No Vacancy IV, Too Together For Jesus
October 3, 2010
39:30:00
SUMMARY
Pastor Jay uses the biblical story of Nicodemus to challenge self-styled religions that rely on personal performance and moral comparisons rather than a relationship with God. He explains that even a highly respected religious leader like Nicodemus was told he must be born again because God requires a spiritual renewal of the entire nature rather than a mere amendment of behavior. The sermon concludes that true Christianity is impossible without the cross, urging listeners to receive the free gift of grace that covers their sinful condition.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Well, the last few weeks for me has also been a bit of a whirlwind. I'm not sure about you, but with, you know, launching the fall ministry opportunities that we have and, of course, the new campus in Swickly Valley. And once again, I want to welcome our Swickly Valley friends along. Yeah, go ahead. That's fine. Good to have them with us. Along with Oakland and, of course, the Worship Cafe. It's been a full plate add to that, a new baby in my family and a whole lot of other family events going on, visits and so. And I was sort of grousing before the Lord earlier this week and just saying, you know, Lord, this is just a little much. Feeling a bit overwhelmed here. And I don't know how you know when God's sort of speaking to you and when it's like you making it up. But I heard the Lord just as sort of plainly as I hope you're hearing me now. Kind of speak to my heart and say, do you know how many people in your season of life would be thankful to be needed? Would be thankful to have too much to do? Would be thankful to have grandchildren? And just a moment like that and a couple of the things the Lord tacked on, which I don't feel the liberty to share. I realized that I had fallen into that trap of a complaining spirit, a negative report about myself. And that got my attention. I don't know if it's just me, but anyone else inclined from time to time to sort of just tell the Lord what your plans are and ask him to bless them. And when things don't conform to our plans, then we sort of get just a little bit frustrated with God that he hasn't heard our plans. And I quoted this famous passage, I think it was last week, in Jeremiah 29. Lord, I know the plans I have for you. Plans to bless me and to prosper me and give me a future. No, it doesn't say that. The Lord says to you, I know the plans that I have for you. And I have to confess to you from time to time, one of the most difficult things about the Christian life is the patience to allow God to work his plan. Anyone else struggle with that? If I were God, if I were God, this would have happened by now. Yeah, I'm not alone in that. Now, I live sort of on both sides of that issue. You know, I've confessed to you that I sometimes get frustrated with God that things don't go my way. But I also represent two people, whether I like it or not, sort of like God in the sense of not, you know, that I represent a spiritual authority, okay? And I can't tell you the number of times I've been in a restaurant or someplace where someone will see me from a distance. I'll catch them out of the corner of my eye. And if things aren't exactly going on well in their life with the Lord right then, I can tell that they're trying to not make eye contact. You know how awkward that is when you look over and they're like this? And you could see them just... And I had an experience recently at one of the local restaurants here where somebody that just shows up now and then saw him on the other side of the room. And I was heading over that way, and he popped right out of his seat and went right back to the restroom. Now, I'm not weird enough to go back to the restroom after anybody, okay? So I just let it go. But it was a prompt for me to end up calling him later and just say, you know, I've noticed I haven't seen you for a long time. And we got into a good conversation. It's just one of those things. The Christian faith doesn't always happen according to the script that we plan before God. And we'd like it to because sometimes we, if we're honest, we would like to believe that we know what's best for us. We're in this fourth week of the series, No Vacancy, which was just sort of a symbol of not having enough room for God to do His work in our life. The first week, we looked at being too smart, too intellectual, too many arguments that we pose before God. The second week, Pastor Kent talked about being too busy and making time for God in our schedules. Last week, I talked briefly about being too messy, having things in our lives that just we feel like, you know, God's not going to, He's not going to tolerate this in me. And how wrong that is, how God's drawn into our mess to make a miracle of it. And I want to talk just briefly today about those of us who might be, you know, feeling like we're pretty together with life. And we've kind of got a good thing going here. And I want God in my life, but I sort of want it the way I've put it together. And maybe you're here as a first-time guest, and you're not sure what this church believes and all that. And maybe you're visiting from out of town, and, you know, a family member dragged you along, and this is all kind of new. And maybe you've been coming for weeks or months, and you're trying to sort this out because part of it makes sense, part of it resonates with