You Must Be Born Again
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Intro
Intro
Situations where you’ve felt least in control and most in danger
riding in a car with a bad driver
riding a roller coaster
skydiving
We Are Powerless
We Are Powerless
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.”
Nicodemus sneaking to ask Jesus a question
Jews have a negative opinion of Jesus already
Nicodemus recognizes the authority of Jesus
While Nicodemus recognizes Jesus’ authority, he isn’t ready to accept all of his teaching just yet, at least not without questions.
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?”
The teaching of Jesus is a stumbling block for Nicodemus, for two reasons, and the first is that it is simply foreign to him. Jesus is preaching about spiritual matters, but Nicodemus is only thinking in physical terms.
When Jesus teaches about the Kingdom of God, he begins speaking of a spiritual reality that must occur in a person, but Nicodemus fails to see it.
Jesus is going to continue to drive home the spiritual nature of what he is teaching by providing more detail:
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.”
And lets be honest here: this teaching can be a difficult one to really understand. What is Jesus talking about being born again? That has become a popular religious term in our culture, but what does it really mean, and how does it happen? How can someone be born again?
Well again, there isn’t anything physical that needs to happen. Jesus is describing a rebirth of our spirit.
Jesus is describing the reality of our spiritual state: that we are dominated by the flesh and that nothing spiritually good remains in us. He is showing that what we are inside needs to die, and something new needs to be born in its place.
And he pushes even further than that by explaining how something like that happens:
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.”
Jesus teaches that you are completely powerless when it comes to experiencing spiritual rebirth. There is nothing you can do. There are no actions you can perform, no penance you can pay, no words to say, there is nothing that you can do because your heart is spiritually dead and opposed to God.
When someone is reborn, it is completely out of their control. If a person experiences spiritual rebirth, it is because the Holy Spirit came upon them and made them new.
and Jesus is also teaching that the Holy Spirit is a genie in a bottle, or a magical eight ball that can be shaken up. The Holy Spirit is God, and he works apart from our manipulation. We do not control him or force him to serve us.
Just like the wind, we do not control him, and he acts of his own accord.
And this is the second reason Nicodemus stumbles, because this teaching butts up against the prideful need for control Nicodemus feels.
Just like the person sitting in the backseat of a car, or the person strapped to a skydiver, Nicodemus is feeling completely powerless for the first time in his life.
Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?”
God Is Fully In Control
God Is Fully In Control
Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? 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. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
Jesus shows Nicodemus that this need for control he feels is foolish.
Jesus has tried to teach to Jews about things they should know about, and they have refused him. They couldn’t even understand Earthly things, and they have been to Earth before.
How are they supposed to understand heavenly things if they’ve never been there and don’t understand anything about it?
Jesus teaches Nicodemus that only Jesus has even been to heaven, because he came from heaven.
So do you know what our need for control is like? It would be like if you were at a friends house far away and you went on a walk, but it got dark and emergency sirens started blaring. You don’t know why, but danger is obviously close and you have no idea where you are or how to get back to safety.
Us feeling the need to be in control of our salvation is like insisting that our friend follow us to safety rather than trust him to lead us himself.
We have no idea how to get to heaven, we have not even the slightest clue how to find God’s Kingdom.
Jesus, on the other hand, has come to us from the father and has offered to bring us home to himself.
Thats why Jesus adds this:
s
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
This is a reference to a story in Numbers
So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.
When the people were bitten by serpents and poisoned, they were meant to look at the bronze serpent and God would heal them of their venom.
Now, Jesus is showing that this was meant to point to him. Now he must be lifted up and looked upon, believed in, and our enemy the serpent’s venom will be cleansed from within us.
This leads us into one of those most famous bible passages there is:
“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.
God’s Sovereignty Brings Us Assurance
From this passages I want you to see three things:
You are not in control of your salvation. There is nothing you can do to defeat the sin that dwells inside of you. You are completely at the mercy of outside forces.
God is completely in control of your salvation, and has provided Christ to accomplish it. There is nothing that can force him to save you, but there is also nothing that can stop him from saving you when he decides to.
Because God is in control, you should have full confidence about your salvation when you believe in Jesus and follow him.