The Need for a Second Birth

“Must wear appropriate attire” is what the sign read to the restaurant that Olivia and I tiredly walked into during our travels last week. After hours of driving and site seeing, the only thing we wanted to do was check into our hotel, and eat something other than gas station food. We were not prepared for those four little words to derail our dinner plans. I stepped inside and asked what “appropriate attire” meant to them, and clearly what we had on did not make their cut.

In life, many people think that they will enter the kingdom of God because of their outward appearance. They believe that their church attendance or affiliation will gain them access to eternal life. Some believe their generous hearts will buy them a ticket in the kingdom. Others are relying on their good deeds to outweigh the bad in an attempt that God will not send them to hell simply because they are more good than bad.

I want to tell you that there is only one way into heaven, and that is through the gift of God in salvation paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ.

This morning I want us to look at a story of a man who thought he was going to heaven, until he had a conversation with Jesus.

John 3:1–8 ESV

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, “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.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 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?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and 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 its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Lets look at Nicodemus for a minute. Who is this man, and what is he doing coming to the Lord in the middle of the night. According to the gospel of John, Jesus had just expended a load of energy by driving the money changers out of the temple. This is the famous scene of Jesus flipping tables and sending men running with a whip. But this man Nicodemus comes to Him by night.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee. The Pharisee were a small (roughly 6,000 in number), legalistic sect of Jews who were known for their rigid adherence to the ceremonial fine points of the law. Their name means “separated one.” They may draw their values from Ezra 7:10 “For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel. The Pharisees did not separate themselves in isolation, but they separated themselves from the “common people” by following the Mosaic Law rigidly. Following the Mosaic law to a T would not be a bad thing to do, but where the Pharisees made the mistakes were when they began to add their own rules to the list of rules that God had handed down, even though God was not the one who ordained them. You know if we follow God’s rule we will have a pretty nice life. Maybe not easy necessarily, but nice. If we spent more time remaining rigidly faithful to God’s word nowadays our country would not be in the state that it is.

But they started adding their own rules and imposing them on the people. Each Pharisees took a solemn vow before three witnesses that he would give his life to obeying the Ten Commandments as a means of pleasing God. The Pharisee’s lives were then spent defining specific ways to apply the commandments.

Jesus’s encounters with the Pharisees were usually apprehensive and abrasive on both fronts. Jesus would contradict the Pharisee’s philosophies, and the Pharisees would end up embarrassed. Now I don’t know about you, but usually I do not jive well with those who embarrass me, neither did the Pharisees. Because of the embarrassment and the challenge to their way of life, the Pharisees sought to kill Jesus on multiple occasions.

Pharisees "follow the guidance of that which their doctrine has selected and transmitted as good, attaching the chief importance to the observance of those commandments which it has seen fit to dictate to them" and they "passed on to the people certain regulations handed down by former generations and not recorded in the Laws of Moses" . Although the phrase "Oral Law" is not used, it appears Josephus understood that the Pharisees affirmed a body of traditional interpretations, applications, and expansions of the Old Testament law communicated orally.

Pharisees paid a great deal of attention to outward ordinances and actions that would make them appear righteous, but they were not as concerned with actually being righteous in their hearts. This is why Jesus compared them to a white-washed tomb. They look beautiful in appearance, but in reality all they hold is death inside.

Jesus rebuked them in Matthew 23. by saying this:

Matthew 23:2-7 ““The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others.”

Matthew 23:23 ““Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.”

The Pharisees had a terrible issue. They had divorced themselves from a true relationship with the Lord for their rituals and traditions, which mean nothing without a clean heart.

But the Holy Spirit was dealing with Nicodemus. He had undoubtedly heard of the claims that John the Baptizer cried in the wilderness, coupled with this knowledge and the powerful evidence that Jesus had been displaying, Nicodemus began to wonder if this truly was the Messiah they had been waiting for.

So Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night for greater understanding. Many circumstances cause Nicodemus to come by night. He was a member of the Sanhedrin, and Jesus was not well accepted by them. He came at night to 1.) Show that this meeting did not reflect the entire consensus of the Pharisee’s or Sanhedrin 2.) Because he did not want to deal with the confrontation he would receive if he was caught conversing with Jesus.

