Are You Born Again? - [John 3:1-8]

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What does it mean to be born again? How would you even define that?
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I know there was a time in my life when it certainly would have puzzled me. You know, if somebody would have said, when I was growing up, are you born again?
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I wouldn't even have understood the question. The religion I was in, that wasn't a concept that we talked about, and it would have been completely foreign, completely different, completely outside of our ken.
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K -E -N. There's a word for it you look up. K -E -N. Sure. Our realm of knowledge.
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It's just not something we would have considered. But when the Lord saved me, I remember going to work the next day.
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I worked in a jail and supervised a building, and I was pretty excited. Imagine that.
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And one of my co -workers came up to me and said, what's up with you?
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And I said, well, nothing. You know, just a little happy. I was trying to avoid the whole question, and finally she just said, no, you're really pretty happy today.
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What is it? And I said, well, I became a Christian last night. She took kind of a step back and she said, not a born -again
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Christian. I really didn't know how to answer that.
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I didn't know what that meant. You know, I just thought, not born again. How do you separate born again?
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I didn't know. But her idea, and this is how she defined born again, born again meant you spoke in tongues.
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You rolled around on the floor. You roared like a lion. You laughed in the spirit. You did all those kind of things.
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And I said, you know, can I define it perfectly? No, but I can tell you that's not, no.
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But I was really unprepared for such a reaction. How could such a little phrase, born again, carry so much baggage?
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Well, what does it mean? Let's turn to the Gospel of John, and we'll get some answers this morning. John chapter 3.
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When we consider any of the Gospels, well, what is a Gospel? We know it's good news. Well, why is
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John writing this Gospel? He's writing a Gospel tract, an extended tract.
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I mean, if you had somebody in the Gospel of John and you go, here, here's a tract for you, it might not go too far, but that's what it is.
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It's a proclamation of the good news that God saves sinners. How does he save them?
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Through the finished work of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And when he saves sinners, it is by transforming them, by changing them, by giving them faith, a faith that is necessary to be saved from sin.
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That's why John wrote this book, so that the readers might believe that Jesus is the
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Christ, the Son of God, and that believing in him, you might have eternal life. Now, chapter 1,
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John took us behind the curtain, as it were, took us all the way back to the beginning, told us that Jesus is our
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Creator, the second person of the Trinity, fully God and fully man.
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And then as we transition from chapter 1 to chapter 2, we see the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, him gathering the disciples, performing the first miracle at Cana, the first sign where he changes water into wine, and then the cleansing of the temple, and then the subsequent interaction with the
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Jewish leaders. And the last time, two weeks ago, when we were in John, we looked at the last three verses of chapter 2, and I asked three questions.
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And I'm going to give you all of the last message in 45 seconds, and you'll wish, gee, why didn't you do that two weeks ago?
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Question number one, do miracles cause saving faith? Question number two, do professions of faith obligate God? And question number three, what does
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Jesus know that the church today does not know? So here we go. Know, know everything about everyone.
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Done. There you go. That was two weeks ago. Miracles do not cause saving faith.
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In fact, as we follow the ministry of Jesus, we'll see that people see miracle after miracle after miracle, and yet what?
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Very few come to faith, even at the end of his life. Secondly, do professions of faith obligate
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God? No, because we see at the end of chapter 2 a number believed, and we'll talk more about that, but they were not saved.
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And question number three, what did Jesus know that the church today does not know? Well, everything about everyone.
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There was no doubt in his mind who believed in him, who trusted in him, and who did not. And so we come to chapter 3, and what we're going to see here is really the first example of someone who knew him but didn't know him.
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Someone who believed in him but didn't believe in him. Someone who trusted him but didn't trust him selfifically, had no saving faith, as it were.
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John 3, verses 1 -8. Jesus answered him,
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Nicodemus said to him, Jesus answered,
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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 its 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. Now this morning
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I've set out throughout our text six road markers for you. As we move through this text, so that you'll grasp the nature of salvation, what it means to be born again.
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If you're here this morning and you love Christ, I pray that this will be a tonic for your soul and encouragement.
