His name was Paul. He lived in a small town in the Pacific Northwest some years ago. He was just a little boy when his family became the proud owners of one of the first telephones in the neighborhood. It was one of those wooden boxes attached to the wall with the shiny receiver hanging on the side of the box… and the mouthpiece attached to the front. Young Paul listened with fascination as his mom and dad used the phone… and he discovered that somewhere inside the wonderful device called a telephone lived an amazing person.
Her name was “Information Please”… and there was nothing she did not know. Information Please could supply anybody’s number… and the correct time! Paul’s first personal experience with “Information Please” came one day when he was home alone and he whacked his finger with a hammer. The pain was terrible and he didn’t know what to do… and then he thought of the telephone. Quickly, he pulled a footstool up to the phone, climbed up, unhooked the receiver, held it to his ear and said: “Information Please” into the mouthpiece. There was a click or two and then a small clear voice spoke: “Information.” “I hurt my finger,” Paul wailed into the phone. “Isn’t your mother home?” “Nobody’s home but me,” Paul cried. “Are you bleeding?” “No,” Paul said. “I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts.” “Can you open your ice-box?” “Yes.” “Then go get some ice and hold it to your finger.” Paul did and it helped a lot.
After that Paul called “Information Please for everything. She helped him with his geography and his math. She taught him how to spell the word “fix.” She told him what to feed his pet chipmunk. And then when Paul’s pet canary died, she listened to his grief tenderly and then said: “Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in.” Somehow that helped and Paul felt better.
When Paul was nine years old, he moved with his family to Boston… and as the years passed he missed “Information Please” very much. Some years later as Paul was on his way out west to go to college, his plane landed in Seattle. He dialed his hometown operator and said, “Information Please.” Miraculously, he heard that same small clear voice that he knew so well. “Information.” Paul hadn’t planned this, but suddenly he blurted out: “Could you please tell me how to spell the word “fix?” There was a long pause. Then came the soft answer: “I guess your finger must be all healed by now.” Paul laughed. “So it’s really still you. Do you have any idea how much you meant to me during that time when I was a little boy?” “I wonder,” she said, “if you know how much your calls meant to me! I never had any children and I used to look forward to your calls so much.”
Paul told her how much he had missed her over the years and asked her if he could call her again when he was back in the area. “Please do,” she said, “just ask for Sally.” Three months later, Paul was back in Seattle. This time a different voice answered. He asked for Sally. “Are you a friend?” the operator asked. “Yes, a very old friend.” Paul answered. “Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” she said. “Sally had been working part time the last few years because she was sick. She died 5 weeks ago.” Before he could hang up, the operator said: “Wait a minute. Did you say your name was Paul?” “Yes.” “Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down in case you called. Let me read it to you. It says: ‘When Paul calls, tell him that I still say: there are other worlds to sing in.’ He will know what I mean.” Paul thanked her and hung up and he did know what Sally meant.
“There are other worlds to sing in.” Isn’t that a beautiful and powerful thought? And that is precisely what John 3 is all about. “There are other worlds to sing in”… in this life and, yes, even beyond this life. When Jesus said to Nicodemus that night: “You must be born again.” “You must be born from above.” That’s what he meant… you don’t have to stay the way you are. You can make a new start. You can have a new life. You can become a new person. There are other worlds to sing in.
Remember the story with me…Nicodemus was a key leader among the Jews in the time of Jesus. He was probably from a wealthy, distinguished and highly respected family. He was a Pharisee… one of the brotherhood of 6,000, who had taken a pledge in front of three witnesses that they would dedicate their lives to observing every detail of the scribal law. The Scribes worked out the regulations. The Pharisees consecrated their lives to keeping them to the nth degree. In addition, Nicodemus was a member of the Sanhedrin, the Supreme Court of the Jews. The Sanhedrin had only 70 members out of the 6,000 Pharisees, the top 70 made up the Sanhedrin jury, and Nicodemus was one of them… The Sanhedrin had religious authority over every Jew in the world; and one of its primary duties was to examine and deal with anyone suspected of being a false prophet.