But Jesus was also very busy, and so was Nicodemus, so the evenings made the best time for both of them to be free of

It was a spiritual rebirth that Jesus is talking about. You might be physically alive, you might be the most healthy person on this planet, but if you are not spiritually reborn then I assure you that you are dead. You are in every essence the phrase “dead man walking”

>What does it mean to be Reborn:

Jesus told Nicodemus that in order to enter the kingdom of God he must be born again. Think about Nicodemus’s predicament. He was born a descendent of Abraham, he was circumcised, he was a member of a ultra-religious group called the Pharisees, and he had even worked his way into a position of power as a seat on the Sanhedrin. But it was not enough. He thought he was doing everything he needed to be doing in order to go into the kingdom of God, but Jesus stopped his thinking short. Jesus is the one who brought up the topic. Why? Because while we see the exterior of man, God see’s the heart of man. Jesus knew that Nicodemus was not headed to heaven, when Nicodemus fully believed that he was.

Being born again does not mean a physical rebirth, but a spiritual. Physically you are alive, and physically you will pass away someday. But even though physically alive, you can be fully dead spiritually.

Ephesians 2:1 “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins” [We are spiritually dead. You may be breathing, but inside you were dead]

1 Corinthians 15:22 “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”

Being born again means that we have given our lives over to Christ, and He has given us a new life. Being born again means that a complete lose of self, and an utter acceptance of Christ. You must let go of everything you are holding onto and solely lean into and hold onto Him.

Then, and only then, may we be born again. But then, at the very instance, you become a child of God. You are given a new name, and you become part of something far grander than what we see here on this earth. You are given a family, you are given an inheritance, you are given a hope. You are given eternal life that can never be taken from you.

>Why must man be Born Again:

The question has often been asked “If God is loving, then why does He send people to hell?” I want you to know that God loves you very much. He loves each and every one of His creations. You must understand this: God is Holy. God is Holy, and He is perfect. Do you know what happens when a Holy and Perfect God allows an imperfect being into His midst to dwell? It taints perfection rendering it imperfect. Therefore, if God allows man into heaven in mans sinful state heaven will no longer be a Holy dwelling place. Nor would a judge be moral if he allowed a reckless man to continue walking the streets when he should clearly be in jail. God cannot allow our sins to go without punishment. If God turned a blind eye, He would be immoral and that is something that God will never be. Because He is holy, and He is just, I want you to know that the penalty for our sins is a spiritual death and eternal imprisonment in the lake of fire. If you die in your sins, and you are not born again, you will spend eternity away from the presence of God, and if you want a clue about eternity, it never ends. Period. No half time, no plea deals, no second chances, no offers, and no relief. It is eternal damnation. It is something that I wish no one to experience, yet sadly the vast majority will.

*I want to add this. Hell is horrible. Hell is eternal. Hell is punishment beyond measure in the form of a lake of fire amongst other torments. But the older I get, do you know what makes me depressed about thinking of hell? You would be completely cut off from God. No access to the Father. There will be no embrace from Jesus Christ. No one wiping away the tears. No happiness. The single Creator of all things, sustainer of our lives, and the One who loves us more than anything, and we are cut off from Him.

Do you want a glimpse of hell? Totally remove God from something and you will see the brief snapshot.

And every man sins. From Adam, all the way down to the last soul on this earth, everyone has, is, or will sin. As we talked about in the opening of the sermon, we often try to cancel out these sins with pointless efforts of physical nature such as attending church, giving, and acts of kindness. All of these acts will fall short and leave us empty. I believe what people do not realize is that once sin is committed, it cannot be corrected through our own efforts. The one who caused the problem cannot be the one who fixes the problem, and that posses a problem. We want to go to heaven, but as it stands we cannot. Not on our own efforts.

But God loves us, and He did not want to leave us abandoned without a hope. This is why, if you continue reading the rest of John 3 you will come to the most iconic verse of scripture in the Bible John 3:16-17 ““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

This is what Jesus was telling Nicodemus in our scripture this morning. That man must be Born Again, born of the Spirit, because he cannot enter the kingdom of God in the state that he was born in.

How is one Reborn:

Jesus said that the one who does not understand he is sick has no need for a physician.

In order to be saved you must understand that you have sinned against the God of heaven. You cannot merely understand that you did wrong, everyone knows that they have done wrong in life. You have to understand that God is perfect, and because of the decisions that we have made we are no longer able to go into the presence of God because of who He is. It is not that God wrong, it is that we do not deserve to be in His presence. When we understand that, then the process begins.

Even though we have failed, God still wants us by His side.