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If you're here this morning and you think you love him, I pray this morning will be a time of examination, of determination for you.
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If you're here this morning and you are not saved, I pray the God of the universe, the God of salvation, the
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God of all grace, will open your eyes to your peril, and your heart to his salvation.
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I want you to be born again. First road sign.
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First road marker, the stealth of Nicodemus. Look again at verse one. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named
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Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night.
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Now, as I said in chapter two, we saw that there were a number of Jews who had come to believe
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Jesus was sent from God. In fact, verse 23 of chapter two says, many believed in his name when they saw the signs he was doing.
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They saw the signs, really the idea of a sign is a miraculous work that only
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God can do. They saw these signs, and our text tells us that they believed in him, but it wasn't saving faith.
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And you say, well, how can that be? How can they believe but not be saved? Well, we'll develop that in just a second, but they saw the things that he did, and they knew that he wasn't false.
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They knew he wasn't some charlatan. They knew he wasn't a fake. They knew he was from God, but they did not believe him to be the
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Messiah. They did not receive him as who he was. And how do we know they did not believe?
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Savingly? Because Jesus did not believe in them. The verb believe in 23, and the verb trust in 24 are really the same verb.
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So the idea, if we're going to translate them the same way, would be this. Either the people trusted Jesus, but he didn't trust them, or they believed in Jesus, and he didn't believe in them.
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And why not? Because he knew what was in all men, verse 25 tells us. He knew what their hearts were.
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He knew their nature. He knew that they weren't ready to receive him as Lord. And so, as I said, we have
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Nicodemus really the first person out of this crowd, this group of people that believed in Jesus.
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They saw the signs, and they knew he was of God. They weren't sure if maybe he was the prophet.
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They didn't know who he was, and Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. Believing in him, but not savingly.
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And how do we know that he's the first one? Well, the first clue would be the first word of the chapter there, where it says now.
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There's a continuation of thought. We need to keep in mind that when we leave one chapter and go to another, there's not necessarily a dividing line in the story.
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Why? Because the original text would all be mushed together, and there isn't like a chapter 3 marker, or some kind of chapter break.
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These are things that have been put in there to help us, so that we can find things, but it's not divinely inspired.
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But that first word, now, lets us know that he is an example of that particular crowd.
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And our text notes that he's not just anybody. This isn't just somebody off the street.
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Nicodemus was somebody who was an expert in the law. He taught the law. He held the
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Jewish people to a high standard of the law. In fact, several years ago, my wife and I were in Jerusalem. And on the power lines around the city, there are markers.
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You know what those markers are for? They're going to tell you how far you can walk on the Sabbath. You can walk that far and no further before you actually work.
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If you go into a building and you come to an elevator, it stops on every single floor.
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Why? Because it's work to push the buttons. They'll take the super legalistic
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Jews, and they'll park their cars blocking roads. Why? Because it's work to operate a vehicle on the
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Sabbath. And so they want to stop other people from sinning. And that's what Nicodemus is.
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He is of the Pharisees. They had all these additional insights that they would pile up, and they called them the law, but they weren't the law.
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I mean, we see all the time the interaction between Jesus and the
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Pharisees and what does he say to them? You know, you've heard it said. He's always correcting their teaching, letting them know what the original intent, the authorial intent of the
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Scripture was. Well, it's pretty easy to let them know what the authorial intent was when what? You're the author.
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It's pretty easy. Well, I'll tell you exactly what I meant. But these days, if somebody calls you a
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Pharisee, is that a compliment? No, obviously not. They're talking, you know, who are you, you
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Pharisee? But in those days, Nicodemus would be received with great warmth and respect because he's a religious expert.
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He's one of the big shots. You know, he's a big deal. Judaism, the
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Judaism of this time, had really become a religion of works, much like we would see it now. It's all about outside external righteousness of making a show of your religiosity.
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And the idea was that you could somehow earn favor, that you could merit heaven.
