Filling the Holes in Holiness 

Journey Through the Bible Series
Preached by Dr. Peter James Flamming, 
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Va.
March 2, 2003

Text: John 3: 1-8

If you want a spiritual part of you, you’re not going to get it with the birth equipment you were born with.  It’s going to come because the Spirit of God has brought it to you and it’s like, it feels like, it becomes like, a new birth. 

Eighth verse says, “The wind blows where it will and you hear its sound but you can’t tell where it comes or where it’s going.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”  (I remind you that the Spirit and the word wind are the same in the Hebrew Old Testament.)  The wind blows. 

Some years ago Nell Mahoney wrote a book with an intriguing title, Don’t Put a Period Where God Puts a Comma.  Last week it was an amazing service for us.  The wind blew.  The wind of the Spirit swept among us.  How could it happen in a church 222 years old plus?  With a preacher from Iran who preached an hour. I won’t, I promise. But I guarantee he judged us, he called us, he challenged us, and when that service was over, hardly anybody who was here could have left without understanding something remarkable happened here last Sunday.  I encourage you, no, no, no, that’s not strong enough.  I challenge you, uh-huh, that’s not strong enough.  I beg you don’t put a period.  God has put a comma here!  The Spirit’s at work!  Don’t put closure on last Sunday.  The Spirit blows where it will.  What we’re asked to do is to be open. 

Now some of you who made real commitments last week - breakthrough commitments, by now you’ve had some doubts.  Don’t worry about it.  I’ve never made a major decision in my life that having made it, I didn’t have doubts about it.  That’s normal, that’s you.  That’s human.  That’s not what you need to worry about because you don’t need to worry, the Spirit is at work.  The Spirit blows. 

Some of you have had a kind of an emotional backwash.  That’s just emotions.  It’s like sports teams.  Sometimes they’re up and sometimes they’re down, but you don’t want to do without them. 

And some of you, some of you have had some failures since then.  Shucks!  Now you can learn of God’s grace.  See, think about how many times a little child falls, gets up, falls again when they’re learning how to walk.  God’s grace, like a parent, stands there, let’s us fall, so we can get up again and learn how to stand on our own feet.  Spiritually, the wind blows where it will!

Nicodemus and Jesus set an appointment and they’re appointment and darkness arrived at the same time.  Nicodemus was a Pharisee, our brothers, the Pharisees.  I’d like to say brothers and sisters, but sisters, you couldn’t get in in those days.  Pharisees, good people.  They’re like us.  They were Biblical, conservative.   They lived honest, decent, law-abiding lives.  Not only that, they were missionary and they were deeply committed.  Sounds good to me!  I’d elect somebody like that to any office in the church, but they had one critical weakness.  They’re holiness (and they were the most holy people of their era) their holiness was negative.  It was all about what they wouldn’t do or if it was about what they would do, it had negative connotations so if they didn’t do it --and along comes Jesus.  Along comes the one who took all of the law and affirmed it but said “don’t stop there.” 

Most of us come to Christ in what is the shell in which we put things like this building, like the hymnals, like the people who lead you in worship, that’s the shell.  But you see it’s the Spirit that’s the heart of it.  That’s what makes it all work.  Jesus put it like this, he said, “it’s like old wine skins and new wine.”  Paul said “It’s like a clay pot that holds the treasure.  Don’t become so obsessed with the clay pot you forget the treasure.”  And there comes a time in the spiritual life when you’ve seen the clay pot and you’ve seen the wine skin, and suddenly, wow, the wine is what’s important!  Suddenly, it’s the treasure, the jewel, the pearl of great price that’s important and you say, “I’m not there yet.”  And the Holy Spirit walks in and gentle wind says, “That’s all right.  You’re right where I need you to be.  Right where I planned for you to be.  But, leave the clay pot behind and seize the treasure.”  Hum. 

You see, Nicodemus had a holiness that was like a donut - Krispy Kreme to be sure.  Glazed with chocolate around it. But guess what, still had a hole in it.  Had no center.  A righteousness that’s negative.  A righteousness that prides itself on what it doesn’t do has a hole in the center and that hole, that lack of center, that lack of power, leads to a joyless faith, a critical judgmental faith and what’s needed is to put the center back in place, the Spirit of the Living God!  There’s a reason we call the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit because as Christians we believe that holiness is created not by our own effort, not by our own goodness.  Holiness is created by the Spirit of God who lives within us!  Holy Spirit.