Nicodemus came to visit Jesus by night… and much ink has been spilled over that. Why did he come by night? Was he afraid of “guilt by association”? Was he fearful of what his Pharisee colleagues might think? Or did he want a private audience with Jesus undisturbed? Was he coming as a “watchdog” of the Sanhedrin? Or was he genuinely interested in getting to know Jesus better? All of these are fascinating questions, but what is amazing here is that he came to Jesus at all. His Pharisee friends would have scoffed at this thought. After all, Jesus was not one of them… and besides that they were supremely suspicious of him. They had labeled him a trouble-maker who was upsetting the people… and they were looking for an opportunity to silence him. They saw Jesus as a threat.
But Nicodemus came to him and Nicodemus said to him: “Rabbi, you must be a teacher who has come from God because no one could do the signs and wonders you do apart from the presence of God.” And Jesus responded to Nicodemus by saying to him: “You can’t see the Kingdom of God without being born again. You must be born from above.” This means that you can’t become a Christian by making a few minor adjustments to your life. It must be a complete turn around, a radical re-birth, a re-birth from above, which, of course means a new life from God. Nicodemus didn’t understand. He didn’t get it. So, Jesus explained with what many would call the greatest verse in all of the Bible, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”
Some years ago, the great boxer, Mohammed Ali, was asked by a ghetto youth how he could quit school and start a boxing career since he had bad grades. Ali smiled at the young man and said in his poetic fashion:
“Stay in college and get the knowledge,
-And stay there! Til you’re through
-Cause if God can make penicillin out of moldy bread,
-He can make something out of you.”
This is the good news of John 3. Because God so loved the world, He SENT His only son to make something out of us… when we accept Him into our lives and commit our hearts to Him,… then He gives us new life in this world… and new life in the world to come. That’s what it means to be “born again” or “born from above,”… but let me be more specific and describe this new birth with three thoughts. You will think of other dimensions of this re-birth through Christ, but for now… let’s try these three on for size.
I. FIRST OF ALL…TO BE BORN FROM ABOVEMEANS TO COME ALIVE TO THE BIBLE.
In his book “Biblical Proclamation for Africa Today” John Wesley (2wo/mu/non/dii/ta Kurewa Abingdon 1995, 15-16) tells a wonderful story about a young woman who had heard people talking about an interesting new book that had just been published. Everybody raved about how great it was. She went to the bookstore, found a copy, bought it, took it home and tried to read it… but, somehow she just couldn’t get into it… She would read a little and then put the book aside. It did not capture her attention.
A few months later, the young woman was traveling in a foreign country. She met a handsome young man and she fell in love with him. As they spent time together, she discovered that he was a writer… and would you believe it?… He was the author of that book everyone was talking about back home, the one she had bought and tried to read, but couldn’t get into it… and had put aside. When she returned home, she found the book and started reading it again,… and this time she couldn’t put it down! She read it from cover to cover… and then read it again and again. It was the most exhilarating book she had ever read in her life. What was the difference? Simply this: She now had met the author. She knew him personally. He was her friend; indeed, she was in love with him.
This story is a wonderful parable for what it means to “come alive” to the Bible. If we don’t know Christ personally, the Bible is hard to read, difficult to get into, easy to put aside. But, when we know Christ personally and intimately, when we feel His love and return His love,… then the Bible comes alive for us; it becomes a “love letter” from God; it becomes the most exciting book we have ever read in our life.
There is a fascinating thing to notice here about Nicodemus. He knew his scriptures well. But for him, being religious meant knowing what to do and especially what not to do. The emphasis of his Bible study was on what people do. But Jesus changed all of that. He said that in order to see the Kingdom of God, the emphasis must shift to what God does. The new Testament makes it clear that this “new birth” is not our doing. We are “born from above”; it is God’s gift. We can’t earn it. We can only accept it in faith: So, “To Be Born From Above” means to come alive to the Bible by falling in love with “the author and finisher of our faith.”
II. SECOND, TO BE BORN FROM ABOVE MEANSTO COME ALIVE TO LOVE.
A little girl went went to the doctor for a check-up. When the doctor came into the examining room, she held up both hands to get his attention and then she said: “Dr., I know what you are going to do. You are going to do 5 things. You are going to check my eyes, my ears, my nose, my throat and my heart.” The Dr. smiled and said: “Well, Sarah, that is exactly right. Is there any particular order I should go in?” Sarah said: “You can go in any order you want to… but if I were you, I’d start with the heart!!!” That’s what Jesus did, wasn’t it? He started with the heart. He started with Love… and that is precisely what he wants us to do!