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Now, Nicodemus was a man of position and prestige, so why does he come to Jesus kind of sneaking in, stealthily sneaking in, slinking in, kind of going in by the back door, as it were?
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Why? Precisely because he's a man of power and prestige. I mean, who's
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Jesus? We know him as the Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, the author of Scripture. To Nicodemus, who was he?
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This kid who just came out of Galilee, kid. I mean, he's 30 -ish, which in those days, that would be considered a young man to be a teacher.
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But he's this kid out of Galilee, but I can't totally discredit him, Nicodemus is thinking. Why? Because I've seen what he can do.
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I know he's from God, but he's not the sort of man that Nicodemus should go to.
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That would be seen as beneath his stature. And what, he's going to go to Jesus to get some teaching?
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What kind of image would that be presenting? And again, you have to think, what's the most important thing about me as a
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Pharisee? It's how people perceive me. It's the image I project.
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I don't want them thinking that I'm going to Jesus for some kind of help or instruction or clarification.
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So that's the stealth of Nicodemus. Second road marker, the statement of Nicodemus.
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The statement of Nicodemus. Look at verse 2. Now again, given who
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Nicodemus is, his stature, it's important to note that he calls him rabbi.
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And he's not being sarcastic. He's treating him as a colleague. It's like, you know, one professor to another.
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One teacher to another. It's not like, you know, when I showed up the first day of my
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Greek class in seminary, the first day of the third semester, and all of a sudden the professor was calling us all doctor.
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That's why I call some guys around here doctor, you know. Why? Because he was, I mean, this guy could read and write and do all this other stuff in Greek, but we had two whole semesters under our belt.
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This is our third semester, so we're experts now. Dr. Cooley, would you wax, you know, eloquent on the post -partitive day?
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As if I, you know, knew anything beyond that. But that's, you know, it was just a funny way to kind of put us on the spot.
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But here he is legitimately showing respect to Jesus. Why? Because he knows that he's of God.
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He can't explain it, but that much he knows. Now again, how do we know that he's being respectful?
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Because he refers to the signs, these supernatural things that he knows come from God. He's not going to discount him, but he hasn't quite figured it out.
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He's deferential and not sarcastic. To disrespect
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Jesus, to discount him, would be to discount those signs and maybe to put himself in peril with respect to God.
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Also note that he's not testing Jesus. He's not questioning his authority. He's not saying, you know, what right do you have to do this?
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How dare you do that? I mean, this is what the Pharisees do, what, throughout all the Gospels. How dare you heal this man on the
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Sabbath? How dare you eat? How dare you meet with these sinners?
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This is just what they do. But he's not doing any of those things. I really don't think
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Nicodemus knew what to do with Jesus, but he wanted to do something with him. He wanted to figure it out. And Nicodemus wasn't the only one.
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Again, look at the text. He says, we know. This isn't a royal we.
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There's a multitude of people who've seen these signs. They believe. They just don't know what to do. But Nicodemus did not believe savingly yet.
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Jesus knew that. Jesus knew all men. So we've seen the stealth of Nicodemus, the statement of Nicodemus, really a statement which is, if you look at it, it's not a question at all.
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And so we get our road marker number three, the surprising answer to Nicodemus, surprising answer to Nicodemus.
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Look at 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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Now, what's the most surprising about his answer? Well, I think the most surprising thing is, again, there's no question. Well, let's put it another way.
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There's not a question that Nicodemus verbalized. He didn't say, I have a question. But since Jesus knows all men, he knew that there was an issue here.
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He knew that there was a reason. Nicodemus is a big deal. It's like the president of the United States showing up at your house.
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You don't just go, oh, it's the president of the United States. How do you do, Mr. President? Would you like some iced tea? You're like, what are you doing here?
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He didn't have to ask what Nicodemus was doing there. He knew what Nicodemus was doing there.
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And the real root of the issue, what Nicodemus is struggling with is, who are you?
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How are you able to do these things? Are you the prophet? Are you the one before the prophet? Are you the
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Messiah? Who are you? Now, again, let's just think back to this context.
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A lot of people believed in the science. But Jesus didn't entrust himself.
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He didn't believe in them. He didn't reveal himself as Messiah. And just like those other people, he wasn't going to entrust himself.
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He wasn't going to confide in Nicodemus. He didn't say, yes, I'm the Messiah. This wasn't a time for him to transfigure himself and reveal his glory to Nicodemus.
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He didn't do any kind of science to help prove to Nicodemus who he was. Instead, he answers the question that Nicodemus wants, but in a completely different way.
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It really is a scene that reminds me of the rich young ruler. Rich young ruler comes to him and says, good teacher, what must
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I do to inherit the kingdom of God? And what does he say to him? He gives him the commandments.
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Well, I've done all that. I've done all that. And one thing you lack, right? It's all that you have and get to the poor.
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He just kind of takes his finger, as it were. And, you know, have you ever had anybody do this?
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Somebody did this to me a few weeks ago, by the way. If you want to know the secret of Steve Cooley, the secret is
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I have every joint on my body is shot. I'm just done. Somebody came up and wrapped me on the shoulder a few weeks ago, and I was just like...
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And this is what Jesus is doing. He's taking, figuratively speaking, a finger, and he's just going,
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I'm going to push right where it hurts the most. You think you're so good, Nicodemus. You think you're fit for the kingdom of heaven.
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I'm going to tell you something. You're not. Just as he told that rich young ruler, you need to sell everything and give it to the poor, knowing that he wouldn't, he says,
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I'm going to show you something, Nicodemus, something you don't know. For all your letters and all your degrees, here's something that's going to blow your mind.
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And he starts with, amen, amen, or truly, truly.
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This is something you can take to the bank. This is 100 % reliable. What I'm about to say to you, Nicodemus, is the truth, the unvarnished truth.
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Now, if you're sitting here this morning, wondering how this little interview with Nicodemus applies to you, we're getting to that right now.
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Every member of mankind, every person here this morning, falls under this edict. Listen, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
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One. Every single person is included in that one little word right there.
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Unless one, unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God.
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That's unmistakable language. It doesn't say, unless one is born again, you may not see. It's possible you could see.
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You cannot see the kingdom of God. You won't even get close enough to see it.
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But look, that phrase, born again, can also mean born from above. And you say, well, how do we know which one it is?
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Well, I think we can tell by the way Nicodemus interprets it, which we'll get to in a minute, and the fact that Jesus doesn't correct him on that.
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But this idea, either way you look at it, can he be born again, can he be born above, is it something that you can decide to do?
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And I think the idea would be clearly, no, you can't. This idea of being born again would be new to Nicodemus, something that would be foreign to him.
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Now, the kingdom of God, that would be something that he would understand. He would understand it as being able to experience eternal life in the presence of God.
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He knew that there was a kingdom coming of God and that it would last forever. He could get that from reading the
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Old Testament. But it would be mystifying to him because the prevailing understanding of salvation in Judaism was salvation by works, but also you would be more blessed in the afterlife if you were obedient, if you worked hard.
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But really, in Judaism, you were saved by what? By virtue of being a Jew. I'm descendant of Abraham.
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You're in. That's how they thought of it. How would it be possible that the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would not be with God?
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After all, he'd chosen them. How would he not let them in? But that's the whole interaction with the Jews that we'll see later on in John 10,
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I think it is, where he interacts with them and they say, are we not sons of Abraham? We've never been slaves.
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We're free. All these kind of things. There was a great deal of pride that went with being a
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Jew. And the idea of Judaism at that time was unless you committed some extraordinary kind of spiritual treason that you would surely get into the kingdom of God.
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So Jesus is just throwing all that out the window and he's saying, wait a minute. He says, let me tell you something.
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You think because of who you are, because of what you've done, because of your parents, because of your heritage, that you are going to be in the kingdom of God.
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Let me tell you something, Nicodemus, unless you are born again, you're not even going to see the kingdom of heaven.
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It's shocking. It's completely the opposite of everything that he'd ever understood. Now again,
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I think it's clear that Nicodemus thought of what Jesus was saying as being born again, and we'll see that here because we're going to get to our road marker number four, the stupefied question of Nicodemus.
