You Must Be Born again

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I am pretty sure that I married a mind reader. And I realized this pretty early on in our marriage. There was one day I hollered at her from the other room.

I said, hey, Charla. And she said, they’re in the bottom drawer at the right in the back. I said, thanks.

Wait, what? Because she knew exactly. And what I was looking for and hadn’t asked was right where she said.

I still don’t know how you knew that I was looking for that pair of socks in particular, or any pair of socks, or that I was about to ask you where to find something. But stuff like that happens all the time in our house. Even just recently, there was a situation where I was downstairs in the kitchen, and Madeline was down there too.

Charla was upstairs bathing Abigail. No way she could have heard what was going on in the kitchen. And Madeline says, Daddy, what do I need to do when I’m done sweeping?

And I said, well, let me think. And about that time, my phone buzzes, and I’ve got a message from Charles saying, when Madeline’s done sweeping, she needs to work on her spelling. And I’m going, get out of my head, woman.

She’s a mind reader. And really, I think a lot of it comes from the Lord. She tells the kids, God talks to me.

So if you’re not going to tell me what happened, He will. It seems to work, all right? I’m not going to question it.

It just seems to work. But I want us to look this morning at an instance where Jesus read what was in somebody’s mind. He did this frequently.

And some of those things we’ve looked at on Sunday nights going through the book of Mark, where Jesus saw what was in somebody’s mind and in their heart before they verbalized it. There’s another instance I want look at this morning where Jesus answered a question that a man had not asked yet. I think it’s where he was going with his questioning.

But actually he hadn’t asked any question at all. Jesus knew what was coming and answered the question before it was asked, before any question was asked. And Jesus pointed him in the direction of the truth he didn’t realize he needed.

And so we’re going to be this morning in John chapter 3. If you’d turn there with me in your Bibles, John chapter 3. I wish we had time to go through the whole of this exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus that goes on through verse 21, but I didn’t feel like I had time to do the whole thing justice this morning.

We’re really going to focus in on the first seven verses. So once you’ve turned there, if you’re able to stand without too much difficulty, if you’ll stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. And if you don’t have a Bible this morning or can’t find John chapter 3, It’ll be on the screen for you here as well.

But we’re going to read together from John chapter 3, starting in verse 1. It says, 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.

Jesus answered and said to him, Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Now, if you’re looking at that and saying, wait, did I miss something here? No, you did not miss something here.

Jesus just skipped over the question that he was leading up to and went ahead and answered it. Because if you’re just reading through this, it looks like they’re having two different conversations. Have you ever had that happen?

You’re talking to somebody and you feel like you’re having two different conversations? It’s because Jesus just skipped right ahead and got to the point. He said, most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Verse 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? Jesus answered, most assuredly 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. You may be seated.

And as I said, there’s more to the story. There’s more that goes on from there. I highly encourage you to go and read on.

Later on in this chapter, later on in this conversation, is John 3. 16, probably the most quoted and most memorized verse in all of Scripture, but it means even more in the context of this conversation and what Jesus is talking to Nicodemus about. But this morning, like I said, I want us to focus in on these first seven verses where Jesus is talking about being born again.

in this whole exchange, Jesus anticipates Nicodemus’ question before he’s even asked it. You see Nicodemus kind of beating around the bush and laying the groundwork for the question, and Jesus just rushes right ahead and gives him an answer to the question. And what the point he’s making to Nicodemus in his answer is that our goodness will never be enough to get us into God’s kingdom.

It was true of Nicodemus, it’s true of us. Our goodness will never be enough to get us kingdom. Now to understand where we take this from the text, we need to understand what it’s saying here about who Nicodemus is.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and if you’re not familiar with the Pharisees, they were the strictest of the strict among the Jewish religion at that time. They were the ultra-fundamentalists. They had rules on rules on rules.

It says in verse 1 he was a Pharisee. They were so strict and so religious that they made extra rules to make sure that they didn’t violate God’s law. They would have things like where the Old Testament law says you’re not to work on the Sabbath.

They would get into the nitpicky details of what constituted work, because it wasn’t enough just to not work on the Sabbath. We don’t want to get close to breaking this rule. So we’re going to say, you know, work is anything over carrying this amount of weight and walking this far.

I mean, they had rules, but they also had rules how to get around it. You know, if our rules say you can’t walk this far beyond your house, then we’re going to hang things up that technically make our whole neighborhood one dwelling place where we can walk. It just got to be these arcane rules that were hard to follow.

They were so religious that they made all of these laws to try to ensure they followed the Old Testament law perfectly, at least outwardly. It says also in verse 1, he was a ruler of the Jews. That means he was a member of the Sanhedrin.

So not only is he a Pharisee, not only is he one of these super strict religious types, but he’s a member of the Sanhedrin, which was basically the Supreme Court of Israel. It was their job as a body to ensure that the laws were enforced properly. And so we start to see how concerned he is with goodness and religion and strictness and rules.

