Featured Nicodemus, Master of Israel

'I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the LORD; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.
31 “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. 33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

Jeremiah 31:31-34 nasb

 

Not what you are asking for, but I don't see how one would conclude that Jesus was asking how Nicodemus didn't know about regeneration.
It seems obvious that He was asking Nick how it is that he couldn't fathom the earthly (wind in trees)part of His parable.

 

Everyone realizes you do not really want an answer....the answers are everywhere when you can see....

25 Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.

26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.


it is based on God's eternal Covenant; but you really do not seem to care for such things do you???


19 And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh:

20 That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.


9 And a man that is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up without the camp in a clean place, and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for a water of separation: it is a purification for sin.

 

All you need to see is this;

9 Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be?

10 Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things

Jesus expected the main teacher in Israel to know these things.....from scripture....

Numbers 19; speaks of the water of separation ..it was a purification for sin... the other verses speak of Divine heart surgery...like here-

2 And shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul;

3 That then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee.

4 If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee:

5 And the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers.

6 And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.


The action is all of God.....see it?:wavey:

 

:wavey::wavey::wavey:

 

Wrong...the Accomplishment of redemption happened when Jesus said it was Finished......but all saints were saints before they left this body...you are off on your statement.

 

Because you do not get it, does not constitute failure on my part.You have been answered...you do not like it...so you try and live to fight another day, repeating your failed arguments,and holding onto the fig leaf of your imagined free will.

 

You were answered on this ;

Wrong...the Accomplishment of redemption happened when Jesus said it was Finished......but all saints were saints before they left this body...you are off on your statement.
32 Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

5 I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah.

6 For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him.


Are you claiming ot saints were not saved???

5 Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow.


Nicodemus was to know all of this.....
all the saints described in heb11 were looking for the Accomplishment of redemption, they left their bodies as saints....

39 And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise:

40 God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. the cross is the accomplishment of it...the Spirit was active in all of redemptive history.

there are no giants of anything here...just sinners saved by God's grace, effectually drawn to salvation.

 

It is literally NOT 'born again', it's 'born from above', as in:

26 But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother.
27 For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; Break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: For more are the children of the desolate than of her that hath the husband.
28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise.
29 But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, so also it is now. Gal 4

This 'Celestial Zion' and Her children that Nicodemus was not comprehending are alluded to in passages such as Gen 3:15:

and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Or Ps 87:

3 Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. Selah
4 I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon as among them that know me: Behold, Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia: This one was born there.
5 Yea, of Zion it shall be said, This one and that one was born in her; And the Most High himself will establish her.
6 Jehovah will count, when he writeth up the peoples, This one was born there. Selah
7 They that sing as well as they that dance shall say, All my fountains are in thee.

Notice all those Gentiles in Ps 87. All through the period of the Mosaic covenant there were FAR MORE of these ‘children of the heavenly Zion’ with circumcised hearts among the Nations than there ever were in Israel as clearly indicated in Isa 54:

1 Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith Jehovah.
2 Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitations; spare not: lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes.
3 For thou shalt spread aboard on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall possess the nations, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.

Christ told of them in Jn 10:

And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice: and they shall become one flock, one shepherd.

Paul refers to them in Ro 2:

13 for not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified:
14 (for when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are the law unto themselves;
15 in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith, and their thoughts one with another accusing or else excusing them);

And in Col 1:

26 even the mystery which hath been hid for ages and generations: but now hath it been manifested to his saints,
27 to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:

In Rev 12 we’re given an awesome visual picture story exposition of Gen 3:15, the seed germ of all prophecy, detailing the enmity down through the ages between the Serpent and the Celestial Zion clothed with the sun and the moon and the stars and her children:

1 And a great sign was seen in heaven: a woman arrayed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars;
2 and she was the child; and she crieth out, travailing in birth, and in pain to be delivered.
3 And there was seen another sign in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads seven diadems.
4 And his tail draweth the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon standeth before the woman that is about to be delivered, that when she is delivered he may devour her child.
5 And she was delivered of a son, a man child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and unto his throne.
17 And the dragon waxed wroth with the woman, and went away to make war with the rest of her seed, that keep the commandments of God, and hold the testimony of Jesus:

But Nicodemus should not be harshly judged for not comprehending this concept of ‘born from above’. The vast majority of the teachers of Israel today still don’t grasp the idea of ‘born from the Jerusalem that is above’, or, ‘the Spirit where He willeth doth blow’. You and the Calvinists that you are obsessed with refuting are actually brothers in this regard.

 

:thumbsup::thumbsup: very eloquent:type: He does not want to understand, just complain and argue......he wants to see the words written out in every part of scripture....the word regeneration he wants to see on every page,....

then he wonders why he gets 80 page views with no response:laugh: