You know, in 1976, a blockbuster book named Born Again hit the newsstands.
And as many of us know, it's the story of Chuck Colson and how he went from being Richard Nixon's hatchet man to being a believer in and a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now the reason I bring this up is because today we're going to meet the man to whom these words, born again, were spoken for the very first time. We're in a series entitled People Jesus Met. And today we're going to meet a fellow named Nicodemus to whom Jesus says, you must be born again. We want to go back 2,000 years and we want to see exactly what Jesus meant by that. And then we want to bring all of that forward and we want to talk about, okay, so what difference does that make to you and me?
So here we go. We're starting in John chapter 3, verse 1. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, the Bible says, a member of the Jewish ruling council.
Here in verse 1 of John 3, we meet a very important man in the time of Jesus, a fellow named Nicodemus, and the Bible tells us two reasons why he was so important. Number one, the Bible tells us that Nicodemus was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were members of the strictest, the most observant religious party in Israel. They were highly educated men, having been trained in Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, Greek. They were expert theologians. They were experts in the Old Testament. And secondly, the Bible tells us that Nicodemus was a member of the Jewish ruling council, commonly called the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was the supreme religious authority for Israel at the time of Christ.
It consisted of 71 members, all of whom were appointed for life. To be appointed to the Sanhedrin was the highest honor that any Jewish person could be afforded in the time of Christ. Verse 2, and so Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. You say, why did he do that?
Well, because he didn't want all of his friends on the high council to know he was coming, that's why. And he said, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God. Now stop for a minute. Look at this. Here we have Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin, a rabbi on steroids.
You understand what I'm saying? Openly confessing that Jesus is from God. The real question we should be asking here is on what basis did Nicodemus come to believe this? Why did he believe this? And the answer is he believed it because of the hard factual evidence that he saw all around him.
Watch. Verse 2 continues. Nicodemus said, Rabbi, we know you're a teacher come from God, for no one can perform the miracles that you're doing if God were not with him. You know, it may surprise you to learn that the New Testament, the Gospels, only record 31 days out of the public ministry of three years of the Lord Jesus' life. And this is why John, in John chapter 21 says, and there are so many other things that Jesus did, that if they were all written down, I suppose even the world itself would not have room for all the books that would be written about it. You know, so often we think that Jesus only performed the few dozen miracles that are actually recorded in the Bible, and only a very few lucky people ever got to see one of these miracles. But friends, based on the fact that only one month of Jesus' three year ministry is recorded in the New Testament, and based on what John says in John chapter 21 about the multiplied miracles that Jesus did in the other 35 months of his ministry, we need to realize that in actuality, Jesus saturated the land of Israel with miracles. Mark chapter 7, verse 36 says the more miracles Jesus did, the more people kept talking about it. Mark chapter 3, verse 8 says because they heard what Jesus was doing, his miracles, many people came to him from Judea, Jerusalem, the regions east of the Jordan River, and around Tyre and Sidon and modern day Lebanon to the north, down below the Dead Sea in the south, and into the country of Jordan to the east. The Bible tells us that the news of Jesus' miracles had spread throughout this entire area. Matthew 15, verse 30 says, and great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and laid them at Jesus' feet, and he healed them all. The point is that by the end of Jesus' three-year public ministry, everybody in Israel, everywhere in Israel, had either heard about his miracles from some eyewitness they trusted, or had actually seen one of his miracles with their very own eyes. It was on this basis, the basis of empirical, verifiable, corroborated, hard, eyewitness testimony, that Nicodemus said to Jesus, only God could do the kind of miracles that you're doing, and therefore, Jesus, you must be he. Now, verse 3, you would think Jesus might have started off in verse 3 and said to Nicodemus, oh, thank you so much, Nicodemus. It's so wonderful to have a rabbi like you come and recognize me for who I am. I'm so flattered.
No, no, no, no. Jesus knew exactly why Nicodemus had come to see him. Nicodemus came to see him because in spite of all the religious activity that Nicodemus had in his life, he still wasn't sure that he was going to heaven after he died. And so Jesus is not interested in his flattery.
Jesus cuts right to the core of the issue. He says, verse 3, I tell you the truth, Nicodemus, unless a person is born again, they cannot see the kingdom of God. Jesus cuts right to the case and says, Nicodemus, you want to go to heaven? You want to have eternal life? Then you must be born again.
There's our word. And Nicodemus said to Jesus, how can a person be born when they're old? Surely they can't enter a second time into their mother's womb and be born all over again. And Jesus answered and said, I tell you the truth, unless a person is born of water and the Spirit, they cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.