how you were raised, but part of it just is completely new and different. And I've come into so many people, into conversation with them. When I ask them, you know, we get to the place in the conversation, we talk about their spiritual lives, and they sort of describe for me some sort of, and I don't know what else to call it, but it's sort of their version of Christianity. Now, I've assembled sort of a random stack of boxes here to represent the pieces of that little religion that they've put together. And I hope you all can see this well. I didn't go to the extra effort of having these neatly painted or wrapped. I suppose I should have, but I thought of it at a quarter to five. So, which, for this service and this particular time, that's late, okay? Let me just tell you about it. The bottom one represents sort of the need to be part of a church. And most everyone understands, well, you know, I don't necessarily have to go a lot, but yeah, I remember when, and they refer back to it, I was born, and they name whatever church they were born, and they go occasionally. You know, certainly C and E, Christmas and Easter, right? And then the occasional maybe other E, which is the emergency times, when they really feel like an E God. And then there's a part here, well, this green one is like the forgiveness box, which is the one that they have sort of laid hold of, which is when they hear a pastor or a preacher or a teacher say something like, well, God loves us and will always forgive us of our sins. And so you sort of think, no matter what happens in my life, I've got this safety net that I know God's going to forgive me, so it's all going to work out in the end anyhow. That's part of the self-styled religion that I hear a lot about. And then this big one sort of here in the middle stands for the, what I'm going to call the moral continuum. This is an important component in everyone's self-styled religion. The moral continuum is that confidence, that sort of belief that I'm not over here, you know, with the ax murderers and the really wicked people of the world, okay? That's not me at all, and God knows that I've never really done anything. I mean, I've done some stuff I'm not proud of, and they kind of, but I'm not evil, come on, I'm not evil. And then over here, of course, is I'm not. On the other hand, I'm not whoever your iconic holy person might be. We used to say Mother Teresa, she's now passed away. I don't know who it might be for you. Someone that stands out in your mind as being just sort of a model of inaction and in word the Christian faith, maybe it's Billy Graham or someone like that. They say, I'm not an evil, but I'm sort of in here, and I sort of think at the end of the day God's going to be fair, and a fair God would certainly not toss me in over here with the evil doers and separate me from Him forever. I just can't believe a fair God would do that. How many people have ever heard that argument? Yeah, most hands are up. I would expect that's true of most all of us. And then up here, this little smaller box is the one that's, you know, I guess just to compensate for some of the stuff that I haven't done well, I should do a few good deeds. And so these are the folks that, you know, every once in a while they'll show up and volunteer. They'll be part of a, you know, maybe even go on a, I mean, if it's really, really, really a sacrament, they'll go on a mission trip. But, you know, they're the kind of folks that now and then they hear the call to come and help out and do a good deed. And, yeah, that's part of the component of really being a good religious person. And then the really small box is the one where they, once in a while, they'll dig down and, you know, they'll spot God at 20. And that's their big offering. It's the financial part that they really have to manage. But every once in a while, just to acknowledge and get, you know, get Pastor J off their back, they'll go ahead and give God something. Now, I just randomly selected these, but these are part of sort of the self-styled religious program that a lot of people have. And when you pull this all apart, what I generally come back to is when I get down with people and let them talk about this, you know what they say just almost invariably? They say, well, it may not be perfect, but I don't need to be put in a box that you want to put me in. Why is your religion better than mine? I hope you have an answer for that. You should. If you've been coming here any length of time, you should have a response as to why this self-styled religion, no matter what it is, doesn't make you good enough. Because, loved ones, the fundamental flaw in that thinking is that God does not grade on a curve. With our God, it's pass-fail. And that's the fundamental flaw that most people have. And you know, when I press them just a little bit, they are honestly, when they're honest with me, a little afraid that maybe this isn't right. And they say, well, yeah, yeah, you know, you put your finger on this and you put your finger on that. But then they're still not sure that they want to make a change. Now, in today's passage, I want us to look together at, I think, a person who represents many of us. Even though he lived in a time 2,000 years ago, he represents the thinking that we see all around us and perhaps some of us even gather here to worship today. His name is Nicodemus, and we find his story in John chapter 3 in your Bible. So, you might want to turn there and certainly pick up your outline out of your notes. And if you're with us for the first time, we use these notes not just on the weekend services, but we use them many times in our small groups to follow along and dialogue. So, take a couple of notes while we study this together. And I'm going to read in John chapter 3 about the story of Nicodemus. Nicodemus. Let's read together the first several verses. Now, there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform the miraculous signs you were doing if God were not with him. And in reply, Jesus declared, I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he's born again. How can a man be born when he's old? Nicodemus asked. Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born. And Jesus answered, I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he's born of water and the spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying he must be born again. The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear it sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the spirit. There's an intentional reference there, but clear to most of the mystery of this experience of new birth. I'm going to come back to that. How can this be? Nicodemus asked. Indeed, how can this be? A couple things to note here. Nicodemus, first of all, is presented as a Pharisee. And we don't need to pull that apart. We've talked about that quite a bit. A Pharisee in the Jewish culture was a very highly respected religious leader. I mean, he was way more than like a regular pastor. This was like, you know, this is like a bishop or one of the big, big time people. Did you know that a Pharisee had to memorize the Torah? The first five books of the Bible. Try that on just to sort of like, you know, as an entry card into being a Pharisee. And the Pharisees, the Bible says, were given a lot of honor, given the best seats in the public gatherings. They were the ones that people got out of the way for and made room for. The Pharisees were big time. And people gave them an amazing amount of respect. Second, it says here that he was a member of the Jewish ruling council. Now, what is that about? Well, remember that at this season in the history of the Jews, they were slaves to the Romans. And the Romans had, they were smart. And they'd figured out how to control the Jews by having them appoint people amongst themselves who would represent them to the Roman authority. So Nicodemus was one of those especially recognized leaders who the Romans said, all right, we want you to be part of this very elite board that will represent the Jews to us. And you'll take back to the Jews what we think needs to be done. Now remember, the mission of these people, the Jewish ruling council, was very clear. They were under mandate from the Romans to keep things copacetic. We don't want a lot of messing around here. I don't want to have, you know, my region getting a bad report that there's an uprising going on. And if you've watched or read any history, you know that that was never a good thing. So when it happened, the people who were responsible to Caesar stood in the face of a lot of trouble. So the mission of this religious, this council, so to speak, was to keep the people under control, make sure they pay their taxes and be true to the state. And so you can see, Nicodemus was a leader, religiously speaking, of his people. And he was also a leader, politically speaking, to the Romans. By any measure, he was a player. Now, interestingly enough, this Jesus, who he goes to see, is causing a stir on both counts. Both with the Jewish people and their religion and the Roman authorities and their control of the people. Any reading of the Gospels will give a clear account. It wasn't... Jesus rarely got into mentioning things about the Romans. But, nonetheless, people were stirred up. And I find it fascinating with all this buzzing going on, Nicodemus makes it a point to go to Jesus. Nicodemus clearly has been listening from a distance because, if we read on here, it says, he came, verse 2, to Jesus at night. Now, let me just pause there. Why would he come at night? We don't really know. Maybe it's no big deal. Maybe, you know, maybe he worked late. I don't know. But the more likely scenario, wouldn't you say, is that Nicodemus didn't want to jeopardize this standing that he had as a heavyweight amongst his peers. Because anybody caught with Jesus was immediately suspect of being sort of hooked up with this rebel-rousing kind of new voice of rebellion that was out there. So, under cover of darkness, Nicodemus goes to Jesus. Friends, let me ask you this. Have you ever wrestled with what it would cost you in terms of your relationships if you honestly came to Jesus? It's been a long time since I made my first complete decision to be a Christ follower. But I remember clearly when it happened. I was a college student and when I came to grips with my condition before the Lord and I knew that if I really gave my life to Christ and this is, I'm not exaggerating, at that time I was at a completely secular college. There was no Christian fellowship per se and the only two or three people that I could ever identify as being Christians, because I'd been raised in a church and I had my antenna up for kind of like, I mean a church fellowship thing. There wasn't any inter-varsity or there wasn't any kind of you know, Campus Crusader, any of those kind of big