What is...? The Commands of Christ, Matthew 28:20

The Commands of Christ and the Need to Be Born Again

My face is blocked out. Isn't that crazy? Wow. I didn't see that coming. This is Truth and Love. I apologize for the technical difficulties. Let me take that out real quick. That didn't help either. Okay.

This is Truth and Love. Thank you for watching. Good afternoon to you. Hope you're doing well. If we can pray for you, let us know. All you have to do is type me. Ephesians chapter 4, Truth and Love comes from Ephesians chapter 4 verse 15.

But speaking of Truth and Love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ. Dan is with me again. And we are looking at the commands of Christ. Looking at Matthew chapter 28 verse 20, where Jesus is speaking to his disciples.

They're giving him some instructions. He says to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go. So based on that foundation of Jesus' authority in heaven and on earth, we are to then go.

And then we're to be obedient. Go make disciples and baptize them and teach them to obey all that he has commanded us. And that's what Dan and I are looking at. The pastor of my church is putting together a good discipleship manual.

If you're interested in it, let me know. It's called Multiply, a discipleship training manual. And he is looking specifically, he's taking Matthew chapter 28 verse 20, and he's taking Jesus at his word there and looking at the commands of Christ and so that we can learn them ourselves, obey Christ and share them with others and so that they can hear the commands of their king and follow them as well.

The New Birth and the Limits of Human Effort

What we're going to be looking at today is living or what Jesus says, you must be born again. And the famous verses that where you can find that is John chapter three. We've looked at some other commands of Christ to repent, to believe, to abide, to seek or to pray to the father.

I guess my first question to you, Dan, before we get started is. How does how does an unbeliever? When they when they hear those commands, repent, believe we must abide in him or we must pray, we must seek him.

In what ways can they understand that? I know they can't understand that they definitely can't apply it, but but in what ways can they they understand those commands?

Well, those commands are telling us that we need to take our own efforts to live in the world and to go about in as a part of creation, take our own efforts and to put them aside to trust in God and what he said about his own creation and our own beings and our state of being and who we are and how we act and trusting in him.

That means that we put away our efforts at determining what is right and wrong. We trust in what God has said is right and wrong. And then we look back at the things that we've done that are sinful, that are evil.

And we trust in Christ to forgive us of those sins by the power of the cross. So those those commands really can only be understood in a gospel sense, a sense in which these are things that that need to be done because of our state before God.

The Bible calls that a couple different things. One of them is is that we are dead in our trespasses and sins. It says that we're at enmity with God or we're enemies of God. It says that we hate God, that we are rebels and sinners, uses that type of language.

And those commands to repent and believe are to stop being rebels, to stop being fighting with God, to stop being dead, which we're going to talk about today, which is you can't do that on your own. Stop being dead and to find your life in Christ, who you are, your identity, your everything, to find it in Christ.

Yeah. The reason why I ask that question at the forefront is because I wanted to elevate this command of Christ and you were hitting the nail on the head. I think an unbeliever, we can to a degree, maybe make some logical sense out of those other commands.

But they can't be understood fully and they definitely can't be applied. And that's why this command is so important is because without this taking place in a man's heart, we can't understand rightly and we definitely can't apply the other commands of Christ in such a way that they are pleasing to God.

Does that make sense? So what we want to do, if you've got your Bibles, if you want to follow along with us, we're going to walk through John chapter 3 verses 1 through 21. John chapter 3 verses 1 through 21.

And let me start off by reading the first three verses. And Dan will lead us in a little explanation. Now, there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to him by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

Jesus answered and said to him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Yeah.

Oh, OK. This is the start of the account of Jesus and Nicodemus. Nicodemus, who was a religious leader, he came to Jesus saying, we've seen you do all sorts of miracles. I've seen you do all sorts of things.

What are we to make of it? We know that you've come from God. So, you know, what gives? He really didn't know what to ask. And so Jesus kind of took it from there. He said, all right, well, you're trying to get at the heart of the matter, you know, since you know that I come from God, what is what is my message to you?

