THE WIND BLOWS WHERE IT WISHES

‘The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:8 NKJ

Spiritual dullness is a feared condition by anyone who names the name of Christ. Yet if we be honest with ourselves it is often the normal condition of our spiritual walk. As Christians we are strangers and foreigners in hostile territory with no promise of spiritual victory save for the intervention of God. The world hates us and tries everything it can to woo us into her clutches. Our heart by virtue of its connection to old Adam is inclined to flee from God. And then there is that personal adversary, the devil, who has command over all the opposing forces of the world and is not afraid to unleash them upon the meek and lowly Christian. The result is a life that is often swayed by sin more than we would like to admit, a life characterized by worldliness, distraction, idolatry and that feared overarching haze of dullness.

When we fall into that state (which is often) well meaning counselors are quick to give us their remedy. The irony is that often times the counsel emanates from their own dull hearts. Such counsel often majors on human remedies, availing oneself to the means of grace which are defined as reading one’s Bible more, more attendance at church, serving others and even fasting. If one does these things, one will be cured of this hovering spiritual malaise.

But if closely analyzed, all these ‘remedies’ begin with man. They tacitly assume that we in ourselves have the ability to cure spiritual declension. A well is infected with water which only makes the people of the town more and more thirsty. It orders the water department to pump more water from the well in order to solve the thirst problem. Sending believers back to their own corrupt hearts in order to solve the dullness of the heart is to prescribe the very poison that is killing us. But when we study how Jesus dealt with those who had dead or dull hearts we find that he takes a completely different tact. We turn our attention to Jesus as He deals with a dead and dull man named Nicodemus, a man who is called ‘the teacher of Israel.’ We find the story in the beginning of John chapter 3. Nicodemus comes by night to ask Jesus how He is able to perform all those miracles. “What’s your angle Jesus Bar-Joseph?” Jesus avoids the question and gets right to the point of Nicodemus’ spiritual blindness. As expected, the Pharisee is totally bewildered. At this point it would have been the perfect opportunity to for Jesus to tell the man to read the Scriptures more, to pray more, or to serve more. But He does no such thing. Rather, in what seems to be a form of cruel mocking, Jesus tells the man he can’t understand those things because the Spirit is not working in him. Well how does one get the Spirit, Nicodemus might ask? Jesus at this point only makes the man’s plight more desperate. He notes that the Spirit cannot be lassoed and controlled by anything man can do. The Spirit blows like the wind. We can see its results but we cannot control it or predict it. The Spirit is the sovereign God who does whatsoever He wills (Psalm 115:3). From this we gather that any spiritual work in the human soul cannot originate with man. One can no more manipulate the Spirit’s work in his soul than he can change the course of Jupiter. Earlier in the book Jesus had said that man’s spiritual birth comes “not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but from God” (John 1:13).

So Jesus gives the poor, inquisitive Nicodemus no hope. In fact He makes his case worse by stripping that poor man of any self-remedy. Some might think Jesus was being cruel. But wait.

When confronted with someone who is dead or dull we do the opposite of what Jesus does. We turn men back to remedies that originate in self. If a person is feeling spiritual dullness or feeling ‘dead’ to God, don’t we usually counsel them to read or pray or serve, or do something spiritual to help themselves? We exhort them to use the ‘means of grace’ and believe that if they appropriate these sure fire remedies their problems will go away.

But the question is, can these things instill grace in the soul? If they could, wouldn’t Jesus, the master counselor, have suggested them to Nicodemus?

“Nick,” Jesus might have said with his hand on his chin, “you need to read the scrolls more. You’ve been a little lax lately in your study and you have forgotten how one is born of the Spirit. Go home and cloister yourself in your room and do some intense ‘Bible’ reading.”

Or perhaps Jesus could have said, “Nick, you have gotten pretty perfunctory in your prayer life. You are just going through the motions, how can you expect God to reveal to you such sublime truths? Get down on your knees and really plead passionately to the Lord.”

No, He didn’t say anything like that or anything else that Nicodemus needed to do, for that matter.