ministries. And the two or three guys that I knew to be Christians who met to study the Bible were nerds of the first caliber. Now, I'm not saying I wasn't. But I knew I didn't want to be necessarily socially like identified with those folks. Now, I'm the only one I know that ever kind of wanted to protect my reputation. Little did I know what little reputation I had. But it was an issue. Has it ever been an issue for you? Well, if people really knew what I thought and I mean, I will tell you I know people who have come and gone from North Way because it was considered, the church where you go if you're really serious about God. And I don't want to be identified. I'd rather go someplace where I'm not serious. Is that not a contradiction? I mean, you're either serious about God or not, right? And I remember the absolute step of faith it was for me to identify myself with these other guys who were not in my, you know, they were part of the fraternity of misfits, if you will. And I ended up being with them a lot. And over time, I just had to accept the fact that that's just, if I wanted to be a Christ follower and have fellowship, I needed to identify, and that was just the way. And one of those guys, if you were here a few years ago, came on this very platform. We're still friends today. Wow. And I'm humbled when I get letters and emails from people like some of our missionaries who tell us of families who lose not just their jobs or not just their position, but their entire career gets flushed down the toilet if they go public because they're growing up in a Muslim country where to be an outspoken Christian means you're just banned from any opportunity. And they're even, loved ones, dissociated or rejected by their families. Let me just tell you, sometimes it does cost you. In our culture, not nearly as much as it does in some other cultures to be a true Christ follower. Now, this man, Nicodemus, goes to Jesus and he says, Rabbi, and I just, this is where the study of Scripture is so rich, just using the term Rabbi means that Nicodemus had an innate respect for who Jesus was. Rabbi is a term of honor. You're an exceptional teacher. Now notice what he says. We know you're a teacher who has come from God. Very important the words there. He didn't say, we know you're God. He didn't say that. We know you're Messiah. He doesn't say that. We just know that we've seen these miracles and nobody could do them unless they were from God. Again, I want to just challenge your thinking for a moment. Any of us that look at Jesus as a really good teacher? A high moral sort of model? Ever have people give you that sort of argument? Yes, I believe that the teachings of Jesus are worthwhile. I believe that he was one of the most incredibly insightful people of all times. I believe in his moral influence and his leadership prowess and so on. Back in his day they didn't have doctors, so I guess some of those miracles kind of things could have happened. But I want to quote C.S. Lewis and if we have that quote, let's put it up on the screen. Here's what C.S. Lewis said about who Jesus was and there's not a lot of debate about this. I like this. Let's put it up, please. Either Jesus was the son of God or he was a demon or a madman. You can't have it somewhere in the middle. Just leave it up and think about it for a second. Either he was Jesus claimed he was the son of God. I who stand before you am he. We read last week. I am the Messiah. He's either the Messiah or he's a crazy man. He's a lunatic. You can't call him a great moral teacher and a man that I'd be worth emulating in terms of my actions, but not call him the son of God. And don't let that ever be lost on you. He's the son of the living God. And may I just interject here, that wrong beliefs about who God is lead to wrong consequences every single time. Let me just give you an illustration. People say, well, you know, God is forgiving and he overlooks my sin. That wrong belief, just sort of at face value, someone who doesn't understand the consequences of sin and just think that God just sort of turns the other way and winks, or maybe he's old and cogent and he just falls asleep and he doesn't see. And you think at the end it all works out. Those people suffer the consequences of prideful activity that leads to broken marriages and heartache and maybe even more destructive practices like addictions and who knows, all kinds of things. Most extreme forms in other religions, false views of God lead to people saying, well, I believe God told me to take the bomb on the plane or to stand in the market square with the bomb strapped around my back and blow it up in the name of God. Wrong beliefs are very serious and can lead to wrong consequences. So, on your outlines, if you're taking just a couple notes, let's get this down right so that we can be clear about what we are saying here. Who is this Jesus really, number two? The most important thing we have to nail down here is that he is fully God and fully man. The incarnation. It's one of the five great mysteries of Scripture, but one that I think we could spend months talking about and never fully understand but could grow so much in terms of who God is, in terms of our understanding of the Son of God and the Trinity and all the rest. Beloved ones, it's very easy for this to roll off our tongues. Yes, he's fully God and fully man. But think how difficult it was for those men that walked with him in that day. Remember, for 