You say, Lon, stop. I got to tell you, I'm as confused as Nicodemus was. What in the world is Jesus talking about? Well, friends, Jesus is telling Nicodemus and all of us that being born again has nothing to do with going back and being physically reborn.
Jesus says one physical birth being born of water, that is amniotic fluid, one time is enough. Jesus says what I'm talking about and what you need, Nicodemus, is an entirely different kind of birth, a new birth, a spiritual birth that only God can give you. See, Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1 says we were born spiritually dead in our trespasses and our sins.
We are all born separated from God spiritually, alienated from God spiritually, under the judgment of God for being members of Adam's race. Ah, but my friends, when we are born again, when we come to faith in Christ, all that changes. Watch, Colossians 2 13 says, but when we were dead in our sins, God made us alive in Christ, forgiving us for all of our sins and canceling the debt against us by nailing it to the cross. Above everything else, my friends, we must understand this, that Jesus did not die to make bad men good or to make good men better. Jesus died to make dead men alive. And this is what being born again is all about.
It's all about God taking spiritually dead people like you and me and nailing our sins to the cross and then birthing us spiritually so that we become living, spiritual beings who are now connected to God, who are now alive to God, who are now reconciled to God. That's what it means to be born again. Well, I'm sure Nicodemus was standing there with a completely puzzled look on his face. So Jesus said to him, verse 7, do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. Nicodemus, the wind blows wherever it wishes and you hear its sound, but you can't explain where it comes from or where it's going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
You say, what does that mean? Well, Jesus says, hey, Nicodemus, the wind is real. You feel it on your face.
You know it's real, but you can't explain where the wind comes from or where it goes. And in the same way, Jesus said, you may not be able to explain all the mechanics of being born again, but brother, when it happens to you, it is real and you know it's real as real as the wind that's on your face. Trust me, Nicodemus, this is real. Then Nicodemus said to Jesus, how can these things be? And I love what Jesus says to him. He says, you are Israel's teacher and you do not understand these things. Nicodemus, this is elementary stuff, Jesus says.
And you know what? The new birth, Jesus says to Nicodemus, is in the Old Testament as an expert so-called in the Old Testament. Nicodemus, you should already understand this. You say, well, Lon, where is being born again in the Old Testament?
Well, I'll just give you one example. In Ezekiel 36, verse 26, here God says, I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and I will give you a living, breathing, spiritual heart of flesh.
What do you think he's talking about here? God's talking about being born again. And then in the very next chapter, Ezekiel 37, God goes on to liken being born again like to a valley of dry bones. That's us dead in our trespasses and sins whom God makes these bones come alive. He makes these bones come screaming to life.
What do you think he's talking about? Friends, this is what it means to be born again. It's in the Old Testament.
It's in the New Testament. Nicodemus should have understood it, Jesus said. And this is what Jesus was inviting Nicodemus to experience.
And without this, he told Nicodemus, nobody, not even you, Nicodemus. With all your rabbi badges and medals on, not even you can get into heaven. Not even you can get eternal life. Not even you can enter the kingdom of God.
You must be born again. Now that's as far as we're going to go in our passage. Because we're going to stop now and we're going to ask our most important question. And all of our friends out at Loudon and Prince William and around the world and down the edge, we want everybody to do this together. So are we ready? Okay, here we go.
One, two, three. No, how sweet it is. You say, all right, Lon, so what? Say, I appreciate what you're saying here. What difference does this make to me?
Well, let's talk about that. The Bible says, 2 Corinthians 5 17, Therefore, if any person is in Christ, if any person is born again, they become a new person. Old things pass away. Behold, all things become new. And my friends, this is why Jesus came to earth 2000 years ago.
This is why Jesus died on the cross 2000 years ago and rose from the dead. He did all of this to give us a new birth into a new life that overflows with new things. And I want to take the rest of the time I have today to tell you about four of these new things that we get when we're born again. Now, there's a whole lot more of them than four. But I'm just going to tell you about four.
Here we go. Number one, when we're born again, the first new thing we get is a new relationship with God. John chapter 1 verse 12 says, To all who receive him, that is Christ, he, God, gives them the authority to become, look at this, children of God.
Children who are born not by natural birth nor by a husband's will, but who have been born, that is spiritually, by God. The Bible says that when we are born again, we become members of a new family, God's personal family. And as part of this family, we have a new relationship with the leader of this family, Almighty God. Now we are his personal adopted children in Christ.