 Let me try again.  I read the other day that Porsche was going to build an SUV!   I wonder if Rolls Royce is going to build a pickup truck?   You know what those Porsche SUV’s are going to cost? $150,000.  No use to stand in line.  The article said they were already spoken for.  But suppose you had that $150,000 Porsche SUV in your driveway.  I’m going to tell you something.  If it didn’t have any fuel, you couldn’t go anywhere.  Pull up the hood, look at that magnificent motor.  It’s all painted in all the right colors.  It has all the gadgets and all the computer, it’s there!  Open up the door and see how wonderfully and meticulously it’s been upholstered.  But I’m going to tell you something, a bicycle is going to get you there quicker than that Porsche SUV without any fuel in it.  Try a skateboard, it’ll win!   

If you think, if you think that all that matters is the outside, the achievement, what you do, how you act, the behaviors that are yours, even the doctrines you seize, you’ve missed the Spirit, you’ve missed the treasure.  The wine you’ve never tasted.

 Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Nicodemus, you have no center, you have no heart, you have no throb of life, you have no fuel.  Spiritual fuel, Nicodemus, new life, Nicodemus!” 

What about you?  Suppose you have in the living of your lives just kind of gotten out of touch with the Lord.  You feel far away.  How are you going to get back?  Or maybe you’ve never been there, and you’d like to be.  How are you going to get there?  Well the first thing you’re going to have to do, the very first thing you’re going to have to do is take Jesus Christ seriously because the Holy Spirit is always actualizing what Jesus Christ was and did.  They’re inseparable, they always are together. 

Nicodemus came to Jesus and he just was so impressed with his teaching ability.  “Rabbi, we know you’re a teacher who’s come from God.  None could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”  There is an incredible influence Jesus Christ has upon our lives.  Teachers do that.  Great teachers just do it.   

In January I got an e-mail midmorning.  One of the great teachers I had died.  I looked at the time, the service was going to be going on very soon.  I couldn’t get there.  And I sat behind my desk and I wept.  I wept partly because a friend was gone.  I’d talked to him a lot this year.  We had talked just a couple weeks before.  Three great teachers have infected my life in such a positive way I’m eternally grateful to those three teachers.  Only one’s left.  He’s over ninety.  But I grieved also because I couldn’t be there.  There’s something about the influence of an incredible teacher upon your life that you want to be there when they need you. 

Nicodemus came to Jesus because he’d felt the incredible impact of this life upon his.  Friend, I’ve had three great human teachers, but put all of their influence together, and it becomes shrunk to the affect that the Living Christ has had upon my life.  The first step to knowing the Spirit of God and replacing or putting center is when you and the Lord Jesus get together and his influence begins to transform you. 

Second thing, you’re going to need to love God in an appropriate and significant way that you can do it.  You’re going to have to love the Lord.  Now one among us has come up with five love languages and in giving us those five love languages, which are by the way, first one is affirmation.   And the second one is touching (“Reach out and touch.” “Have you hugged your child today?”). 

Third language is quality time.  Fourth language is service and the fifth language is gift giving.  Five love languages.  Most of us who are Christians who have dedicated our lives to Christ, do three of them more easily than two of them.  The first one, affirmation, in Biblical terms that’s praise, that’s worship, that’s blessing.  “Bless the Lord Oh my soul and all that is within me bless his Holy name.”  The fourth one is service and we do serve.  We serve in community missions, we serve in partnership missions, we teach Sunday school, we sing in the choir and on and on and on.  And the fifth one is gift giving.  We give.  We are givers.  But oh my friend, how often do you reach out and touch the Spirit and how often do you give quality time to the Lord.  It’s those second and third ways of loving where so many of us just stumble. 

The new Appointment with God books are out.  Your staff does this.  It’s a work of love.  We’re not perfect, but we love to do it, most of us.  You know why we do it?  We do it because we know quality time with the Lord has to happen sometime besides Sunday.  I bless you for being here today.  You’ve given quality time of your life to the Lord Jesus or you wouldn’t even be here, I bless you for that.  But let me ask you, what are you going to do on Tuesday, or Thursday, or Friday, or any day of the week when life begins so to become so intense and even seems to be unraveling.  You need to reach out and touch.  And the way in which we do that and give quality time to the Lord is usually praying and reading the Bible and spending some quiet time with him. 

You say, I have trouble praying.  Listen, it’s like the elephants’ ballet at the circus.  The wonder is not that the elephants’ don’t do the ballet perfectly.  The wonder is that they do it at all.   If you took everybody that prays on the face of the earth in the Christian church you could rattle it in a bucket.  Try it.  Don’t pray like you can’t.  Pray like you can!  Be the elephant who tries to do the ballet and it’ll be enough.  Spend time with the Lord.  If you had a child and that child came to you and wanted to you and didn’t say everything in the right way and put the words all in the wrong order.  Would you be judgmental?  Not a bit.  You’d say that wonderful child of mine is trying.  Now if you will do that as  a earthly parent, how much more will your heavenly Father receive your prayers and receive your efforts at taking the scripture and making it your own.