But Jesus did not leave Nicodemus hanging. But before we look at what Jesus did do, let us evaluate what happens when we try to turn people back to their own spiritual resources in order to regain a sense of God. First, when we counsel people who are struggling spiritually to read, pray or serve more are we not suggesting that they can do what only the Spirit can do? Are we not giving them fleshly solutions and in so doing we bypass the One who alone can heal their deadness or dullness? As counselors we must never forget John 6:63, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh provides no benefit; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit, and are life.” God brings Ezekiel to a desert valley where many bones (the nation Israel) are buried in the sand. And what does God tell Ezekiel to do? Give up? Pour water on the ground? Pray for healing? No. God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones that they (the nation) will be restored. “Preach the good news to them, Ezekiel, preach!” And he preached and the bones lived. When we are dealing with dead or dull souls we must do the same, we must preach the good news to them. Yes, we may be creative in this. We may share it in different ways using different illustrations, but let us give them the message that can heal them; let us tell them what God alone will do and has done.

Oh, but I get ahead of myself.

Second, turning men back to their own resources can also lead them into disillusionment, disastrous disillusionment. How so? Many are the spiritual grave markers of those who in a time of need were told to do something to fix their problem. And what was the result? They discovered that they were unable to bear that heavy burden of the added duties and they gave up. They tried and tried to find God through reading or prayer or fasting or serving, but it became nothing more than a spiritual burden. At this point they saw Christianity as an unattainable duty and they gave up.

On the other end of the scale are those who are told to resort to their own resources who actually believe they have achieved the required behavior changes. Their chests are puffed out like peacocks and they actually believe they have discovered the key to spiritual victory. Yet if the Bible teaches anything, it teaches that mere performance of spiritual duties is often antithetical to actually walking in the Spirit. The Pharisees not only engaged all these so-called ‘spiritual disciplines’ but they actually believed that they were spiritually superior in doing them. Thus these men could stand in market places and pronounce their spiritual superiority without one little pang of conscience. “I thank God I’m not like other men,” was their gospel of self-sufficiency.

No matter how you slice it, turning people’s aching hearts back to their own selves is a sure recipe for spiritual disaster. Many are the walking wounded in our churches.

So back to Jesus. What did He do with Nicodemus? Not to be redundant, but what He doesn’t do is give Nicodemus some quick tips to enliven his lifeless heart. He first establishes the right to give Nicodemus any advice at all by noting that He bears the perfect testimony to God for He alone came down from heaven (vs 13). Nicodemus may have suspected this for he had seen the great miracles of Jesus. But Jesus settles the matter. “I am the prophet sent of God. You must listen to me.” (vs 12).

Even then Jesus does not give the confused man any counsel. What He does next is amazing; He points Nicodemus back to an Old Testament prophecy about Himself (Nicodemus had no New Testament). That is, Jesus preaches one of the clearest gospel texts the Old Testament had to offer. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should have eternal life” (vs. 14-15). So that Nicodemus would not miss the point, He repeats His own interpretation of the event in Numbers by giving what is often considered the most recognized verse in the Bible, John 3:16. The emphasis is clear. God did something and you need not do anything…. except believe in Him.

So Christ knew something none of us knows intuitively (duh!). Spiritual counsel begins and ends with giving people the gospel. We tell them they must not do anything except believe in a person. Counterintuitive? Perhaps; like most everything else in the Bible I might add. We preach the gospel to those who are hurting, to those who are dull, to those who are doubting, to those who are dead. The remedy is the same for all. It is Jesus’ remedy.

Now of course we must say that not everyone who hears this message will be saved. God grants faith as He sees fit. But if one is to be saved, it will come through this message, the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is what Paul calls the gospel (1 Cor 15:1-4). And remember this was Paul’s remedy also. In writing the great treatise on salvation he wrote these words, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jews first and also to the Greeks.” The gospel alone is the instrument that God uses to save, heal, fortify, comfort, and encourage the saints. In a similar vein the writer of Hebrews calls for His audience to “consider Him who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.’ And what about Jesus are they to consider? His suffering at the hand of sinners; His beating, slapping, spitting, mocking, and crucifixion. That’s right, we are to consider the time Jesus Christ gave the full measure of devotion by dying for wretched sinners. That, my reader friend, is the only advice I dare give you. Are you dull and dreary? Are you discouraged and weary? Then look to the One Jesus who is high and lifted up and who via His cross draws all men to Himself.

Now listen carefully. I hear the wind. Where did it come from and where is it going? I cannot tell. What I can do is look straight at the cross and most assuredly the wind will blow in my favor. “Look and live, look to Jesus Christ and live!” Amen.