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

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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 the 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 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.

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's said about his own creation and and our own beings and our state of being and who we are and how 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.

And 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, says that we're at enmity with God or we're enemies of God, 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 getting 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? Yep. 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, okay. 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 what gives?

He really didn't know what to ask. And so Jesus kind of took it from there and he said, all right, well, you're trying to get at the heart of the matter.

Since you know that I come from God, 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 unless they're born again.

And it confuses him. He's breathing, his pulse, his blood's going through his veins.

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 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. And what he's wanting him to see, ultimately, this guy

Nicodemus being a ruler, a head guy in the

Jewish economy, you know, Jesus is wanting him to see 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 part of the key message. 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 creating all these other laws that you must follow.

Right, and he's trying to make sure that he understands the point that all of this that they've been doing, the law keeping, 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 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 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 leading to life. You started with death, and no efforts thus far, thousands of years, have continued to lead to death.

But the law did do something positive for Nicodemus. Nicodemus, through all that, even though it didn't bring him life, it did speak about the one who could bring him life.

So what he did is he pointed out his need for a savior, which is why when the Messiah comes, he comes to him and says,

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 tools to recognize the

Messiah and his need to believe and do what God told him to. Yeah, and whether it was intentional or not,

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 some kind of familiarity that Jesus felt like maybe Nicodemus should have had.

But for us, being born again sounds kind of strange to us.

We think about birth and we think about we're physically born.

And that's the question that Nicodemus asks, do I need to go into my mother's womb a second time?

So I think we kind of need to get a foundation of this born again language.

Why do we need to be born again? And 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 in 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 open. 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's the death that is entered into the world.

It has affected all men because all men have sinned.

Death has come to all men. So 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. And 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 fail.

Death entered into the world and has affected all men. All men die because all men have sinned.

Any extra thoughts on that? Yeah, the idea of death here is 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 causing an 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. And what the Bible is saying is that as we sin, we have entered into death already in a spiritual sense.

We have become vile. And 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. And 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 I want to emphasize that just a little bit more, that the spiritual death 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. Yeah. 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 of 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.

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 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 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. Flesh, 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 say that it's a bit of a mystery.

Now, I 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 that.

It's something that 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 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 that 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.

This is the point that he's making with the wind. 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. 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. 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.

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, disobeyed

God, doing things on their own, in their own way. 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.

Here, I think we can make that connection as well. Things that are born of the flesh is flesh.

Nicodemus, 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. We can still experience 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 in 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 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 them, 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, he was telling them about things that you would understand and see all the time through the birth of humans and animals and all sorts of different stuff.

If I'm telling you about this through a metaphor 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 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. Yeah. And here's why we need this spirit.

I mean, this is looking back at some of these verses in the Old Testament. This is what

Nicodemus had. This is what his co -workers had, if you want to call them 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 had this, they continued to work in the flesh.

And therefore the result was birthing what the flesh births, 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 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 experienced this. They passed down these stories.

I mean, 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 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 you understand heavenly things?

Right. They needed to be born again. That's kind of what he gets into in the next couple of verses. Okay. 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.

He 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 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 some moral failure 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 make 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 was 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, 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, 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 in 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, he said, 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 suffering, 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 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 to sorry to interrupt there. Oh, you're fine. That's good stuff.

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 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 him exactly how it is that he can find the kingdom of God through life in the son knows 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.

And then he goes on, unless you have. Well, I think it's important to to look at that word, believe.

Sure. That's it's misunderstood sometimes. Some people view that as 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 doing things in the flesh. We're getting away from works, righteousness.

Well, this yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. I got excited. I knew the answer. This this word here is not even an action verb for us.

Even in the original, what it means is you can read it so that all the believing ones not 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 exegesis of the text that we don't.

Uh, just like you cannot birth yourself, you cannot make yourself become a lot.

You cannot make yourself believe. And here's here's why that belief is a 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's no one who seeks after God.

There's no one who seeks after God. There is, um, this is their mouths are an open grave.

Um, and the venom of asps 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. Um, what we have is that a dog doesn't act contrary to the nature of a dog.

A bird will always be a bird. A goat's going to be a goat. A tree is going to act like a tree and a center will act like a center.