There’s one other thing.  Togetherness.  Christianity is not an individual effort.  Spiritually speaking, it’s a team sport.  (Sigh) Do you know what?  Some of you sit in the same place just about every week and I bless you for that, well unless something special is happening, you get scooted out.  Mumble mumble as you go out.  “Somebody took by seat!”  I want to turn that into an asset.  Before you leave and Sunday after Sunday check that group around you.  Do you even know their names?  If one of them misses for four or five weeks, do you know how to call them and say, “I’m worried about you.”  Do you realize how important it is to have a cluster of Christian brothers and sisters in Christ who are there for you?  Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered together, there I am in the midst of them.” 

This last week I had a wonderful experience and a story told to me that just tells what the Christian church is about and what the fellowship is about.  I said goodbye to a wonderful lady.   Lived out at Imperial Plaza.  Hum.  Born on a tobacco farm in Lunenburg County.  Moved to Richmond years and years and years ago to realize her dream to become a nurse.  She got her education and for all of her life she was a nurse until she retired and then she lost her husband and then she lost her sight.  Hum.  Now she could have put a period there, said my life’s over.  She didn’t.  She put a comma there.  And she and the Lord decided that there was still life to be lived.  She learned where everything was.  Couldn’t see a lick.  It’s all right.  She could memorize it.  Her mind had that incredible ability.  As it happened in God’s providence, a girlhood friend came to live in Imperial Plaza two floors down from where she did.  They hadn’t seen each other for years.  Didn’t take them long to bond.  They were similar and they were different.  About the same age.  But you see Shirley couldn’t see.  Her friend whose name was Thomasina (her parents wanted a boy and were going to call him Thomas. They solved the problem by adding an -ina, Thomasina.)  Well, they got together.  Thomasina could see well, she could she could drive well, she could walk well.  She couldn’t remember well.  You know we say children have attention deficit.  She had memory deficit.  She could find her way to the grocery store.  She just couldn’t find her way back.  She and Shirley got together and they decided they’d become a team.  You say, “How?”  Well, they got in the car.  Thomasina over here behind the wheel, Shirley right over here, navigator.  How could she navigate, she couldn’t see?  No, but she could remember.  “Thomasina, get in the right lane, you’re going to have to turn right right over here at the next corner.”  Every day they drove.  Everyday they went somewhere.  The most amazing time was when Virginia Center Commons was built.  Now do you know where Imperial Plaza is?  Most of you do.  Ginter Park area.  Right across from Bryan Park.  Do you know where Virginia Center Commons is?  It ain’t close.  It ain’t even close close.  Do you know they made up their minds they were going ... Shirley’d never been there.  How did they make it?  I don’t know.  . 

Thomasina left before Shirley did.  They’re both in heaven now.  I hope they’ve done two things.  I hope they’ve gotten acquainted with the angel that looked out after them while they were doing all that driving around.  But I hope they’re doing something else.  I hope they’re looking back and saying weren’t those great days when my weakness and your weakness were overcome by the other person’s strength.  That’s why you need each other.  That’s why the Spirit has at its heart partnership.  He wants you to be his partner, be it!  And he knows you need to be a partner with other human beings who are right around you.  Be it! 

Did Nicodemus ever become a Christian?  Did he ever open his heart to the Lord?  Did the Spirit ever find new birth within him?  I think so.  Turn over to the 18^th chapter, John’s gospel.  Pardon me, 19^th chapter.  And if you look in verse 38 and on down you’re going to find there are two men who were there when Jesus died.  There were two men, two men.  Look with me.  Look with me.  Do you see Simon Peter?  James?  John?  Phillip?  Where are they?  Their Lord is dying on the cross, where are they?!  Nowhere about.  Oh, oh, oh I see, I see two men coming.  Two men coming... They’re too well dressed to be one of the twelve.  They’re top of the pyramid.  They’re at the success peak of their lives.  Joseph of Arimethea and Nicodemus. 

For one second crawl into the skin of Nicodemus.  You’re at the foot of the Cross.  Your arms are open as his lifeless body falls in your arms.  And you and Joseph who have arranged for his burial (because you see they took those crucified and threw them on the junk heap) anoint him with all of the aloes and myrrh that Nicodemus had provided, and laid him in a garden tomb.  And I think, I think when they had finished their work they stood there for a while and they just cried. 

Two guys who earlier probably came to Jesus in the shadows.  The shadows, embarrassed by their lack of courage.  Now out in the open in front of everybody have taken the body of the Lord and put it to rest.  Oh, but they didn’t know God’s not going to put a period there.  Are you going to put a comma there?

© 2003 James Flamming