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What do I mean by that? I mean, he's like, he's been stupefied. He, you know, you can wave your hand in front of us.
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He doesn't know what to think. He's confused. He's dazed. Listen to what he says in verse four, Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old?
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Look, I'm an old guy. Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?
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He does not get this. Nicodemus has spent his adult life knowing one thing.
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He wasn't just a Jew. He was an obedient Jew. Somebody that worked tirelessly to obey the law, to be seen obeying the law, to do good works, to be known for his good works.
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Now here's this man who's been in ministry a few weeks, telling him that he must be born again.
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But he also knows, on the other hand, he goes, well, I want to throw out what Jesus is saying, but I've seen what he's done.
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Nobody can do the things he does except he's from God. I have no doubt that at this point he's upset, but mostly because he just can't figure it out.
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He can't figure out what Jesus is saying to him. Nicodemus was not an old or a young man.
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The culture placed quite a premium on age, which I like. I'm very much in favor of that as I enter my golden years.
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But we don't know exactly how old he is, but he would not have risen to his position, the lofty position they had, if he didn't have a few years under his belt.
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So he asks, how can a man who's lived such a long life be born for a second time? He took
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Jesus literally, just as the other leaders of the Jewish religion had done when he said what?
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Back in chapter two, he said, Jesus said, destroy this temple and I'll raise it up in three days.
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And they didn't take it as his body, they took it as the building. They said, look, it's taken 46 years to build this thing and you're going to have it.
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You're going to tear it down and then raise it back up in three days. That's impossible. They took it very literally and he does exactly the same thing here.
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He's trying to figure it out. He goes, well, it doesn't make any sense. That's impossible.
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What you are telling me is absolutely impossible. I can't be born a second time. Here's the problem for Nicodemus.
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He's a natural man. First Corinthians 2, 14 would describe him. He's a natural man trying to sort out the things of God.
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He is an unsaved man without the Holy Spirit trying to separate truth and error.
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And he just can't do it. I have no doubt that this afflicted his pride.
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And his main concern then is what he wants to do something. He's like, well, OK, you're telling me I need to be born again.
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What do I need to do? I live in a religion of do, do, do. So what am
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I supposed to do with this? If we just glance a little bit ahead in our text at verse 10, we know that Nicodemus is a well -known teacher.
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Jesus refers to him as the teacher of Israel. He is renowned for his knowledge of scripture.
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He teaches others. He's like the head of the university as it were. If you go to Pharisee University, you know, he's the big guy.
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But he can't figure it out. You must be born again or you cannot see the kingdom of heaven.
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This frazzles him. He's stupefied. So we get to the second answer of our
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Lord, the fifth road marker, second answer of our Lord. Verse 5, Jesus answered, Truly, truly,
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I say to you, same construction, 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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This is really so kind and gentle and patient on the part of the
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Savior. He is the preeminent teacher, the perfect teacher. His student,
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Nicodemus, doesn't understand what he's saying. So he's like, OK, let me try this a different way. I'm going to use,
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I'm going to teach you the same concept, different way. You ever had a teacher like that? I mean, the good teachers,
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I was just thinking this morning about my Spanish teacher back in the seventh and eighth grade, what a great teacher he was.
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You ever have a math teacher who, for the life of them, couldn't explain something? You know why that is?
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Because when you get to a tricky part of mathematics, whatever it is, I remember in college algebra, I had a teacher who, if you asked a question, what a waste of time that was.
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Because he would take an example that was already done in the book and put it up on the board. I'm like, and that helps how?
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He didn't have a second way of explaining it. There was no other way. He didn't have a good enough grasp of communication, a good enough grasp on his subject to come at it from a second angle.
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And that's exactly what Jesus is doing here. He knows everything about salvation. And so he's like, well, OK, you don't understand that.
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Let me give you another way of thinking of it. Now, in the first one, he said what?
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You couldn't see the kingdom unless you were born again. And now he says you cannot enter the kingdom of God.
