Born from Above

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Goal:

The extraordinary poem hidden in the first 18 verses of John [1:1–18]
In our modern, organized minds, we want the truth laid out in 7 simple steps. But what the Bible often gives us is a Michelangelo painting
Why the very first believers were so drawn to Jesus [1:19–51]
A Different Take on turning Water into Wine [2:1–11]
Anger and Love in the Temple

Before any miracles—what was it?
- Personal testimony is so powerful
- Jesus saw right into their very being, and called out something new and amazing.
  They felt deeply seen and deeply loved!
It was really about Mary’s faith
- Jesus is deliberatedly ambiguous so as to really stretch her faith
- But she comes through shining, with complete trust, and her faith triggers the start of Jesus’ miracles
- Sometimes God stretches us, to give us the opportunity to shine.
- Sometimes God’s ways can be hard to understand—give your problems to him in total trust, not demanding, but believing he is good!
Anger and Love in the Temple
- It’s all about the experience of coming into God’s presence
- Something that should have been so positive had been polluted, which made Jesus extremely angry
- But ultimately he would redefine our experience of God’s presence
- He would create a new temple, starting with himself, and adding us
- We become the very dwelling place of God

Now while Jesus was in Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover, many people believed in his name because they saw the miraculous signs he was doing.
But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people.
He did not need anyone to testify about people, for he knew what was in people.

Elsewhere in John:

John 3:31 He who comes anothen [from above or again] is over all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is over all.
John 19:11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you anothen [from above or again].”
John 19:23 Jesus’ garment woven anothen “from the top”

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,
who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of humans, but of God.

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.
They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world…
As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.…

[I ask] that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,
I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

Did many experiements which demonstrated how we think within our boxes, sometimes shockingly
Everything we see, we interpret within our categories
It is a challenge for us to be open to a new framework for thinking
E.g old age

Jesus still wants to blow away your categories, your framework for life
We define our own limitations
Jesus challenged Nicodemus to think outside his religious box.
In a similar way he challenges us, not to live ordinary lives limited by the expectations of this world,
but to embrace the amazing reality of the age to come, now in the present.