It's good to see you this morning. It's a pleasure to be with you. Shall we pray? Our Father, we thank you that we have had many sweet remembrances of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, this morning.
He redeemed us, he rinsomed us. He rinsomed us when we were powerless. And in the power of things that are far beyond our power, we confess this morning our weakness. We just pray that your Word would minister to us this morning in Jesus' name, amen.
Clicker, clicker's a good thing. This morning we are going to think about three interactions that the Lord Jesus Christ had in his time on earth. And when you marvel at the incarnation, when you marvel at what God did in being incarnated, the God of the Son, God the Son incarnated as a man. What an amazing decision, if you will, by God to reveal himself through the God-man, Jesus Christ.
It enables us to grasp things like love. It seems to me that if God was a God that is an untouchable God, difficult to know, always in heaven, we would have a much harder time understanding God's love. But because the Lord Jesus walked this earth and interacted with people, he had dialogues with people, it is much easier for us to see the love of God, to observe, to think about the love of God. And I love the three dialogues that we're going to be talking about this morning.
These are cases in point of what it means for the Son of God, God the Son, to interact with man. We can observe these interactions, listen to these conversations. We can fall in love again and more with this person, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. We are going to think about three people.
And when we think about these three people, we can think about how the Lord Jesus dealt with them in a loving and truthful way. Love and truth, do any of us hold these things in tension perfectly? Do we sometimes bomb people with the truth in an unloving manner? Do we sometimes try to love people and forget about what is true?
I have been guilty of both of these things. However, the Son of God has these things, obviously, in perfect balance. He is the incarnation of both truth and love. And in dealing with these three people, we should study this, we should think of this, we should observe this and take note of the details.
We might learn as well as the character of Christ and love him again, we might learn how to interact with people in a way that is both loving and truthful. These three people are very different, very, very different. I hazard a guess that you run into very different people every day of your life. People who come from wildly, widely, and wildly different perspectives, wildly different backgrounds.
How to cope with this? Consider the Word of God. Consider what is in your Bible as to how the majestic Lord Jesus Christ dealt with widely differing characters, with widely differing backgrounds and knowledge and attitudes. In addition, we might say this morning, if you do not know the Lord, maybe you are like one of these people.
Maybe in some sense, you can identify with one of these people. If that is the case, listen carefully and read carefully. The Savior can speak to you. It's, I'll say at the beginning what I'm going to say at the end, the outcomes are not the same.
Oh no, the outcomes are not the same. And if you are a seeker, the outcome is, I would say, open to question. What will your outcome be if you know not the Lord? What will you do about the fact that you know not the Lord?
That is a very important question that you should concentrate on, you should focus on, you should pursue this question. It is the most important question. All the other questions in your life are actually secondary to that question. The question of whether you have a relationship with the Son of God, God the Son.
Finally, I might say by way of introduction that you have people who have baggage. Everybody you might say has baggage. How does the Lord Jesus deal with your baggage and other people's baggage? How does he want us to deal with other people's baggage?
It is entirely possible for you to get sunk by your own baggage in reaching out to others. It is entirely possible for you to become sunk in their baggage. That isn't yours. You need grace and wisdom and the love of God in order to know how to proceed.
So I'm going to do something this morning. I actually timed myself last night and I will make no apology for this. I'm going to read a whole bunch of scripture. And you know why I'm not going to make an apology for this?
Because this is a Bible believing church. It is absurd to apologize for reading the Bible in church. So what spiritual truths can we learn? What can we learn about the character of Christ?
What can we learn about the person speaking with Jesus Christ? Here's our first dialogue. Nicodemus is a name that appears exactly five times in the Bible, all of them in the book of John. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
This man came to Jesus at night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher. For no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. Jesus responded and said to him, truly, truly I say to you unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, how can a person be born when he is old?
He cannot enter his mother's womb a second time and be born, can he? Jesus answered, truly, truly I say to you, unless someone is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which has been born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit. His spirit, do not be amazed that I said to you, you must be born again.
The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it is coming from and where it is going. So is everyone who has been born of the spirit. Nicodemus responded and said to him, how can these things be? Jesus answered and said to him, you are the teacher of Israel.
And yet you do not understand these things. Truly, truly I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen and you people do not accept our testimony. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the son of man.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up so that everyone who believes will have eternal life in him. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that everyone so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through him. The one who believes in him is not judged.