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See the kingdom, enter the kingdom. I think those are parallel ideas. I mean, imagine you cannot see the kingdom.
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OK, well, now I can see it, and I'm going to hell anyway. That's not the point. You can't be born again, see the kingdom, and then go to hell.
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He's saying see the kingdom, and it's equal to enter the kingdom. He's talking about you will not get to heaven unless you are born again.
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And the idea of born again, again, parallel with being born of water and the
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Spirit. To be born again is to be born of water and the Spirit. So you say, well, what does born of the water and the
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Spirit mean? Does that have to do with baptism maybe? I really don't think so.
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I really don't think so because I think if we understand where we are in that time, baptism was not connected with salvation at all.
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In fact, all we had was the baptism of John the Baptist at this time. And the idea of being baptized and that being somehow the key to salvation, that would not have existed.
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That's something that I think some people do retrospectively, looking back on it and trying to anachronistically take something of an understanding now and putting it back on that time.
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So I don't think that's right at all. I think it's best to take this idea of born of water and the
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Spirit as just a restatement, a different way of saying to be born again. And in fact, if we understand what
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Nicodemus would have known, what he would have understood is the idea of water or washing and spirit together.
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In the Old Testament, those would be pictures of spiritual renewal, of spiritual cleansing.
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And that's the idea that he's trying to get across. You need to be spiritually cleansed. You need to be purified.
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You need to be washed. You think you're righteous and you're not.
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You think you're good enough and you're not. For our purposes here this morning,
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I would draw your attention to this truth. Nicodemus has it all wrong.
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This wasn't about what he needed to do or what he had done. But listen, what must be done to him.
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He asked the question, what do I have to do? You know, go back to my mother, be born again? No, no, no, no. You have to be reborn.
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You didn't choose to be born the first time. You don't choose to be born the second time. It's something that externally happens to you.
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Not something that you do. This is the end of your religion of do, do, do.
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Me, me, me. It's now of God. And our sixth road marker, the saving action of the
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Holy Spirit. The saving action of the Holy Spirit. Look at verse 6. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the
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Spirit is spirit. So often when we think of the flesh, what do we think of? We think about how
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Paul uses it. That sinful hangover. That desire to act sinfully.
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That sin nature. That's not what Jesus is talking about. That which is born of the flesh.
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He simply means, look, you're born the first time. That was a human birth.
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This is not a human birth. This is a spiritual birth. This is something altogether different.
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You think that by your human efforts, you can achieve the kingdom of God. You can't.
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This is a spiritual kingdom. Your efforts are no good. They're of no value. You must experience spiritual rebirth.
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Nicodemus had a problem. He needed a new nature.
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A new heart. He was spiritually blind, therefore he could not see the kingdom of God.
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He was spiritually dead, therefore he could not enter the kingdom of God. And no matter how hard he worked on that dead heart, no matter how he shined it with good works, no matter how he tried to buff it up and make it look good, it was as dull as it could be.
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It really is a great picture in Ezekiel 36. You don't have to turn there. Ezekiel 36, verse 26. God foretelling the future says,
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I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
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Nicodemus had a heart of stone. At least spiritually speaking.
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And he could do whatever he wanted with that heart of stone. He could do all the works he wanted. It wasn't going to make that heart of stone beat for God.
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Jesus tells him in so many words that he needs a heart transplant. And that he was helpless to do it on his own power.
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Can you imagine somebody saying, I'm going to give myself a new heart. I think I'll just take the old one out and put a new one in.
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And it was because of that Old Testament concept that this would be done.
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That Jesus says to him in verse 7, Look, do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again.
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Jesus uses the plural for you here in verse 7. It's not just singular you,
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Nicodemus. But you, plural. Why? Because there's a large group there? No. Because again, it goes back to the one in verse 3.
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It applies universally to everyone. To everyone.
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Everyone's involved in this. And this is in keeping with the universality, the universal applicability of this whole passage.
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This is not limited to Nicodemus, but encompasses again all of us.