What Jesus is getting at is not, Hey, you need to do this one thing. And then maybe I'll change some other stuff about you and make you perfect.

In the end, he's saying you need a complete overhaul. You need your whole being want to your nature changed.

You need to go from being one who loves death, who loves sin, who loves the things of the serpent to being one who is alive, uh, in, in the spirit who loves

God and loves, uh, his work. So what he's saying here is he's describing that there is life coming, that there's life coming through the sun, but he's not telling us that it's something that we can come out and grab or, or, uh, lay down as we will.

We know from Ephesians chapter two, that is by grace that we are saved through faith.

It's not faith that we generate in ourselves that causes the grace of God to come to us.

We are saved by grace, the grace of God given to us through faith.

Uh, John six describes it like this, that all the father gives to the son will come to him.

Uh, and that he will not cast them out on the last day. Uh, also he says that you cannot come to me unless the father who gives you to me draws you.

Um, this is a work of God, um, from start to finish.

That's why he gives the analogy of the spirit and the wind in the leaves. You don't know how it's going to happen.

You don't know what it looks like. You can see the effects of the work of God though. Because I think what a lot of people will get backwards is they think that God somehow, uh, did something, set something up and then left the world to be to see how it would turn out.

Or even if he knows how to turn it out, he's not really the driving, controlling force behind it. And, uh, that's just not what we see in the

Bible because, uh, even in Isaiah, Isaiah has a whole section from chapters 40 to 48 that talks about, uh,

God being better than the other gods. He says to them, you know, what did the other gods, uh, do have one of them, uh, tell me what's coming in the future or even this, have them tell me what happened in the past and why it happened.

You know, what's the purpose behind it? No one can say because God is, uh, he's

God, he's the sovereign. He's the, these are definitional things of what it means to be

God. And so the same God, uh, when he says in Ephesians one before the foundations of the earth planned out salvation and salvation through the sun.

And that is what he's speaking to Nicodemus. Now, the salvation that you've been promised, the salvation that you saw, uh, covenanted to the people of God throughout the old

Testament through, uh, the promise given to Adam and Eve in the garden and the

Noah, uh, through Abraham, Moses, the one promised to David, uh, that is here.

Now I am the one who will be lifted up and, and, and bring salvation to my people.

Um, I think this is an important thing because we need to remember that salvation is of the

Lord and not of us. Right? We don't force God's hand.

God forces ours. Uh, I think that's an important point to make.

Absolutely. Uh, and going back to the verses you were quoting from Ephesians chapter two, uh, verses eight, nine, four, by grace, you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves.

It is a gift of God, not as a result of works that no one should boast.

And then verse 10, of course, where we are, his workmanship created in Jesus for good works, which

God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Um, and then the beginning of that chapter, he tells us why we, why we've got to be saved by grace through faith, that why it's a gift of God and not of works because verse one, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world.

And that's, that's kind of the, the theme here that we've been discussing that we were, we were dead in our trespasses and sin.

Um, the only thing that we can work out and that, that, you know, that's what Jesus wanted

Nicodemus to see is, um, that which you've been doing this, this flesh working, um, and producing that which comes from the flesh is all that you've been able to do.

That's why you need, you, you're dead in your trespasses and sin. That's why you need to be looking to the spirit.

That's why things need to be done in the spirit. That's why you need to be born again, born by the spirit, through the spirit, because you can't do it yourself.

So that's why you need to look upon the son of man who's, who's been lifted up.

And, um, I think Ezekiel, Ezekiel 36 is, uh, has some good verses, uh, to point out some of the things that you were talking about that it's, you know, that it's his work.

Ezekiel 36, starting in verse 25, uh, then

I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. We don't cleanse ourselves.

God says, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from your idols.

Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will be careful to observe my ordinances.

This, this careful to observe his ordinances is a result. It comes from all these things that God has already done in us.

It's such a powerful point that I appreciate you bringing out that I think, um, it's important for all of us to understand.

Um, and I appreciate you bringing out that point in, in John 3, 16. Um, it's, that is why it's so important for, for us and for anybody that that's watching for you to be under a good

Bible teaching pastor. You're reading, you're listening to good

Bible, um, teachers and good Bible, uh, pastors that, that explain it well, because John 3, 16 is, has probably been one of the most famous verses in our modern times, but it's famous.

