The Wine, The Whip and the World

Water into wine.

Cleansing the Temple.

Nic at night.

For many of us, these images of Jesus in John’s Gospel can be troubling. I mean, how many Christians do you know would be scandalized by the thought of Jesus with wine? Or offended by Him wielding a whip? Or distanced by Jesus’ total rejection of Nicodemus’s upright way of life?

In a brilliant stroke of inspiration, however, John holds each of these portraits together so that we might see something so important and beautiful that it would change the way we live forever.

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Grace Fellowship Church

Jon Stallsmith

Series: The Gospel of John

January 25, 2015

The Wine, the Whip, and the World

John 2:1-3:21

We’re going through John 2 and a little bit of John 3 in looking at this story of The Wine, the Whip, and the World. Sometimes as a preacher people give you a hard time for creating outlines that all start with the same letter, but if the alliteration is actually in the Scripture then you have to go with it. Actually, as we read, you’ll see there are these three words that start with w and so I just thought we should highlight them and all hold it together. See, that was funnier in the first hour.

As we’re picking up in John 2, remember we’ve looked at that prologue, the first 18 verses of the gospel of John, that give us the big picture, sort of the overture of the story John is telling, and it is a marvelous story of the Word, Jesus, who is with God and was God taking on flesh, dwelling among us that we might behold his glory, that we might see who God is in Christ, and then be drawn into this great story of redemption and new creation that begins now and goes forever into eternal life.

It’s a beautiful swoop of God into history, gathering up people to himself in Christ and onward and forward. Last week, we even saw as we are looking to find our place in that story with God through Christ, rather than simply looking inwardly, we discover our identity, we discover our place in the story of God by looking to Jesus.

So we saw in John 1 how when John the Baptist looks at Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” it clarifies for him who he is not. Very important that we become clear about the things we’re not and the people we’re not. Sometimes it’s just as important as figuring out who we are.

Then as Jesus begins calling disciples to himself, these disciples in Jesus as they look to him are discovering who they are. Remember Jesus gives that name to Simon. He calls him Peter. He says, “You’re my rock,” or Rocky. Then we saw just a little bit there in chapter 2 about how when we’re with Jesus that pattern of the world that so often repeats itself, where things start off good or a lot of enthusiasm and then just peter off at the end, is totally reversed.

When we start walking with Jesus, rather than the wine keep getting worse and worse and worse, kind of nose diving into shame, when you’re walking with Jesus, the grace of Jesus takes it to where things keep getting better. So that’s who we’re becoming in Christ, continually growing and becoming deeper.

Now, these next two stories we look at in John 2, it’s kind of curious John puts them right at the beginning of his gospel. Because of course the first one for John is the first sign Jesus works. So it makes sense it would come toward the beginning of his ministry. But in the second one, the story of the temple cleansing when Jesus takes a whip and clears out the temple, in the other gospels it actually comes toward the end of the story in the final week before Jesus comes to the cross.

We have to remember as we’re reading the gospel of John, John is not writing his book chronologically but theologically. Okay, he is not quite so concerned about putting all the events in order chronologically day to day, but rather to put the events in order in such a way we’re able to see a very clear picture of who Jesus is. In fact, that’s exactly what he says he’s doing at the end of the book. In John 20, he says, “I’m doing this, I’m writing this so you might see who Jesus is and believe.” That’s the call that we’re trying to see Jesus, that he shows us how and who to be.

So the reason these two stories here are put together at the beginning of the gospel of John, the wedding and wine story of course and then the temple and the whip story, they’re put together because it shows us something absolutely essential about who Jesus is. Again, as we look to Jesus, we begin to see who he has called us to be.

In John 1:14, right out of the middle of that prologue, one of the most important verses, it says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father…” Then what’s the next line? “…full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) What we’re going to see in the story of the wedding and the wine is Jesus’ incredible grace. What we’re going to see in the story of the temple cleansing is how Jesus brings truth to a situation that desperately needs it.

Now these two, grace and truth… It seems like as we’re trying to live our lives they can sometimes be in conflict. Parenting perhaps is where this comes to play very frequently. I mean, what do you do if you know your son has a large project that is due on Monday? You tell him the week before, “Start working on your project. Let’s start putting some things in place. Hey, I’d be happy to help you on Wednesday. I’d be happy to help you on Thursday.”