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Every man, woman, and child must be born again. So put yourself in Nicodemus' shoes.
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You're the teacher of Israel. You're the Pharisee. You're old. You're skilled.
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You're well -known and respected. Yet Jesus, this man you know, really that you've just met, but you know that he's of God, is saying things that you cannot dismiss, nor can you fully understand them.
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You want to do something. Offer a sacrifice.
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Give up fish for lint. Do something. There must be some way of ingratiating yourself with God.
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But Jesus keeps telling Nicodemus, something needs to happen to you.
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You must be born again. And now the final piece of this puzzle for this morning. Look at verse 8. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its 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. What a vivid word picture that is.
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Last time we had a great big windstorm here. You know, sometimes I really do. I like to just kind of, especially late at night when
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I'm laying in bed and can't get to sleep anyway, I like to just listen to the wind and just listen to it howl.
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And that's the picture here. He's like, just think about that. The wind comes in. It blows.
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You can hear it. Maybe in the morning you'll go out and take a look and see what it's done.
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But you know what? Unless you're like MrWeather .com or something like that, you don't know where it comes from.
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You don't know where it's going. You just, you see, you hear the effects of it, but you don't know where it's coming or where it's coming from or where it's going to.
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You just know that it was there. The wind is unseen, unpredictable, and powerful.
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And that's exactly the parallel that Jesus wants to draw here. Look, he says, so it is with everyone who is born of the
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Spirit. Well, just like the wind, the Holy Spirit is what? It's unseen.
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We cannot know who's being transformed by the Holy Spirit. We don't have any outward sign.
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They don't start writhing, frothing at the mouth, rolling on the floor, speaking in tongues. So it's unseen.
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His work is unseen. He's also unpredictable. When we think about someone like the
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Apostle Paul, before he was saved, I think if they'd conducted some kind of Pew survey, if they'd asked who's the least likely person in all of Israel to get saved,
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I think Saul would have been number one. The Holy Spirit is also powerful.
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The Holy Spirit, the third person in the Trinity, does not fail in giving someone a new heart and transforming them.
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Imagine this idea. You're born again. God has caused you, the
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Holy Spirit has caused you to be born again, and yet you say, you know what? I'm not going to be born again. That would be like what?
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A baby saying, I'm not going to be born. You don't have that choice. The Holy Spirit is powerful.
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He goes where he wills. He works as he will work. The Holy Spirit is also, his work is unmistakable.
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The marks of his work are evident. Over time, what happens to someone who is born again?
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We'd see in Galatians 5, verses 22 to 24. But the fruit of the
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Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.
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Against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
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This is what the Holy Spirit brings about in the life of someone who is born again. Now what's the common teaching today?
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If you go into a typical church, what will you hear? Right where you are, I want you to invite
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Jesus into your heart. Pray this prayer. And if you mean it from the heart, then welcome to the family of God.
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Now let's just take that and apply this to Jesus and Nicodemus. Didn't Jesus know that he was just supposed to say to Nicodemus, Nicodemus, right where you are,
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I just want you to invite me into your heart. Nicodemus, just pray this prayer, and if you mean it from the heart, then welcome to the family of God.
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That's not what he said to him. He said, you must be born again. You must be born from above.
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There has to be a supernatural transformation that takes place upon you. That's the mark of a child of God.
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This is what Nicodemus wanted. He wanted something to do. He was thinking to himself, what do
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I have to do to be born again? Do I have to change synagogues? What exactly is it?
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And we really come up in our own lives, we come up with this question of, well, okay, if the Holy Spirit is sovereign, if he changes people, then what's our responsibility?
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We still have the responsibility to do what? To believe. To confess.
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There's a difference between ability and responsibility. But let's just take a step back.
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What does it mean to be born again? From our text, we know that it's something that happens to us. The theological term for that is regeneration.
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We are spiritually dead. The Holy Spirit works his work on us, and we are brought to spiritual life.
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That's what it means to be born again. That's what it means to be regenerated. We are renewed spiritually. We're given spiritual life.