It's been made famous because it has been read and preached, taken out of context and preached even evangelistically in such a way that it causes us to misunderstand the verse and a good

Bible teacher will point out that the, the true message of what

Jesus was talking about, um, how Jesus isn't commanding us to believe he's just making a point.

Those who are believing, um, you know, so if you read it in its, um, correct word order for God, so love the world that he gave his only begotten son, that everyone believing in him.

So it's, it's, you know, it's not a command to believe. It's just an exhortation that everyone that is believing will have life.

We'll not perish, but have eternal life. Yeah. Go ahead. No, we are commanded elsewhere to repent and believe.

Right. That's true. That's just not what's happening here. Exactly. Yeah. And, and that's the point.

That's not what happened. What's happening here. Um, and that's a whole different subject.

Correcting, correcting the misunderstanding of John 3 16. Um, but I, I appreciate you bringing out that point.

Yeah. The next few verses speak to exactly what you were saying. Um, verse 17, it says,

God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world. That wasn't his point. Jesus wasn't coming in order to say,

Hey, you're all going to hell. But in order that the world might be saved through him, he came for the purpose of saving a people to himself, of bringing redemption to his entire created order.

Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only son of God.

There's a popular way of thinking about things that you are somehow neutral before God.

And then you have a, a choice to make. Well, I can either believe in him or not believe in him.

And then God's going to send me to hell just because I choose not to believe in him. Or I believe not to that.

That's not the case of the cases that we are sinners condemned already because God cannot be in the presence of evil.

Evil must be done away with. So everything that is evil is condemned from the get go.

Um, and those who believe are those who are finding internal life, who the spirit has worked in and brought salvation to them.

So, and then he tells them, he tells us exactly what the judgment, what the standard of judgment is that God will have on the world.

And this is the judgment that light has come into the world and people love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.

The judgment upon the world is that there are evil folks in the world. There are evil deeds going on.

That is a judgment upon the world as, uh, as, as it stands now.

That's why we need to be born again. That's why we need to be made alive in, in the spirit.

And he goes on to explain for all who do evil, hate the light, do not come to the light so that their deeds may not be exposed.

They don't want their, their deeds to come to light their works to come to light because they're evil and they're, they're ashamed of them.

Somehow they have ingrained in them the, the true nature of God and what is right and wrong.

And they have shame over things that they ought to have shame over, but they, they don't have enough shame to want to stop.

It's because of who they are. Um, the, the, the moles and the bats come out at, at night because they love the darkness.

The same thing for evil people. They come out, um, at night because there's nothing to shine on the truly heinous nature of who they really are.

Um, and then in verse 21, it says, but those who do what is true come to the light so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.

Their deeds have been done in God. Not that their deeds have been done by themselves or that their deeds have been conjured up in order to gain eternal life, but that that spirit has been working in them.

The spirit has made them alive again, that the spirit has caused them to, to put aside darkness and choose

Christ. It's showing that they are, uh, I don't know if you want to think about it like, like a vampire who doesn't want to come out at night, all of a sudden been cured, been given life is no longer undead and now can walk around at noontime in central park.

They can do what they want to because they have been made alive. Um, I don't want to say vampires made alive by Christ because vampires are not like that, but you get my metaphor.

The reason why Jesus was doing all this, why he's talking to Nicodemus was, was to tell him that there, there, there's a very real problem with sin and death that we're all dealing with as human beings.

The only solution is going to be the application of the gospel of Jesus Christ, of, of Jesus' death upon the cross.

When he is going to be lifted up like the serpent in the wilderness, when the spirit applies that finished work to your life, you will be changed.

You'll be changed so that you hate your former ways of doing things. You will want to put those to the side and choose life.

You'll walk towards the light. You won't lie. You'll be upfront because you have nothing to fear because you have goodness from Christ in your soul.

It's life. It's the absence of evil.

It is the presence of righteousness. So like we go back to that first point that I made, that death is really the evidence of moral failure.

It is sin. It is evilness. So when we talk about being born again, we're talking about the slate being wiped clean, of our ledger being fixed, of the record of our wrongs, of our transgressions, of our sins being wiped away, of us having life, righteousness, goodness dwelling in us.