And Jesus said there in verse three, I tell you that no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above or with unless they're born again. And it confuses him. He's, you know, breathing, his pulse, his blood's going through his veins.

You know, he just had supper a little bit ago since he came to him at night. He had lots of things going on where he thought he was alive, but that wasn't what Jesus was talking about at all. Jesus was talking about his relationship to God and his, he was telling him what his message was.

His message is you who are dead in your trespasses and sins, you must be made alive again. You are in a state of unbelief, a state that's leading towards eternal death. And you need to come away from that and towards eternal life, which he gets into a little bit later, very shortly.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And what he's wanting him to see, ultimately, this, this guy, Nicodemus being a ruler, a head guy in the Jewish economy, you know, Jesus is wanting him to see that this message is the culmination of what you guys should have been seeing throughout all of your history.

You guys keep meticulous records, you know, your lineage, you study the law, you've got this stuff memorized, but you are not seeing the message. And this is, this is part of the key message. And he's trying to pull out, draw out to him.

This is what you guys should have been seeing. This is the culmination. This is the peak of what you guys should have been drawing out all along, instead of taking all these other routes and branches and making, creating all these other laws that you must follow.

Right. And he's trying to make, trying to make sure that he understands the point that, that all of this that they've been doing, the law keeping the, you know, making sure how many steps you take on the Sabbath or how much you tithe your mint dill and cumin or where you pray or how you do that.

All of their working at the law, all of the things that they've been doing, all of their efforts towards law keeping and what has it gotten them? You must be made alive. All it's done is brought you death.

So you, if you want to have life, it's not come the way that you've been doing things. So the law has been completely fruitless to you in helping you attain or gain life. It's, it's, it's not worked for you.

So here's why I'm here. I'm here to show you that your efforts have caused or have led to death. But I'm telling you that if you want to see the kingdom of God, you need to be born again. You need to have life and you're not getting life doing what you've been doing.

Yeah, I think that is such a powerful point right there. What you have been doing is not, not leading to life. You, you started with, with death and no efforts thus far, thousands of years have continued to lead to death, right?

But the law did.

Do something positive for Nicodemus. If you notice Nicodemus through all that, even though it didn't bring him life, it did speak about the one who could bring him life. And so what he did is he pointed out his need for a savior, which is why when the Messiah comes, he comes to us as teacher.

Tell me what you're here for Messiah. Let me know what I'm supposed to believe. So while the law didn't provide life for him, it absolutely gave him the, the tools to recognize the Messiah and his need to, to believe and do what God told him to.

Yeah. And whether it was intentional or not, or not, I think, I think it's from Galatians. We read that the law is our schoolmaster that leads us to Christ and whether it's the intention or not, it does its job.

It eventually does its job. This born again language, though, is kind of weird, I think, to our ears, modern ears, maybe, which he tells him later on, don't be amazed that I tell you, you must be born again.

So there was, there was some, some kind of familiarity that he, Jesus felt like maybe Nicodemus should have had, but, but for us being born again, sounds kind of strange to us. We, we think about birth and we think about we're, we're physically born.

Do we need, and that's the question that Nicodemus asks, you know, do I need to go into my mother's womb a second time? So I think we kind of need to, to get a foundation of this born again language. Why do we need to be born again?

And that, that takes us back to Genesis chapter three, verses one through six. Let me read that for us real quick. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field, which the Lord had made and said to the woman, indeed, God has said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden.

And the woman said to the serpent from the fruit of the trees of the garden, we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree, which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat from it or touch it lest you die.

And the serpent said to the woman, you surely shall not die. For God knows that in that day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened. You will be like God knowing good and evil. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and it was a delight to the eyes that the tree was desirable to make one wise.

She took from its fruit and ate, and she gave also to her husband with her and he ate. Now there's where it happens. That's where death enters into the world because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, and then proceeds all throughout the rest of history.