And even down further than where we stopped reading in verse 10, Jesus called him the teacher of Israel. Not just a teacher, but the teacher of Israel. He was an expert in the law.

He was somebody who was there to instruct others in how to be good and how to be religious and how to follow the rules. And on top of this, there are details in the gospels that suggest he was probably a wealthy man. He purchased pounds and pounds of spices for Jesus’ burial years later after this.

Now to you and me, that doesn’t mean much, but in their interpretation of the Old Testament law, it was kind of like prosperity teachers today. In their interpretation of the law, if you were wealthy, it must mean you had done something right to earn God’s favor, so they assumed the richer you were, the more righteous you were. Now we know that is very often not the case, right?

but in their understanding of things, because he had lots of stuff, he must be close to God. God must favor him. And so we have this guy that was tied up in the rules, was tied up in being right with God through all these outward ways, and he comes to Jesus.

He comes to Jesus at night, and there’s been a lot of speculation as to why was it at night. Was he embarrassed? Was he that?

My guess, he came to Jesus at night because that’s when it was easier to get an appointment, right? Because Jesus was surrounded by people all throughout the day. That’s my guess.

I could be wrong, but that’s what I assume it to be. He came to Jesus. He asked him a question in verse 2, Rabbi.

And Rabbi means teacher. It means master. All of that is rolled into one meaning.

So he’s acknowledging Jesus here as some kind of authority. He’s acknowledging that Jesus is not a crazy person out there just making stuff up. And he says, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God.

Now the Pharisees would not admit this openly, most of them, but he says we know. We know you’re a teacher sent from God. He says because no one can do the signs.

No one can do the miracles that you do unless God is with him. And so he’s acknowledging what those signs were there to demonstrate, which was Jesus’ authority. Later on we see the Pharisees looking at Jesus’ signs and saying, no, you’re doing that by the power of the devil.

They refused to admit it, but deep down they knew that the signs confirmed who Jesus was and who he represented. And so he comes to Jesus with this idea, you’re a teacher, you’re sent from God, we know God is doing something through you here and we don’t quite understand what it is, but he’s working around to the question, I believe, are you the one that has been sent by God to restore Israel? Are you the Messiah?

Are you the one who’s come to usher in the kingdom? And Jesus responds, if you don’t pick up on that part, Jesus responds seemingly disconnected answer about the kingdom. Because Nicodemus up to this point hasn’t said anything about the kingdom.

But again, it indicates Jesus read Nicodemus’ mind and his heart and he knew what was there. Nicodemus recognized Jesus was a teacher sent by God. He recognized that he worked miracles and signs by the power of God and he wanted to know if Jesus was the Messiah.

And for him to ask that, he’s worried about getting into the kingdom. He’s worried just like the disciples were so many times about his place in the kingdom. Where do I fit here?

because the disciples, even leading up to the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, were arguing about who was going to be the greatest in the kingdom. Everybody’s worried about their position and their place. And so Jesus responds to the question before it’s even asked and told Nicodemus that even with all the religious characteristics he had, even with all the things he had going for him from an outward perspective, all these things that made him look like he was particularly special to God, he could not enter the kingdom as he was.

He said, most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And folks, the reason for that is because of the problem of sin. Sin is the reason why no one enters the kingdom of God without being born again.

We have a sinful nature that we’re born with, and it shows up in sinful behaviors. We have this idea sometimes that we are sinners because we sin. Like that we’re just walking along and we’re good moral people until we do something wrong and then we become sinners.

That is backwards. We are sinners and for that reason we sin. Sin is in our very nature.

And you know this to be true if you’ve ever raised a child. Because I have never sat down and given my children lessons on how to lie. And yet they do it.

Fortunately they’re bad at it. And we can see through it. But I’ve never taught them how to lie.

I’ve never taught them how to take things from one another. I’ve never taught them how to hit one another. I’ve never taught them to say words that they’re not supposed to say.

As a matter of fact, we have a standing rule at our house. I don’t care what you hear on TV because we try to steer them toward good things. But even just being out in public, they’re going to hear things.

I don’t care if you hear it on TV, on the radio, out in public, from a friend at school. It doesn’t matter. If it’s not a word you hear Mama and Daddy say, don’t say it.

Or ask us if you have questions. because we may not say anti-disestablishmentarianism in conversation all the time, but it doesn’t mean it’s a bad word. If you’re in doubt, come ask us, right?

Never taught them how to say bad words. Never taught them how to do any of this. It just comes naturally.

Nobody ever taught me how to get frustrated and say things behind people in traffic. It just comes naturally. It’s the sin nature, and we’re all born with it, and it shows up.

Who we are shows up in the behaviors. It’s not the behaviors making us into that. It’s our nature showing up in our behavior.