Because it's a who. Who is that righteousness? That righteousness is Christ and Christ being formed in us.

It's still a process. We're still moving on towards the perfection of our bodies. Our bodies went to the grave, but we've been promised that as our spirits have been made alive and our affections have been changed and our life has been made new, spiritually, so will one day this old body, when it's laid down in the grave, will come up glorious.

It will come up resurrected by God and ready for complete eternal life, living with God in His eternal bliss.

Yeah, that permanent transaction that has taken place that you were giving us a picture of is that slate or chalkboard has been wiped clean and then replaced with Jesus.

On that slate now is Jesus. That's two things that we or Nicodemus and the

Pharisees and his people, they could not do. They could not do either one.

They couldn't wipe it clean, and then they couldn't obtain righteousness to make themselves right before God.

Right now, we were looking at the last verse, verse 21. That his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in the spirit.

I think it's how interesting how Jesus is making the distinction between the two different kingdoms, the kingdom of the flesh that he was talking about and the kingdom of the spirit, basically saying you can continue, and I think he said this elsewhere, you can continue to work in your kingdom of the flesh, continue to go out and proselytize, bring in converts.

You're just making them twice the sons of hell that you are. Continue on that path.

But here, when it's done in the spirit, when it's in the kingdom of the spirit, the deeds are going to be, it's going to be manifested as something that has been done by God himself, making the distinction between this kingdom of the flesh and kingdom of the spirit.

Right. The book of Hebrews says that God is the author and the finisher of our faith.

Mm hmm. The point that you made to wrap all that up, what he's getting at is it's not law keeping.

It's not our attempts at righteousness. It's not our deeds, but deeds that have been done in us, that Christ is the one who is bringing about salvation for us, that he is authoring and then finishing our faith.

He's from one end to the other, bringing a people to himself. Let's let's look at this last passage in Romans chapter six and we'll wrap it up.

Because we will, of course, we want to address here at the end, any anybody who is hearing this being drawn by the spirit to respond.

We want to we want to make sure that we address that presenting the gospel. Mm hmm.

Encouraging you to, as Jesus did, look, look to the son of man who has been lifted up for your salvation, but the

Romans chapter six verses eight through 14 is speaking to those who have.

Thank you, Roger. Those who have been born again, those who have received the spirit.

God has now taken them out of this kingdom of darkness, taking them out of this work of the flesh and made them born again by the spirit.

How then should we live? And Dan and I were talking about earlier the interesting language

Paul uses here to give us a picture of how we should live and what it looks like.

Let me read it for us real quick. Now, if we have died with Christ. Which is repentance.

We believe that we should also live with him. Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again.

Death no longer is master. Listen, that language is master over him for the death that he died.

He died to sin once for all. But the life that he lives, he lives to God.

Even so. Now this is for us. Consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lust.

And do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

So how then shall we live based afterwards or based on this fact that we've been born of the spirit?

We should consider the fact or consider the reality. The life that we have been birthed into.

Christ has been, Christ died for sin once for all. And now he lives for God or he died to sin once for all.

But the life that he lives, he lives to God. Now we should consider our lives in that light and live them in that way.

And the language that Paul here is using is, it no longer has his master over him.

Speaking of someone who has authority. And then for us, as we live, we are to no longer present.

Sin no longer reigns. You hear that kingship language. It no longer reigns.

We are no longer to present our members and bow down to sin and present our members to sin as one who has authority over us.

But now Jesus is our King, the one who has authority over us. And we bow to him, surrender, submit to him, our members for righteousness.

And that's how we then live in light of the fact that we've been born again. We've been made alive in Christ.

We die to sin because Christ has killed it.

It no longer has his master, no longer reigns, but Jesus reigns.

Does that make sense? Absolutely. Fantastic.

Any last thoughts? No. Okay, well, we want to encourage you if you are not born again, if God has not made you born again, if you're not in him, that's, of course, one of the reasons why we live.

We want to glorify God by exalting, proclaiming the kingship of Christ and the work he did on the cross for sinners, for those who would believe in him.

And so if you've not repented of your sins, if you're not putting your trust, your faith and trust in him to save you, if your slate has not been wiped clean and replaced with Jesus, do that today.