It makes me think of Romans chapter five, verse 12. And Paul kind of clearly explains that theology, that language, or what we need to understand about what happened in that situation. He says, Romans 5, 12, therefore, just as through one man, which was Adam, sin entered into the world and death through sin.

And so death spread to all men because all sin. So there, there's the death that is entered into the world. It is, has affected all men because all men have sinned. Death has come to all men. So there's, there's our predicament.

There's our foundation. That's why we need to be born again. Previously before, and that's what we call the fall in theological terms, we call it the fall. Prior to that, Adam and Eve were alive. Their relationship with God was living.

It was alive. They were in a right relationship with God. And then after this disobedience, they fell, death entered into the world and has affected all men. All men die because all men have sinned. Any extra thoughts on that?

Death, Sin, and the Need for the Spirit

Yeah, the idea of death here is, is it's linked to moral failure. What I mean by that is, death is always seen as the result of sin. When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, they died. Not because it was cause and effect, but because those were one in the same thing.

As they gave up righteousness, they gave up life. When they walked away from God and his commandments, they turned away from the one who had quite literally given them life by forming Adam out of the dust of the ground and breathing into him the breath of life and bringing Eve out of Adam's rib to form her and giving her life.

As they stepped away from God and rejected him, as they did their own thing, as they sinned, they became evil. So the link you see with you must be born again is, there's a link between death and sin, evil and lifelessness.

So when Jesus is saying, we must be born again, he's saying, you must purge yourself of evil. So when we look at Adam and Eve, or we look at any of the people in the Bible who have sinned, and we see the ideas of sin and death, they're really the same concept.

We see them in the world. Sometimes they don't match up in time. We have sinners who are around who are still living. What's their end? Their end is death of the physical body. What the Bible is saying is that as we sin, we have entered into death already in a spiritual sense.

We have become vile. So death, while we think of it in terms of, I have breath in my lungs, I have blood in my veins, it's pumping, I have thoughts in my head. When that ceases, I die. Death is actually more linked to our status of righteousness before God than it is to our body actually functioning or working.

Because God can take things that we would consider lifeless. The rocks of the ground can cry out in obedience to God, they have life. But like Uzzah, who reached up to touch to study the Ark of the Covenant when it was about to fall down, and he died.

It was his disobedience that led to death, whereas the ground was there to catch the ark in complete obedience to what God was saying. I hope that makes sense that the idea of death and sin are linked together.

And that's what Jesus is trying to get at when he's talking to Nicodemus.

Yeah, I think that's an amazing point. And we should, I want to emphasize that just a little bit more, that the spiritual death is so, should be the greater focus than our physical death. I think there's such an emphasis on our physical death, because it's something we don't think about it.

It's something that's scary. We dread it, you know, it's powerful. But in God's reality, which, you know, should then, once we're born again, once we're his, you know, should then become our perspective, our reality.

It's the spiritual death that is the greater emphasis. Because it is more important to be alive in him than alive physically. It's a worse thing to be dead in him than dead, you know, physically.

Right. Well, physical death is just a natural outworking of spiritual death, which is why he says you must be born again, which is why Jesus, after he suffered death on our behalf, went into the grave, he then came up out of it again.

He's the one who holds power even over the graves. So those who he promises spiritual life to, those who he says are born again, also have in tandem with the same promise is that when their physical bodies do succumb to death, that they will be raised up again, because death itself has no power over them, because their sin has been wiped away in Christ.

Listen, let's move on with John chapter three. We're in verse four, the demon said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter into into a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?

Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.

Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from, where it is going. So everyone who is born of the spirit.

So what is Jesus telling Nicodemus here?

Oh, well, Nicodemus starts off by missing the whole point. He starts off saying, Well, I'm an old guy now. How am I going to, to enter back into my mother's womb? Like, are you teaching reincarnation or something like that?

He's like, No, no, no, nothing like that. It's not time. I'm telling you that you must be born of water and spirit or of creation and spirit. Your physical body as well as your spirit must be redeemed.