In our failed state, we cannot right the wrongs that we have committed, which means we will never achieve perfection that heaven requires. But God had a remedy. The most iconic and favored verse of the Bible tells us God’s divine plan for man. John 3:16 ““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” God loves you. Even while we are wrapped in our sins, God still loves us. This is why Christ came to die for us so that we may be set free from the penalty of those sins, and we might have a relationship with God. Christ is the one who made that possible. Jesus came to earth, faced the same temptations to the sin we fail to, but He remained sinless. Because of the fact that Jesus is perfect, He could now pay for the penalty of our sinfulness. The issue is that the wages of sin is death. Jesus would have to pay for our sins with His perfect blood, which if you will refer back to John 3:16 (and many other references throughout scripture) He willingly does.

You must place your full trust in Christ.

Trust that Jesus is the Son of God. Trust that He lived a perfect life, and that He freely gave that perfect life for you so that you may spiritually live, just as the scripture has said. And, most importantly, believe that Christ’s sacrifice for your sins has the ability to cancel your sin debt and give you the opportunity to enter a relationship with God.

Then when you have placed your trust in God, He will place within you the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit will be your guide. It will not be like an arrow in front of you telling you which way to go, more like a call from the scriptures over your life. The Spirit will remind you of what God’s word has said, and will aid in your day to day lives by steering your mind guided by scripture. (Which means the more your life is saturated with scripture, the better the outcome will be)

Which will produce in you a new creature.

>What does it look like to Reborn:

Christ died “that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” (2 Cor. 5:15) We were chosen in Christ “before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” (Eph. 1:4) Christ “loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her…so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” (Eph. 5:25-27) Christ “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” (Titus 2:14)

J.C. Ryle, the Bishop of Liverpool during the nineteenth century, was right: “We must be holy, because this is one grand end and purpose for which Christ came into the world…Jesus is a complete Savior. He does not merely take away the guilt of a believer’s sin, He does more—He breaks its power

Jesus did not come to make bad people good. That is as good as adding a fresh coat of paint to that white washed tomb. Jesus came to bring life to those who were dead. He came to transform those who would place their faith in Him.

Ephesians 2:1-5 “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—”

When you are saved, you begin a transformation process. You immediately go from death to life, but the growing process is gradual BUT IT MUST BE EVIDENT.

We could spend hours here talking about sanctification and the process of discipleship and the evidence in a saved person’s life, but I will cut it short with this plea...

Please be genuine. If you are saved, act like it. In all that you do. Your decisions, your conversations, your relationships of various kinds, how you treat others. Let your life reflect Christ, and leave no doubt that you are a child of God in the minds of those around you. We will fail from time to time, but do not be content with falling short. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and strive to do what is right according to God.

Conclusion:

I want to end with this. “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sounds, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” People often use the wind as an illustration for God. They say “well you cannot see the wind, but you see it’s effects. That is the same with God.” That is true, but I want to add something to your thought process. You cannot restrain the wind either. You cannot control the wind. You cannot contain the wind. It goes where it will. Sometimes it is a gentle breeze, others it is a raging storm. We have all seen picture of tornado’s decimating a town, and yet a single piece of lawn furniture will be left untouched. We have seen photos of raging winds rip apart one house, and leave another standing. Many in this community have experienced that first hand.

It is the same with the Holy Spirit of God. He goes where He will, He touches who He touches, you cannot stop it, you cannot altar it, and you cannot force it. I want you to know this today, if you are not saved, God completed every requirement needed so that you may be today. If you feel the Spirit pulling at you, answers Him while He is hear. Tomorrow He may be on down the road, TODAY IS THE DAY OF SALVATION

If it were possible, a physical rebirth would only produce a fleshly person. But a spiritual rebirth creates a spiritual being. It will always be the Spirit that produces a change that leads to salvation.

Some listening to this sermon, whether in person or online, are saved but they serve have drifted. Maybe you were strong at one point but it has faded. Maybe you have been saved, but you have never started the process of growing in Christ. It is never too early or too late to follow the Lord wholeheartedly. No matter what you have done, or circumstances you may find yourself in. I know of men in prison right now that are living a life that is strong in the Lord. Christ’s blood has freed us from every past, present, and future sin. His blood is also pure enough to cover any sin imaginable. You could not commit a sin what God could not forgive.

Some of you listen are not saved. I know that the majority here are, and I praise God for that. But some are not. There was a day when I was not saved either. Every saved person in here had a day when they were not saved, but then they simply listened to their loving Lord call them to salvation. Don’t ignore Him: Don’t push Him away. He loves you.