Because as Jesus was telling Nicodemus, they tried for thousands of years to work in the flesh, but the flesh only continued to birth death and they could not obtain life.

And that's why Jesus was trying to explain to Nicodemus and the gentleman on the road to Emmaus, the

Old Testament points to me, the one who can give life.

And so come to him today if you've not. And if you have, if you know him, share him with others.

And with that being said, Dan, do you mind to pray for us as we close? Sure. You mind if I add something real quick? Absolutely.

Uh, some, some folks may get a little, uh, they may be wondering if we're talking out both sides of our mouth.

Uh, cause at one point we, uh, we say that this is a work of God. It's something that God does. And then the next we're saying, well,

Hey, you need to believe. If you haven't done that, do it. Like, so which is it, is it the one or the other?

And the thing is God uses a certain means to call people to himself.

One is the reading or the preaching of the word. And other is, uh, uh, listening to his truth from the

Bible. Um, but, uh, what, what God does is he uses, uh, his word, the call of the gospel in order to do his work in the life of a person in a way that they don't always understand, which is why he describes it as a wind blowing.

And you don't see the wind, but you see the effects of it. Uh, one thing that we need to realize in light of what we we've been talking about today is that, uh, belief in God is not a natural thing for, for human beings to, to encounter.

So if you're listening today and you have not to this point been a believer and you, you say, well,

I want this to be true of me. I want to know Christ. I want to believe, but you've never done it before.

But these guys are telling me maybe, maybe I can't do that. It's not my, my, my,

I don't know. What are, what are you getting at? Fellows that what we're getting at is this. It's not natural to have an inclination to believe the gospel.

Um, as you, the book of Isaiah says that the word of God will not return void, which means it accomplishes everything that it's meant to accomplish.

So if these words are hitting your ears today and you feel that tug, that pull to believe in, uh, in the gospel, what that is, that is the

Holy Spirit working in your heart. That is the, um, that is the external call of the gospel telling you and witnessing to you that what we're saying is true, that Jesus came, lived a perfect life, died on the cross.

And then, um, went into the grave, arose three days later, and now seated at the right hand of the father.

It's that message that's proclaimed. That is the means that God uses to draw people to himself.

So while it may look like two bald guys talking to you, we're not taught. It's not the two bald guys that make any bit of difference is the message of God.

It is the work of Christ. And if you hear that message today, the book of Hebrews says, um, that he's appointed a day for salvation and that day is today.

So we would pray that you would hear our message, not believe because it's something that we say, but it's something that God has done, um, through Christ.

And the Holy Spirit is witnessing to you in your heart. That's, that's what we would, we would want for you to hear today.

Yeah. And that's, that's the distinction right there that whenever, whenever you see life, like it, it goes against our grain, um, to let me

Colossians Colossians three 12. This is the verse of the day that we read yesterday.

Um, Colossians three 12. And so as those who have been chosen of God, and put on a heart of compassion, he's telling us you who have been born again, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

So if you, that's evidence of life. If you see evidence of life, somebody showing compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, you know, that God is present.

You know, that God is at work. That's what Jesus is saying in verse 21 of John chapter three. Um, it's going to be manifested and shown that it was a work of God because the flesh cannot produce these things, these fruits of the spirit in such a way that it pleases

God. Um, so, so yeah, that that's your distinction.

And as Dan was saying, we, we don't want to be confusing. We, if that's why the

Bible tells us that repentance and faith are gifts of God.

And so if you feel that, uh, since that, you know, working in your heart where you want to turn from your sins and you want to believe in the, on the

Lord, Jesus Christ, it is God working in you and, and praise him for that.

And, and honor him by surrendering to that, that urge to repent and believe.

And with that, would you mind to close this? Sure. Yeah. Dear heavenly father, we thank you for today.

We thank you for the message of Jesus as he's come to the earth, uh, died in place of centers and risen again.

God, we thank you for that. We pray that you would, um, continue to work in us through your

Holy spirit to do good works, to love you more and to proclaim your message throughout all the earth.

We love you in Jesus name. We pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you guys for watching. Remember that Jesus is

King go live in that big tree. And let's continue to go out there together and proclaim this good news of the gospel.