You Must Be Born Again (Part 3)
Notes
Transcript
Doxology:
This is my Bible. It is God’s Holy Word. It is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path, and I will hide its words within my heart, that I might not sin against God. Amen!
Scripture Reference: John 3.16
Context
Context
We have finally made it to the world’s greatest text.
We have already looked throughout this chapter at “The World’s Greatest Tragedy” and “The World’s Greatest Truth.” Now it is time to dive in and examine “The World’s Greatest Text”.
We call it this for very obvious reasons.
It is the most memorized, most quoted, most preached on, most utilized, and most valued text in all of Scripture.
This one verse contains the very essence of the Gospel. It is the revelation of God’s heart. When understood to its fullest, it is the beginning and the ending of Christianity.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ permeates all of Scripture. Everything in the OT looked forward to Jesus. Everything contained within the Gospels speak of Jesus. Everything after the Gospels either look back and expound upon Christ’ first coming or look forward to His second coming. It is all about Him. It always has been and it always will be.
This means John 3:16 is the ultimate reference. Almost every other place in Scripture can be referenced back to this verse as it is the essence of Scripture itself.
This one verse is packed with revelation.
It reveals the nature of God.
It reveals the will of God.
It reveals the power of God.
It reveals the love of God.
This text is truly inexhaustible.
16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Content
Content
Now we must be careful with this verse. What I mean, is that we must be careful not to take it out of context. Remember that we have been engaged with Nicodemus in conversation. Nicodemus is asking questions concerning the meaning of Christ’s former statement, “You must be born again.”
This verse is so rich that we quote it in solitude, but we must remember what we have already spoken. We must remember all the other verses leading up to this verse.
To completely outline the plan of salvation, Jesus goes all the way to the foundation. He starts where it all started. He starts with God.
For God
For God
What significance we have right out of the gate. Jesus and Nicodemus have been discussing the new birth, being born again. Jesus leaves no doubt to the debate of who’s work this new birth is. It is the work of none other than God Himself.
But who is this God we speak of? What major contributing factor does He bring to this conversation?
Well, He is the God of whom Nicodemus had spent the better part of his life studying. He is the God of the Scriptures. He is the God who gave the righteous standard of the law. He is the God who he writes about and speaks about in the synagogue. He is the God to whom Nicodemus prays.
He is the God of the Israelites, the God of his people. He is the God of their forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is the God of Moses and Aaron. He is the God of the prophets.
He is the God of deliverance. He is the God who delivered Israel from Pharoah. He is the God who delivered Israel in the wilderness. He is the God who delivered Israel from the Babylonians and the Assyrians. He is the God who delivered Elijah from Ahab & Jezebel. He is the God who delivered more oil every time the widow went back to her jar, and He is the God who delivered water from a rock.
He is the God of power. He is the God who opened the fountains of the deep, as well as windows of heaven, so that this world could be flooded. He is the God who rolled back the water so Moses and Israel could cross the Red Sea on dry ground. He is the God who sent manna from heaven so the Israelites would not starve. He is the God who made the sun stand still for Joshua and go backwards for Hezekiah. He is the God who made a donkey talk like a human and a king eat grass like a donkey.
He is the God of all gods, King of all kings, and Lord of all lords. When paired up against Ball, He is the one who sent fire from heaven. When placed face to face with Dagon, it was Dagon who fell before Him, not once, but twice. When God’s people went to war in His name, there was no force under heaven who could stop them. Gideon defeated hordes of opposing enemy troops with just 300 soldiers, all in the power of God, and a teenage boy named David defeated a 10 foot tall giant in the name of God. None can stand against Him. Even Satan himself has been defeated once already by God, and the stage is being set now for their long anticipated rematch, where Satan will be defeated again and this time for good.
He is Alpha & Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. He is that which was, that which is, and that which is to come. He is the eternal, self-existing, uncreated God that transcends time and space.
