Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Scripture Reading
Intro
I don’t know about you, but sometimes when you do something over and over again, so much that it becomes second nature.
Or, if you here something over and over again, there is a tendency to not appreciate it as much.
One of the best things I can here from my wife is how much she loves me.
I love hearing it and will never get enough of it.
You know sometimes, we will be texting each other and she will say, “I love you” and then I will hit the text box to begin my reply and Google will pop-up with it’s auto-reply suggestions.
One of them of course is “I love you too”.
How convenient!
Just hit it and don’t think about it.
Not me though, I pray that it never becomes a casual thing!
That it will never become an auto response, but something deep and heart felt every single time.
And it happens sometimes though.
We hear something or we say something so often, that is what it becomes.
Just an auto-response.
How are you?
“Good” What we read this morning maybe something that you may think to yourself, “I got this!
I already know this, time to plan my day and zone out.”
The gospel message is such a good thing.
And alway is a good thing.
I pray that you will be captivated just like you were the first time you truly heard it.
That it is real and potent and vivacious in your life.
But on the other hand, for those who may be sitting here or listening online or on the podcast thinking to yourself I know this, but do not truly know it.
I want it to become real.
I pray that God will open your eyes so that we are not like Nicodemus.
Because there is a difference between knowing and knowing.
In the case of Nicodemus, he was a teacher of the law and he knew a bunch of things, but he did not truly know it.
And my prayer for those of you like this is that God will do a work.
Do a work that only He can do.
That the beautiful gospel message here is real in you.
Body
Now we do not know much about the events that occurred here.
For example, it is unclear where exactly this evening meeting occurred or who else was present, but we do know a bit about the characters.
Jesus, of course, we know.
John has already set up for us who he is.
He is the Son of God.
He is God!
He has even provided signs for the people to know who He is.
Nicodemus, likewise, we get a little bit of information on.
He is a pharisee.
And already we know a lot about him from there.
This is a person who knows the Word of God.
This man knows the Tanakh.
He has studied it and defended it.
He is very well-versed in the written and oral laws of Judaism.
He would have most probably had all 613 laws memorized.
How many of us have even 300 Bible verses memorized?
He was an astute learner and he was a professor of the Scriptures.
But we know a little more about him, we know that he is a ruler of the Jews.
This indicates to us that he is well respected and a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin.
Think of it as the Supreme Court for this people group.
He was more than likely wealthy and had great influence on the Jewish community.
So this is a person who we would expect has all the answers.
He is knowledgeable in the Scriptures and has proven himself to have excelled in this area to one of the highest positions of all the Jews.
And he comes to Jesus at night.
Many speculate as to why he came at night, it does not necessarily mean that he was afraid or embarrassed, it could have just been the best time to go visit Jesus.
During the day many people would throng around him and so it is rather inconvenient to have a deep conversation with so much distraction.
And the text does not tell us the motive, so we can only speculate on this.
But we do know that he did go and also that Nicodemus exhibits some rather commendable qualities.
What qualities?
Also, he calls him Rabbi.
“Rabbi”- 1:49, Nathaniel also calls Jesus Rabbi, but also added “You are the Son of God!
You are the King of Israel!” Nicodemus is not quite there yet.
But in using this title he exhibits humility.
Being a very well-respected man in the community with affluence and influence he puts himself in the position of student.
And what better teacher could there ever be than Jesus?
Later on Nicodemus believes in who Jesus is.
2.
He acknowledges that God is clearly with Jesus.
Even if he does not yet believe that Jesus is God, there is a humility in this.
He is not going to blind himself to what he really sees.
He discerns that God must be with Jesus otherwise there is absolutely no way that He could do the things that he did.
And this really must be a thorn to those who want to deny that Jesus ever existed.
It is stories like these that provide further evidence.
Nicodemus is no fool.
He is not uneducated, he is not hallucinating or tricking himself.
He is an eyewitness affirming to the miraculous and wonderful things that God is doing through Jesus.
And almost in continuation to what we read in chapter 2, Nicodemus states that the basis for this understanding is that no one can do the signs that Jesus does.
So the basis for the faith he has in Jesus is based on the signs right now.
He has seen and you will notice that this is not enough.
Nicodemus has faith based on signs, but the whole context of the conversation is on salvation.
So anyone can have faith based on signs, but it is not enough.
Now this is nothing novel to us.
We very much understand that salvation is by grace and faith in Christ alone.
Not Christ+ some work or even convincing piece of evidence.Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, is not quite there yet.
Recently, Ligonier Ministries released this bi-annual state of theology survey and the results are very discouraging.
All respondents were allowed to self-identify as they wished and so I went ahead and I filtered the responses to only include those who claim to be Christian.
Not only that, but I also limited it to those who went to church one or more times a week.
So these would be the ones who are considered regular attenders or those who really are devoted to the church.
When asked:
Religious belief is a matter of personal opinion; it is not about objective truth.-
34% said yes
Even the smallest sin deserves eternal damnation- 51% said no
God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam- 54% said yes
The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being- 58% said yes
Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.
-72% said yes
And on and on you can read the results on your own.
What we see clearly here is that many people say that they know God and they know His word, but the reality is that they do not.
You think about what it means to be born again that confounds Nicodemus.
According to Barna, if you say that you have made a personal commitment to Jesus and believe that you are going to heaven.
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