Nicodemus and his Pharisee friends had a hard time with that because they had been taught all of their lives to start with all those laws and rules and regulations and restrictions. For example, if a man fell into a hole on the Sabbath Day and was screaming for help,… the Pharisee would say: What does the law say about this? Well, the law says “You can’t work on the Sabbath Day”,… so their response would be “Sorry, can’t help you today. Maybe somebody will come along tomorrow. Sorry, can’t break the Scribal law.” On the other hand, Jesus would start with the heart and He would say to the man in the hole, “Give me your hand, I’ll pull you out.”
That night in Jerusalem long ago, Jesus was saying to Nicodemus (and to us): “You don’t have to stay the way you are. You don’t have to be a prisoner to legalism. There are other worlds to sing in. You can be re-born from above. You can come alive to the Bible and you can come alive to Love. Give me your hand Nicodemus; I’ll pull you out.”
III. THIRD AND FINALLY, TO BE BORN FROMABOVE MEANS TO COME ALIVE TO ETERNAL LIFE.
For the Christian, death is not death at all. It is not the end of life. It is simply moving through a door called “death” into a new dimension of life with God.
Perhaps you have heard of Henry Van Dyke’s Parable of Immortality. It is a powerful parable on how we see death and how death should really be viewed. Listen to this:
“I am standing on the seashore.
-A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.
-She is an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
-Then someone at my side says, ‘There she goes!’ Gone where? Gone from my sight… that is all.
-She is just as large in mast and hull and span, as she was when she left my side and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of their destination.
-Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
-And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
-‘There she goes’ there are other eyes watching her coming… and other voices ready to take up the glad shout,
-‘Here she comes! Here she comes!!’ on the other shore.
This is the good news of our Christian faith. We can be born again in this life… and we can be born yet again when death comes,… because there are other worlds to sing in. When we commit our lives to Christ, God will always be there for us, even on the other side of the grave. We can count on that because we know that… “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
Being “born from above” means many things, but for sure it means accepting Christ into our lives as our personal savior and through Him coming alive to the Bible, coming alive to Christ-like love, and coming alive to eternal life.
Her name was “Information Please”… and there was nothing she did not know. Information Please could supply anybody’s number… and the correct time! Paul’s first personal experience with “Information Please” came one day when he was home alone and he whacked his finger with a hammer. The pain was terrible and he didn’t know what to do… and then he thought of the telephone. Quickly, he pulled a footstool up to the phone, climbed up, unhooked the receiver, held it to his ear and said: “Information Please” into the mouthpiece. There was a click or two and then a small clear voice spoke: “Information.” “I hurt my finger,” Paul wailed into the phone. “Isn’t your mother home?” “Nobody’s home but me,” Paul cried. “Are you bleeding?” “No,” Paul said. “I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts.” “Can you open your ice-box?” “Yes.” “Then go get some ice and hold it to your finger.” Paul did and it helped a lot.
After that Paul called “Information Please for everything. She helped him with his geography and his math. She taught him how to spell the word “fix.” She told him what to feed his pet chipmunk. And then when Paul’s pet canary died, she listened to his grief tenderly and then said: “Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in.” Somehow that helped and Paul felt better.
When Paul was nine years old, he moved with his family to Boston… and as the years passed he missed “Information Please” very much. Some years later as Paul was on his way out west to go to college, his plane landed in Seattle. He dialed his hometown operator and said, “Information Please.” Miraculously, he heard that same small clear voice that he knew so well. “Information.” Paul hadn’t planned this, but suddenly he blurted out: “Could you please tell me how to spell the word “fix?” There was a long pause. Then came the soft answer: “I guess your finger must be all healed by now.” Paul laughed. “So it’s really still you. Do you have any idea how much you meant to me during that time when I was a little boy?” “I wonder,” she said, “if you know how much your calls meant to me! I never had any children and I used to look forward to your calls so much.”