But then it comes to Sunday night and the project is due the next day. This may or may not be an example from my own childhood that was repeated many times. So now it’s Sunday night. Your child’s project is due the next day, and he hasn’t done any work on it. As a parent in this moment, do you show grace or truth? The hard truth is, “Well, you should’ve worked on it. Good luck.” Then there’s the gracious response, which is, “I know you’ve procrastinated until now, but let’s see what we can do with this thing.”

We often find ourselves, maybe not just in parenting, but in all kinds of situations where we face the difficult road of walking in grace or walking in truth. It’s easy as individuals, it’s easy as churches, as communities, it’s easy to become just grace people or just truth people. Our whole life we’re just, “We have to give them the truth no matter what! Just stand up, say the truth, so help me, God.”

There are other people who just totally buy into this whole idea of grace. It’s like, “Yeah, I know you keep making really rotten decisions and doing all sorts of things to take you off the path, but hey, there’s grace, man.” But how do you live with both of these things? Because Jesus, according to John, like we just read, he was full of grace and truth. At the same time, 100 percent gracious and 100 percent truthful.

Following Jesus, trusting Jesus (as we’ll see in a moment) actually means embracing both his absolute graciousness and his absolute truthfulness together. But how does this work? How do we see this in Jesus and then how do we become those kinds of people who live in grace and truth without falling off one side or the other?

Martin Luther used to say that the Enemy doesn’t care which side of the horse you fall off as long as you’re out of the saddle. Sometimes we fall over on the grace side; sometimes we fall over on the truth side without carrying the balance. But the problem is grace without truth becomes license. Just do whatever you want. And truth without grace becomes legalism. How do we live firmly planted on the saddle, following Jesus in grace and truth? Let’s start reading.

John 2:1: “On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’

Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, ‘Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.’ So they took it.

When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.’

This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him. After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.” (John 2:1-12)

Now if you look at this story and you read this story and you meditate on this story, before long you really begin to understand the enormous grace Jesus displays here. You begin to see even how the grace of Jesus works. Of course, the word grace means unmerited favor, undeserved gift. That’s what Jesus is doing here.

Mary comes up to him and she shows incredible trust in Jesus. Very, very simple trust. She goes to Jesus and she says, “They have no wine.” That’s it. She doesn’t tell Jesus what he has to do or how he has to do it. She just knows enough about Jesus to know that if she comes with a very simple need and presents it before him he will have grace in some way. He has grace to show it.

There’s an aspect of this grace coming into our lives that comes in when there’s a recognition of the need for it. She sees they have no wine, and that grace comes pouring into that place of need. It was needful because in the ancient world weddings were a big deal, perhaps even a bigger deal than they are now.

They would often last for several days up to a week, sometimes even two weeks. It was a huge party. Everybody from the community would be invited for days upon days of celebration. It was the responsibility of the wedding party’s family to make sure all the needs of the community were met. A wedding feast, a wedding banquet was a place where everybody was to come together and feast on good food and fine wine.

If the wine runs out, it’s such a deep embarrassment. In fact, it would be something that would be talked about for years. “Oh, do you remember?” “Yeah, it was a bad wedding.” Some even think it’s possible Mary would’ve had some relation to the family who was putting on the wedding because family members in the ancient world were responsible to make sure the wedding goes well. So Mary feels this responsibility. She comes to Jesus and she says, “The wine has run out. The need is upon us.”

Some people when they read Jesus’ response in verse 4 when he says, “Woman,” they think Jesus is responding to Mary in a little bit of a brusque manner, kind of a little too harshly. I mean, I never called my mother woman. You know, “Woman, thank you for doing my socks in the laundry.” I mean, it didn’t really work in our household.

But actually, the best explanation of this I heard from an old Arab priest. In Middle Eastern weddings, even to this day, the celebration is still typically divided between the men’s side and the women’s side. The priest was saying, “There was a lot of wine there. It’s probably just better that the men are with the men and the women are with the women.”

So he said what was happening here is that Mary recognizes the need. In fact, she’s so desperately concerned about this need that she breaks social norms to leave the woman’s side and come over to the men’s side to find Jesus and seek his help. This is a risk. It’s simple trust, but it’s risky trust for her. So when Jesus sees her, he says, “Woman,” kind of to say, “Hey, you’re a woman on the wrong side.”

Then he references his hour not yet coming. “What does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” Now this is interesting because in the gospel of John the word hour is almost a code word that refers to the day when Jesus will be crucified and resurrected. The sense of his glorification. The hour of his death and resurrection. You wonder why is Jesus bringing that up? Why is this on his mind right now when Mary comes to him? Perhaps Jesus is contemplating weddings and marriages.