The one who does not believe has been judged already because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God. And this is the judgment that the light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light so that his deeds will not be exposed. But the one who practices the truth comes to the light so that his deeds will be revealed as having been performed in God.
The next dialogue, the next chapter. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away to the city to buy food.
So the Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, though you are a Jew, are asking me for a drink? Though I am a Samaritan woman. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus replied to her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is, who is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.
She said to him, sir, you have no bucket and the well is deep, where then do you get this living water? You are not greater than our father, Jacob, are you? Who gave us the well and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle? Jesus answered and said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again.
But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never be thirsty. But the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water, springing up to eternal life. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty, nor come all the way here to draw water. He said to her, go call your husband and come here.
The woman answered and said to him, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, you have correctly said, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands and the one whom you now have is not your husband. This was you have said is true. The woman said to him, sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
Our fathers worshiped on this mountain and yet you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one must worship. Jesus said to her, believe me woman, that a time is coming when you will worship the father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know because salvation is from the Jews.
But a time is coming and even now has arrived. When the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and in truth for such people the father seeks to be his worshipers, God is spirit. And those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said, I know that Messiah is coming.
He who is called Christ, when that one comes he will declare all things to us. Jesus said to her, I am he, the one speaking to you. And at this point his disciples came and they were amazed that he had been speaking with a woman. Yet no one said, what are you seeking or why are you speaking with her?
So the woman left her water pot and went into the city and said to the people, come see a man who told me all things that I have done. Is this not the Christ and the King James, this is not the Christ, is he? A wonderful dialogue. And now we come to the third dialogue, dialogue between the Lord Jesus and Pontius Pilate, the prefect of Judea.
Then they brought Jesus from Caiaphas into the Praetorium. And it was early and they themselves did not enter the Praetorium so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover. Therefore, Pilate came out to them and said, what accusation are you bringing against this man? They answered and said to him, if this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.
So Pilate said to them, take him yourselves, a judgment according to your law. The Jews said to him, we are not permitted to put anyone to death. This happened so that the word of Jesus, which he said, indicating what kind of death he was going to die, would be fulfilled. Therefore, Pilate entered the Praetorium again.
And summoned Jesus and said to him, you are the King of the Jews? Jesus answered, are you saying this on your own, or did others tell you about me? Pilate answered, I'm not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priest handed you over to me.
What have you done? Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews as it is. My kingdom is not of this realm.
Therefore, Pilate said to him, so you are a King. Jesus answered, you say correctly that I'm a King. For this purpose, I have been born. And for this, I have come into the world to testify, to the truth.
Everyone who is on the side of truth listens to my voice. Everyone who is of the truth. Pilate said to him, what is truth? And after saying this, he came out again to the Jews and said to them, I find no grounds at all for charges in his case.
However, you have a custom that I released one prisoner to you at the Passover. Therefore, do you wish that I released for you the King of the Jews? So they shouted again, saying, not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a rebel.
So Pilate then took Jesus and had him flogged and the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and placed it on his head and put a purple cloak on him. And they repeatedly came up to him and said, hey, King of the Jews, and slapped him in the face again and again. And then Pilate came out again and said to them, see, I am bringing him out to you so that you will know that I find no grounds at all for charges in his case. Jesus then came out wearing the crown of thorns in the purple robe and Pilate said to them, behold a man.
So when the chief priests and the officer saw him, they shouted, crucify, crucify. Pilate said to them, take him yourselves and crucify him for I find no grounds for charges. In his case, the Jews answered, we have a law. And by that law, he ought to die because he made himself out to be the son of God.
Therefore, when Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. And he entered the Praetorian again and said to Jesus, where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, are you not speaking to me?
Do you not know that I have authority to release you? And I have authority to crucify you? Jesus answered, you would have no authority over me at all. If it had not been given to you from above, for this reason, the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin.
As a result of this, Pilate made efforts to release him. But the Jews shouted, saying, if you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar. You are not a friend of Caesar. Everyone who makes himself out to be a king opposes Caesar.
Therefore, when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment steep at a place called the pavement. But in Hebrew, Gabbatha. And what was the day of preparation for the Passover? It was about the sixth hour.
And he said to the Jews, look, you're king. So they shouted away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate said to them, shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered, we have no king except Caesar.
So he then handed him over to them to be crucified. Three remarkable accounts, three remarkable dialogues. Think for a moment, if you would, about Nicodemus. As a seeker, he sought out Jesus.