Romans chapter 8 verse 15 says that when we believe in Christ, watch, we receive the spirit of adoption as children by which we say to God, Abba, which in Hebrew means father, Abba, father. Indeed, the Bible says, the Holy Spirit bears witness to our spirits that we have become the children of God. This is the first new thing we get when we're born again, our entire relationship with God radically changes. Now we are not his enemies. Now we are not unreconciled and alienated from him. We are his precious and treasured children in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Number two, when we're born again, the second new thing we get is we get a new power over our passions. Not too long ago, Brenda and I were traveling and we were in an airport waiting for a connection. And we were sitting at one of the little restaurants there, you know, in the airport. And not too far from us, in fact, close enough I could almost reach out and touch them, was an elderly man and his daughter, middle-aged daughter. And the man had one of these oxygen tanks with him. You know what I'm talking about where they have the tube and they roll the little tank.
Okay. And I was watching the man as he was eating and I felt sorry for him, you know, and I was praying for him. Lord, help this man, show mercy to this man. And then when they got through eating, I listened as he turned to his daughter and he said, okay, honey, he said, let's go out for a smoke now.
This is not a lie. And so he stands up and he reaches in his pocket and he pulls out a pack of cigarettes. And so they start to walk out and he's got a pack of cigarettes in one hand and he's wheeling his oxygen tank with the other hand. And I said to Brenda, is this surreal or what? I mean, you would think if you're already needing oxygen to walk that you would stop smoking, wouldn't you?
You would think. But you know, folks, we all have those self-destructive passions that we can't beat. And it wasn't just this old man. Ladies and gentlemen, this struggle to overcome our self-destructive passions is something every one of us has to deal with every day. Every one of us here struggles every day to live right, act right, work right, talk right, think right, drive right and eat right.
And most people in our world lose this fight a whole lot more than they win. And ah, but you see, my friends, when the Lord Jesus Christ comes in to your life, he brings with him a new power that can help us overcome these self-destructive passions. John chapter 8 verse 34, Jesus said, Truly I say to you, whoever obeys their sinful passions becomes a slave to those passions. Well, thanks, Jesus. We know that.
Ah, but listen to what he says next. But, he said, what a great word. But when the Son of Man, that is the Lord Jesus Christ, sets you free, you shall be free indeed. Praise God for that.
Listen, I'm here to give you testimony that this is right, that this is true, that this power really works. By the time I was 22 years old, the self-destructive passions in my life had so ruined my life that I was prepared to take my own life because I had tried and tried and tried to beat these things and I could not beat them. In fact, some people think that self-destruction is one of my spiritual gifts, and it may be.
But I could not win that battle. And then at the age of 22, the Lord Jesus Christ came into my life and all of that changed. Now, am I sinlessly perfect today?
Not on your life, my friends. Those dangerous passions still live inside of me. But thanks to the liberating power of the living risen Christ in my life, I am no longer a prisoner to those passions. I don't have to obey them.
I don't have to be their slave. And this is the new power that God gives every born-again believer in Jesus Christ. Number three, the third thing we get, all right, the third thing we get when we're born again is we get a new purpose for living. In a recent interview, Madonna was asked about the drive for fame and fortune that so characterized her early career. And she said, and I quote, I'm telling you that fame and fortune are not what they're cracked up to be, end of quote. Wow, isn't this interesting, huh?
The material girl living in a material world has discovered that material things don't really satisfy. Well, you know, everybody discovers that sooner or later. And this is the great thing about being born again. God gives born-again people a new purpose for living, an eternal purpose for living, a purpose for living that transcends the things of this world, a purpose for living that brings true meaning, true fulfillment, true satisfaction to life. And what is this new purpose for living? 2 Corinthians 5.15 says, Jesus died for us so that we should no longer live for ourselves, but for Him who died and rose again on our behalf. And I have discovered that when our purpose in life becomes centered around living for the Lord Jesus Christ instead of living for myself, I have learned that when my purpose for life begins to focus on serving the Lord Jesus Christ with my gifts in my life instead of serving myself, when my purpose every morning for getting out of bed is to walk with Christ and exalt Christ instead of trying to exalt myself, I have learned, folks, that leads to true satisfaction, to eternal fulfillment in life. And this is something you get when you're born again. You get a whole new purpose for living. Number four, and finally, we get when we come to Christ, when we're born again, a new assurance about eternity.
Hey, can we wind back a few minutes? Do you remember why Nicodemus came to Jesus to start with? You remember we said he came to Jesus to begin with because he was looking for some assurance about eternity. He wanted to know for certain that he was going to heaven, that he had eternal life, that he was going to enter the kingdom of God after he died here on earth. And as we said earlier, isn't it interesting that all of his religious performance and all of his religious piety and all of his religious achievement and all of the power and the fame that he had amassed, isn't it interesting, none of that gave him any assurance about eternity?
