This posting is excerpted from the last lesson I gave in our church in MIchigan in April 2012 prior to our move to Pennsylvania. It is a very different type of message from the ones that I normally delivered before the explosion in my head. My earlier lessons were built on what I believed to be a solid Biblical foundation constructed through an analytic study of scripture, bathed in prayer. After the study and prayer, with God’s help I would raise the framework of the sermon and then clad it with pictures and metaphors, supplied by God, illustrating my main points.
This message was put together in a very different way. It did not begin with an analytic foundation. It was inspired by a book of poetry that I have no idea how I came to possess. As I was cleaning up my library and preparing to pack some books, sell some, and give the rest away, I found a very small book of poetry hiding between two of my topical study books. I almost overlooked it, but it fell to the floor when I pulled two Warren Wiersbe books off the shelf. Picking up the little book. I was fascinated by its title, which was Let Us Be Gentle, Joseph: A Devotional Journey. I didn’t recognize the name of the author, John Anderson Barbour. I began reading it and soon found that I had read all 46 pages of the book while sitting on a box of books that I had just finished packing.
Since I didn’t know the author I tried looking for more information about him and the book. According to Amazon.com, the book is out of print. They only list three used copies available in the whole U. S., priced from $14.95 to $61.95. I’ve gone to several other sources, and the only other books written by Barbour since this 1973 publication were Bible story books for children. Barbour just seemed to disappear after 1978. Even the publisher, T. S. Denison & Company, Inc. of Minneapolis, seemed to vanish in 1986.
I am reprising my last message in our Michigan church for this post. In it, I am trying to give you some pictures of the gospel story that I never saw anywhere else. These stories are not meant to replace or displace the eloquent and forceful, straight forward truth of the gospel account from scripture.
In John, chapter 3 we are introduced to a Pharisee, named Nicodemus. This very familiar story is found in John 3:1-16. Knowing the hatred that many Pharisees had toward Christ, it is not hard to imagine why Nicodemus went to see Jesus under the cover of darkness. What is hard to understand is why Nicodemus wanted to talk to Christ in the first place.
Nicodemus opens the conversation by giving Jesus an honor rarely afforded by a Pharisee to someone other than another Pharisee. Nicodemus addresses him as “Rabbi” and “a teacher come from God” (v 2). Without really coming out and saying what was on his mind, he indicates that he recognizes that Jesus must have come from God because of the things that Jesus had done. These miracles could not have been the works of a mere mortal.
Since Jesus is God, Jesus knows what’s on Nicodemus’ heart and mind, and gets right to the point. “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (v 5). Without pausing, Christ continues by introducing a phrase that has characterized Christians ever since: “Ye must be born again” (v 7).
Nicodemus then asks the question that everyone who wants to come to God must consider, “How can these things be?” Christ chides Nicodemus a little by asking him, “Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?” (v 10) Jesus then zeros in on the problem. Nicodemus is thinking in earthly terms and Jesus was speaking spiritual and heavenly truths.
Jesus gives Nicodemus one more metaphor tying a spiritual reality to an earthly object lesson. As a Pharisee, Nicodemus would have been very familiar with the story of Moses and the serpent lifted up in the wilderness which saved any Israelite who looked toward it. Something had to die so that man could live. This was the basis of the Jewish system of sacrifices for the atonement of sins.
At this point Jesus knows that Nicodemus is ready for the new gospel message. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (v 16).
At this point Nicodemus fades away and the Biblical account follows Jesus and his disciples to Judea, where they meet up with John the Baptist, who was preaching and baptizing people, proclaiming the imminent coming of the Messiah.
We are left wondering what happened to Nicodemus. Barbour’s poem Nicodemus gives us a picture of what might have occurred next.
You understand
it would not be discreet
for a person of some prominence
to be seen with him.
Some say he claims to be God’s son;
some that Caesar’s throne
is no in jeopardy;
and there are those who talk
with starry eyes
about the happiness he brings,
of stunted limbs
and scaly flesh made whole;
and so I climbed the stairs by night.How will I tell the Council that I know
beyond a shadow of doubt
this son of man is love personified
and that because of him
I have been born again?
Barbour’s poem is not scripture and definitely not included in the official canon, but it paints a picture that resonates with me. It provides a window into the soul of Nicodemus and other humans. It also provides me a mirror which reflects an image of my soul. I can definitely see myself in it. I find myself in his words. “How will I tell [others] that I know beyond a shadow of doubt…that because of him I have been born again?”
This post is to be continued in Let Us Be Gentle, Joseph Part II – Nicodemus and Joseph.
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