There's a contrast here between these three seekers. But he sought out Jesus at night because he was afraid and ashamed. He didn't want his fellow Sanhedrin people to know that he wanted to talk with Jesus Christ. So he went at night.
He sought out Jesus, but in a sense, he was ashamed of Jesus. Maybe we might say, well, if someone only wants to talk to me in the middle of the night because they're ashamed of me, maybe I don't have any time for them at all. That would be you and I. That would be me.
Jesus has time for Nicodemus. What about the woman at the well? He sought her out. He had his plan to go to Saikar.
He knew where that well was. He knew she would be there. He wanted to talk to her. Nicodemus might have been ashamed of Jesus.
This woman, this woman at the well, has had five husbands. You might say that in some sense, she's a shameless person. What has she got to lose? She's been rejected by society.
She's a Samaritan. Jesus seeks her out. And she is, in some sense, shameless. What about Pontius Pilate?
It's an evil thing that happened, but you almost feel sorry for him. This Jesus Christ of Nazareth is pushed upon him. He doesn't want to deal with this. He wishes this whole problem would go away.
Matthew 27, you read about his wife saying, extricate yourself from this. I had a dream I have suffered much this day because of this man. Get out of this situation. He's afraid.
He does not want this problem on his plate. He was very proud. He was proud to be a praetor, a prefect, a servant of Emperor Tiberius. And he was very uncomfortable.
He did not seek Jesus out at all. And so you see there's a strong contrast between these three people. Sometimes people are seekers, and then there are seekers. We might say, well, what about the, I'm going to use it.
I don't even know if this word is in the dictionary. The religiosity coefficient. The coefficient of religiosity. How religious were these seekers?
Nicodemus, up to here. Probably if this had taken place in modern times, it would be professor Nicodemus, Dr. Nicodemus. He had the equivalent of a PhD in the Old Testament.
And he was a Jews Jew. Who is he talking with? The most revolutionary Jew that has ever walked the earth that's going to turn everything upside down in terms of the Jewish concepts of God and salvation. What about the woman at the well?
Well, that's interesting. You have heard and you have read that this woman is a Samaritan. Do you know that the Jews said that if you sit down and eat with a Samaritan, that is equal to eating pig meat, that is equal to eating pork. It is just as disgusting as unacceptable to sit down and eat with a Samaritan woman as it would be for a Jew to eat pork.
What? They considered their lineage to be questionable. A big issue is, are we genetic sons of Abraham? Are we Jews?
It's a big matter, a big matter of pride. You might say they're genetic lineage. Oh yeah, but the Samaritans. Well, there was the expulsion of 712 with the Assyrians and then some came back and it's all mixed up and they have their own thing at Mount Gerizim.
This is all, this is a disaster. It goes back to the split between Solomon's son, Rehoboam, and General Geroboam. And it never got better after that happened. There wasn't one single good king of the Northern Kingdom.
And so the Judeans viewed them with disgust. That is a very, you might say, a very racist attitude. The average Jew with Nicodemus ever have talked to the woman at the well like Jesus did, not on your life, not on your life. Who is this woman speaking with?
Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who in two places, has an ironclad lineage of Jewish descent. Ironclad lineage as a descendant of Abraham. No question whatsoever about his lineage. And yet, and yet, how does he handle that?
That's very interesting to think about. What about the level of fear? Well, Nicodemus goes at night. He's kind of afraid that he's gonna be found out.
Oh my, what an attitude. What about the woman at the well? What's her level of fear in approaching the Lord Jesus Christ? I'll tell you what it is.
Zero. This woman is a very straightforward person. She has been socially ostracized. She has probably been even considered by her own people in Saikar as one of them.
And one of these, her behaviors just, oh, a woman like that, tends not to be afraid of anybody. And she's not afraid of Jesus. She's quite curious as to why a Jew would ask her for a drink that's quite a shocker. They're not even supposed to have anything to do with them.
What about Pontius Pilate? Does he come at this from religion? No. Does he come at this from religion and some kind of semi-Jewish history?
No. He comes to this as the representative of Emperor Tiberius who lives far away. And this is an occupied country. And he is probably quite proud of the fact that he is the emperor's representative.
And yet, he is terrified. This man is terrified of the Lord Jesus. A man in awful condition. A man who he had flogged and is still coming back and standing there and he's presenting the Lord Jesus to the crowd.
He is terrified of him. What is he afraid of? The person of Christ is so majestic in that interaction. Pilate was quaking in his boots.
He smelled a rat. The Jews didn't answer a direct question. He knew they were crafty. His wife had warned him.
