October 18, 2026
John 3:1-21
In our dining room we have one wall that is covered in plaques with different sayings on them that we have found here and there. Some of them are funny, like the one which asks the question, “I wonder if we ever give God a headache?” Others go a little deeper, stating, “In this house we do second chances, we do grace, we do real, we do mistakes, we do I’m sorry, we do hugs, we do family, we do love; that’s a little food for thought while we share our food, isn’t it? Of course, we also must remember that our family has been given its character through dealing with a tree, so we also have a plaque that states, “Our family is like the branches of a tree; we may grow in different directions but our roots remain as one.” My favorite plaque though, is the one we placed in our basement for our Airbnb guests which reads, “Each day I am thankful for nights that turned into mornings, friends that turned into family, dreams that turned into reality and likes that turned into loves.” After enduring the loss of our home and getting through that ordeal with friends who became like family, this sign expresses our experience quite well.
I thought of that line that reads, “…friends that turned into family.”, as I worked on this week’s message. You see God does something even greater than turning friends into family for our God’s greatness is that he can take strangers and create out of them a family. In the first chapter of the gospel of John, we learn that Christ is in the world, a world that he created but the people of this world did not know him, they were complete strangers to him. Yet, we also learn, that as many who took hold of him, he gives them the right to become children of God, family members alongside of him. The reason for this amazing transformation is, as we learned last week, Jesus, the Son of Man, has come into the world to fulfill the mission first given to Abraham, which is that through Abraham and his offspring all the families of the world will be blessed by God. Jesus is the offspring through which the blessing of God goes out to all the people of this world. As Paul tells us in the third chapter of Galatians, “In Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham is found in the people of the nations so that they might take hold of the promise of the Spirit by faith.” The gospel of John, not surprisingly, is all about God giving this blessing to all people every bit as much as we find in the other gospel accounts.
Throughout John’s gospel we find twenty-five unusual sayings of Jesus which all begin with Jesus saying, “Truly, truly.” At least this is usually how the words of Jesus are translated. In the original language of Jesus though, these sayings began with the words, “Amen, Amen.” The word, “Amen” comes from the root word, “Aman” which means something that is sure and certain, something you can build your life on, something that will not shift or fail. So, when Jesus says, “Amen” not once but twice, he is emphasizing in these twenty-five teachings that here we find foundational truths which communicate an ultimate truth that are not just reliable but are indeed reality itself. In times such as we live in when so much seems so uncertain and unreliable, here in these double, “Amen” teachings Jesus gives us a sure thing, a bedrock truth upon which we can build a life which is secure.
Today in the third chapter of John’s gospel, we discover the second instance where Jesus gives us a double Amen teaching. This chapter of John is one of the most well known yet is also one of the least understood of any chapter of John’s gospel. The first double Amen teaching found in the third chapter, is one that many have probably heard before. Jesus is speaking to a Pharisee named Nicodemus who comes to Jesus at night, as if he is conducting a secret mission so that his fellow Pharisees will be be unable to scrutinize his speaking to this one named Jesus. Now Nicodemus never asks Jesus a question. All he does is merely confess to Jesus that it is evident that Jesus is a teacher who has come from God. Nicodemus has come to this conclusion because he has seen firsthand Jesus perform miracles, what John records as being signs pointing to the truth about Jesus which is that God is with him. When Jesus hears this testimony of Nicodemus, he begins a familiar, double Amen teaching, saying, “Amen, Amen, unless one is born from above, they are not the kingdom of God.” When I hear this teaching of Jesus, I can not but help remember a period of time in the life of the church when this teaching of Jesus became a litmus test people used to determine just who was a “true”Christian. Those who attended church were often asked this question, “Have you been born again?” Often those asking this question would press the issue a little further, asking, “When were you born again?” What questions like these ended up doing is creating doubt and uncertainty within the hearts of good, Christian folk. I can recall an article rebutting such question written by a Catholic priest who said that yes, he had been born again and the date when this happened was on a Friday when Jesus died for him upon the cross. I was so impressed by this answer I got his article out of the paper and kept it.