Because what is born of the of the flesh is flesh. There are things of the flesh, people, bodies that can reproduce. They do not have to have spiritual life in them. We see that in people all the time.

They want nothing to do with God, but they have families. What is born of the flesh is flesh. But the only way to have that right relationship with God to have eternal spiritual life is to be born of the spirit, to have the spirit birth you, so to speak.

The idea that Jesus has here, he then goes on to to say that it's it's a bit of a mystery. Now, we really dislike saying things are a mystery because it kind of sounds like a cop out when you're talking about things.

But this is actually the point that Jesus is making. Not that it's a mystery that we can't understand fully, even though there are aspects of it that are, but that we don't really know how it works because he doesn't have.

Not that he doesn't have that. It's something that we we're not privy to the information of all of the workings of how the Holy Spirit actually regenerates someone, gives them life. What we do know is that when you go out outside and it's windy outside, you do not see the wind coming, but you may see dust floating through the air.

You may see leaves in the trees rustling around tree branches going, the grass bending over and amber waves of grain going off in the breeze. You don't see the wind, but you do see the effects of it. So what he's saying here is you may not be able to watch the spiritual realm where the Holy Spirit reaches in and touches someone's life and brings their spirit back to life.

But what you can see is the effects of it. What you can see is that someone who was dead, who wanted to do things their own way and did not trust in Christ, who was, as Nicodemus was well aware at the time, the Jews would try to seek their righteousness by following and keeping the law.

A lot of people will do that today, even if they say they don't need to follow the Old Testament law. They'll say, well, I've done well. I'm following my own law or I'm following natural law or one of a bunch of other different things.

But what this is saying is that there will be a marked change in which one who didn't trust in Christ, who didn't believe in him, who didn't give over, I hate to say give over authority, but didn't recognize the authority that Christ already has now does.

They all of a sudden care about spiritual things. They want to pray to the Father. They trust in the Son who died on the cross and rose from the grave. There is a change in the person where they, while they were once desiring evil and being selfish, when they were living in death, living in death, they are now born again.

Their spirit is alive. Their spirit doesn't desire those evil things anymore, but desires to do well, to trust in God, to believe in him, to let him be their standard and the righteousness. It's leaving behind a nature of evil and entering into a nature of good.

And this is the point that he's making with the wind. It's like, you don't know how that happens because it's nothing that you can do of yourself. It's something that is done by God because the spirit is born by the spirit.

So if we're going to be born again, we're going to be born again by the power of the Holy Spirit and through the message of the gospel.

Yeah, that's definitely one of the directions that I was going to go with it. Touching back on the idea, the thought concept that you were bringing up earlier when we were in Genesis and this idea of morality.

And I think it has a relationship to the flesh here because you have Adam and Eve. They were tempted by Satan, of course, but then they bought into that temptation and then in their flesh, you know, disobey God, doing things on their own in their own way.

And therefore, the result of doing things in the flesh instead of in the spirit, obeying God. The result of that was death and then the death of all mankind. And so here, I think we can make that connection as well.

Things that are born of the flesh is flesh. So Nicodemus, you know, all these thousands of years of working in the flesh is still producing death. You know that which you are working in the flesh is still birthing death for you.

And so you need something. You need to be born by the spirit and go back to doing things in the spirit because that which is born of the spirit is going to give you life. You need to get away from this working in the flesh and doing things in the flesh.

And, you know, we can we can still experience that that today, even above spiritual birth, doing things in the flesh. It's not going to work out apart from Christ. We go back to what we talked about in the video about abiding in Christ and John.

Is it John 15? Where we're abiding in Christ and Jesus says, apart from me, you can do nothing. And so that's that working in the flesh, living in the flesh, working in the flesh, that which is born of what you're trying to do in the flesh is just going to produce death because.

Apart from him, you can do nothing, and that's why we need this birth in the spirit to be to be born again, a different way of life, and that's what Jesus is introducing to Nicodemus.