Paul told her how much he had missed her over the years and asked her if he could call her again when he was back in the area. “Please do,” she said, “just ask for Sally.” Three months later, Paul was back in Seattle. This time a different voice answered. He asked for Sally. “Are you a friend?” the operator asked. “Yes, a very old friend.” Paul answered. “Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” she said. “Sally had been working part time the last few years because she was sick. She died 5 weeks ago.” Before he could hang up, the operator said: “Wait a minute. Did you say your name was Paul?” “Yes.” “Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down in case you called. Let me read it to you. It says: ‘When Paul calls, tell him that I still say: there are other worlds to sing in.’ He will know what I mean.” Paul thanked her and hung up and he did know what Sally meant.
“There are other worlds to sing in.” Isn’t that a beautiful and powerful thought? And that is precisely what John 3 is all about. “There are other worlds to sing in”… in this life and, yes, even beyond this life. When Jesus said to Nicodemus that night: “You must be born again.” “You must be born from above.” That’s what he meant… you don’t have to stay the way you are. You can make a new start. You can have a new life. You can become a new person. There are other worlds to sing in.
Remember the story with me…Nicodemus was a key leader among the Jews in the time of Jesus. He was probably from a wealthy, distinguished and highly respected family. He was a Pharisee… one of the brotherhood of 6,000, who had taken a pledge in front of three witnesses that they would dedicate their lives to observing every detail of the scribal law. The Scribes worked out the regulations. The Pharisees consecrated their lives to keeping them to the nth degree. In addition, Nicodemus was a member of the Sanhedrin, the Supreme Court of the Jews. The Sanhedrin had only 70 members out of the 6,000 Pharisees, the top 70 made up the Sanhedrin jury, and Nicodemus was one of them… The Sanhedrin had religious authority over every Jew in the world; and one of its primary duties was to examine and deal with anyone suspected of being a false prophet.
Nicodemus came to visit Jesus by night… and much ink has been spilled over that. Why did he come by night? Was he afraid of “guilt by association”? Was he fearful of what his Pharisee colleagues might think? Or did he want a private audience with Jesus undisturbed? Was he coming as a “watchdog” of the Sanhedrin? Or was he genuinely interested in getting to know Jesus better? All of these are fascinating questions, but what is amazing here is that he came to Jesus at all. His Pharisee friends would have scoffed at this thought. After all, Jesus was not one of them… and besides that they were supremely suspicious of him. They had labeled him a trouble-maker who was upsetting the people… and they were looking for an opportunity to silence him. They saw Jesus as a threat.
But Nicodemus came to him and Nicodemus said to him: “Rabbi, you must be a teacher who has come from God because no one could do the signs and wonders you do apart from the presence of God.” And Jesus responded to Nicodemus by saying to him: “You can’t see the Kingdom of God without being born again. You must be born from above.” This means that you can’t become a Christian by making a few minor adjustments to your life. It must be a complete turn around, a radical re-birth, a re-birth from above, which, of course means a new life from God. Nicodemus didn’t understand. He didn’t get it. So, Jesus explained with what many would call the greatest verse in all of the Bible, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”
Some years ago, the great boxer, Mohammed Ali, was asked by a ghetto youth how he could quit school and start a boxing career since he had bad grades. Ali smiled at the young man and said in his poetic fashion:
“Stay in college and get the knowledge,
-And stay there! Til you’re through
-Cause if God can make penicillin out of moldy bread,
-He can make something out of you.”
This is the good news of John 3. Because God so loved the world, He SENT His only son to make something out of us… when we accept Him into our lives and commit our hearts to Him,… then He gives us new life in this world… and new life in the world to come. That’s what it means to be “born again” or “born from above,”… but let me be more specific and describe this new birth with three thoughts. You will think of other dimensions of this re-birth through Christ, but for now… let’s try these three on for size.
I. FIRST OF ALL…TO BE BORN FROM ABOVEMEANS TO COME ALIVE TO THE BIBLE.
In his book “Biblical Proclamation for Africa Today” John Wesley (2wo/mu/non/dii/ta Kurewa Abingdon 1995, 15-16) tells a wonderful story about a young woman who had heard people talking about an interesting new book that had just been published. Everybody raved about how great it was. She went to the bookstore, found a copy, bought it, took it home and tried to read it… but, somehow she just couldn’t get into it… She would read a little and then put the book aside. It did not capture her attention.