Well, I believe that Jesus did not give us this double Amen teaching, a teaching that speaks of a sure and certain truth, all so that others could use this teaching to create doubt and uncertainty in the hearts of believers. While such people who asked others whether they had been born again probably meant well, they nonetheless missed the point in which Jesus was trying to teach us. Ending up with the wrong meaning to these teachings of Jesus is bound to happen if we do not remember that Jesus is teaching us about being secure in what has been promised to us by God, the blessing which he wants us to receive.
When we keep the blessing of God as our criteria for understanding the teachings of Jesus, then we will realize that the pattern in which God blesses us mirrors the way that people in ancient Jewish culture blessed their children. We find this act of blessing in the story of Issac and his two sons, Esau and Jacob. Now, even though Esau and Jacob were twins, because Esau arrived first, he was the one given the birthright, the one upon whom the blessing of his father would rest. Jacob would one day end up tricking his father all so that he might be given the blessing instead of Esau. This is how important this idea of a father blessing his first-born son was in this culture.
Well, when God enters a relationship with his people, he does so in the manner of a father blessing his firstborn son.When Moses was sent by God to Egypt to perform miraculous wonders before Pharoah in Egypt, God instructed Moses to tell Pharoah, “Thus says, Yahweh, “Israel is my son, my firstborn.” Moses told Pharaoh that Yahweh’s demand was this, ‘Let my son go that he may serve me.” Using such language, God implies that the people of Israel are those he wants to bless just as fathers bless their own first-born sons. Thus, when Jesus teaches us that we must be born again, it is not a stretch for us to understand that we must know ourselves as being the firstborn children of God if we want to receive the blessing of God.
The blessing of God, like the blessing fathers would give to their first-born sons, means that those who receive this blessing will bear the authority of the Father, and then go out in the power of the Father in order to do the work the Father expects of them. It is not difficult to understand then, that the blessing given to the son came with a great deal of responsibility because the Father now places his reputation in the hands of the son he has blessed. The son must be mature enough to set aside his own need for recognition so that all that he does brings honor upon his father whose work he is doing.
So, with an understanding of what it means for us to receive the blessing of our Heavenly Father, then what Peter writes in the first chapter of his first letter begins to make sense of what it means for us to be born from above. Peter writes in the twenty-third verse, “We are born again not of perishable seed but through the living and abiding word of God.” What this tells us is that if we want to receive the promised blessing of God then we must let his word be our sole authority for our life. To answer the question that was so often asked, “When were you born again?” we just tell of when we last allowed the word of God to direct our actions so that through what we did the honor of our Heavenly Father is increased. This helps explain why Jesus taught this teaching about the need we have to be born again to Nicodemus. When Nicodemus came to Jesus after dark it was clear that the only reputation that Nicodemus was concerned about was his own. If Nicodemus had been living as a firstborn son of God, he would have not been concerned about his own honor among his fellow Pharisees but instead he would have only wanted to glorify his Heavenly Father.