He is the God of creation. He is the beginning of all things outside of Himself. He spoke and the world leapt into existence. The hung the stars in the sky and called them by name. He created the vastness of the galaxies and yet He knows the number of hairs on our head. He breathed the breath of life into the first man to walk this earth, after forming him from the dust of it. He created the Sun and then determined when it would rise and fall. He created the moon and then told it where to hide until evening. The very essence of His being exists within every particle in this universe and He alone is in control of them all.
He is God, Elohim, Jehovah, Adonai, Yahweh, the God who has revealed Himself by so many names.
Not only is He “The God”, He is the only God. There is no other besides Him. All of the other so-called gods are nothing more than a manifestation of man. Man created them. They have ears but they cannot hear. They have eyes but they cannot see. They have mouths but they cannot speak.
This God Jesus speaks of does all three. He hears, sees, and speaks. He is God Almighty.
And what is it about God that Jesus wants Nicodemus to know above all else?
So Loved
So Loved
“For God So Loved...”
Now it is important to note the word “so” here. Jesus is not trying to be hip for the 21st century reader. This is not a filler word, or even an emphatic word.
“So” here serves as an adverb and can be rendered, “after this manner”.
God loves after His own manner. This other-worldly, eternal, omniscient God loves out of Himself. Every word that would be used to describe Him, can also be used to describe His love, because He loves out of Himself.
This means, that the love of Almighty God is not the same as the love of you and I. Our love cannot compare with this love because our character cannot compare with His character.
His love goes beyond understanding because He goes beyond understanding. His love is past finding out, because He is past finding out. His love is never ending because He is never ending.
This love is stronger than death. It is a love that will never let me go.
It is a love that suffers long and is kind; it does not envy; it does not behave rudely; it is not provoked; it thinks no evil; it does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.
It is a love that never fails. It has no boundaries.
It is not based on circumstance. It is not strengthened or weakened by our moral standing. It does not grow stronger for us as we become more faithful and it does grow weaker when we grow more distant.
There is nothing you can do to cause God to love you more because there is no more. It is complete at all times.
There is nothing you can do to cause God to love you any less. There is no variable degrees to God’s love. It is an extension of who He is. His love is consistent and constant.
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
In our darkest of moments, God’s love remained full, even to the point of laying down His own life so that we might have life.
Love is the very essence of His being. It is not something He does, it is Who He is. It is woven within the fabric of His nature. God is love.
And what is it that this Godly love is pointed directly at? It is us.
The World
The World
“For God So Loved The World...”
The world here does not refer to the systems of this world.
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
That verse speaks of the systems of this world. The evil of this world that is in contradiction to God.
God’s love is not directed at those things, it is directed at His creation. It is directed at that which He Himself called “very good” in the beginning. His love is directed to us.
Unfortunately, we have fallen from who we once were. We have fallen from perfection. We have drifted from our created purpose and lost touch with who we are.
We are the creation of an Almighty God. We were created with glory in mind, but in search of vain-glory we have surrendered ourselves prey to the wickedness of this world.
We have given ourselves over to sin. We have fallen captive unto ourselves. We have allowed the lust of our flesh, the lust of our eyes, and the pride of our life to drag us away from the very thing that completes us, which is the presence of God.
That is what we seek. That is the innate desire to be a part of something bigger and better than we ourselves are. That is our search for power. That is the desire to know the unknown, to find that which is lost, to break records, and to soar beyond.
That thing which we search for is really a person, and He has been here the whole time. While we have wasted our lives searching for Him, He has been patiently waiting for us to come to the end of ourselves and realize that He is our prize. He is that which completes us. He is the missing piece.
We as humans have made several wrong turns along the way, and apparently we have no spiritual sense of direction. God looked down and was able to see that there was absolutely no way for us to find our way back on our own. We were broken, desperate, and without hope.
So God looked down in love and decided to do for us what we were unable to do for ourselves.
He showcased that unexplainable love to us in the next few words:
That He Gave
That He Gave
“For God so love the world that He gave...”
Think about that statement. God created us in perfection. Have you ever wondered why man was the last thing He created? He created everything else before He created Adam. He wanted everything to be perfect, and it was. He created a perfect place, then created us in perfection, free from sin or the tragedy of it, and placed us there in that perfect environment. If there was ever a time that man could have succeeded, it would have been right then during those days.