I remember going to weddings before I was married, and maybe you’ve been to some weddings as a single person, or maybe you are a single person at some weddings or whatever. What do you typically think about if you’re single at a wedding? Getting married. Exactly. “I wonder what my wedding is going to be like? I wonder if I’ll meet my spouse here?” These are the kinds of thoughts.

Now Jesus we know never married a human, a person, but we do know theologically Jesus considered himself to be the bridegroom, and his bride is all of his people. Right? This is one of the most common pictures of redemption throughout the Scriptures, even into the Old Testament.

But it’s very possible that here Jesus is sitting at this wedding, reflecting on the celebration, he’s a single guy, and perhaps he’s even thinking about, “When is my wedding feast, when all these people who I have come for to draw into this great family of God’s people are fully mine, the bride of Christ making herself ready? That’s going to be costly.” Maybe Jesus is even thinking about the hour of his crucifixion and just how much this grace will cost him.

It’s interesting. One old preacher, Edmund Clowney, was commenting on this passage, and he said it’s almost as though Jesus was in the midst of all that joy sipping sorrow so we might be in the midst of sorrow sipping coming joy. Here Jesus is there. He knows he’s going to have to lay down his life, but out of that will come this amazing, incredible grace.

Now as a picture of that grace, what he does with the water and the wine is kind of overwhelming. Mary comes to him with simple trust. Then she tells the servants, “Do whatever he says.” Great advice for living. Maybe you want to put something on your bathroom mirror in the morning. “Do whatever Jesus says.” That’s a good thing there to live by.

Jesus tells the servants to do some very, very simple things. He says, “Fill up the jars, draw some water out, and take it over to the steward.” We don’t know exactly when, but at some point in that process that water becomes amazing wine. There’s no big hoopla. There’s no dancing or working up emotion. The servants aren’t supposed to walk around the thing seven times or anything else. They just come to Jesus with simple trust and simple obedience. “Fill this up with water. Draw some out. Take it over to the steward.”

A lot of times following Jesus looks like that kind of simple obedience. We want him to tell us all these crazy… No, no. A lot of times the Lord just says, “Okay, what’s the next thing? Do that thing.” Very simple. “Fill it up with water. Draw some out. Take it over to the steward.” But what happens is when they come to Jesus with simple trust and simple obedience what comes out is abundant grace…overwhelmingly abundant grace.

In fact, we know it’s somewhere between 150-180 gallons or so of wine Jesus made through this miracle, which is somewhere around 600 bottles of wine. Sometimes we read this and we go, “Maybe that’s a little too much grace, Lord. Do they really need that many? That much grace?”

But there’s something about this. Not only is Jesus capable of producing wine from water, displaying his incredible power as a creator, but he’s also doing it in such a way that it’s just so clear there is abundant grace. It’s taking this situation of total need and shame and desperation and turning it on its head to a place where it is glorious and abundant in its grace. That’s what grace looks like.

Again, Martin Luther, writing about this passage, says, “Thus Christ lures all hearts to himself, to rely on him as ever ready to help, even in temporal things…” Even in the daily stuff. “…and never willing to forsake any… This shows the way of divine grace… For grace does not feed the full and satiated, but the hungry, as we have often said.”

Jesus steps into this shame and disappointment and creates incredible joy. The jars themselves are jars for purification, which would’ve been the religious requirement. If you think about this, as the party went on, whenever the Jews would eat they were required to wash, and so since there wasn’t running water, you’d just go over to the jars and everybody would dip their hands in and then go eat.

So these jars, when Jesus says, “Fill them,” it’s probably not because they’re empty but because they’re about two-thirds full of nasty hand water. All the dust and dirt and grime like that. He says, “Okay, top them off guys.” They fill them up to the brim, and that’s the water he turns into wine.

Is there a better picture of grace? Dirty water nobody would even want to drink turned into the best wine you could possibly imagine. Jesus came full of grace. It’s what he does with us. He takes us, dirty dishwater, and simple trust, simple obedience, abundant grace, changing us from the inside out.

In the second scene in John 2, we see Jesus working in the truth realm. Verse 13: “The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen.

And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, ‘Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.'” A quote from Psalm 69.

“So the Jews said to him, ‘What sign do you show us for doing these things?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” (John 2:13-22)

Sometimes our familiarity with this story of Jesus cleansing the temple can diminish the shock that this moment would’ve been for the people who were there. The temple was the sacred place, the reverent place. It was the center of their social life, their spiritual life. It was where they went to sacrifice, to worship. I mean, it was revered.