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We're transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. Regeneration means that you have a new nature created within you by the sovereign
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Holy Spirit. Now ask yourself this, can you command the
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Holy Spirit? Does he take orders? And obviously the answer is no. And again, we get back to this idea of what does it mean to be born again?
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Well, you're born from above. You're born, but it's outside of your control. It's not a decision that you make.
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It's not as simple as being baptized. It's not as simple as learning the right facts or joining a church.
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Why does anyone need to be born again? Well, it's easy, because in God's eyes, in God's economy, all who sin, and that means every single person here, every single sinner is a dead man or woman walking.
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Spiritually dead, incapable of responding to spiritual truth, even as this knowledgeable giant of Judaism, Nicodemus, was not able to figure it out.
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But everyone who is born physically is spiritually estranged from God, separated from him on account of the fall of Adam, and their own sin nature, their own desire to sin.
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They, you, deserve his wrath. But God sent his son,
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Jesus, to obey the law of God perfectly, to die in the place of sinners, those who deserved his wrath.
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And then he raised him on the third day that he might be recognized as the son of God. Now what the
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Holy Spirit does, by giving a new nature to sinners, is he enables them to do what they have not been able to do before, to confess with their mouth
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Jesus as Lord, and to believe in their hearts that God raised him from the dead. That's what we all need.
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Best case scenario for anyone here this morning is, if I come up to you and I say, well, are you good enough to get to heaven?
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You might think, well, I've done more good than bad. But that's not the standard. The standard is perfection. And anyone here, almost anyone here, would probably admit that they're not perfect.
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I hope you would admit that you're not perfect. Well, how can you attain perfection on your own?
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You need to be perfect to get into heaven. How can you do it? Well, you can't. You must be born again. And so the question comes about again, are you born again?
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Here we have Nicodemus, a man steeped in knowledge of scriptures. By human standards, he would have lived a good life.
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He would have obeyed the law, at least outwardly. But he comes to see
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Jesus by night, drawn by the works.
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And Jesus tells him, you need spiritual surgery. You need a new heart, a new nature. And that can only be performed by the
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Holy Spirit. My question for you this morning, has he done that work in you? Has the
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Holy Spirit so worked in your life? If not, I beg you, I beg you to flee to the cross to repent and be saved.
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Why do we pray? Why do we pray for those who are not saved? Because we believe in a sovereign
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God, a sovereign Holy Spirit, who causes people to be born again. Just like the wind.
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Why do we evangelize? I was reading even this week from my friend Tony, a woman that had heard the gospel while they were out doing their street preaching on a beach, and she heard it, she thought they were nuts, and they had an interaction for many weeks, and she got saved.
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Why do we evangelize? Because the Holy Spirit works as he will, on whom he will, when he wills.
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What's the benefit of understanding this passage? Well, I think for those who are saved, we can think, well, this is comfort.
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I didn't cause myself to be born again. I can't lose my salvation. I am secure in him.
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But more than that, it gives us joy. Why? Because if we're born again, then what are we going to do? We're going to see the kingdom of heaven.
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We're going to enter the kingdom of heaven. Let's pray. Father in heaven,
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Lord, we're thankful for your word, thankful for the gospel of John. We're thankful for the sovereignty of the
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Holy Spirit and salvation, how he works to cause those that he would desire to be born again, that they might be renewed in their thinking, that they might be transferred from the kingdom of Satan, literally from the kingdom of Satan, into the kingdom of your
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Son, to pass from spiritual death to spiritual life, to have the hope, the sure hope of eternity in your presence.
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What a blessing and what a joy. Father, we would pray for any who do not know you here today, any who have not been born again.
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Father, we pray for your spirit to descend on them, that they might be convicted of their sinfulness, of their need before a holy
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God, to have a substitute who died for their sins in their place, to have a substitute who lived a perfect life in their place.
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Father, each of us will be resurrected, and to those who are not born again, it will be to eternal punishment.
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Father, I pray that that will be the end for anyone here this morning. Lord, again, we thank you for your grace in saving any of us, and we do so in Christ's name.