A few months later, the young woman was traveling in a foreign country. She met a handsome young man and she fell in love with him. As they spent time together, she discovered that he was a writer… and would you believe it?… He was the author of that book everyone was talking about back home, the one she had bought and tried to read, but couldn’t get into it… and had put aside. When she returned home, she found the book and started reading it again,… and this time she couldn’t put it down! She read it from cover to cover… and then read it again and again. It was the most exhilarating book she had ever read in her life. What was the difference? Simply this: She now had met the author. She knew him personally. He was her friend; indeed, she was in love with him.
This story is a wonderful parable for what it means to “come alive” to the Bible. If we don’t know Christ personally, the Bible is hard to read, difficult to get into, easy to put aside. But, when we know Christ personally and intimately, when we feel His love and return His love,… then the Bible comes alive for us; it becomes a “love letter” from God; it becomes the most exciting book we have ever read in our life.
There is a fascinating thing to notice here about Nicodemus. He knew his scriptures well. But for him, being religious meant knowing what to do and especially what not to do. The emphasis of his Bible study was on what people do. But Jesus changed all of that. He said that in order to see the Kingdom of God, the emphasis must shift to what God does. The new Testament makes it clear that this “new birth” is not our doing. We are “born from above”; it is God’s gift. We can’t earn it. We can only accept it in faith: So, “To Be Born From Above” means to come alive to the Bible by falling in love with “the author and finisher of our faith.”
II. SECOND, TO BE BORN FROM ABOVE MEANSTO COME ALIVE TO LOVE.
A little girl went went to the doctor for a check-up. When the doctor came into the examining room, she held up both hands to get his attention and then she said: “Dr., I know what you are going to do. You are going to do 5 things. You are going to check my eyes, my ears, my nose, my throat and my heart.” The Dr. smiled and said: “Well, Sarah, that is exactly right. Is there any particular order I should go in?” Sarah said: “You can go in any order you want to… but if I were you, I’d start with the heart!!!” That’s what Jesus did, wasn’t it? He started with the heart. He started with Love… and that is precisely what he wants us to do!
Nicodemus and his Pharisee friends had a hard time with that because they had been taught all of their lives to start with all those laws and rules and regulations and restrictions. For example, if a man fell into a hole on the Sabbath Day and was screaming for help,… the Pharisee would say: What does the law say about this? Well, the law says “You can’t work on the Sabbath Day”,… so their response would be “Sorry, can’t help you today. Maybe somebody will come along tomorrow. Sorry, can’t break the Scribal law.” On the other hand, Jesus would start with the heart and He would say to the man in the hole, “Give me your hand, I’ll pull you out.”
That night in Jerusalem long ago, Jesus was saying to Nicodemus (and to us): “You don’t have to stay the way you are. You don’t have to be a prisoner to legalism. There are other worlds to sing in. You can be re-born from above. You can come alive to the Bible and you can come alive to Love. Give me your hand Nicodemus; I’ll pull you out.”
III. THIRD AND FINALLY, TO BE BORN FROMABOVE MEANS TO COME ALIVE TO ETERNAL LIFE.
For the Christian, death is not death at all. It is not the end of life. It is simply moving through a door called “death” into a new dimension of life with God.
Perhaps you have heard of Henry Van Dyke’s Parable of Immortality. It is a powerful parable on how we see death and how death should really be viewed. Listen to this:
“I am standing on the seashore.
-A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.
-She is an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
-Then someone at my side says, ‘There she goes!’ Gone where? Gone from my sight… that is all.
-She is just as large in mast and hull and span, as she was when she left my side and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of their destination.
-Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
-And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
-‘There she goes’ there are other eyes watching her coming… and other voices ready to take up the glad shout,
-‘Here she comes! Here she comes!!’ on the other shore.
This is the good news of our Christian faith. We can be born again in this life… and we can be born yet again when death comes,… because there are other worlds to sing in. When we commit our lives to Christ, God will always be there for us, even on the other side of the grave. We can count on that because we know that… “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
Being “born from above” means many things, but for sure it means accepting Christ into our lives as our personal savior and through Him coming alive to the Bible, coming alive to Christ-like love, and coming alive to eternal life.