Perhaps re-envisioning this story in some other settings might help us imagine what it would’ve been like to be at the temple when Jesus cleared it out. Maybe your school, your high school, the principal’s office toward the end of the year. All the administrators are there, key teachers, heads of departments, and they’re going through papers and files are all around.

Then like a high school student just storms into the principal’s office, takes all the files, throws them up in the air, says, “You’re all corrupt! Get out of here!” and takes his backpack off and starts slamming it on the table, and everybody runs out. I mean, that would be shocking, right? That’s kind of what Jesus does here, except it’s at the temple. Even more intense.

Or just a few days ago, the State of the Union address. Everybody is watching it on TV. The president giving his speech. Can you imagine if somebody ran in and said, “This is all corrupt! Get out of here!” and started yelling at people and sending them away. It’d be shocking! It’d be the news of the day, of the week, of the year. They’d also probably say, “Why would the Secret Service allow that to happen?”

They didn’t really have a Secret Service, although it is interesting because the temple mount, it was actually forbidden to bring weapons up there, and because it was the Passover time, they would’ve been checking very carefully. So it’s not like Jesus showed up with a whip under his robe planning on doing this, bringing a weapon in or something like that. He wouldn’t have been allowed in with the whip, so that’s why he makes the whip out of cords.

Sometimes we look at this and think, “Did Jesus actually strike people?” It does not seem that he does. In fact, in the Middle East even to this day sometimes you can use a whip of cords or something like that. People who work with herds will strike the ground to make those kinds of animals leave. So probably that’s what Jesus is doing. Certainly it’s an intense moment that he’s expressing great anger, although reading this it seems he is not violently hurting people.

But this is certainly Jesus bringing truth into a situation. You’re like, “What a second. Where’s the grace from the last time?” But in this situation, Jesus brings so much truth and intensity because the people have really missed it. They have bought into some awful, awful lies. What’s going on in the temple? Well, it was the place of worship.

You had to go and make your sacrifices as the Old Testament laws commanded, but the Roman coins of the time almost all had the picture of a Caesar, of an emperor, a king on them, and you weren’t really allowed to take those coins up into the temple because it’s like a little idol. So you had to exchange these coins for the right kind of coins. So that’s why there are all these money changers and these tables set up there so you can do all the money exchange.

Then around that developed a whole economy to the point where the temple actually functioned as a central bank for the whole nation of Israel. Then you would buy all these different kinds of animals to be sacrificed. It’s interesting there’s no mention of lambs, which was the essential sacrifice for the Passover.

So it seems like what has happened to the temple is that it has become way more consumed with the transactions of being able to fulfill the obligations than actually obeying the heart of the law. I mean, they’re not even mentioning selling lambs. If they really cared about the law they’d be taking care of the lambs, but they’re not. They’re not selling lambs at all. It’s driving everything else out, the oxen and sheep and all the rest. So Jesus drives them out.

What’s going on here? Well, Jesus is furious because they have taken worship of God and connection with God and reduced it to a mere transaction…to trade. Money has gotten in there. That’s distorted things. Now people’s ability to worship and connect with God is completely obstructed.

There’s nothing wrong with money or banking, wise investment. You saw a Financial Peace promotion. It’s a good course. There’s nothing wrong with any of those things, but when our hearts and our worship become obstructed by that trade and money and stuff then it’s a huge problem. Jesus has to bring in some truth there.

You think about that trade and that peace. Maybe these days we don’t have the same selling of animal sacrifices and things like that when we come together to worship, but it is all too easy for us to reduce our worship to a mere transaction, where we think, “Okay, if I go to church, then, God, you’ll bless me,” or, “If I tithe, then everything is going to work out fine and I should be rich,” or whatever. We can turn our relationship with God into a series of transactions or trades back and forth. “God, if I do this, then you’ll do that, right? If I do this, then you’ll do that.”

Jesus is saying, “No, no, no, no. That is like the most simplistic, inaccurate way of thinking about God and relating to him. This isn’t supposed to be some transaction; this is supposed to be the transcendent encounter between God and man, between heaven and earth. Let’s get this out of the temple so people can actually meet with God, hear from God, pray to God, respond to God, and let him lead our lives. Not just reduce this to a series of back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.”

