This program is brought to you by Israel Restoration Ministries.
What are you doing Sunday nights? Come join Friendship with God radio Bible teacher Tom Cantor of the Friendship with God Fellowship Church every Sunday night at 5:30 p.m. at The Vine at 9336 Abraham Way, Santee, California. Watch and listen live around the world to Tom Cantor Sunday evening on youtube.com by searching for Friendship with God Fellowship or by going to our homepage at friendshipwithgod.org.
That’s friendshipwithgod.org.
Welcome to Friendship with God with our Bible teacher, Tom Cantor. Today’s message and previous messages can be listened to or downloaded for free at friendshipwithgod.org.
Well, let’s pray, Father, we come to you now in the all-wonderful name of Jesus, the name that is above every name, the name that only matters. And so Lord, we do pray that as we open the Word of Jesus this morning, that you would open our eyes in Jesus’ name, amen. So turn now, if you would, to John chapter three.
We’re gonna be covering this wonderful, start here, this wonderful chapter, John three, with the most famous verse in the Bible in it, which obviously John 3 16. But let’s follow along here as I read these first few verses of John 3, John 3 1. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus sayeth unto him, How can a man be born when he is old?
Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh.
That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.
So is every one that is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, how can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, we speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen, and you receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and you believe not, how shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly things? No man hath to send it up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in heaven.
And as Moses lifted up the serpent, in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting, eternal life. Now, that’s as far as we’re going to read here, because obviously we’re not going to be covering all this, but for context, it’s important to see how this conversation is going between Nicodemus and Jesus, because Chapter 2 finished with a statement about many people. It said in Chapter 2 verse 23, now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover and the feast day, many believed in his name when they saw the miracles which he did.
So, and then we read, as we finished up Chapter 2, we saw that Christ was suspicious of them. He didn’t trust them, and the explanation for why he didn’t trust them is because it says that he knew them. He knew them better than they knew themselves, and he knew that their belief was not the kind of belief that was going to withstand the storm of the peer pressure and the temptation causing them to just to switch very quickly from hail him to crucify him.
And this we saw in the end of the last two verses of Chapter 2, where it says that Chapter 224 says he did not commit himself unto them because he knew all men, and indeed it not that any should testify him, for he knew what was in man. So that’s the emphasis. He knew what was in man.
That’s how Chapter 2 ended. Multitude of people, he knows each one individually. And that’s what makes the first statement in Chapter 3 so dramatic with the words that switch from the end of Chapter 2 many to Chapter 3 verse 1.
There was a man. There was a man. They were brought to see not a multitude, but just one man.
One man who’s alone. This man is surprising because this man comes from the party that’s the enemy of Jesus Christ, the religious elite party of the Pharisees. There was a man, verse 1.
There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man is not just any man. He’s a Pharisee.
This man is just not any Pharisee. He’s a ruler. He’s a chief.
He’s like on the top of the political, religious party of the Pharisees. We see now in Israel how Netanyahu has formed an alliance with the political, religious party, religious Zionists in Israel. They’re called the religious, they said the co-religious Zionist party.
And this is the party that now has a lot of control in Israel. It’s practically, it’s made, done things that have practically put the, caused a great divide in the state of Israel today. This is the party that hates Christ so much that they have revoked the visas of all the workers in Christian churches, Christian organization, churches, so that they have to leave the country.
This is the party that hates Christ so much that they introduced a bill into the parliament in Knesset that would have made it a crime punishable with a two year penalty for anyone who spoke, wrote or posted anything about Jesus Christ to Jews. I mean, just imagine if one of the rulers in that party secretly became an admirer and a follower of Jesus Christ. That’s who Nicodemus was.
And that was the situation that Nicodemus found himself in in verse one when it says, a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. But verse one directs us not just to see Nicodemus as just one of them, where verse one says there was a man, that’s so important for us to see that this has an impact on our lives with the statement there was a man. Because in that statement in verse one, there was a man, it causes us not to see Nicodemus as a Pharisee, as a ruler of the Pharisees.
The statement in verse one of there was a man causes us to see Nicodemus as God sees Nicodemus. Simply a man, a man that has been created by and formed with the hands of Jesus. And this, a man that God has a wonderful plan for this man’s life.
This man, God loves this man. God sent his son Jesus so that he could get the exemption from hell with the blood of Jesus. A man, if you just take out him, the love of God, you could say, there was a man that were the ocean filled with ink, and were the skies of parchment made, and were every stock on earth a quill, and were every man on earth a scribe by trade, to write the love of God for just this one man of the Pharisees in verse one, would drain the ocean dry, and the scroll above could not contain the whole, even though it stretched from sky to sky.
