How to get to heaven

Intro: The Rev. Billy Graham tells of a time early in his career when he arrived in a small town to preach a sermon. Wanting to mail a letter, he asked a young boy where the post office was. When the boy had told him, Dr. Graham thanked him and said, “If you’ll come to the Baptist church this evening, you can hear me tell everyone how to get to heaven.” “I don’t think I’ll be there,” the boy said. Graham asked “why not,” The boy replied “You don’t even know your way to the post office.” So it is with many of us today.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and a man of high moral character, deep religious hunger, and yet profound spiritual blindness. He came to Jesus by night in a quest for truth and Jesus cuts to the heart of the matter and tells him how to go to heaven. If Nicodemus needed instruction about salvation then some of us may need some too.

CPS: Today, I want to tell you how to get to heaven, not what I say about it, not what Billy Graham says about it, but what Jesus says about it. And, Jesus says “you must be born again.”

I. The Necessity of the New Birth (1-5)

Being born again is necessary for Salvation. Twice Jesus says “Except a man be born again.” Modern translations read “Unless you are born again,” except/unless means there is not another way! Jesus says in vs. 7. “You must be born again.” Just as your body MUST have air to breathe so must your soul be born again! Just as your body MUST have blood pumping through your veins so must the soul be born again!

ILL: You don’t become a Christian and have a place prepared for you in heaven by doing good things nor by going to church. Apart from being born again, you have as much a chance of becoming a Christian by just going to church as you do becoming an automobile by sleeping in a garage. Without ‘The New Birth” it is impossible to be saved and go to heaven.

Naturally, we are born into flesh and flesh is corrupted by sin. Therefore, naturally we are blinded and our hearts are hardened towards the things of God. It is a divine act of God that changes us. Nicodemus was hoping the Kingdom of God had come, but it didn’t look like what he expected. Jesus tells him/us that unless you are born again it is impossible to seethe Kingdom of God much less arrive in it!

ILL: The fog in Steinhatchee was so thick that we could find the channel.... Once the sun penetrated the fog and it lifted we were able to see and enter into the channel. So it is with the kingdom of God, unless you are born again you can’t see it or enter in to it!

You may be sitting here toadying thinking, I have prayed a prayer and I have been baptized……. but have you been born again? The only way to go to heaven is by being born again. You must be born again!

II. The Nature of the New Birth (6-13)

Nicodemus, was the greatest teacher in Israel yet he had a hard time understanding what Jesus meant by being born again. You may have difficulty understanding what is meant by being born again. Jesus is speaking of heavenly things to a carnal being. He likens it to the blowing wind, you have no control over it, you don’t know where it’s coming from nor where it is going, you can’t see it but you can feel its powerful affects.

The new birth is not a second physical birth it is a spiritual birth! To be born again(anōthen) means to be from above, to be born of heaven. When you were born you were the product of a mother and a father, likewise the new birth is of two parents, the Word of God and the Spirit of God. 1 Peter 1:23 “for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.” John 6:63 “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”

Instantly, When the Word of God and the Holy Spirit of God comes upon you, you pass from death to life and the corrupt fleshly being you once were no longer exists, 2nd Cor. 5:17, Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

If anyone understood the renewing work of the Spirit, it should have been Nicodemus. He would have known of Ezekiel’s experience with the Spirit of God in the valley of dry bones. Ezk. 37:1-14. When death meets the Word of God and the Holy Spirit of God life takes place. Eph. 2:1 tells us we are dead in our trespasses and sin, but when the Word (Prophesy) and the Spirit of God comes upon you, you will come to life. True abundant everlasting life!

The New Birth may seemmysterious yet it is real. If a person will believe Christ’s words and receive Him, he/she will discover how real and wonderful the new birth is.

III. The Basis for the New Birth (14-21)

Now I want to tell you the process of the New Birth so you can experience it and be saved and go to heaven when you die.

A. Jesus Died for You

Jesus says the Son of Man MUST be lifted up, In order for you to experience the New Birth Jesus had to die for you. When Jesus says He must be lifted up He is speaking about the Cross and He likens it to the pole on which Moses lifted up the Bronze Serpent of Num. 21. Sin has its penalty, it is physical death, and Spiritual death. But God so loved the world that He made a way for us to be spared from spiritual death and judgment, He gave His Son! God’s gift to mankind is that the penalty of our sin can fall on Jesus! He had to die in order for us to be forgiven of our sin. On Calvary’s cross the unique sinless Son of God, Jesus paid a debt that He didn’t owe because we owed a debt that we could not pay!

ILL: When Lincoln’s body was brought from Washington to Illinois, it passed through Albany NY and it was carried through the street. They say a black woman stood upon the curb and lifted her little son as far as she could reach above the heads of the crowd and was heard to say to him, “Take a long look, honey. He died for you.” So, if I could, I would lift up your spirit to see Calvary. Take a long look, He died for you.

B. You Must Believe

But, in order for His death to be credited to your account you must believe. Believe is used 7x in our text, it is the verb pisteuō which means trust. In context Jesus is relating to Nicodemus the OT occurrence of the bronze serpent, an incident that he would be most familiar with. Shortly after God freed the Hebrews from Egypt they fell into sin which led them to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, yet in the barren desert God graciously provided for all their needs even calling daily bread from heaven. In Number 21:5 we read that the Hebrews spurned God’s graciousness and He judged their sin. As Rom. 3:23 teaches the wages of sin is death so God sent poisonous serpents into the camp and as many were bitten died. The people cried for mercy and God made a way of salvation. His salvation was not a salve that treated the bite nor was it the removal of the serpents it was a simple look, (Num. 21:8-9). It was the look of faith!

Jesus said “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so must the Son of man be lifted up!” And just days before His crucifixion Jesus says, “Now Judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” (John 12:31-32) In order to be born again you must look to Jesus in faith!

Con: On Jan. 6, 1850, a snowstorm almost crippled the city of Colchester, England; and a teenage boy was unable to get to the church he usually attended. So he made his way to a nearby Primitive Methodist chapel, where an ill-prepared layman was substituting for the absent preacher. His text was Is. 45:22, “look unto Me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” For months the teenager had been miserable and under deep conviction; though his father and grandfather were preachers, he did not have assurance of salvation.

The unprepared substitute minister did not have much to say, so he kept repeating the text. “A man need not go to college to look,” he shouted. “Anyone can look, a child can look!” about that time, he saw the young visitor sitting to one side, and he pointed at him and said, “young man, you look very miserable. Young man, look to Jesus Christ!” The young man did look by faith, and that was how the great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon was saved. He was born again by a simple look of faith!

Today will you look by faith to Jesus; the difference between life and death, heaven and hell is being born again through faith in Jesus!