Nicodemus

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info visit us at thrive-fl.org. Welcome to Thrive. It's good to have you here today. We are in our second week of a series called Identity, and we're looking through the Gospel of John and seeing how different characters, different case studies, are encountering Jesus throughout this Gospel. John's Gospel, unlike all the other three Gospels, has more one-on-one conversations with Jesus than any other, and in each of these you discover that they're really about identity issues. Who am I? What am I about? What's important? Am I my track record? Am I my pedigree? Am I my race and background? What makes who I am and what I am? And so we're going to be looking at that today, again, here with a person named Nicodemus in John chapter 3. Now, why the series? Because, well, I've noticed our culture is consumed by questions of identity. People are always trying to figure out who they are, where they fit in, discovering who the real me is, and I guess we're all still trying to figure that out, right? I still am at my age, but I think what we find out, too, about identity is it's a very complex issue, and so each of these characters has a different aspect of it that they're struggling with. So a man named Klein Snodgrass wrote a pretty good book on all of this, and he says, what is identity itself? It's this. Identity is the sum of everything that pertains to us and shapes us. Identity is the sense of being and self-understanding that frames our actions, communicates to others who we are, and sets the agenda for our acts. Nicodemus, now, as we are looking at John chapter 3, he understood all of these things. He was raised in a culture, and at a time, everything was more or less established, or as I will say, fabricated for him. It was kind of set up, but when he encounters Jesus, when he hears of him, when he sees and hears the rumors of what he's done, and actually witnessed probably a couple of these things, it shook him to the core because he didn't quite understand how this all fit together, and so all of a sudden, his world that seemed so predictable and stable was turned upside down by Jesus not quite fitting in. You know, that can happen. There's been probably times in your life when you've either moved to a new location, and all of a sudden, you're around different people and things, and all of a sudden, everything feels like, well, wait a minute, I thought I knew who I was. Happens a lot in college, by the way. You get away from your parents for the first time, you're living on your own, and all of a sudden, it's like, well, who am I? Am I just what my parents want me to be? Am I, you know, what other people expect? And what I loved myself about college is the fact that I could leave high school behind. High school was not the most fun time for me. I don't know about for you. It was a very tribal place, and I didn't feel like I fit in anywhere, and so when I got to college, I was able to be John. Nobody knew my background, my backstory. I could be who I was and how I was, and still I had those questions. Nicodemus is probably at the peak of his, quote, career, and prominent, and yet he's having questions about this. We're going to read now about this encounter with Jesus in John chapter 3, and we are starting, I believe, in verse 1 and going through verse 15. Now, there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 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. Jesus answered him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. 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 again? Jesus answered, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is everyone with everyone who is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus said to him, how can these things be? Jesus answered him, are you a teacher of Israel and you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and we bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you did not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. So that's our text today, this case study...