30 years, they just kind of knew him as Jesus the carpenter. They just kind of knew him as the man that they, you know, kind of hung out with. He was a good man. He was a single man. He was a quiet man. He just sort of kept to himself. We don't know anything about him. Imagine being one of those guys that walked and talked and hung out with Jesus and then one day he just announced, hey, by the way, got to tell you some news here. Back there in the Old Testament it was prophesied about me being a Messiah. That's me. I'm that guy. You know, I've worked with Scott Stevens here on our staff for about eight years now. Pastor Scott is our executive pastor and he just, he keeps the wheels really going and has just a great way with our team and leading a team and you know, we hang out together. We'll grab a meal now and then. He has this one sort of character flaw and that is that he still believes that the pirates are going to win the pennant in his lifetime. But if Scott came in one day and said to me, you know, Jay, I just need you to know that the last few years have been tight and all that but I'm the Messiah. I'm the one you've been looking for coming again. That's really me. You know, I'm the big guy. I'm the one they prophesied about. How many of you know I'm not going to bow down and worship Scott Stevens? What is my next act going to be? Cell phone? 9-1-1. I need a truck. Send someone over here. He's lost. I mean, seriously. We read about fully God, fully man but this, it was just as amazing a statement back then to that culture, to those people, as something like that would be to you and to me today. Saul, who was a persecutor of Christians, who so believed that they were wrong that Saul took a stance of standing next to the people that stoned Stephen to death and held their clothes while they did so. He hated Jesus. Saul wrote this in Ephesians some years later. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. In him, the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. Jesus said of himself, he who has seen me has seen the Father. One author said, he's God with a belly button. I'm already hearing ads about the holidays and Christmas shopping so I guess I can throw in just sort of one reference to Christmas. The most amazing thing about Christmas is God was born. Born. He came from a woman's womb. I can't explain that to you. How infinity can become helpless in the form of a baby. But he did. The other truth real quickly that we have to grab hold of is this. That Jesus said, I came with a mission and that mission was to die on a cross. Mark 10, 45. Son of man came not to serve, not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. He became an atoning sacrifice and I don't have time at all today to talk about the atonement in any depth except to say that the word atonement, I like to remember it this way, at one meant. It means enemies become friends. It means that you make amends for wrongs that you've committed. Jesus came to be that sacrifice to make things right with God that we could not do on our own. God had planned all along for Jesus to come to that moment where he would go to the cross and be the perfect sinless sacrifice for all of us who could not help ourselves. Loved ones, next week in all of our campuses, I believe, we're going to be celebrating communion. I know for sure that we are here in Wexford. I'm pretty sure in all the campuses. Anyhow, whenever we do celebrate it, Jesus says and only about that moment in communion, remember me in my death. He wants to be remembered. Not for his miracles necessarily, not for the way that he taught, but in his death. John Stott says this, and if we have that quote, let's put it up. John Stott about the sacrifice of Christ. Here's what he says. Communion reminds us that it was by his death that Jesus wished to be remembered. It is safe to say that there is no Christianity without the cross. If the cross is not central to what we believe, ours is not the religion of Jesus. The cross is central. And that's why he goes back to Nicodemus and says this very important statement about what he came to do. He came that we might have this relationship with the Father. That we can't get by doing all these things and creating this religion. He came that we might know him. And I love the fact that Nicodemus listens and he says, no, how can this be? Can I go back into the mother's womb? And he's still thinking in the physical sense when Jesus has already transitioned into the spiritual sense. Let's look at number three at what our response needs to be. I want to go back to this term, born again, that we read. I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he's born again. How many know the term born again has come upon pretty difficult times? Anyone here ever been called a born againer? Sort of an epithet. It sounds like there's always a little bit of a cut with that. Are you a born againer? Does your church believe in being born again? Well, if you're a real follower of Jesus, you know that there's no other way to enter the kingdom of heaven, even to see it, unless you're born again. That term, John Calvin says, does this. The word born again, and Calvin lived in the 1600s. Here's what he says. By the term born again, he means we're not fixed by amendment of a single part. In other words, there's not a component of us that gets fixed, but the renewal of the whole nature, there's nothing in us that is not