But somehow mankind managed to find the one way to fall from the perfection that God intended us to dwell in.
At that moment, God could have wiped His hands clean of mankind and spoke everything out of existence that was just spoke into existence. He could have started over with a new plan. He could have killed Adam and Eve and tried again with a new person.
Instead, He looked on us with love. He knew the depths of sin we would find ourselves in. He knew that we would dig a whole so deep that we would never be able to save ourselves. He knew the cost of allowing us to continue, but He decided to do it anyway.
He continued to give. After all that He had already done, the fact that this verse says, “For God so loved the world that He gave....” anything at all, says volumes about who He is and how much He loves us.
But He did give. And He did not just give something of little value. When He decided to give, He decided to give the very best He had to offer. He gave everything.
His Only Begotten Son
His Only Begotten Son
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son....”
Now some will say, “Ok, brother, you had me until that statement. I get that mankind was created in perfection. I get that we chose evil over good and fell from the perfection in which we were created. I get that, no matter how hard we try, we can’t be good enough to be perfect. I even get that we needed to be saved by someone or something outside of ourselves, that is better and more capable than we are. I get all of that....but His Son? I don’t get why God had to give His Son. Could He not have done something else? Could He not have extended grace some other way? Why did God’s Son have to die so that sin could be forgiven?”
That is a great question, and it is a question that so many are wrestling with today. Here’s the answer.
Remember how we said that God’s love is an extension of who He is? His love is perfect, because He is perfect. Well, love is not His only attribute. He is also a just God. This means that just as His love is an extension of who He is, His justice is also an extension of who He is.
4 He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice; Righteous and upright is He.
14 Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Mercy and truth go before Your face.
See God is a loving God, but He is also a just God. This means that God must call sin, sin. This means that if each one of us were to stand before God based upon our own good works alone, we would all be found guilty of sin, and that we must all be punished for that sin, whatever the punishment of His law required. This is the justice of God.
If God’s perfect righteousness were the standard on one side, and we were to be lined up across from it, and then be judged by how we measured up to it, we would all fall short of the glory of God. We are guilty of sinning against God.
Now, we must also understand that if God is perfect, and the place He dwells (heaven) is also perfect, God can not allow imperfect people to enter that place. If imperfect people are allowed to dwell in a perfect place, then that place would no longer be perfect. It would cause the perfection of God to be stained by the sinfulness of those who come there.
This means, that God has decreed, if anyone is to come and dwell with Him, a perfect God in a perfect place, they also must be perfect. That poses a big problem, because you and I are not perfect, as we have already established.
Now in the beginning, God made a way of forgiveness. When someone had committed sin, that sin could be forgiven, but only after atonement was made. Atonement is the price of reconciliation. In other words, the atonement is the price that must be paid so that a relationship can be restored to its former unity.
Sin causes a separation between man and God. We have seen that from the very beginning.
Remember what God told Adam:
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat;
17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
The result of sin is death. “The day you eat it, you shall surely die,” He said.
The sin they had committed brought forth death. It also brought forth the awareness of sin, which is accompanied by shame, guilt, and pride.
25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
So we the result of sin in the very beginning, but we also see in the very beginning the price that God demands as the atonement, or the price of reconciliation:
21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
This means that God killed an animal of some kind and used its skin to create clothes for Adam and Eve. This is a picture of Jesus, the Son of God whom God gave out of His love for mankind.
This animal was killed, so that it could be used as a covering. It skin was used to cover up the nakedness, which was only made a reality after sin was committed.
In order for sin to be forgiven, or covered up if you will, blood has to be shed.
11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.’
22 And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission.
This means that the atonement for sin is life. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, death came upon them. In order for their life to be restored, another life had to be taken. God decided that the life of an innocent animal was the atonement for their sin. It was a life for a life.
The problem came about when mankind lost sight of how detrimental their sin was. Every time they sinned, another animal had to die. But animals were being bred by the thousands, so they lost sight of how important just one life could be. These animals sufficed, but they were not perfect enough to atone for all sin, just the current sin.
