Text: John 3:1-8, 16
Introduction
- Bible Mondays--read John 3 today, memorize John 3:16 if you haven't already
- Let's quote John 3:16 together
- I was tempted to preach on John 3:16 today - turn to someone near you and guess what a sermon on John 3:16 would have been about... 20 seconds, go
A. Nicodemus
- A Pharisee - they're not "fair, you see"
- Actually, he's one of the cool kids. He knows the Law. He's super-spiritual... or so the people thought.
- He's not just a professor. He's an STM professor! :-)
- Maybe a little embarrassed that he doesn't have all the answers. Maybe a little embarrassed that he's not as spiritual as he wants to be.
- You ever feel like that? That people look up to you and expect you to have it all together, but you know that you really don't? It's a lot of pressure.
- Illustration
- Cuts to the chase.
- "You must be born again/from above" - the potential double entendre
- Nicodemus is confused.
- My dislike of horror movies, especially of the apocalyptic kind
- Driving around with WD in your head
- The world is actually the reverse.
- Our human lives are a struggle to become alive.
- All have sinned and are the walking dead.
- Apart from God, we are all roadkill. We are all zombies. We look like the image of God, but it is marred almost beyond recognition.
- The argument from evil (Nietzsche's madman, existentialism)
- Most people wander around without a true sense of the meaning of life (live for pleasure or for idolatrous causes or they serve God as a duty rather than a delight)
- The Spirit is the breath of life.
- He is the power to be human again. Charges the image of God.
- Illustration
- He powers us to live and love as God made us.
- He is the Spirit of truth that gives us discernment, to see the world as it is and can be.
- John 3:16
- Faith - not a mere check yes, check no, not mere words
- Romans 10:9 - a Lord is a master. Allegiance, investment, commitment
- "Jesus is [my] Lord."
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