Are you born again?

Please turn with me to the end of John 2 and the beginning of chapter 3. The first time I heard of the term born again Christian from what I can remember was actually from one of my Favorite Wrestlers Shawn Michaels.

In an Interview with the Christian post it said, that he was Raised Catholic, Michaels recounted in his book how during this time he believed that there was a Jesus Christ but that spiritually he did not know him. "As long as I did the good things associated with religion, I thought I was in good shape spiritually, too," wrote Michaels regarding his upbringing.

During the 1990s, Michaels was known for his over the top behavior toward his WWE peers and outside the ring, writing that even before joining WWE he "began to drink more and started taking drugs and pills and chasing women."

After suffering from pain pill addiction and being forced to retire from WWE in 1998 due to recurring health problems, Michaels at the urging of his wife sought spiritual help.

"I was raised Catholic and I knew of Him and certainly what He did but I never truly experienced knowing Him," said Michaels to Christian Post.

"I found you can believe the man in history that is Jesus who walked the earth. It's a whole different thing altogether to know Him as the Son of God to have reconciled yourself to Almighty God."

In today’s text we see someone totally opposite of Shawn Micheals, one who is a Pharisee looking to do the right things and learn from Jesus, but he to sees that he needs to be born again. Just like Shawn Micheals.

Let us read God’s word this morning. John 2:23-3:13 “23 Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. 24 But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people 25 and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. 1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 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.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 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?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. “6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 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. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? 11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.”

If you are following along in your bulletin, or taking notes, the main point I want you to write down this morning is this.

Jesus says the only way to have eternal life is to be born again.

I want to unpack that this morning a little bit the first sub-point is this.

It doesn’t matter who you are no work can save you.

Prior to the conversation with Nicodemus, we see at the end of chapter 2, this idea that Jesus knows the hearts of men all people, he knows every thought, every intention, every conviction of each and every person, he does not need anyone to tell him what is going on.

Now we are introduced to Nicodemus for the first time in John, and as we study this book together we will see him a few more times.

Nicodemus was a very powerful influential man in Isreal. He as the text says was a Pharisee a ruler of the Jews. Now it is believed by many historians that there were ruffly 6000 Pharisees during the time Jesus was doing ministry on earth, and the Pharisees had 613 commandments to follow strictly. 248 do’s and 365 don’ts, instead of getting those word of the day calendars you could buy a don’t of the day, some of the commandments they had were quite extreme. Never the less these men tried there best to follow these commandments to the best of there own abilities.

Nicodemus was believed to be of the Sanhedrin a smaller group of these Pharisees that had more power. When studying this week a few people attributed it to something like the Senate in our own country. There were 70 of these men, and one high priest, and the text makes it clear that Nicodemus was a great teacher of Isreal, and a man who truly was trying to seek after God. Because this was the case he went to see Jesus.

Now he did not go Jesus in the broad day light, rather he went at night, most likely so no-one would see him, and he would have more time with Jesus.

And the first thing Nicodemus asks Jesus is this… Rabbi, we know you are a teacher come from God, for no-one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

Unlike the text we talked about last week when the Pharisees demanded a sign, Nicodemus recognized that Jesus was sent from God. And Jesus as we learned at the beginning of the text today knows the hearts of men.

Whats interesting about the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus is that Jesus unlike many of his other conversations goes after his heart and not his works. Nicodemus no doubt was a righteous man in the eyes of men, but in the eyes of God he was spiritual dead.

He had the qualifications to make one righteous in their own eyes, he is what I have referred to you in past sermons as a checklist religious person.

Jew check, Righteous to the law check, moral person check, yet the same issue that Shawn Michaels had prior to knowing the Lord, and that is neither one was born again. See we have two different people, one rebellious, doing what he pleased the other following commandments to prove his own righteous, but both spiritual dead.

I bring to you those two examples, because the reality is that no matter the background, no matter the standards that you yourself set, if you are not born again you are not saved.

You are not a child of God, to often people have this idea that they can come to God on their own, with their own set of standards, with there own systems, and miss him completely.

Jesus himself in the gospel of Luke says this Luke 5:31-32 “31 And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.””