So God, looking down in omniscience, was able to see that a better sacrifice needed to be offered. Not an animal sacrifice, but a human one. But this sacrifice could not just be any human, it had to be a perfect human, one without sin. Well that definitely narrowed the pool down a bit seeing that noone could live up to that standard.
So God sent His only Son, the very Son of God Himself. His name was Jesus. He was tempted in all points, just as we are, but yet He never sinned. He lived a perfect life and then willingly gave His life for us at Calvary. Because He never sinned, He should not have had to die, but He died for us.
He became the atonement for this sin of mankind. His blood was the necessary price that had to be paid to restore the relationship between man and God.
Romans 3:24–25 (NKJV)
24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
25 whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness...
God’s love compels Him to go to whatever lengths necessary to ensure our spiritual renewal. God’s justice compels Him to bring about the necessary judgment due to our sin. When both of these are brought together in unity, God’s love and God’s justice, there only remained one possible outcome: Jesus would have to go to the cross. Nothing else would satisfy the justice of God.
Whoever Believes
Whoever Believes
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
2 And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.
Whoever believes. Say that with with me. “Whoever Believes.” Say it again. “Whoever believes.”
Jesus’s sacrifice, the willing act of laying down His life for others, became the atonement for the sin of all of those who would believe in Him.
Jesus tells Nicodemus, right here in this verse, “If you want to be born again, you must believe in Me. You must believe that I am the Son of God. You must believe that I am perfect, without sin. You must believe that I came out of love for you, to die for you, so that you might stand justified before God. You must believe that I am the way, the truth, and the life. You must believe.”
Built within this command of Christ to Nicodemus, “Ye must be born again,” we find another hidden must, “Ye must believe in Him.”
It is our belief in Jesus that brings about the new birth. It is our belief in Jesus that brings about salvation. When we humbly acknowledge our need for Christ and accept His death in our place as the atonement of our sin, it brings about a spiritual transformation. As the nakedness of Adam and Eve was covered by the skin of that sacrifice, our belief in Christ allows our sin to be covered by the righteousness, the perfection of Jesus. It washes over us and makes us clean.
See many of us are guilty of trying to do what Adam and Eve did. When they realized they were naked, they attempted to cover up their own sin by sewing fig leaves together.
We too attempt to right our wrongs through tithing, church attendance, giving to charities, and doing good deeds for others. These things are good things. These things we should be doing, but if we are doing them out of a guilt in our heart due to sin, we are doing them for the wrong reasons.
When God came to visit with Adam and Eve, they admitted their sin unto Him. God told them that they can’t simply cover up their nakedness and pretend that everything is ok. It does not work like that. The problem is not summed up in the fact that you realize you are naked. The problem is that this sin has changed you internally. It has made you something different. It has defiled your heart. You can’t just pretend it didn’t happen. You can’t just ignore it and hope it goes away. I told you when you ate that fruit, that you would surely die. That is what has happened. Your sin has caused you to be eternally separated from me, because you are no longer perfect, and nothing you do can change that.
We must come to a point in our lives to realize that there is nothing we can do to change the fact that we are separated from God because of our sin. The only thing that can cleanse our unrighteousness and make us whole is believing in Jesus. Nothing else will do. He is our only hope.
When we believe on Him as our Savior, His blood, which was the price that had to be paid for our redemption, washes over us, cleansing us of every stain that sin has left behind. The separation that sin caused between us and God is now abolished and we now have access to the presence of God.
1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
2 through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Commitment
Commitment
Jesus has broken down in detail to Nicodemus, and to us, exactly what He means by the statement, “You must be born again.”
Have you ever witnessed this transformation? Have you ever been changed by the presence of God in your life?
Have you ever reached the end of yourself, and fully trusted in Jesus as the only hope that you have?
If not, remember, God loves you so much, that He gave everything, He gave His only Son, so that you could be saved. The atonement has already been made. The stage has been set.
The question is, are you willing to acknowledge this before God and man?
9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