That’s the impact of this word, there was a man. The love of God for just verse one, a man named Nicodemus is so rich, so pure, it’s so measureless, it’s so strong. So just a verse one man named Nicodemus, that statement, there was a man has caught, that’s what drives me to tell my Jewish, especially the religious ones, Jewish rabbi friends, I tell them, I don’t see you as a rabbi.
I don’t see you as Jewish. I don’t see you as part of a group. I simply see you as my friend, Yaakov, for whom God so loves you that he sent his son to die just for your sins.
And that statement in verse one, there was a man, has led me to say, and I don’t want you to see me as a Christian. And I don’t want you to see me as part of a church. And I don’t want you to see me as part of them.
Because I want you to see me as just a person who has decided alone to follow the Lord Jesus Christ and doesn’t want you to suffer eternally in a state of forever condemnation. I want you to see me as just a man, just your friend. This statement in verse one, there was a man, is why I tell my Jewish friends, please, when you talk to me about yourself and God, please don’t use the words we and us and our, referring to Jewish people and Judaism.
And you’re gonna never hear me when I talk about myself and God. I will never use the words we and us and our, and I’ll only use the words I and my and mine. And those are the words I ask you to use, because in verse one, it says there was a man.
And because when God made his call, when God makes call to people, he calls individuals. He doesn’t call groups, because God said to the Jewish people, look at Abraham in Isaiah 51.2. Isaiah 51.2 says, look unto Abraham, your father, and unto Sarah that bare you, for I called him alone, and blessed him and increased him.
And God should say, I called him alone. I spoke to him alone. That’s what we find in Genesis 12.
Genesis 12, when God called Abraham in that famous lech lecha command, go, you go, walk, you walk, God did not call Sarah. God did not call Lot. God did not call anyone else.
He just called Abraham alone and told Abraham, leave your country, leave your people, leave your father’s house, go to a land that you’ve never seen before, go to a place you’ve never been to before, but God called them to, and Abraham was called alone, and because Abraham spoke to God alone, and because Abraham had this wonderful private relationship with God alone, because Abraham obeyed God alone, God said, Abraham, you’re going to be the father of faith. You’re going to be the father of every person who obeys me by faith and who follows me. Because they’re going to copy you, Abraham.
They’re going to have a private, alone relationship with God based on trust, based on obedience, based on confidence in God, and those are going to be the children of Abraham. And the pinnacle of Abraham’s aloneness with God and his alone relationship with God came when God called Abraham alone in Genesis 22, 1, Genesis 22, 1, where it says, and it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham and said unto him, Abraham, and he said, behold, here am I, here I am. And he said, take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains, which I will tell thee of.
That was a private message from God to Abraham alone, and that he should sacrifice his son Isaac to God. That was a private message that Abraham should sacrifice, he should kill his son Isaac to God. And Abraham did not, or let me put it this way, God did not tell Sarah, did not tell the mother of Isaac about it.
That was a call to Abraham alone. And Abraham kept the secret, he obeyed God, and he would have sacrificed Isaac his son had God not stopped him. And that was all because Abraham had this, this quality of aloneness with God.
He developed this intimate aloneness relationship with God alone. And that’s why these words are so important in verse one, in chapter three, verse one here. There was a man named Nicodemus.
God wanted Nicodemus to become a child of Abraham, who God called alone and who alone trusted and obeyed God. So when verse one says there was a man named Nicodemus, it shows us what Jesus Christ thinks of one solitary soul. And what Jesus Christ thinks of that one solitary soul is what he described in Matthew 18 and 11.
Matthew 18 and 11, where Jesus said, the son of man is come to save that which is lost. How think ye if a man have a hundred sheep and one of them be gone astray? Doth he not leave the ninety and nine and goeth into the mountains and seeketh that which is gone astray?
And if so be that he findeth, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. Even so, it’s not the will of your father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish. So just as a shepherd, he risked his life, he risked to go and to get just that one solitary sheep that went astray.
Jesus Christ will go to such risk for just one solitary sheep, who in this case happens to be a man named Nicodemus. And the hymn puts it so well. There were ninety and nine that safely lay in the shelter of the flock.
But one was out on the hills away, far off in the cold and dark, away on the mountains, wild and bare, away from the tender shepherd’s care. Lord, thou hast here thy ninety and nine, are they not enough for thee? But the shepherd made answer, this is mine, has wandered away from me.
And although the road be rough and steep, I go to the desert to find my sheep. And none of the ransom ever knew how deep were the waters crossed, nor how dark was the night which the Lord passed through, ere he found his sheep that was lost. Out in the bleak desert he heard its cry, all bleeding and helpless and ready to die.
That’s the impact of verse one. There was a man, and if that was the only man on earth, Christ would have died for just that man’s sins, because that’s how much Christ loves one man. Now, this was a different man compared to the people who came to Christ, because this was a man who was, in verse one, a ruler of the Jews.
