901. The New Birth

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.

The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. His intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything so he established daily chapel services. Today, that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from the University Chapel platform. Today on The Daily Platform, we're continuing a study series entitled Our Great Salvation, which is a study of the doctrine of salvation or soteriology. Today's speaker is seminary professor Dr. Eric Newton, preaching on the new birth from John chapter 3. We are continuing our series, as you can see on the screen, Our Great Salvation. And it is our prayer that this would not simply be a series of informative lectures on salvation, but that it would stir us to worship the Lord. And it would give us a sense that there is no greater theme that we could ever share with anyone than that there is a Savior who died for them, who died for us.

Because of some scheduling issues, we're actually inverting the topics, and so my topic is coming today, and that is regeneration. What does it mean to be born again? It's a term many of us have heard all of our lives.

It's a common term in the media, particularly during election seasons, as we have recently experienced. Wikipedia defines born again this way. It's a phrase used by many Protestants to describe the phenomenon of gaining faith in Jesus Christ. It's an experience when everything they have been taught as Christians becomes real, and they develop a direct and personal relationship with God. Now, that is a sociological observation definition, but what does it mean to be born again?

There's no better person to ask than Jesus Christ Himself, so if you'd turn with me to John chapter 3, we'll hear the words of Jesus about regeneration this morning. You're familiar with this passage, and I'll begin reading in verse 1. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. We find out later, it's confirmed that he's part of the Sanhedrin. The same came to Jesus by night and said unto Him, Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with him.

Jesus answered and said unto him, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus comes when it's night. That probably has a double meaning.

It's literal. It was nighttime when he came. Maybe the cover of darkness helped veil his questions that he wasn't so sure he wanted other people to know about.

We don't know that for sure. But it probably has a figurative meaning in the Gospel of John as well. That Nicodemus was in the dark.

He was in the dark a lot more than he realized, as we all are before Christ rescues us. And we see from the beginning of this passage here in verse 3 that the new birth is integrally connected to the authority of Jesus Christ. In order to understand new birth, we have to listen to Jesus. He says, verily, verily, I say unto you, this is the truth.

It's a trustworthy statement, and I am saying this based on the authority of my Father. He repeats that same phraseology or similar phraseology in verses 5 and 7 and 11. And so we're going to look at four aspects of this new birth this morning.

The first one is this. The new birth is absolutely essential. The new birth is absolutely necessary. He says, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Now Nicodemus would have understood the language of the kingdom of God, or at least he thought he did. But this idea of being born again and that being in relationship to coming into God's kingdom, he was a Jew.

He was a great Jew. What's this business about being born again? And we learn from this passage and others just what kind of state we're in. Why would we need a completely new life? Well, this is what Scripture says about us.

Look at this list. This is our state apart from regeneration. We cannot see or enter God's kingdom. We cannot be saved, John 3 tells us. Later in the same chapter we see we cannot come into the light.

We're living in spiritual darkness. We see from Romans 3.11 that we neither understand nor seek after God. From Romans 6 that we're enslaved to sin hopelessly. From Ephesians 2 that we are dead in trespasses and sins. That we're children of our age. That we're children of wrath by nature. And back in the Old Testament it puts it very bluntly, we cannot change ourselves.

This is as hopeless as it gets. We are dead. We must be born again. If we were to take a poll this morning, perhaps someone is doing this actually, about what we need most desperately in America.

You would hear a variety of answers, some spoken with a lot of vehemence, I assume. For Jesus Christ there is no debate about this. It's a matter of life and death. What we need most is for God to intervene. The new birth is absolutely essential. But read on with me in verse 4. Nicodemus saith unto him in response, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?

That's pretty preposterous. Jesus answered, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born, and then he clarifies, 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. You see Nicodemus is searching here for answers to his own questions, but Christ very directly challenges his core assumptions about what it means to be a child of God, to be part of God's people. He says except a man be born of the water and of the spirit. Now there are a lot of different interpretations about that and it's not our intention this morning to go into those, but I think this passage tips us off to know what the correct interpretation is. Because if you'll notice in verse 7, he says marvel not that I said unto thee. He's talking to him as if he should have known the answer to this question. And in verse 10 he says art thou a master of Israel and knowest not these things?

In other words, if you truly understood your Bible, which for Nicodemus would have been the Old Testament, you would know the answer to these questions. It's a gracious but a very direct rebuke. So what is this talking about? Well this combination of water and the spirit seems to be pointing back to a couple of passages in the Old Testament.

I'm going to put one up in front of you. It's from Ezekiel 36. Follow along with me. This is God speaking. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Will I cleanse you? Notice that language. Clean water, clean from your filthiness from idols.

That gives us a little bit of a clearer picture of what he's talking about. I will cleanse you. And this is not just some really good spring cleaning like alright I'm kind of dirty. I know I do some bad stuff. I'm going to go get that washed up. I'm going to go confess that. I'm going to go to a religious service and feel better about my life and I'll be okay.

No, look what it says going on. A new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh. There's a complete transplant going on here. And I will put my spirit, my very own spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and ye shall keep my judgments and do them. You see what God is doing is he's actually taking our heart of stone that is impenetrable that we can't do anything about and he's removing it and putting a very new heart, his own spirit into our soul. And by doing that he cleanses us of the stain of our guilt and our sin. The New Testament talks about this as well in Titus 3 5.

Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost. You see that connection, washing of regeneration, renewing of the Holy Ghost. So the new birth is not only essential, it's spiritual. It's internal and it happens by God's spirit. You see it's qualitatively different from physical birth.

Notice verse 6 again, that which is born of the flesh is flesh. Well that makes sense right? I mean you can follow that but what's the point? Well in other words, it can't just be more of the same. I can't just start over, I can't just have some new New Year's resolutions.

I can't just cut off some people and try to get some new friends. I can't just have a wardrobe transformation. You can't just have more of the same because anything born of the flesh is going to end up as what?

Flesh. It's like if you're making something in the kitchen and it calls for water, pure water and you put salt water in there from the ocean and then you taste it and you see there's a little bit of an issue here. How do you fix that? Do you go get your new bag of salt and dump that in? Is that going to fix the problem?

No, you've got to have something completely different. That's Jesus' point. So he does this in our souls.

How does he do this? Well it's clear from a couple of other references in the New Testament that being born again has everything to do with God's word. Look at these verses. 1 Peter 1 23, being born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the word of God which liveth and abideth forever. And James 1 18, of his own will beget he us with the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

Now this is mysterious but it's clear by the word of God whether it's preached like in these moments today in chapel, whether it's read, somehow God by his Spirit uses those words to breathe life into a soul and to make a completely new person. So my question here as we pause for a moment is have you ever come to the place where you've recognized that you need something that you cannot produce yourself? You can't pray well enough to get it. You can't obey consistently enough to get it. You can't rub shoulders with the right people enough to get it.

You need something that you cannot produce. My heart is dirty. My heart is corrupt unless God breathes new life and replaces it with his very own Spirit. Just a few weeks ago my wife was talking about this with our two youngest daughters. And Allie, the three year old, when my wife said do you know Allie that your heart's dirty? She kind of paused and then she looked around and then she lifted up her shirt and she looked back at my wife and she said my heart's not dirty mommy.

Now I don't think she quite understood the spiritual metaphor there but I think her reaction is a natural reaction. My heart's really not dirty. I mean, yeah, I do some bad things. Yeah, I've made some mistakes. But a corrupt heart?

A stony heart? Rosaria Butterfield in her very excellent book Openness Unhendered says this, we all make choices along the path of our life journeys, but if sin is only about bad choice making, we don't need a Savior. Sin is bigger and deeper and longer than bad choice making.

And she's absolutely right. So the new birth is essential. It's spiritual. Moving on to verse 7, the new birth is supernatural. Read with me verses 7 and 8. Marvel not that I said unto thee ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth, so is everyone that is born of the Spirit. The new birth is supernatural.

It's divine. There have been some bad historical misinterpretations of regeneration. Pelagius going way back into the early centuries of the church said it was just personal moral reformation. Augustine said that the baptismal font was the saving labor of regeneration, that water baptism affects what it signifies. Charles Finney in the early 1800s said regeneration consists in the sinner changing his ultimate choice, intention, preference, or in changing from selfishness to love or benevolence. And we'll talk about this, there certainly is change, but regeneration is not my changing myself, because I can't. No, regeneration is an act of God.

Look again at this passage in Ezekiel 36. Notice, I won't read it again, but notice the bolded words, if those stick out well enough, then will I sprinkle clean water. Will I cleanse you? Will I give you? Will I put within you? Will I take away the stony heart? I will give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you. God's going to do this. This is a promise.

And he always keeps his promises. Regeneration is an act of God. We see in verse 8 this metaphor of the wind blowing. It blows where it wants to. You can't see it, right?

You can't control it. Well, I mean, we harness it, I understand, but the wind's going to do what it's going to do. The wind breathes life into things. There's this wonderful picture in Ezekiel 37, the very next chapter. In this vision, God says to Ezekiel, do you think I can take this valley of dry bones and bring them to life? And Ezekiel is puzzled by it. And then what happens is through his preaching in this vision, these bones are brought together and the sinews graft on top of each other and they come to life.

And he breathes life into this body. November 14, 1978 was a pretty important day for me. I was born on that day. I hear it was a joyful occasion. I don't really remember. In fact, I was late to the party.

I was supposed to be born on Halloween two weeks earlier. It was unconscious. It was instantaneous. It was unrepeatable.

Never done that again in my life, as far as I know. This is what God does. We do not clean ourselves up to come to God.

We cannot create for ourselves some new and improved identity complete with slick advertisements and endorsements. We are dead outside of Christ. The Holy Spirit has to create in us new life. So that leads us to the fourth aspect and that is the new birth is essential and spiritual and supernatural and fruitful.