This is somebody different. Get yourself out of that. Have nothing to do with this man. Extricate yourself.
Who is Jesus in this context? He's a Jew in an occupied country. What does Pilate got to worry about? You might say it doesn't make any sense.
Ah, but it does because of the majestic character of the Lord Jesus Christ. Are these people engaged? When you speak in ordinary English about engaging conversations. Why do I even say that?
I guess I'm influenced by my ESL sort of mentality. Of course, everybody knows about having an engaging conversation. Are these people engaged? Are these engaged seekers?
How would you rate Nicodemus? I would say that's it. That was a pretty difficult interaction. To some extent, they are talking past each other.
Nicodemus has great difficulty understanding spiritual concepts and keeps putting forward ideas that don't match well. They don't engage well with the truth that Jesus is giving to him. Nonetheless, in a loving way, the Lord Jesus gives him these truths. What about the woman at the well?
You just feel so good when you read that conversation. You feel that the Lord Jesus is showing her love and drawing her into the kingdom. It's a wonderful interaction. What about Pontius Pilate?
It's a tragic engagement. It's a tragic interaction. You have Pontius Pilate discarding truth and majesty and sending the Lord Jesus to the cross. In terms of this presentation of the Lord Jesus to each one of these people, who is the one?
Who is the one? The promised one. Who is the king? In all cases, it's the man standing right in front of you.
The man standing right in front of you. Is the Messiah? Is the true king? Can you grasp it?
Could they grasp it? Nicodemus had trouble grasping it. I would say the woman at the well came to welcome it. Pontius Pilate not only treated the situation with dishonesty, he washed his hands of it.
Honesty is kind of subjective to subject, Ted, or in subjection two, the idea of truth. How can you talk about honesty if you have no concept of what is true? Pilate goes, what's truth? The man who is going to send this Jesus of Nazareth to the cross.
That's what he does. What is truth? We can't very well then can we expect him to be honest? I've already talked about this aspect of honesty, but think about the seeker, the seeker himself.
Do you think Nicodemus was being honest with himself? I'll tell you something. When Jesus speaks of the essentiality of things, he says that a person must be born of water and of the spirit. Now, my doctrinal belief and the doctrinal belief of this church is that there is no regenerative event at baptism.
Next week we have a baptism. Is there any regenerative thing that's going to happen next week? Not at all. There is no grace that is given to that person as a result of going into that tank of water and coming out again.
We don't believe that, and we don't find that in scripture. But one passage that might make you think, wait, except a man is born of water and of the spirit. What? He put those two things together.
I was impressed by the commentary of a Scottish divine named Alexander White with a spell with a Y. He points out that look, at the end of chapter one, what you read is the Sanhedrin of whom Nicodemus is a member. Send Levites and priests to go and listen to John the Baptist. And they come back with their report.
And Alexander White suggests that maybe Nicodemus went with them as the top dog from the Sanhedrin going with the priest and Levites to hear John the Baptist. And he suggests that Nicodemus was smitten in his heart when he heard John the Baptist preaching about repentance at Bethabra. You can go there today, although they're not sure exactly, because the Jordan River has changed course. But the Levites and priests and the Sanhedrin, one of the Sanhedrin himself went there.
You know, when they came back, you can read at the end of that passage that ends with the word Bethabra. And they made their report. It's kind of a tragic funny. It's like a committee.
Let's have a committee. What a kind of like absurd. You're going to go listen to John the Baptist, and you're going to have a committee report from the. Listen, it's not for writing committee reports.
It's for you. It's for you to repent. The baptism of John was not believers' repentance. It was a baptism of repentance for the Jew.
Jesus knew that this man Nicodemus had been exposed to this and had not been baptized. He had not repented. He knew it. And he puts it right in.
You might say Nicodemus is face. You did not avail yourself of the opportunity to be baptized that day. And yet, I believe that in Nicodemus's heart, that had pricked him, he had realized that what John the Baptist was saying was true. He was pricked in his heart, and then he heard of the miracles.
And then he heard of the teaching. And he said, you know, I'm going to go and find this, Jesus. It's going to have to be in the night. But I want to go and find out more about this person, because I can't sleep.
I have no rest in my heart. I just signed that report for the Sanhedrin. And I can't shrug it off. And he went to see Jesus by night.
Is he being fully honest? No. No, he's not. Let's think about the Lord Jesus side of some of these things.