Nicodemus was a considerable position in Israel. He was a ruler of the Jews. And yet, Nicodemus came to Jesus, and that made Nicodemus one of the group that the Bible calls the not many group.
Not many group. In 1 Corinthians 1.26, 1 Corinthians 1.26 says, For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. See, the Apostle Paul was telling in that verse, the Church of Corinth, to look around, look around at each other, and see that there’s not many mighty, not many who are of nobility.
You know, it reminds me of a woman in England who was very wealthy, and she was of nobility in the high status in the society. And she became a follower of Jesus Christ, and she said, I was saved by the letter M, she said. Because 1st Corinthians 126 says, not many, and the letter M is in the word many.
But she said that if 1st Corinthians 126 didn’t have the letter M, then it would have been not any, she said. So she said she wasn’t the not any, she was saved by the letter M. So all that means that this is, it’s not a case of not any of the Pharisees were followers of Christ, but Nicodemus was saved by the letter M, because not many of the Pharisees were followers of Christ, but there were.
He was a member of the Great Sanhedrin that convicted Christ, condemned Christ, and then essentially carried out the execution. But he was like a senator. He was a man of authority in the capital of Jerusalem, and that made for Nicodemus his life to be a struggle.
He was struggling because he was part of that group that was the most prejudiced against Jesus Christ. And that made this man to have to struggle with thoughts of prejudice against Jesus Christ. You know, the prejudice is so strong.
I was just, you know, if you, I don’t know what I’m going to do with this, but if you look on Amazon, anyways, there’s 500 reviews about, for the book Changed. And they are so divided. It’s unbelievable.
There’s like, not any one, two, there’s five stars, and there’s really not two, three, four. And then there’s one stars.
And the one stars are extremely hostile. You know, he’s a moron. I mean, the colors are wrong.
He has no grammar. It’s going on and on everything under the sun. And then very negative.
And then the five stars are, oh, the book is wonderful. It’s the best I heard. And you scratch your head and you say, did they read the same book?
You know, and and and you realize that it’s so poignant because the point is, is that it’s not about me. It’s about Jesus Christ. It’s what do people feel about Jesus Christ that drives their their review and impression of the book.
If they’re for Jesus Christ and the book is about Jesus Christ, it’s wonderful. If they are prejudiced against Jesus Christ, then it’s the most horrible book ever written. And it’s all about prejudice.
This is the this is this is the group that that Nicodemus is in, the prejudiced group against Jesus Christ. So and he is a person that’s got to struggle with these thoughts also that rise in him, that tempt him to be also prejudice against Jesus Christ. And he’s got to constantly do what the command is in 2 Corinthians 10-5.
2 Corinthians 10-5 which says, casting down imaginations and every high thought that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. And bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. He’s got those imaginations, he’s got those thoughts, he’s surrounded by it all the time to be against Christ, to be prejudiced against Christ.
And he’s got to grab those imaginations and he’s got to grab those thoughts and bring them into captivity. Put them in prison. And that made life extremely hard and a struggle for Nicodemus as when the subject of Jesus Christ came up in his body, the Sanhedrin, he was constantly being overruled by the majority.
He found himself yoked together with those who were corrupt and hated Jesus Christ. So all this meant that for Nicodemus, that the good that he wanted to do for Christ, he could not do that. And yet, he continued in his position, being a ruler in Israel, and he did what he could when he was not able to do what he wanted to do.
So that’s his life. And Nicodemus, he heard Christ speak. Nicodemus was familiar with what Christ had done, by way of the miracles, publicly.
But there was something going on inside of Nicodemus. Something was stirring inside of him. And this anxiety inside of Nicodemus meant that he wasn’t satisfied to just listen to Christ publicly.
That was not enough. He had questions, and he felt that he had to have a private meeting with Christ. This was what was burning in him.
It wasn’t enough just to listen to Christ. He had to encounter Christ personally, alone, with no one else present.
Tom Cantor’s messages can be listened to and downloaded for free at friendshipwithgod.org. For other free resources, email us at tomcantor at friendshipwithgod.org or call us at 800-247-3051. Join our live services on YouTube by searching Friendship with God with Tom Cantor every Sunday at 5:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.
What are you doing Sunday nights? Come join Friendship with God radio Bible teacher Tom Cantor of the Friendship with God Fellowship Church every Sunday night at 5:30 p.m. at The Vine at 9336 Abraham Way, Santee, California. Watch and listen live around the world to Tom Cantor Sunday evening on youtube.com by searching for Friendship with God Fellowship or by going to our homepage at friendshipwithgod.org That’s friendshipwithgod.org This program is brought to you by Israel Restoration Ministries.
