wanted darkness, because they were doing evil things. All who do evil hate the light and will not come to the light, because it will show all the evil things they do. But those who follow the true way come to the light, and it shows that the things they do were done through God." New birth.




Think about it this way: You’re walking down a major street in the midst of great crowds in one of the world's largest developing cities and a little pretty little child, covered in dirt and filth, comes towards you, holding out her hand. Wouldn't your heart be moved with compassion? But if the cute child walks towards you and calls out, “Mother,” or” Father,” in their native language, your compassion would go away. Right? Wouldn't you think to yourself, “this little child has no right to be claiming me as her parent.” It's only by becoming a parent that such a relationship can occur. But if you take the hand of that little child, go through the necessary steps of paperwork, and take her home with you and offer her a clean bed and new clothes and good food and legally adopt her into your family, then she has the right to call you mom or dad. And the law will recognize that right. In the divine relationship, God has made full provision for sonship. If we are to become sons or daughters of the Living God, the first step is realizing that we are not sons or daughters of God, and cannot be except for the channel which he himself has opened up to us through Jesus Christ. The touchtone of sonship is the love of the individual parts for the Lord Jesus Christ. Just find the love of Christ we must accept the claims of Christ.

Nicodemus went away that night, without finding the new birth, without being born again. But chapter three leads to chapter 4 and there is another story I need to share. From the base translation of The Expanded Bible:

5 In Samaria Jesus came to the town called Sychar, which is near the field Jacob gave to his son Joseph.6 Jacob's well was there. Jesus was tired from his long trip, so he sat down beside the well. It was about twelve o'clock noon. 7 When a Samaritan woman came to the well to get some water, Jesus said to her, "Please give me a drink." 8 (This happened while Jesus' followers were in town buying some food.)
9 The woman said, "I am surprised that you ask me for a drink, since you are a Jewish man and I am a Samaritan woman." (Jewish people are not friends with Samaritans.[d] )
10 Jesus said, "If you only knew the free gift of God and who it is that is asking you for water, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."
11 The woman said, "Sir, where will you get this living water? The well is very deep, and you have nothing to get water with.12 Are you greater than Jacob, our father, who gave us this well and drank from it himself along with his sons and flocks?"
13 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give will never be thirsty. The water I give will become a spring of water gushing up inside that person, giving eternal life."
15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so I will never be thirsty again and will not have to come back here to get more water."
16 Jesus told her, "Go get your husband and come back here."
17 The woman answered, "I have no husband."
Jesus said to her, "You are right to say you have no husband. 18 Really you have had five husbands, and the man you live with now is not your husband. You told the truth."
19 The woman said, "Sir, I can see that you are a prophet.20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that Jerusalem is the place where people must worship."
21 Jesus said, "Believe me, woman. The time is coming when neither in Jerusalem nor on this mountain will you actually worship the Father. 22 You Samaritans worship something you don't understand. We understand what we worship, because salvation comes from the Jews.23 The time is coming when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, and that time is here already. You see, the Father too is actively seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."
25 The woman said, "I know that the Messiah is coming." (Messiah is the One called Christ.) "When the Messiah comes, he will explain everything to us."
26 Then Jesus said, "I am he—I, the one talking to you."
27 Just then his followers came back from town and were surprised to see him talking with a woman. But none of them asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"
28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to town. She said to the people,29 "Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did. Do you think he might be the Christ?"30 So the people left the town and went to see Jesus.
31 Meanwhile, his followers were begging him, "Teacher, eat something."
32 But Jesus answered, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."
33 So the followers asked themselves, "Did somebody already bring him food?"
34 Jesus said, "My food is to do what the One who sent me wants me to do and to finish his work. 35 You have a saying, 'Four more months till harvest.' But I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields ready for harvest now.36 Already, the one who harvests is being paid and is gathering crops for eternal life. So the one who plants and the one who harvests celebrate at the same time.37 Here the saying is true, 'One person plants, and another harvests.' 38 I sent you to harvest a crop that you did not work on. Others did the work, and you get to finish up their work."[e]
39 Many of the Samaritans in that town believed in Jesus because of what the woman said: "He told me everything I ever did."40 When the Samaritans came to Jesus, they begged him to stay with them, so he stayed there two more days.41 And many more believed because of the things he said.
42 They said to the woman, "First we believed in Jesus because of what you said, but now we believe because we heard him ourselves. We know that this man really is the Savior of the world." God’s word from John 4 and The Expanded Bible here on Haven Today and Eureka Moments – Finding Gold in God’s Word. All of us have drunk this earth’s water. We may have drunk deeply, but always we have thirsted again. Some have drained a cup at the well of riches, others have drawn water from fame, honor, pleasure. Some have even sought satisfaction at the wells of lust, or have drunk the exciting waters of crime, but no one has ever been fully satisfied with the streams of this earth. But what a promise from the lips of the Lord Jesus! The believer gets new life. And this new life shall be a continuing spring and it shall never run dry.

One last thing about the Great Story. If we just had John 3 and 4, we would think that only the woman at the well found faith in Jesus. Nicodemus was seeking, but walked away that night from the Gospel. But in God’s providence, we have another mention in the New Testament of Nicodemus, a man who was probably a member of the ruling Sanhedrin.

John 19:38-40

38 Later, Joseph from Arimathea asked Pilate if he could take the body of Jesus. (Joseph was a secret follower of Jesus, because he was afraid of some of the leaders.) Pilate gave his permission, so Joseph came and took Jesus' body away.39 Nicodemus, who earlier had come to Jesus at night, went with Joseph. He brought about seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes.40 These two men took Jesus' body and wrapped it with the spices in pieces of linen cloth, which is how they bury the dead.

From this little mention, church historians have concluded that somewhere in between that night in John 3 and after the crucifixion in John 19, Nicodemus believed and he did find new birth in Christ Jesus. And that gives hope to all of us. All of us, even if we have rejected Jesus as our savior. Until our dying breath, there is still time, there is still room at the cross for you.
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