Nicodemus begins by saying, you're a great rabbi, right? Well, Jesus in so many words says, you know who I am, or you should know who I am. The Lord Jesus was much more than a great rabbi. The people who walk up and down that sidewalk on Victoria Road if you were to ask them about what they think of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
They'd probably say, you know, I'm sure he's a good teacher. I actually haven't read any of that for a long time, if at all. But you know, probably had some good teachings there. My friends, Jesus is never portrayed in your Bible as being primarily or solely a good teacher.
He offended people. He brought the truth to people, whether they liked the sound of it or not. He was the Son of God. He was the light of the world as we heard this morning.
He was infinitely greater than a rabbi or a teacher. The woman at the well said, you're not greater than Jacob, possibly, are you? Oh, yes. Far greater than Jacob.
One far greater than Jacob is here. Pochis Pilate seemed to be going, what I'm worried about is if this man standing in front of me is greater than Tiberius or thinks he is. If he is, I am seriously scared. If he thinks he is, I have to get rid of him.
And the Lord Jesus dealt with all of these people in truth and in love. What about Jesus, origin? You must be a teacher from God. He says, I am from heaven, descended from heaven.
I am salvation. I am God's light versus 13, 15, 16, 19. We're not going to think of the Lord Jesus as a teacher from God. Nicodemus considered himself to be someone who taught the Bible, a teacher from God.
Jesus is in an entirely different category. And he lays that out to Nicodemus in no uncertain terms. What about the woman at the well? Well, now that we're on the subject of religion, I'm paraphrasing, the Messiah is supposed to come someday.
That's what we think or that's what I've heard people say in Saikar, I who speak to you and he. What a direct way to reveal himself. Did he ever do that to anybody else? Nope.
The woman at the well, I am your Messiah here now, standing in front of you. I'm going to brush on ahead because the time is gone and more outcomes. I've got an interview first thing in the morning with a committee from Ottawa. I don't like this committee, but I have to bite my tongue.
And they are going to interview me and grill me about educational outcomes and something called graduate attributes and performance indicators. And now my head is already spinning, and I don't know how to answer any of these questions because of the committee manner in which these things are being posed outcomes. The popular word. We don't know what happened with Nicodemus.
We read in Chapter 7, 5051, that they wanted to kill Jesus and Nicodemus. Maybe we should hear him out and then silence. And then you go all the way to Chapter 19, and you read that this man brought 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes because regardless of what he had concluded about this Jesus of Nazareth, he was not going to allow that man's body, the body of Jesus of Nazareth taken down from the cross to be thrown into the burning garbage pit, Tofet in the valley of Hymm, also called Gehenna, he was not going to allow it that man's body go there. You can just imagine the two criminals, they did go there.
Nicodemus was not going to allow that to happen to Jesus of Nazareth and brought 75 pounds of spices while Joseph and Aramathia arranged for the tomb. What about the woman at the well? Salvation. Salvation.
Philip, the evangelist came back and found safe people. Read it in Acts. Wonderful. Wonderful.
Pilate, a few years later there was a Samaritan revolt at Gerizim, Mount Gerizim, and he didn't handle that very well and he was recalled to Rome by Tiberius, and Tiberius died before he got back, and that's the last we hear of Pontius Pilate. I fear that Pontius Pilate went to hell. I fear that Pontius Pilate ended up being a man who had had a golden opportunity to realize that the man who stood before him was the king of the universe and discarded it. And so this morning I hope that these meditations about these interactions, these dialogues, the graciousness, the majesty, the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, the wisdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, in dealing with these three people will have helped you in your Christian life.
I hope that you will see that these three people, these seekers, in some sense, I mean we hesitate to call Pilate a seeker. Are you a king then? He asked the questions. These three people were very different.
Are you like any of them? Does any one of them have certain aspects that you feel that maybe I'm a bit like that? That should give you pause. That should give you pause to think about the state of your soul.
I trust that as we have meditated upon these things this morning that you will then go away this week, and I hope perhaps read these passages again and allow the Lord and allow the Holy Spirit to bring back those parts that are precious, precious things like being born again, precious things like worshiping in spirit and in truth. And may God's Spirit guide you this week. Let us pray. We thank you Father for your word and for the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, the rich and account, the historical account of his life, his words, his deeds.
We know Lord that the most important deed, the most significant deed that he did was to die on the cross for us. We thank you for him and pray that you would touch our hearts this morning and soften our hard hearts and help us to cast ourselves upon him. In his name we pray, amen.