Born Again

Introduction:

We live in a world that is so busy with so many things going on that many people rarely stop to think about God and the things of Heaven.

With this in mind, it is easy to understand why these people cannot understand miracles or God’s heart behind things.

Before I was saved and had a relationship with the Lord it was impossible for me to understand the things of Heaven, whether that is miracles or things like Godly values, because I was living from my intellect and personal wisdom.

Just as we believe that it is impossible for someone to go to Heaven after they die without knowing Jesus and being born-again, it is also impossible for someone to understand Biblical values and hold them to a high standard and way of life, if that person is not born-again.

I heard someone say one time, and I’m sure many of you have too, that the world and the people of the world will continue to do the only thing they know to do which is sin.

So, we shouldn’t be surprised when the world does things that we know are wrong.

A person that is lost and living apart from God is not going to be concerned about living a life that is pleasing to God.

It just will not happen.

I was a good person before I got saved in 2008, but I was not going to Heaven.

I was mostly nice to other people, but I was more concerned about myself.

My Testimony about my actions before and after salvation.

You might be setting there asking yourself, “Is this even in the Bible? Is there anything that talks about being born-again? I would like to see that.”

There are many places throughout the Old and New Testaments that talk about this exact thing.

We are going to look at a few, so if you have your Bibles turn with me to:

John 3:1–10 “1 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” 3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” 4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” 9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. 10 “You are Israel’s teacher, “said Jesus, “and you do not understand these things.”

Point 1: We need to be born-again to see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus was super religious guy that was very well trained in the Old Testament scriptures, but he saw something in Jesus that he knew was very far from his religious traditions that he grew up doing.

Those young boys back then that were raised like Nicodemus was, were raised to memorized sections, not verses or books, of the Bible.

Nicodemus was very well-trained in the Old Testament, but he knew Jesus had something that he was missing.

This passage says that he came to Jesus at night.

Many Bible scholars suggest that he probably did this to be hidden so no one else could see him.

Could you imagine having all the people that looked up to him and respected him as a leader, and he hears and sees this man claiming to be God in the flesh and doing miracles?

He knew that Jesus was different and had to go meet with Him, but he had a reputation to uphold.

Nicodemus said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher that has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs that you are doing if God were not with him.”

I love that we have our Bibles that we can read through and see all the miracles that God did in the Old Testament and in the New Testament through Jesus and other great men and women of God.

We can read of these historical facts that happened thousands of years ago.

I love that, but what i love more is the fact that God’s desire is to continue to show off through His people today.

Jesus sends out the 12 and says in Matthew 10:7–8 “7 As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons.”

The question is then, was that for just the 12 back then or for us today?

Some churches believe that those miracles were just for them and ended when they died.

We are not the original 12, but we are followers of the same Jesus and all throughout the New Testament we see not only Jesus, or the 12, performing these miracles but everyone who believed.

In Mark 16:17 Jesus said that these signs will follow those who believe.

Church, we are they who believe.

At the end of Mark it says that the Lord worked with them and confirmed His word by the signs that accompanied it.

When we live a Biblical life we will see these signs and people will be attracted to it.

The Lord will confirm His word!!

Jesus answered Nicodemus by telling him, “No man can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

I believe that we can understand this statement in 2 ways:

The obvious meaning being that this statement from Jesus meant that no person can get to Heaven without being born again.

This statement by Jesus is backed up all throughout scripture directly and indirectly.

Romans 3:23 “23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”

Romans 6:23 “23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Every person that is born into the world has been born into sin.

From birth we have a sinful nature.

It is what comes natural to us and we are all guilty of it.

This is why we need to be reborn or born-again.

When we are born into the world we are driven by our flesh or worldly desires.

You can look at it this way: When we are born from our earthly parents we are born as relatives of Adam and Eve and inherit what they have given us.

When we are born again we are born from above and now our spirit is alive because God, at that moment, sends His spirit to live inside of us.

The struggle that we still have is that our spirit desires to do the things of God but our bodies and free-will still desire to do its own thing.

God gave us this wonderful thing called free-will which is good or bad.

We have the decision to follow God’s way or the world’s way.

Point 2: When we are born-again we can see spiritually.

When we are living for the world for do not have the capability to begin to understand spiritual things.

Jesus tells Nicodemus, “Flesh gives birth to flesh and spirit gives birth to spirit. The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.”

Jesus constantly uses nature to explain what He is talking about, but here it seems to come from and Old Testament prophet.

New Testament scholar Craig Keener points out the similarities between what Jesus says here and the writings of Ezekiel in 36 and 37, so lets go there.

Ezekiel 36:24–27 “24 “ ‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

This is what happens when we become born again:

God washes us clean from all of our sins.

Takes away all of our idols.

Takes our heart of stone away and gives us a heart of flesh.

Finally, He gives us His spirit to convict us of sin and to lead us into all truth.

In Ezekiel 37, God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to a valley of dry bones for them to come alive.

As he does this the bones begin to rattle, come together, and have tendons and flesh come upon them.

Then he did what he was commanded and spoke to the winds that they would move and breathe life into them.

Even though they were alive and moving they were still dead mans bones.

Sounds like Jesus’ later description of the religious people of His day.

We can be attending church and going through the motions, but on the inside we are dead.

Only the Lord can breathe fresh life into us.

Ezekiel 37:14 “I will put my Spirit in you and you will live.”

When we are born again we be able to enter Heaven and spend eternity with the Lord, but we will also have our spiritual eyes opened so we can see and understand the things of God.

When we are born of God we now share in His moral nature.

The things that move the heart of God will begin to move us.

After we are truly born again:

Sin will not sit right with us.

We will have a heart to help other people.

We will have a desire to stand up for what is right.

People that are not born again would think that it is crazy to give up 3 hours of your Saturday to do a prayer walk and pray over a Planned Parenthood building like we did yesterday.

But when we have the Spirit of God living inside of us we will be moved when we hear of the millions of babies that have been aborted since 1973.

God had a purpose and plan for those little lives, but we decided that it’s okay to take the babies life out of convenience for the adults involved.

That baby had a plan and we aborted it because it was the most convenient thing to do.

When we are born again these kind of things will move your heart.

Conclusion:

The only way we can see the kingdom of God is by being born- again.

We are born into a life of sin and have a sinful nature.

At that point we do not have the things of God in mind and only care about ourselves.

We need to be reborn, not again in our flesh, but we need to have a born-again experience where we are born from God.

We will then not only go to Heaven, but we will also take on God’s moral nature allowing us to please Him while standing up for truth.

Craig Keener says, “New birth is more than a metaphor of a social conversion from one group to another, but it is absolute transformation.