March 5, 2023, Teaching Old Dogs, John 3:1-17 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ March 5, 2023 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon, click the link above. Below is an outline for the sermon.

1. About Trapper – 15 years old, describe his one trick – that is the way he knows how to be a good boy.

We know the expression “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” We’re being facetious, but most of us have internalized it. Most of us, I think, see ourselves as old, a finished product, unable – maybe unwilling – to change. We don’t expect to “grow up” any more. We are who we are. That is how Nicodemus thought as well.

2. Nicodemus was an important man:

(“ruler of the Jews” means he was a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish governing body = “assembly of the elders” before whom Jesus was brought when he was arrested)

N. came by night to see Jesus – secretly – afraid to step outside the proper boundaries of who he was. He recognized that Jesus had a real connection to God – he had heard about the miraculous works Jesus did. He felt a longing, a need, to know who Jesus was.

But what Jesus said didn’t make any sense to him. N. knew the law. He knew who he was – a Jew, a scholar, a religious authority. He was who he was. And anyway, he was already an old man. What was Jesus talking about?

3. This passage is where the term “born again” comes from. Episcopalians don’t use it for the most part, but in many parts of the church it is code for “getting saved” – for crossing the line between being being an unbeliever destined for hell and becoming a Christian with a ticket to heaven. Not to oversimplify, but that is the essence.

But that isn’t what Jesus is talking about here. Jesus isn’t telling N. how to escape God’s wrath, or how to get to heaven – he’s talking about transformation, about a changed life. N. understands that, and that’s why he is so bewildered. “How can an old man go back and begin again?”

Paul expresses it perfectly in 2 Cor. 5:16-17 Greek “If anyone is in Christ – new creation!”

Jesus is talking about forgiveness and a fresh start, but then – “new creation!” not just trying to do the same thing all over again in our own strength, and probably failing all over again, but real transformation – real change and new growth. Because a second chance without transformation is just a hopeless cycle of failure. But life in the power of the Holy Spirit is a life of transformation.

4. The wonderful truth is, rebirth is the way God works – the cycles of the seasons, birth, growth, death, rebirth – but also the way he created living organisms:

About 330 billion cells are replaced daily, equivalent to about 1 percent of all our cells. The vast majority of the cells that are replaced are in our blood and gut. Many cells in the eyes, heart and brain last a lifetime. But every 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion of your cells are replenished—which is the equivalent of a whole new you every three months! (Scientific American)

5. And this is the pattern of the Spirit’s work in us. We can see it in the life of N.

Jn. 7:50 – The Sanhedrin is actively seeking to get rid of Jesus, but N. speaks up for Jesus in the midst of the council: “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” He incurs the anger and scorn of the others “Are you a Galilean too? Look it up yourself: prophets don’t come from Galilee”

Jn. 19:39 N. accompanied Joseph of Arimathea when he got permission to take Jesus’s body and give him a proper burial. Except for John, the rest of the apostles were hiding in terror, but N. brought 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes for the burial. He risked the suspicion and hostility of the Romans and the contempt of the Jewish leadership, and he made himself unclean at the beginning of the Sabbath day, which was not a small thing either.

The old man who crept secretly to talk to Jesus by night had been transformed – in love and in faith and in boldness and in courage.

6. And that same Spirit is at work in you, renewing you day by day, transforming you into the fullness of the person you were created to be. Look back on your life – you are not the person you were ten years ago, or twenty or thirty. And by the grace of God and the presence of his Spirit, a year from now, or ten years from now, if God sees fit to give you so many more years on this earth, you will not be the same “old dog” you are now. If you are in Christ – “new creation!”

7. But that is hard for us to believe. We look at our outward selves, at the decline of our bodies. We regret the changes we see in ourselves, But our re-creation is the work of God, not the product of our own strength.

Phil. 1:6 “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”