No matter where you are today you have a sickness that only one man can cure and that is Sin, so whether your Shawn Micheals or Nicodemus, Rich, or poor, well knowledge of the word, or have never heard or anything in between no matter who you are you must be born again to inherit eternal life.

It does not matter who you are, you must be born again to have eternal life.

One man said, Entrance to heaven is out of reach, even for the most moral upstanding, law-keeping person you know.

which brings me to my second point.

Only born again people can be saved.

Jesus said to Nicodemus, truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Notice the language he says unless. There is no other way.

See the problem with Nicodemus is that he thought this path to entering God’s kingdom was strictly physical thing, but Jesus argues differently.

To be born again is a heavenly work an act of God.

Listen to several scriptures of this transformation, and what happens as a result of being born again.

2 Corinthians 5:17 “17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

1 Peter 1:3 “3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,”

1 John 2:29 “29 If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.”

1 John 3:9 “9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.”

1 John 4:7 “7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”

1 John 5:1 “1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.”

1 John 5:4 “4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.”

1 John 5:18 “18 We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.”

Finally John 1:12-13 “12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

God is the one who causes us to be born again.

Nicodemus asked the question How can a man be born again when he is old, can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?

Remember Nicodemus had lived most of his whole life based on physical responses to God and not spiritual, so it was natural to respond to God in such as way, but Jesus clarified to him to be born again means you must be born of water and the spirit.

Water had always been a symbol of cleansing for the people of Israel.One example of this is

Numbers 19:17-19 “17 For the unclean they shall take some ashes of the burnt sin offering, and fresh water shall be added in a vessel. 18 Then a clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in the water and sprinkle it on the tent and on all the furnishings and on the persons who were there and on whoever touched the bone, or the slain or the dead or the grave. 19 And the clean person shall sprinkle it on the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day. Thus on the seventh day he shall cleanse him, and he shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and at evening he shall be clean.”

this example is just one of many that are found in the Old Testament.

But Jesus was referring to a cleansing not with water alone, but with the water and the Spirit.

Ephesians 5:26 explains this a little bit. he is talking about his church here. “26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,”

So does Titus 3:5 “5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,”

So if being reborn is not a physical act than what its a spiritual one. Listen to one mans words, “ The Spirit of God makes a person alive and new from the inside. The new birth happens when God’s spirit animates the human spirit, making a person alive to the things of God. Its the total transformation of a person from the inside out. Nicodemus the pharisees had studied the Old Testament, but they missed what God said. God said following external laws would never be enough for a person to enter his kingdom. What a person needed was an internal transformation. God made this promise in the Old Testament.”

This promise was made specifically in Ezekiel 36:25-27 “25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And 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. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

The man who was a great teacher like so many missed Christ, missed that they had to be born again, missed that they needed to be changed in such a way.

And like i said already before, its not Jesus plus something its Jesus plus nothing. And to be born again you must believe in him. Jesus did not to come just to make the sick better, but to make the dead come alive.

And he says to Nicodemus there are two types of people, those who are born of the flesh or born of the Spirit. Just like a mentioned earlier that everyone needs to be born again, everyone is either born again or not born again, there is no in-between. You are either saved or you are not.

You are either born again by the Spirit and by the work of God, or you are dead.

And the Spirit works in such a way just like the wind does. Interesting thought isn’t it.

You dont see the wind, but you see its impact.

So many good things I read this week can put this into better words than I can.

The Gospel according to John 5. Jesus and Nicodemus (3:1–15)

The point is that the wind can be neither controlled nor understood by human beings (remembering of course that this was written before modern meteorology alleviated at least some of our lack of understanding). But that does not mean we cannot detect the wind’s effects. We hear its sound, watch the swaying grasses, see the clouds scudding by, hide in fear before the worst wind storms. So it is with the Spirit. We can neither control him nor understand him. But that does not mean we cannot witness his effects. Where the Spirit works, the effects are undeniable and unmistakable.