This is truth that is absolutely essential for these people to hear. Of course, they say, “What gives you the right to do this?” Jesus, in his great statement, says, “Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days.” They don’t understand he’s speaking about his own body, his own crucifixion and resurrection. They think he’s speaking in human terms about the actual structure of the stones of the temple itself, and they don’t understand. They don’t get it.

But again, just like we saw at the wedding feast, there are these echoes. Just as Jesus brings grace in the wedding story but it carries with it a reference to the cross, here also as Jesus is bringing truth into the temple situation, it has this reference forward to the cross. What we’re beginning to see is that total grace and total truth come together at the cross and at the resurrection. This is where we see them both, the fullness of glory on total display.

But we’re still left with a question about how this applies to us. How do we receive Jesus in his graciousness and his truthfulness, and then how do we become the kind of people who display or walk in this grace and truth? The great mistake is that it’s something that can be simply learned.

You know, if we just read enough or we think enough or we figure it out enough, practice enough, then we’ll become gracious and truthful people, but what we’re about to see is that Jesus’ interaction with Nicodemus throws all that off the table, and he’s going after something much, much deeper. We’ll continue on.

Verse 23 says, “Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.” (John 2:23-25)

What a chilling verse. People are looking at Jesus and they’re seeing the signs he’s doing, they’re feeling drawn toward him, and yet Jesus still entrusts himself to no one because he knows what is in the hearts of mankind. In spite of our desires to be gracious people and to be truthful people, Jesus knows our hearts are corrupt, wicked. Apart from him, they are rotten.

A couple of days ago, I warmed up some chili for lunch. It was good chili, and I thought, “I want to put some crackers on this chili.” So I got it out of the microwave. It was there on the table, and I went and got some crackers. Amy and I just moved several months ago. One of the problems with moving is that all of your pantry time limits sort of reset. So if something has been in the pantry at your old house but then you move to your new house, you don’t realize how long it was at your old house before it was at your new house.

So I opened up the pantry. “Hey, a box of Ritz crackers. Hot dog! Sounds great.” So I pull them out, open them up. You know how they come in sleeves, but there’s this sleeve that was three-quarters full but opened, and then you kind of twist the top. So I opened it. I taste one, and it tasted kind of like plastic, but whatever. Sometimes Ritz takes like plastic. Plus these are whole wheat Ritz, so maybe the whole wheat Ritz taste more like plastic than the regular Ritz that are buttery. I think, “It’s just going to go get drowned in the chili anyway.”

So I break up all these Ritz crackers and put them all in there and everything, and then I put the rest of them down. I start eating this, and I look over at the little tube of Ritz crackers. There are all sorts of bugs in there. Needless to say, I had a very upset stomach yesterday. I went through my chili and I picked out all the rotten Ritz, threw it in the trash, and sat staring off into the distance for while, because what do you do? “Oh man, I just ate some pretty bad Ritz.”

I was reading this passage and it says Jesus knows what’s in man. He doesn’t entrust himself to them. It’s like Jesus looks at us and realizes we’re just rotten Ritz. As much as we want to be delicious, gracious and truthful, on our own our hearts don’t just have a problem; we are the problem.

We rebel against God ever since Adam and Eve. Jesus knows what’s in man, which is why a simple project of self-improvement is not going to overhaul our lives. Even the best of us, even the ones we would look at and say, “Wow, they have it most together. Wow, they’re really upright,” apart from Jesus doing a radical new work of life in us, we’re still rotten Ritz.

This is what we see with Nicodemus, because he is that guy. Listen to the qualifications, the way Nicodemus is described. He is what everybody would look at as the guy who has it all together. Chapter 3:1: “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?’ 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 its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.'” (John 3:1-8)

Nicodemus is a ruler. He’s a Pharisee. The Pharisees believed if you keep the rules then God will be pleased with you, and he is by all accounts quite successful in that. He’s keeping the rules. He’s recognized as a leader. He sees Jesus as a rabbi, as a teacher. He says, “Hey, this is a good guy. I want to learn from him.” He even sees Jesus as someone who is sent from God, but he’s not to the place yet where he can understand what God has to do in a person’s heart in order for that person to be born again.

So Jesus tells him, “You have to be born again.” Nicodemus doesn’t understand, so Jesus explains it further, being born of water and the Spirit. Of course, interpreters through the years have looked at this and seen a picture being born of water, baptism, and the Spirit, the gift of the Holy Spirit at salvation coming together.

But the overarching point Jesus is making here with being born again is that this is not just something we grow towards or drift towards or get better at. Life with God, eternal life, all of this is the sort of thing that requires a new origin, a new start, a rebirth, something dramatically different from what has come before. A birth is also a beginning. It is certainly a point in time, but it’s the beginning of a new way of life.

