WWUTT 802 You Must Be Born Again?

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Jesus told Nicodemus that if he wanted to see the kingdom of God, he had to be born again.

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Nicodemus thought this was absurd, and yeah, the ways of God do seem absurd to us, because we're sinners when we understand the text.

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You're listening to When We Understand The Text, committed to the sound teaching of the Word of God. For questions and comments, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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And don't forget our website, www .utt .com. Here's our host,

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We continue with our study of the Gospel of John, and today we have two readings.

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I'll begin with our first in Chapter 2, verses 23 through 25. The Apostle John wrote,

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Now when Jesus was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing, but Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people, and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.

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So yesterday we read about Jesus cleansing the temple in Chapter 2, verses 13 through 21.

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And this account is different than the temple cleansing that we read about in Matthew, Mark, and Luke in the

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Synoptic Gospels, because the temple cleansing in the Gospel of John happened at the beginning of Jesus' earthly ministry.

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The cleansing that we read about in the Synoptic Gospels happened at the end, that very week before he was about to be led away and crucified.

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And so here is another one of those indications that we have that this is a different temple cleansing that we're reading about here in John.

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For in verse 23, it says, Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, remember we began this particular section in verse 13 with,

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The Passover of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Then it says,

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Well, according to the temple cleansing account that we read about in the

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Synoptic Gospels, Jesus did not do any signs during that particular week. He only taught in the temple, and people came and listened to him teach, because they had previously seen the signs that he had done for the last couple of years of his ministry.

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The only sign that we read about Jesus doing during that week is cursing the fig tree, which then the next day was withered.

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And only his disciples were witness to that. So it wasn't something that a whole lot of other people saw.

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So he wasn't doing any signs and miracles during that time. And here in John's account, it's saying that he had been doing signs.

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And so people were believing in his name when they saw what it was that he was doing.

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But Jesus did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.

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And that is setting up the next two chapters that we are going to read. Chapter three, we have

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Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus. And in chapter four, we have his conversation with the woman at the well of Samaria.

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Now Jesus in both of these conversations knows what is in the heart of Nicodemus and knows what is in the heart of this woman at the well.

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So this has been set up by what we have read here at the end of chapter two. No one needed to bear witness to Christ about man.

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No one needed to tell him who to trust and who not to trust. He already knew he could already see into the heart of a person and he knew their intentions.

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Remember that God said to Samuel in 1 Samuel chapter 16, God does not look at what man looks at.

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Man looks at the outward appearance. The Lord looks at the heart. And what did Jesus say to Nathanael when

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Nathanael was brought to him and became a disciple of Jesus? Jesus said this was back in chapter one, verse 47.

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He saw Nathanael coming toward him and he said, behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit.

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Jesus knew the genuineness of this man because he could see into his heart. And so here at the end of chapter two, setting up these next couple of stories,

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Jesus knows the heart of Nicodemus and he knows what is in the heart of this Samaritan woman.

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And so we have these personal encounters of Christ with these other people who are not his disciples.

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That's where John goes next. So in chapter two, we had the wedding feast at Cana and Jesus turning the water into wine.

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And this revealed Christ's divinity. Of course, his divinity was shown to us earlier with John the

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Baptist testifying that he had heard the voice of God from heaven say, this is my beloved son in whom

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I am well pleased in the spirit descending on him as a dove. We have that testimony earlier in this gospel.

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But the first miracle that Jesus performed was turning water into wine and that showing his power over creation, that he could even take water and bring something out of nothing.

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Who can bring fermented wine out of water? Only he who is the creator of all things.

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But this also pointed to the fact that Jesus not only gives the water of life, but he gives life more abundant, which is what was signified in the wine itself.

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And then we have Jesus cleansing the temple there in chapter two that pointed to his righteousness and his authority that would be granted to him by the father, which

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God would would reveal by raising him from the dead and pointing back to what the

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Apostle Paul had said in Acts chapter 17 when we looked at that yesterday. So here we are at the conclusion of chapter two.

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And this leads into Jesus conversation with Nicodemus. Jesus knows what is in man.

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And so he knows the heart of this man that we read about in chapter three. Let me read from verses one through eight of John chapter three.

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Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him,

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Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

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

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Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

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

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That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.

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Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

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So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. This is really one of my favorite stories of Jesus that we have in all four gospels.

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And I love all of it. And it seems like any time I read any story of Jesus in any gospel,

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I'm just going, that's amazing. It's incredible. And showing the love of God for us through his son,

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Jesus, that Jesus would humiliate himself in this way. Do you understand what I mean by that?

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I mean, he is God on his throne in heaven. And he has come down and taken on flesh and become a man, the

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God man, so that he may dwell with his creation and show us God the father, as well as dying on the cross for our sins and rising again from the grave so that all who believe in him will not perish, but have eternal life, as we'll read coming up here in John 3, 16.

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And then, of course, he is ascended into heaven, where he is seated at the right hand of the throne of God, interceding for us even now.

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Jesus in that place is still the God man. He is still very God and very man.