Now it was plain to Jesus that Nicodemus, who considered himself to be a teacher of the people of Israel, did not understand such a basic concept as this need we all have to be born from above. When Jesus tried to explain to Nicodemus that anyone who is convicted by the Spirit can know themselves as being a blessed child of the Heavenly Father, Nicodemus replied, “How can this be?” Jesus then answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and you do not understand these things?” What Jesus is implying is that this idea of being born again is part of the very teachings of the people of Israel, what they call the Torah. It is in one of the most tragic incidents in the wilderness wanderings of the people of Israel that we can find a clear example of what it means to be born again. As we remember, when the people of Israel were set free from their slavery at the hands of Pharoah down in Egypt, the place where they always hoped to end up was the Promised Land. This is the land that God had promised to give to Abraham and his descendants. In the thirteenth chapter of Numbers, we learn that the people of Israel have at last gotten close to going into the Promised Land. All that is necessary is that spies be sent out from the people of Israel to go and look over the land that they were going to live in. So, they select a man from every tribe of Israel, twelve spies in all, to go on this dangerous mission. They were to see just what kind of people currently live in this place and how the land is, is it good or bad? They were to notice how well fortified the cities were and what find out just what types of trees grow in this place. So off they went to spy out the land. Well, before long the spies returned with their report. Ten of the spies come back with the same report. Yes, the land did flow with milk and honey for it was a very fruitful land. Nevertheless, the people who currently live in this land are strong, their cities are well fortified and large, and there are many tribes of fierce and strong warriors. Now, the people who heard this report of course were overcome with fear, but two of the spies, Caleb and Joshua, quickly spoke up and said, “By all means we should go and take the land and possess it for we are able to overcome it.” But the other ten spies spoke up saying, “We are not able to go up against these people for they are too strong for us.” Then the report of these ten spies became even more terrifying for they told the people of Israel, “The land which we saw is a land that devours those who settle there, and all the men are giants. We were like grasshoppers next to them.” Well, upon hearing such news the people of Israel began to panic, and they lifted their voices and wailed and cried all night. The men of Israel grumbled against Moses and the whole congregation of the people of Israel said to him, “We should have just died in Egypt. Or we should have just died in our journey through this wilderness. Why would Yahweh bring us to this land only to have us all die by the sword? The people who live in this land will slaughter our wives and our little ones. Oh, it would be better for us to return to Egypt! So, they said to one another, “Let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt.” Only four men out of of the hundreds of thousands of men who were there that day, Moses, Aaron, Caleb, and Joshua, tore their clothes, upon hearing such rebellious words spoken against God. They cried out to the people of Israel, “This land which you looked at is an exceedingly good land. If God is pleased with us, then he will bring us into this land, and he will give us this land which flows with milk and honey. So do not rebel against God for the people of this land will be like our bread, we will easily chew them up. God will take away their protection for God is with us so do not fear them.” Here in these two responses, we hear one group who were worried about what would happen to them and another group, this group of four men who were faithful to God who worried only about the reputation of God. Only the group faithful to God understood what it meant to be a firstborn son, wanting only to uphold the honor of their Heavenly Father. So, God decided that all the men over twenty of all that had come out of Egypt would die there in the wilderness, all that is except for Moses, Aaron, Caleb, and Joshua. Only when the last of these rebellious people had at last died in the wilderness could the second generation enter the Promised Land. Now when we hear of this judgment God handed down upon his people, we must wonder just who would this younger generation listen to for instruction? If they listened to their parents, those who dishonored God, then they too would end up rebelling against God when it came time for them to enter the Promised Land. No, this younger generation had to be born again, not listening to their parents who were only concerned about themselves. They had to instead learn to listen only to the word of God so that their actions would bring honor to their Heavenly Father.
This is the story Jesus thought Nicodemus should have been able to remember. Jesus expected that Nicodemus would be more concerned about the honor of his Heavenly Father than being concerned about what his fellow Pharisees would think of him if they found out that he had gone to speak with Jesus. The people of Israel who had witnessed miracle after miracle, the parting of the Red Sea, being fed every day with the bread of heaven and seeing water flowing forth from a rock were still unable to give God all the honor and glory when the time came to receive what he had promised to them. In much the same way, Nicodemus as well had seen Jesus perform miracle after miracle proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that all that Jesus did was in God, but he refused to be seen with Jesus and thus he failed to honor and glorify God.
Nicodemus may not have life lived in obedience to the word of God because he simply did not know just what such a life looked like. In this way he is much like us. This is the importance behind this well-known verse, John 3:16. We all probably know that it goes, “For God so loved the world that he gave his Son…”, yet we may never have considered just what God has given to us in this his Son. Here is the Word living in the flesh of this one called Jesus. No more do we have to wonder what our life will look like when we obey the word of God, because now we know that our life will look like the life of Jesus. When we believe in him, we do so because our faith has become sight because now we behold Jesus and in him, we can see ourselves alive with the life eternal, a life which eternally brings honor and glory to our Heavenly Father. Amen, and Amen!
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