defective. That's what it means. That's why we have to be born again. That's why it's talking about this spirit man. Now, if it helps you at all, that same term, born again, is used in John 3.31 to talk about being born from above. I like to look at it this way. It's the way God helps us do what we can't do ourselves. We're all constructed to believe that somehow, you know, God's going to judge our individual actions, but loved ones, the truth of the matter is, there's a fatal flaw in every one of our hearts, and the only way that we can ever know God is to be born again. In other words, to let our spirit be renewed. I look at it as an awesome gift from God, because at the end of the day, what it means is this. I don't have to try to work to keep the laws to help me to do all the things that I want to do. I can't possibly do all this and, you know, keep my act clean enough. I need, watch, I need a gift. I need a gift. In Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, Paul says that salvation, the faith to believe in God, is by grace through faith, and that is a gift, not of works, so that none of us can boast. I can't say I'm any better than you, or you're any better than me. This is what it means to be born again. We take and receive the gift from God that enables us to be accepted by Him. Now listen, I know that most of you know this up here, but I'm sure that a few of you today are listening and maybe for the first time you're realizing that you've been one of these kind of folks most of your life, and you've never really come to the cross and come face to face with your condition and said, you know what God, I'm not really living up to that standard, which is absolute perfection. I'll never make it, but you can receive this gift. You can humble yourself and say, Lord, I'll receive the righteousness that you give me, so that when God looks down from heaven, He doesn't see Jay the sinner. He looks down and He sees that I'm covered in the righteousness of Christ. His robe is on me. How many of you need to be reminded of that, not just once in a while, but every single day? I do. In fact, I'm going to leave this right up here. Yesterday, I got a phone call. Well, let me back up. Yesterday, I got home and realized that I didn't have my wallet. Now, I don't know about you, but in today's culture, to lose your wallet is not a particularly good thing to have. I didn't ask myself, where did I leave it? I knew I'd had it, and I knew when I'd used it, and I knew I didn't have it. That means it got misplaced somewhere out in public. I knew that. I'm thinking identity theft. I'm thinking all my stuff's in there. I mean, they could even have my Pastor Jay business card. Imagine the doors that could open. And I'm thinking, well, I don't know about you, but my mind immediately went, I wonder how they sneaked that thing out of my bag, or did I just leave it for a moment on the counter somewhere? I tried to retrace myself, and I'm sitting there thinking, what kind of person would take my wallet? And then the phone rang, and it's the manager of the restaurant who happens to be a North Way member who'd opened my wallet and saw my picture. I know that guy. I even have his phone number, and he called my phone. He said, and I didn't pick up because I was sitting there thinking how I was going to pull apart this person who stole my wallet, and his message to me was, somebody found your wallet out in our parking lot, and they picked it up and brought it back in and gave it to me. So this nasty, conniving evildoer that I was thinking about destroying was actually a good Samaritan who picked up my wallet and gave it to the owner of the restaurant. And it just brought such conviction to my heart that I need to say, wait a minute, Lord. There's just in me, I'm always inclined to make the wrong judgments, the wrong decisions, the wrong bets. Loved ones, I happen to know firsthand that many of you have been going through a time of testing and trials. Sometimes God allows us to do those things to remind us, watch, that it's not by our efforts of holding on, it's not by saying the right words of faith and having the right, it's by the gift of faith and the grace of God that every good thing that we need, from healing, to provision, to forgiveness, to knowing God's plans, comes to us by God's gift. And so let's end the story of Nicodemus this way. All I can tell you in the limited time that we have left is this. Nicodemus gets the message. We read later on in John chapter 7 that he sort of stood up for Jesus when the Pharisees wanted to get rid of him, and we won't turn to that passage, but I would like to turn to the passage in John 19 because at the very end of Jesus' life, after he's died on the cross, who's there with Joseph of Arimathea? And if we have that verse, let's put it up. John 19 verse 38 through 40. Look at this. This is how Nicodemus ends in the Gospels. Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, because he feared the Jews, with Pilate's permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. So there's the clear confirmation. Same guy. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 75 pounds. Taking Jesus' body, the two of them wrapped it with the spices and strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. Loved ones, at the end of the day, Nicodemus, this heavy, sort of powerful, well-respected leader of the people humbled himself and received Jesus and became a fol