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For it's in 1 Timothy 2, verse 5, that the apostle Paul says there is one mediator between God and man, and that is the man,

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Jesus Christ. So he is still there as very God and very man, the first one to have received a glorified body.

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And there are others who will receive this just as he has. He is the firstborn of many brothers, as described about in Romans 8.

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And so we likewise who are in Christ Jesus will receive glorified bodies like his.

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And he will be in that very God, very man, a sort of hypostatic union that he has right now.

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That's the theological term for it, until he hands the kingdom over to his father, as Paul also talks about in 1

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Corinthians 15. And then he will have that glory with the father and the Holy Spirit that he had from before time began,

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Jesus talking about this in John 17. And we likewise will be with God forever in glory, glorifying him for his greatness and his goodness.

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I don't know how I got there from what I was talking about here in John 3, but all of that to say this is one of my favorite stories.

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So John 3, verse 1, now there was a man of the Pharisees whose name was

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Nicodemus. Now by this point in the telling of the gospel, it's assumed that you already know who the

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Pharisees are. In fact, all four gospel writers presuppose that you know the

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Pharisees. Every time a Pharisee gets introduced in the gospels, there's no backstory.

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There's no like, here comes the villain and here's what his origin is. It's nothing like that. It's just, you know, the name

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Pharisee appears and it's said in such a way that you would already know who the Pharisees are.

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And so John is the same way when he mentions the Pharisees in chapter 1. Even there they get like a parenthetical reference.

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It's not much of an introduction at all. But these messengers of the Pharisees came asking John the

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Baptist who he was. And now this is the second occasion that we've seen that name come up. Chapter 3, verse 1, there was a man of the

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Pharisees named Nicodemus. So he was a teacher of the law in Israel. Now again, it's interesting to note, and I mentioned this at the start of our study when

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I did my introduction to the gospel of John, John never mentions the Sadducees. This is the only gospel where the

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Sadducees aren't mentioned. And that's because the Sadducees didn't exist anymore. After the destruction of the temple in 70

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AD, that portion of the Sanhedrin that was known as the Sadducees, that sect of judges in the

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Sanhedrin ceased to be. So the Pharisees were the continued keepers of the law and the traditions of Judaism after the second temple period, after the temple was destroyed.

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And it's believed Judaism may have gone out completely if it wasn't for the work of the

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Pharisees. So modern day Judaism owes its thanks to the Pharisees for preserving it.

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Nicodemus, of course, was one of these Pharisees, and it is said that he was a ruler of the Jews.

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And all this means is that Nicodemus was part of the 70 member Sanhedrin who tried legal matters in Jerusalem and was also a teacher of the law himself, which is something that Jesus mentions here later in the conversation.

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Then in verse 2, this man came to Jesus by night.

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Now over the course of the gospel of John, often he uses night to signify spiritual darkness.

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So for example, John 9, 4, Jesus said to his disciples, we must work the works of him who sent me while it is day.

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Night is coming when no one can work. And Jesus was telling them this when he was about to heal a man who had been born blind.

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So this man, this blind man was stumbling around in darkness until Jesus gave him sight.

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And this was to show that Jesus was the one who Isaiah had prophesied about, who would give sight to the blind.

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All of us walk around in spiritual darkness until the gospel of Jesus Christ is the light that pierces our hearts and we see our sin and we see

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God. And then it's through the gospel that we've been called out of darkness into his marvelous light as it says in 1

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Peter 2, 9. So John commonly uses this reference to darkness as not just a reference to the time of day or that somebody is blind or anything like that, but it also points to a spiritual darkness.

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And this was certainly the case with Nicodemus. Now he may not have been with the other

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Pharisees in this conversation that he was having with Jesus. It's not like they'd all conferred together and said, well, somebody needs to go and ask him questions.

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Let's nominate Nicodemus. Nicodemus was doing this on his own. And that may also be indicated by John's reference to him coming to Jesus by night so that they wouldn't see,

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Nicodemus would not be seen by other people that he was having a conversation with this guy that the Pharisees didn't like.

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But there was something going on with this man and Nicodemus wanted to know more about this

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Jesus. So he comes to him and the first thing that he says to him is, rabbi was simply a word that means teacher.

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We know that you are a teacher come from God for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

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Now, that's another indication that Nicodemus is just asking these questions of Jesus on his own time, not because he was recruited by the other

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Pharisees to do this because the other Pharisees would not have said that he's a man that has come from God.

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They all said that he was of Beelzebub. But here Nicodemus is recognizing that there's something different about this guy.

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Why is he attracting the attention of these people? How is he able to do these miraculous signs that he does?

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And how does he speak with such authority? So you are a teacher who has come from God for no one can do what you do unless God is with him.

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And that's spoken about all throughout the Old Testament, which was completed, compiled and completed by the time that we're seeing these events unfold here in the

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Gospel of John. The Old Testament was already done. And Nicodemus was one who knew it well and taught it in Jerusalem.

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So he knew that a prophet is revealed to the people by being able to perform great signs.

