Today we’ll look at John 7: 45-52:

⁴⁵Then the temple police went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why did you not arrest him?” ⁴⁶The police answered, “Never has anyone spoken like this!” ⁴⁷Then the Pharisees replied, “Surely you have not been deceived too, have you? ⁴⁸Has any one of the authorities or of the Pharisees believed in him? ⁴⁹But this crowd, which does not know the law—they are accursed.” ⁵⁰Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus before, and who was one of them, asked, ⁵¹“Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?” ⁵²They replied, “Surely you are not also from Galilee, are you? Search and you will see that no prophet is to arise from Galilee.” 

We first meet Nicodemus in John 3. In that chapter, it is very implicit that Nicodemus went to Jesus at night. This is a significant statement because in John’s Gospel, light and dark, day and night, are synonymous with spiritual relation. Light/day represents good, God, while dark/night represents evil, the devil. When was Jesus betrayed? At night. The text is careful to say that. It was evil. When did Nicodemus come to Jesus? At night? He did not yet know; he was still in darkness.

So, when we first meet Nicodemus, he is in darkness. He had not yet made the decision to follow Jesus or obey Him. He was still in the dark.

Today, though, what do we see? We see small steps. While he is not yet the follower of Jesus that he would become, he is now pushing back a little against the persecution that Jesus is facing.

He says that it’s not right, we shouldn’t do it this way, this is not proper. Of course, he gets rejected. He even gets mocked. But he has made a small step. He is one step closer to being a follower of Jesus.

In our lives, we make small steps. Maybe we don’t have it all figured out. Maybe it’s not all right and perfect. Maybe we aren’t the follower of Jesus that we need to be. Maybe we all have much work to do in our lives.

But today, we can take small steps. We can take small steps to be more faithful. We can take small steps of obedience. We can take small steps to follow. Small steps.

Maybe we are not yet where we should be. Maybe we are not yet where we will be. But we can, today, take those small steps, just like Nicodemus did. And small steps of faithfulness lead us exactly to where it is that God would have us to be.

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