Right. And he's trying to do it by way of analogy or metaphor, because Nicodemus right in the next verse says, how can this thing how can this be? He says, are you a teacher in Israel? And yet you do not understand these things.

He's trying to tell him. So I'm trying to give it to you easy. I'm trying to spoon feed it to you, but you're just not understanding. And then he says, verily, verily, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen.

Yet you do not receive our testimony. If I would have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, which is what he was doing is telling him about things that you would understand and see all the time to the birth of humans and animals and all sorts of different stuff.

If I'm telling you about this through through a metaphor of of earthly birth, something that you should be very well acquainted with. How can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? He said, if I started off on a doctrinal diatribe and was going point by point on the finer things of sin and death and how your spirit is is in need of regeneration and how you are completely in sin and incapable of doing anything right.

I just told you, you need to be born again. You need to have no life and go to life. He says, I'm trying to give it to you simple. And he was just having none of it at the time.

The Bronze Serpent, John 3:16, and Salvation by Faith

Yeah, and here's here's why we need this spirit. I mean, this is looking back at some of these verses in the Old Testament. This is this is what Nicodemus had. This is what his co-workers had. If you want to call him that is brother Pharisees and Sadducees and fellow Jews, his forefather.

This is what they had. This is what they experienced. And this is why we need this, the spirit, because even though they they had this, they continued to work in the flesh and therefore the result was birthing what the flesh first, which is continued death.

But Genesis chapter six, verse five, then the Lord saw that the weakness of man was great on the earth, that that every intent of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually. And then Psalm 14, verse three, they have all turned aside together, they have become corrupt, there is no one who does good, not even one death.

Right. And then Proverbs 20, verse nine, who can say I have cleansed my heart? I am pure from sin. Of course, the answer is no one. And then Jeremiah 17, verse nine, the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick.

Who can understand it? And I guess the answer to that question is no one. No one can understand it apart from the spirit. That's why we need the spirit to give us life and give us understanding. Because we see for thousands of years they experience this, they pass down these stories.

I mean, that's that's how we understand and know about Noah, about the flood and about how the wicked were removed from the earth because their heart and their heart led to their immorality. And God cleared the earth of this.

And so what what is the result? How does God feel? What does God do based on our disobedience, our immorality, our working things in the flesh? God hates sin and God will destroy sin. You know, those things Nicodemus had.

He had this information, but he still wasn't getting it. And that's what Jesus, I guess, you know, is trying to explain here. You have this earthly experience, you have this earth, you know, these verses getting it.

How would how would you understand heavenly things?

Right. They need to be born again. That's kind of what he gets into in the next couple of verses. OK, well, if you look at verse 13, it says no one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven.

The son of man talking about himself says, I know I have things. I know things because I come from heaven and I'm here now to tell you these things. And then he tells him plain out with a point from history that was very well known by the people because it is in that first section of of the Hebrew scriptures.

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up. What happened was there was a there was some moral failure in the in the camp of Israel. And there was a bunch of snakes that came in and were biting people.

These people were becoming sick and dying. And so what happened is God told Moses to to make a a serpent on a pole, a bronze serpent and hoist that serpent up in the middle of a town or the camp. And whenever those people got bit by a snake, if they were to make their way and look at the serpent that was lifted up on the pole, they would be healed.

And so what he's saying here is telling them from that story, this is a picture of what's going to happen. This is a picture of that life that you don't understand yet. The life that I told you to go get, you know, be born of the spirit.

This is a picture of it. So must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. Now, who is the him? The him is the son of man who had descended from heaven.

Yeah.

Who knew the things that he was talking about, who understood, who had seen the spirit realm, who had been around, who'd been in heaven. Just like Moses was lifted up in the wilderness, he would be lifted up.

And he meant that literally he was going to be lifted up on the cross. And then anyone who would come to him for forgiveness of sins would be healed and find life, just like those people who had been bitten by the serpent.