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He speaks a word from God and then he confirms that that word is from God when he's able to do things that are miraculous, that nature or logic can't otherwise explain.

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Or this prophet says that something is going to happen and then it happens. So that's another indication that he is somebody who has truly come from God.

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So that's what Nicodemus recognizes as someone who is a teacher of the law. He can at least connect the dots on that.

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This Jesus has to have come from God if he's able to do these things that he does.

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So he's a little less bias than the rest of the Pharisees. But that doesn't mean that he knows or understands who

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Jesus is, for you recognize what Jesus says to him next. Nicodemus clearly doesn't get it.

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So verse three, Jesus answered him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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And what was Nicodemus's response to this? Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old?

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Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? And if that sounds like an absurd response to you, for Nicodemus to say that way, like I'm going to shimmy back up into my mom and I have to be born again.

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You're like, wow, Nicodemus, you know, for you to actually respond to Jesus with that answer.

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Well, yeah, then you understand that Nicodemus didn't get it. If he's going to respond to Jesus with something so absurd, he didn't understand what

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Jesus is referring to. And now you and I, you who's who's listening to this podcast, you've likely been listening to this for a little while and you've probably been in church for a long time, too.

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I'm just going to take for granted that very few of my listeners are new

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Christians. If you are, praise the Lord and thank you so much for finding this broadcast and a desire to hear the word of God taught daily through this medium.

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I thank you for for tuning in to hear the the Bible read and taught.

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But most of you have probably been at this for a while and some of you have probably been

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Christians almost your whole life from childhood. You were raised in the faith. And so you've heard stories like this almost your entire life.

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So it's not absurd for you to hear this term born again. You may not be able to give a theological textbook definition of what that means, but it's not a crazy concept to you or it's not a strange terminology to be used because you've heard it used so many times.

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So it's not odd to hear that for a person to become a Christian, they have to be born again.

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You've already heard it before. Nicodemus is hearing this for the first time, and this is terminology that has just never been used in his presence, in his lifetime.

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He's never heard it said before or understanding, seeing the kingdom of God being put in that way.

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So it sounds absurd to him and he comes up with some absurd response. So I got to come out of my mom again.

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Is that what you're telling me has to happen in order for me to see the kingdom of God?

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I don't know if Jesus rolled his eyes at that or if he was much more gracious than I would have been with that sort of reply.

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So again, looking at what Jesus said in verse three, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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And you and I probably understand what Jesus means by this. I understand, maybe you do as well, that Jesus was saying that when a person is born, he's physically born, but he is spiritually dead.

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This is what happened when Adam and Eve sinned against God. What God said was going to happen exactly happened.

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He said, the day that you eat of this tree that I've told you not to eat from, you will die.

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And you might wonder, well, you know, Adam lived for hundreds of years after that, according to the rest of the book of Genesis.

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So how could it be that on that day he surely died? No, he died that day.

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He experienced a spiritual death. And then, of course, there was physical death that accompanied that, which would happen later.

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But Adam died in his spirit, and his sins had to be atoned for, which

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God did do, sacrificing an animal and then covering Adam and Eve in skins, as is talked about there in Genesis chapter three.

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So blood had to be shed to cover for the sin that had been committed by this couple.

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And so once that happened and all of creation was cursed, all of us who are descended from Adam received that same curse that he received.

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And in our spirits, we're dead. We're born with dead spirits. We're born physically alive, but we're spiritually dead.

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And until we are born again, we cannot see the kingdom of God.

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And so there is a renewal that happens that has to happen in us.

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This happens when we hear the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave, and that all who believe in him will be forgiven their sins and will have eternal life.

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And when we understand that, we repent of our sins and we believe in Jesus. We have experienced being born again.

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And it is a work of the spirit that happens in our hearts, which is what Jesus is going to go on to explain to Nicodemus.

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And we'll come back to that tomorrow. Let's conclude with prayer. Our great

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God, we thank you for the gospel that has been given to us so that by the hearing of this gospel, we might turn from our sin, no longer living in the old way that we were born into.

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For all of us are sinners and have fallen short of the glory of God. We're not just sinners because we sin.

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We sin because we're sinners. And so we needed to be born again in order to see you, in order to have fellowship with God again.

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And so you gave us your son, Jesus, who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave and then commissioned his disciples to go into all the world, sharing the gospel.

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And because that commission is continuing to be lived out to this day, we have heard the gospel and turned from our sin and believed it.

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And so we are saved. We are born again. And this is all by your work.

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And we praise you for that. We thank you for the grace and mercy and love that you have shown us through your son,

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Jesus Christ. And let this be our joy today, that we go through our day with our heads lifted high.

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No matter what happens to us today, no matter how difficult the day may become on this day, no matter what news might come our way, we can hold fast to this promise that though we will die in our body, our spirit has been born again and we will enter into eternal, imperishable life with God in glory because of this wonderful gift.

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So we thank you for this blessing of mercy that you continue to show us every day.

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In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. You can find a complete list of videos, books, devotionals, and other resources online at www .tt