John 3:1-15

 John 3:1-15

We are here today because at some point in the past our biological father and our biological mother shared a moment of physical intimacy.  The result of that physical act is our physical presence. While reproductive science has explained much of the event of conception it is nonetheless a marvel and a mystery. For the ancients it was even more mysterious, not having our scientific explanation. In parallel to the wonder of physical birth and conception our spiritual birth is easier to see and experience than it is to explain, it is a great mystery.

Why is it that sometimes a husband and a wife will conceive a child and other times they will not? Why is it that some people will hear the call of Jesus and become disciples and others will not? These are both mysterious. We sometimes treat evangelism and soul winning as a mechanical process. We present the “Roman Road”, the “Four Spiritual Laws”, “The Two Diagnostic Questions” or “The Five Finger Exercise” as mathematical problems that if followed properly will end up making disciples. We fail to consider the unfathomability of the Spirit.

There's a play on words in verse 8 that does not show up in English. The Hebrew word for Spirit and Wind are the same. The sound of the wind was the voice of the Spirit. How easy is it to capture control and direct the wind? Even the advances of science can't fully explain the wind. What voice or message is hidden in the Wind? Why does it blow in one place and not in another? The wind is better known by experience than by the textbook. Better to fly a kite, sail a boat, or watch clouds race overhead than to sit in a classroom and listen to a lecture on meteorology, even if that lecture was a wonderful lecture of great value. Better to live in the reality of the Spirit’s leading, direction and prompting than to absorb the dry intellectualism of a Pharisee knowledge such as Nicodemus had.

“Lord, keep me attentive to the breeze of Your Holy Spirit. Amen”