Now, that's an incredibly powerful metaphor, because just like the verses you were reading back in Genesis three, who was it that deceived Adam and Eve and fell? Who got snake bit in Genesis three? It was Adam and Eve who got bit by the serpent, so to speak, that spiritual death that latched on.

And so you see Moses with the physical serpent in the wilderness. Now, Christ saying, I'm going I'm here to crush the head of the serpent. I'm here to the death that was passed on to you. The venom of sin is coursing through your veins.

I'm here to take away. And then comes the most famous verse and probably all of the Bible.

But before you hit on that, if I may interject, I was as you were talking, it was making me think of Jesus interaction with with Nicodemus right before that. In verse 10, are you a are you a teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?

So Jesus is speaking to a teacher, a Pharisee in Israel and how we were just. Going over the fact that that him as a teacher, one of the head guys in Israel. Had all this information, had all this life experience, his forefathers, he had all this stuff.

Jesus is speaking to a teacher of Israel. And what is he doing in in verse 14? He's taking taking Nicodemus back to his scriptures. He's taking a teacher of Israel back to his scriptures and saying, this is how you should be seeing this.

This is a this is a foreshadowing of. Your your salvation, your relief, your your life to come. And so when you when you see the serpent Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness. This is this is how you should see God and his and how he does things and how he's working and what's to come.

And then whoever believes in in him, the son of man that's lifted up. So you need to get rid of this, this flesh stuff that that only produces the flesh. You need to get back to the spirit who can save, which is emptying your hands, relinquish, relinquish yourself of your work.

And just look to Jesus. I just I found it interesting that that Jesus, you know, lifts him up and acknowledges him as a teacher of Israel. But what he's doing is he's taking a teacher of Israel and reteaching him how to interpret the Old Testament.

Yeah. So sorry, sorry to interrupt there.

Oh, you're fine. That's good. So so then what he does is he he explains it to him in plain language. He says, for God so loved the world, you know, his creation, the thing that he made in Genesis one that he gave his only son.

That'd be the son of man, the one that's going to be lifted up as a serpent in the wilderness. So that everyone who believes in him may not perish that death that he was talking about, but may have eternal life.

So he tells him that he must be born of the spirit, that unless he's born of the spirit, he can never see the kingdom of God. And then he tells me exactly how it is that he can find the kingdom of God through life in the sun.

No, it's the son who was going to have eternal life. And those who would believe in him and what he was saying were going to find that eternal life. So he tells him he must be born of the spirit. And here's how you're going to be born of the spirit by believing in the one who's going to be lifted up like Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.

Um, and then he goes on, unless you have.

Well, I think it's important to, um, to look at that word, believe. Sure. That's, uh, it's misunderstood sometimes. Uh, some people view that as, um, even a work, you know, that's something I must do.

So maybe we could address how believing on the son of man, believing on the son of God, Jesus himself is not a work. In and of ourselves, because that's, that's what we're getting away from. We're getting away from, um, doing things in the flesh.

We're getting away from works, righteousness.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm sorry.

I got excited. I knew the answer. Uh, this, uh, this word here is not even an action verb for us. Um, even in the original, uh, what it means is, uh, you can read it so that all the believing ones, right.

Not, uh, telling someone that it's now their job to go out and believe. What it's describing is those who have life are going to be the ones who believe.

Yeah.

What we want to stay away from, we want to keep consistent in our, our, uh, exegesis of the text that we don't, uh, just like you cannot birth yourself. You cannot make yourself become alive. Uh, you cannot make yourself believe.

And here's, here's why, um, that belief is a, uh, is a gift from God. The reason why we say this is because of all those verses that talk about us being dead. Uh, we are dead in our trespasses and sins.

It says that there is no one righteous. No, not one. There's none who understands. There is no one who seeks after God. Uh, there's no one who seeks after God. There is, um, this is their, their mouths are an open grave.

Um, and, and the venom of asps or, or, or snakes is on their lips. No, we, we, we smell like the grave. We stink like the grave. And even the venom that comes off of our lips is like our father, the devil.