Sermon Text: John 3:1-17
Date: May 26, 2024
Event: Holy Trinity Sunday (The First Sunday after Pentecost), Year B
John 3:1-17 (EHV)
There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2He came to Jesus at night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these miraculous signs you are doing unless God is with him.”
3Jesus replied, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless someone is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
4Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?”
5Jesus answered, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God! 6Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh. Whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not be surprised when I tell you that you must be born from above. 8The wind blows where it pleases. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
9“How can these things be?” asked Nicodemus.
10“You are the teacher of Israel,” Jesus answered, “and you do not know these things? 11Amen, Amen, I tell you: We speak what we know, and we testify about what we have seen. But you people do not accept our testimony. 12If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13No one has ascended into heaven, except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.
14“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15so that everyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
16“For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
The Triune God Is United in Mission
When a group is working on a singular project, ensuring everyone is going in the same direction is very important. For some people, their whole job is managing those projects to ensure each person or team has the necessary resources and adheres to a schedule to make the process move smoothly. If you have people out of sync, or going rogue, or deciding they have different priorities, the whole system will break down and fall apart.
This isn’t just true in groups of multiple people. I know all too well that I can have one priority for something to get done but then spend my time on other things. Then, I feel like I’ve more or less wasted my time because I didn’t do what I wanted to get done. If it was that important, I should have prioritized it and executed it!
This morning, on the First Sunday after Pentecost, we spend time especially on the Triune God. The Trinity is not something we’ll be able to explain logically. How can God be one yet three? How can there be different persons to God, yet each person is completely and wholly God, not simply one-third of God?
So, the hows of the Trinity will never really make sense—we must take God at his Word and trust that he knows better than us. But what is clear, and what does make sense, is that the Triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—are all unified in their mission. Their purposes and goals are completely in sync. They have one main task in mind and work together to execute it. My dear brothers and sisters, you are the Triune God’s mission and priority.
This morning, we meet up with Jesus early in his earthly ministry. He’s meeting with one of the Pharisees, a man named Nicodemus. Now, in the Gospels, when we run across the Pharisees, and they’re talking with Jesus or asking him questions, they often try to trick or trap in his words. At a minimum, we usually see them test him to learn what he’s really up to. But that’s not the case here with Nicodemus. He recognizes that there’s something special about Jesus. He views Jesus not as a threat but perhaps as a true gift from God. But he has some questions. And so, under the cover of darkness for fear of his fellow Pharisees finding out, he goes to learn more about and from Jesus. “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these miraculous signs you are doing unless God is with him.”
It's not a question, is it? The implication is, “Jesus, please give me some insight from God, help me to understand what he’s done or is doing.” And so Jesus begins with what we might call the end: “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless someone is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” That’s where we end up once God has worked faith in our hearts. But Nicodemus is so baffled by this concept of a second birth that he can’t get past it.
So Jesus continues to tell him that the things of this life produce things that are useful only for this life, but the things that God works are useful for eternity—faith in God’s promises being first and foremost among them.
So then Jesus backtracks even more. As shocking as it seems to Jesus to need to break things down into the simplest of terms for one of Israel’s premier teachers, he does. He goes back to the Old Testament to help with that, to the days of God’s people wandering in the wilderness after they were freed from their slavery in Egypt. As they traveled, they grew impatient with Moses and God and grumbled and complained. So, as a chastisement for their malcontent, God sent venomous snakes among the people. We’re told that as a result of the snakes, “many people from Israel died” (Numbers 21:6). This was no minor inconvenience. God was serious about the people’s sins and ensured they knew!
Seeing what had befallen their countrymen, those left cried out in repentance and fear. They admitted their wrongdoing and pleaded with Moses to pray for them. And so Moses did, and God gave him specific directions: “‘Make a venomous snake and put it on a pole. If anyone who is bitten looks at it, he will live.’ Moses made a bronze snake and put it on the pole. If a snake had bitten anyone, if that person looked at the bronze snake, he lived” (Numbers 21:8-9). A bronze snake was lifted up on a pole, and everyone who looked at it, trusting God’s promise that he attached to it, was spared from physical death at the bites of the real snakes.
Jesus uses this illustration to depict what will happen to him and the result. Jesus, like the metal snake, will be lifted up—not on a pole, but on the cross. He’ll be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Looking to Jesus, trusting his promises that he saves, brings the forgiveness of sins God promised.
But then Jesus takes us back even further. Why would Jesus come to rescue us from our sins? Why would the Holy Spirit work fresh, heavenly birth through faith in Jesus? There’s a fundamental core driving all of these actions: love. And that love stems from the Father, causing him to send his Son, and then the Father and Son, in turn, send the Holy Spirit with that heavenly rebirth of faith. Jesus described that foundational love in the famous verses at the end of our Gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
The mission that the Triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—is unified in is saving you from hell. Because that’s where we are naturally. As sinners who rebel against God’s will in our lives over and over again, we are nowhere near the perfection that God requires. On our own, we are lost to eternal damnation; we will perish eternally without God’s intervention and rescue.
And as God examined that state, his heart was twisted in knots. He loved you, me, and the world too much to let hell be our inevitable destination. He loved us too much to let his justice separate us from him forever. And so the Father, in that love, gives direction to the Son. We sang a poetic version of this commission two weeks ago in the hymn “Dear Christians, One and All Rejoice,” where we sang, “He spoke to his belovèd Son: ‘Tis time to have compassion. Then go, bright jewel of my crown, and bring to all salvation. From sin and sorrow set them free; slay bitter death for them that they may live with you forever.’” For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…
And then, once Jesus does the work we needed him to do, once he suffers and dies on the cross to pay for every single sin ever committed by every person, there is still something left to be done. While the forgiveness of sins is an objective truth because the work is complete, if I, as an individual, do not know what Jesus has done, it does me no good. It’s like a Christmas present wrapped under the tree, completely prepared, yet never opened and enjoyed.
If we don’t look to our lifted-up Savior in faith, we don’t benefit from what he did for us. So, the Holy Spirit comes to us as individuals with that good news of the gospel to assure us that Jesus paid our debt. He creates and sustains faith in our hearts through his Word, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, where he brings us the confidence of our forgiveness and eternal life.
So, the Father sends the Son; the Son is lifted up on the cross to save us; the Father and the Son send us the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit works faith in the fact that the Son completed the Father’s mission of mercy. Each member of the triune Godhead has different roles but the same unified mission. God’s mission was to save you. And that mission is completed.
Dear Holy Spirit, keep us strong in our faith, which assures us that we are forgiven and will be in heaven because of your love for us! Amen.
