Brand new Christianity

We are travelling on the road to Pentecost.

Last week we discovered that Pentecost, simply yet profoundly, means the coming of God and God’s permanent presence in our lives.

Just as we encounter God in the Cross and in the Resurrection, so we meet with God in the Holy Spirit.

Today, we will learn something profoundly important.

The experience of God is brand new.

The Christian faith is different because the presence of God is decisive.

Nicodemus was a great guy He came to Jesus by night because thatwasthetime when people held serious discussions.

His attitude to Jesus was sincere,‘Jesus we know that you are teacher come from God, because no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him’ (John 3.1-2).

Jesus responded to Nicodemus with equal sincerity and earnestness –‘Nicodemus I am going to tell you something entirely new. It is so new it is as if you were starting your life all over again’(John 3.3).

The gist of the conversation was simple. ‘Nicodemus, You are a teacher of Israel, but what I am doing is beyond your learning. It is brand new’(John 3.1-15).

Today, we all need the Nicodemus event. In our individual life and in our Scottish society we need Jesus to encounter us as he did with Nicodemus.

We all need the fundamental Jesus experience.

Our modern society has simply lost Jesus Christ.

The established churches have lost the vibrant attraction experienced in the New Testament.

Christianity was and still is a brand new religion.

Easter Christianity is made real and alive for us by God’s living presence in the Spirit.

Christianity is a life-changing event. After talking with Jesus, Nicodemus was a changed man.

We see this in the way he supported Jesus.The religious authorities began to plot against Jesus.

Nicodemus was a member of their counsel. He stood up for Jesus.‘’Does our law judge a man without first hearing him?’(John 7.50-510).

Pablo Picasso, the Spanish painterrenownedfor Cubism, was once challenged by a collector who complainedthat the artist’s painting did not fit into his gallery.‘Then change your gallery’, was Picasso’s terse reply. That is the Jesus experience.

We do not fit Jesus into our existing life pattern. We are changed tofitintoJesus.

That is what God does to us when God’s presence sweeps through our life.

God takes us by the hand and leads us to Jesus.

John Calvin was a lawyer with a keen interest in philosophy and art before he became the champion of the Reformation movement.

In 1532, he sheltered in Basel, Switzerland, fleeing from religious persecution in Paris.

In Basel, he met William Farel, who was a keen Reformer, but without Calvin’s intellectual ability.

Farel wanted Calvin to come to Geneva, but Calvin declined.

Whatever Farel said to him, Calvin spoke later of God’s ‘sudden conversion’that entirely changed his life. Calvin went to Geneva.

Let me try to describe what it is like to walk in this brand new faith when in God’s presence we live with Jesus.

Remember that lovely hymn,‘In heavenly love abiding’. Your ordinary life continues but becomes more attractive.

Because your humble days become the place where you live with God.

You are forever abiding in God’s heavenly love.

Your troubles and difficulties will still molest.

But you will confront life’s issues with a stronger and more active resolve.

You may suffer from illnesses, youmay loselovedones.

But you find within yourself a certainty that,‘It is well, it is well, with your soul’.

Walking in the Spirit of God’s presence you shape your days with Jesus’hands, you see things with Jesus’eyes, you think of others with Jesus’heart, you love God with Jesus’soul.

As that lovely hymn sings, ‘My Saviour has my treasure and He will walk with me’.

‘If anyone is in Christ you are a new person. The old had passed, behold everything is new’(2 Corinthians 5.17)/

A little prayer – gentle Father God, you entered our soul in Jesus and made us new.

You gave us a warm welcome into your love and made us feel wanted by God.

Thank you for Jesus.

Amen.