The new birth does bring forth fruit. There is evidence. We see in verse 8, you can't always tell where the wind has come from or where it's going. You can't see it. But you see its effects. You hear it. You know it's been there. When God acts to give new life to a sinful soul, there is a change.

There is fruit. We cannot see the Spirit create a new heart, but we can see the life that He creates. What is this talking about? Well, God speaks repeatedly, especially in the Old Testament, of the necessity of having His laws inscribed on our hearts. The problem is, even though you would think that with a heart of stone, that would be a good medium to have something inscribed on it. The problem is it doesn't work that way spiritually. So we can externally obey. We can conform to some degree, but we cannot truly please God. So by regeneration, God puts His laws into our hearts and minds. It's one of the certain blessings of the New Covenant. Look at this passage from Jeremiah 31. This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. And we know from Hebrews 8 and 10 that we've been brought into that covenant as we trust the Lord. After those days, I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts and will be their God and they shall be my people. What does it mean to have the law in our hearts? It means that we have desire and we have power to follow Christ in the way of God's commandments. We have desire and we have power to do so.

We don't do so perfectly, but we want to, and we pursue it. You know trees by their fruit. I'm about the furthest thing from a botanist that you could imagine, alright? But there's a tree out in front of my house and there were I don't know how many thousands of pecans that fell in the fall. I'm pretty sure I know what that tree is.

You know trees by their fruit. And the fruit of the Spirit is something real. It's not something we work up, it's something God does in us as we trust him. I think Calvin gets it right in this quote. He says, the natural man is pricked and goaded by his conscience so that he does not completely slumber in his sins.

He's bothered by his sins, the natural man, the unsaved man. Nevertheless he is disposed with all his heart to enjoy them, to revel in them and to give them free reign, fearing nothing except the penalty which he knows awaits all sinners. If I can get away with it, I'm going to do it. Does that sound familiar in our culture?

If I can get away with it, I'm going to do it. The regenerate man on the other hand clings with the chief part of his heart to the righteousness of the law, and testing and loathing the sin which he commits through his weakness. He's going to commit sin. He is weak. You and I are weak, but he is going to repent.

He's going to get back up by God's grace. There's a story told of Augustine, who had some good theology and some not so good theology, that one of the prostitutes that he used to consort with, he was a moral man before he was saved, saw him in Milan, where he had lived, and called out to him and said, Augustine, it is I. Augustine, it is I. And he responded, turning away from error, yes, but it is not I. He was a new man.

God had changed him. So how do we respond to this? Do we just sit back and hope that the new birth happens to us or to someone else? If it's God's act, then I must be on the sidelines.

How do we respond? Well, look at John 3 again, verse 15. Actually, verse 14. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. New birth is related to the faith by which we have eternal life.

And what is our assurance? Well, our assurance comes in the next verse, verse 16, that you know so well. Because God loved the world in this way. He gave his only son, his one unique son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. This is why the Son of Man had to be lifted up on the cross. He was lifted up so that we might not perish.

So how do we respond? Well, we look away from ourselves. We don't look inside ourselves, we look away to Christ. The message of regeneration is to look to Christ because we are spiritually dirty and dead unless the Holy Spirit mercifully creates within us, by his living word, a clean, new heart that loves God. God doesn't call us to wonder introspectively whether we've been born again. This wasn't a philosophical discussion he was having with Nicodemus. He was leading Nicodemus to faith. And Nicodemus did put his faith in Jesus Christ.

We know that from John 19 because he helped Joseph bury Jesus. He that hath the Son hath life, 1 John 5.12. So, the first response is to believe. Do you believe this? Does your friend who is struggling, who is a professing Christian, does she believe this?

If she does, she will have eternal life. And finally, we'll end this where we began. We need to respond with worship.

Our world asserts that if we have enough education and money and technology and freedom, we will be successful. Jesus says we're dead. So, with Nicodemus and the disciples, we probably should ask, who then, Lord, can be saved? And then revel in his response to the disciples. With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

You can't do this, but you can trust in the God who does. God saves sinners. Let's worship him for that. Would you pray with me? Oh, Lord, when we survey what you have done by giving your very own son to die for us, we're in awe. We pray that you'd keep us there. And we pray if there is any soul in this room today who has not experienced the new birth, that today would be the day of his or her salvation. Oh, Spirit, come, we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. You've been listening to a sermon from the study series, Our Great Salvation, preached by Dr. Eric Newton, seminary professor at Bob Jones University. If you're looking for a regionally accredited Christian liberal arts university, I invite you to consider BJU, which is purposefully designed to inspire a lifelong pursuit of learning, loving, and leading. For more information about Bob Jones University, visit bju.edu or call 800-252-6363. Thanks for listening to our program and join us again tomorrow as we continue the doctrinal series called Our Great Salvation here on The Daily Platform.