N.T. Wright, writing about this passage, talks about how he lost his birth certificate once, and so he needed it for some forms he was filling out. Even though he’d lost his birth certificate, there was no question he had been born. Right? Anybody who talks to him or sees him, he has been born.

That’s part of what Jesus is trying to say here when he’s talking about new birth. There’s something that happens in our relationship with God that is so profound and so distinct that no one would question it. No one is going to ask, “Hey, do you have a little piece of paper to prove you were born again?” Something like that. No, it’s something that actually happens, and it’s so distinct, so radical, so transforming in our lives that people can clearly see there has been a new birth.

Nicodemus is stretched about this because up until this point in his life it has all been about trying harder, doing better. So he says, “Jesus, how does this work?” Verse 9: “Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?

Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do 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.'” (John 3:9-13)

In that statement, Jesus is pointing to himself as the one who is able to reveal the secrets of heaven. At the time in the ancient world when the gospel of John was written, there were all sorts of people who said, “I had a heavenly vision,” or, “I was up there and I saw this and this and this, and let me tell you what it’s all about.” Jesus is saying here, “I’m the one. Look to me. I can tell you what the truth is about heaven.”

Verse 14: “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.” (John 3:14-15) Now here are the key words. Whoever believes in him may have eternal life. How does this new birth, this radical new beginning occur? Belief. It’s very simple. It goes back actually to the story of the wedding and the wine. Simple trust. The same word for believe could be translated as trust. Whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Here he’s referencing the great story in the book of Numbers when the people had rebelled against God and there are poisonous serpents among them. They’re getting bit. They’re dying. God tells Moses to take a serpent, put it on a pole, hold up the pole, and whoever looks to the serpent on the pole would be healed.

Jesus says, “That story is a foreshadowing of me. It’s as simple as looking to me hanging on a cross.” Not that Jesus himself is the serpent on the cross, but rather that in the cross and the crucifixion, as he’s taking all evil upon himself, we can see that’s what evil looks like, and through that evil is Jesus winning a victory, simply putting our trust right there.

He continues in verse 16. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3:16-21)

Jesus tells Nicodemus that the way of living a life saturated in grace and truth does not come by trying but by trusting. It does not come by earning it or self-righteousness but by simple trust and simple obedience in Jesus. That’s the new birth and that’s the way of the life in the Spirit.

Like the wind blowing, you don’t know exactly where the wind comes from, but its effect across your check and in your hair is undeniable. Trusting Jesus results in this life where we tap into the source of all grace and all truth and follow Jesus into a life where we too become people of grace and truth.

So this morning, what do we do? I think the question is…How do we trust Jesus? Can we trust Jesus? For some of us, it’s an intimidating thought because we like the idea of the gracious Jesus who turns water to wine, but maybe we’re a little bit afraid of the Jesus who pounds the ground with a whip and drives out some of the places where we’ve turned relationship with God into a transaction or allowed money to take over our hearts. Trusting Jesus, believing in Jesus means welcoming the Savior who is both gracious and truthful.

Maybe we’re all too willing to believe that yeah, we are a mess, we are rotten Ritz, but we can’t understand or accept that God would love the world so much that Jesus’ death redeems people even like us, wretches like us. Trusting Jesus, believing Jesus means welcoming the Word of God become flesh full of grace and truth.

What does it look like to trust Jesus this morning, maybe for the first time? Or as you’re walking through life, you encounter situations, whether it’s your parenting or your workplace, meeting with people who don’t know God yet, how do we show grace, how do we show truth at the same time? Again, the answer Jesus gave Nicodemus is the same answer. Trust Jesus.

“Lord, show me how to see what you would be like here so we might be those kind of people full of grace and truth to the point where when people meet and see us and interact with us it’s not just an improved person of myself but a newly born person of trust in Jesus.”

Nicodemus again and again uses the word can. “How can these things be? No one can do these things. How can a man be born again?” Nicodemus’ way of seeing the world is so limited by what he can see. It’s all about what can and cannot be done based on his understanding of the world. “How can you be gracious when there has to be truth? How can you be truthful when there has to be grace as well?”

It’s all right here, and Jesus is saying, “No, no, no, no, no. Come and trust me and let me, the one who is the intersection between heaven and earth, show you something even greater. Blow the limitations off the can and allow yourself to be reborn while trusting me.” It’s a whole new world.