Well, friends, the same is true today. You can't get assurance about eternity from power or things or money or achievements. No, no, that only comes from the Lord Jesus Christ. And the great news of the Bible is that when we are born again, part of our spiritual birthright is this absolute assurance that we have eternal life, that we have a secure place in heaven, and there is not one sliver of a doubt about it. 1 John 5, verse 11, and this is the record, the Bible says, that God has given us eternal life and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has eternal life, and he who does not have the Son does not have eternal life.
Can you say it any simpler than that? Now watch verse 13, these things I write to you, John says, who have believed in the Son of God, watch, so you may, what's the next word? So you may know for certain that you have eternal life. I meet people all the time who say, you know, I don't really think it's possible to know for sure that you've got eternal life. And besides, I think it's amazingly arrogant for you to say that you know that you have eternal life. Well, you can think whatever you want, but it's not arrogant, and yes, you can know, but one of the purposes of the Bible, John says, is to assure us who are born again that we have eternal life, and this is not a hope-so hope, this is a know-so hope. Amen?
Amen. Now, I was reading an article not too long ago in which literary critic Lionel Trilling said that he was puzzled by the fact that all of his liberal intellectual friends got so unnerved by any mention of death. They didn't want to talk about it, they didn't want to hear about it, they didn't want to discuss it. And he speculated that it might be, quoting now, because death is a negation of the future and of the hope it holds out for a society of reason and virtue, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, is it possible that the reason liberal intellectuals don't like to talk about death, at least his friends, is because it, what did he say here, negates the future? Who knows what he said? Whatever he said, whatever he said. Is that possible?
Yes. I've got a much simpler theory. My theory is that these people don't like to talk about death because they don't have the slightest clue what's going to happen to them after they die and they are scared, scared, scared to even think about it. Hey, but you know, as born-again followers of Jesus, we don't have that problem.
No, no. We know exactly what's going to happen to us after we die. We are going to heaven and we know exactly why that's going to happen to us after we die because we are born-again adopted children of God through Christ because of what he did for us on the cross and we know exactly what's going to happen when we get to heaven. We are going to spend eternity with the living, risen, resurrected Christ. Hey, when you're born-again friends, that's what you get and that's good news. Amen?
All right. I like the way Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist from the 19th century, who, oh, by the way, only had a third-grade education, I like the way he put it. He said, and I quote, someday you will read in the papers that Dwight L. Moody of East Northfield, Massachusetts is dead.
He said, don't you believe a word of it. He said, at that moment, I shall be more alive than I am now. I shall have gone up higher, that's all, out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal, a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint.
Look what he says here. I was born of the flesh in 1837. I was reborn by God's Spirit in 1855. That which is born of flesh may die, but that which is born of God's Spirit will never die.
End of quote. So here are the four new things we get when we're born again. Number one, we get a new relationship with God. We become His precious children in Christ. Number two, we get a new power over our self-destructive passions. Number three, we get a new purpose for living, no longer for ourselves, but now for the risen Christ.
And finally, number four, we get a new assurance about eternity. But remember what Jesus told Nicodemus. He said, Nicodemus, he said, the only way you get these things is you must be born again. Now, I don't know whether Nicodemus took Jesus up on his offer and got born again or not. The Bible never says for sure, but that doesn't really matter right now because, folks, what you need to understand and I need to understand is Jesus makes you and me the same offer that He made Nicodemus. Right here, right now, He's offering to birth you and me spiritually if it's not already happened so that we're born again and we're not going to let you leave here today.
We shouldn't without giving you a chance to do that. So let's bow our heads together, shall we? And with our heads bowed and our eyes closed and no looking around, here's what we're going to do. If you want to take Jesus up on His offer to birth you spiritually today, to become born again today, then I'm going to lead us in a very short prayer. I'll pray out loud one phrase at a time. You pray silently right behind me. And let's say, Lord, I'm taking you up on that offer. Do that to me today.
Here we go. Lord Jesus, I come to you today because I want to be born again. I want you to nail my sins to the cross once and for all.
And I want you to birth me spiritually so that I become a living spiritual being, a child of God reconciled to you. Lord Jesus, I lay my life at your feet today. I surrender everything I am to you today. And I invite you into my life as my Lord and my Savior. Birth me into a born again individual this day by your power.
In Jesus' name I pray. And, Father, I want to pray for the folks that prayed that prayer, that right now you would, as Romans 8 said that we saw earlier, that you would bear witness with their spirit that they have become children of God. And for the many of us here who have already done this, I pray that you would remind us today what we got, what we have as born again followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, may we walk out of here today rejoicing if we know Christ at all that you've done for us. May we not take it for granted. But, Lord, may we revel in the old, old story of Jesus and His love for us. Thanks for going to the cross so that we could be born again. We love you for it. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. And what do God's people say? Amen. Amen.