How is this relevant to the nature of the new birth? Having drawn the implicit analogy through the ambiguous term ‘wind/spirit’, Jesus applies it to the new birth by creating a further explicit analogy: So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. The person who is ‘born of the Spirit’ can be neither controlled nor understood by persons of but one birth. As the ‘water and spirit’ birth is grounded in Ezekiel 36:25–27 (cf. notes on v.5), so there may be an allusion here to Ezekiel 37. There God’s breath/Spirit (rûaḥ/pneuma) comes upon the valley of dry bones and the dry bones are revived; God’s people come to life. Thus it is with everyone born of the Spirit: they have their ‘origin and destiny in the unseen God’ (Fenton, p. 54), not in ‘human decision or a husband’s will’, for they are ‘born of God’ (1:13). Both the mysteriousness and the undeniable power of the Spirit of God are displayed in the Scriptures to which Nicodemus had devoted so many years of study

Just like the the wind, the Spirit moves about in a way that is not seen, but its effects sure are. When someone is truly changed by God, often you don’t understand it, you don’t see how it was possible, but you know it happened, and because it happened you see the results of it, and know that something changed that person, and that is what happens to all believers.

Nicodemus rather than accepting the answers Jesus gave, asked another question. How can these things be?

And Jesus gave him a powerful answer. John 3:10-13“10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? 11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

This man had been teaching people for years about God, yet he missed that even he himself needed to be born again. He should have been one of the first one’s to come and say Jesus you are the Christ. But his teaching background could not save him, he needed God to.

If you think about Jesus saying in verse 11 he is really answering verse 2 which said, John 3:2 “ “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.””

Nicodemus ultimate problem is he failed to see who Christ really was, and that is the Christ. He knew something about Christ was different, but he didn’t accept it for himself.

Like Shawn Micheals who said, "I was raised Catholic and I knew of Him and certainly what He did but I never truly experienced knowing Him,"

Nicodemus knew the Christ was coming, knew about God and his word, but never truly experienced him for himself.

A powerful reminder that you can know about God, know about Jesus, and even know his word, and never be changed by him. This is why you must be born again.

To think about this interaction is fascinating, because Nicodemus was this great teacher, and Christ being from heaven existing forever, knowing all things could have told him about all the great truths of God, about heaven, about theology, but rather than doing that He told him he had to be born again.

Nicodemus like many others fail to see that you have to be born again here on earth, so if he missed this then he was clearly going to miss the heavenly things, because he was spiritual dead.

Jesus being from heaven had authority to say the things he did, because he is the only one who has authority to do so.

So because Jesus has that authority it means he has authority to tell each and every one of us that we need to be born again.

How do you know if you are born again? You have repented of your sins and you put your faith in Christ.

You did not go through some academic training to be saved, though the Lord might have used that, you didn’t have to go through this check list of things to see if you are qualified to be saved. This is where so many lost people are.

One man sums up this passage so well, “When the Spirit of God blows life into a person’s soul, there will be unmistakable evidence. The first piece of evidence is that the person will believe in Jesus. That’s what Jesus tells Nicodemus. If you have been born again, you will believe what Jesus says. You will understand that he came from heaven to be born as a man, and you will place your faith in Jesus. Its not respect for Jesus or good opinion of Jesus-Nicodemus had both of those. It’s wholehearted faith in Jesus. Its believing every word he says and committing everything to him. When the Spirit blows, we don’t find toppled trees, we discover toppled doubts. The Spirit uproots the forest of skepticism and self-reliance that grows in our hearts and plants seeds of faith.

I would sum it up as, Being born again means You will truly have a new life.

The transition from old life to new is different from everyone, but if you are born again their is a transformation.

Paul describes this in Romans 6:17-18 “17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”

Born again believers are the only people who can be saved.

So where do you find yourself today? Are you like Nicodemus knowing there is something different about Jesus. Knowing he could be who he says he is, know some scripture but you don’t fully believe he is the Christ.

Are you of the flesh or of the spirit. I think we have worked that out today, but in short are you born again, have you been set free, have you been made new by Christ.

The good news is that through Christ you can be born again. He lived a life you and I could not, and died a death that we deserve, and on the third day he rose again, and because of this you can have new life. Today we talked about what that life looks like, and how you can have it. Repent and believe and trust in him today.

Only God knows your heart today, no need to hid from him, respond however he leads you today.

Now is a time we offer that response. If you don’t know Christ by faith alone come forward, if you want to be baptized, join this church, or come forward in prayer do so. Respond however he leads today.