And it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a big thing, what we would call a big thing or a little thing. We can get so caught up in talking about sin out in the world and talking about these big things going on in our culture that we forget the sin nature is just as alive and just as ravenous in moral and religious people.

This subject kept coming up this week in our staff devotions in the office. And we talked about some of the things going on in our country. And by the way, I want you to know we pray regularly, not just for our kids and grandkids in the office, but all of your kids and grandkids.

Because we come into work every day hearing stories on the news, hearing stories on the radio about the things that they are being bombarded with, and it doesn’t matter if they’re in public school, private school, home school, the influences are still out there. And the world is waiting to eat our kids alive. We pray for them.

But we started talking about some of these things that are going on in our country. We started talking about the madness, the sexual perversion, the mutilation of children. We started talking about some of these things, and we cannot believe how the sin nature is running wild in our country.

But as we talked about it, it began to dawn on us, the sin nature is just as evident in my quiet pride as it is in anything that’s out loud going on in the streets. See, we all have a sin nature, and it doesn’t matter if it shows up, if it manifests in a socially respectable way, or the kind of thing people used to whisper about behind closed doors. It doesn’t matter what the manifestation is.

It all points to whether it’s me getting angry with somebody that I have no business getting angry with, or it’s one of the things that we look at in confusion that’s on the national stage right now. It’s all a manifestation of this sin nature that lives within all of us. And so this is why we really can’t say, well, just be good and be moral and be religious.

I try to behave myself. I try to live a godly life. I’ve never drank.

I’ve never smoked. I’ve never cheated on my wife, never cheated on my taxes. You know, I try to do all the stuff you’re supposed to do.

But it doesn’t change the fact that there’s a sinful nature right here that left to itself will relish in being in rebellion against God. And that’s what has to change. We don’t change that by just being religious.

And as long as that’s there, we’re not going to get into the kingdom. These behaviors, all the things we do wrong, whether they’re big things or little things from a human perspective, they’re just a reflection of the sinful nature within all of us that exalts itself against God. And it’s not something we get out of simply by modifying our behavior.

Jesus says in verse 7, you must be born again. I didn’t say that. Our church didn’t get together and come up with that as a slogan.

That’s what Jesus said. You must be born again. If you want to see the kingdom of God, you must be born again.

And what he means by that is that we require a whole new life. We require being changed from the inside out. These words that he uses in verses 3 and 7 when he says born again.

The word there translated as born in Greek means born. The word anathan, which we see translated as again, it has a double meaning. There are multiple meanings tied up in this word anathan.

It does mean again, but it also means from above. It’s a combination of factors going on here. And for Jesus to say you need this to happen, it clearly refers to a birth because anybody he’s talking to has already been born.

So he’s not just saying you need to be born. He is saying there’s a second birth that takes place here after our physical birth. But Nicodemus’s question about returning to the womb in verse 4, I think is meant to say, wait a minute, it is not possible to climb back into the womb and be born physically all over again.

And so that tells me that Nicodemus is hung up on this idea of the second birth, but he’s missed the double meaning in the phrase, in the word anathom that means born from above. Jesus is not just talking about a second birth, although we do need a second birth, but he’s pointing to the spiritual nature of this birth, that it’s something that only God can do in us, which is borne out in verse 10 by the fact that Jesus says Nicodemus doesn’t understand. He says, are you the teacher of Israel and you don’t understand these things?

He missed the main point of Jesus’ message that we need life from God in order to make it to the kingdom. We don’t get there by being religious. And when we understand this, the following verses become clearer.

These are some of the most discussed and debated verses in all of Scripture. They’re verses that I’ve wrestled with, but I think if we understand that he’s talking about a new birth from above, it clarifies some of what comes next. There’s been a lot of debate in particular over what Jesus meant by water and the Spirit in verse 5.

Does it mean John’s baptism as a sign of repentance? I mean, they were doing that at that point, and certainly repentance goes hand in hand with the new birth, so is that what he means by the water? Is it foreshadowing Christian baptism, what we do up here?

That had not happened yet. Nicodemus likely wouldn’t have understood that, but could that be it? Is it a reference to a physical birth, being born of water?

Because after all, we say that somebody’s water has broken. That would be a good explanation, but they didn’t use that phrasing back then. To understand what difficult passages in Scripture mean, the best thing we can do is go try to put ourselves in their shoes as much as possible.

The person who’s speaking and the person who’s listening. What was their frame of reference and what would they understand? And realize that dealing with the teacher of Israel and the one who inspired Scripture, we’re dealing with two people here who knew the Old Testament inside and out.

And so that would be their common frame of reference. We understand this, that sometimes we can have a conversation with one person that a third person on the outside of the conversation doesn’t understand. I thought about this this morning.

If I were to sing, Kitty Rangers, my wife would say, because we hear the same kids show all day long. We walk around singing it without realizing it. Our kids watch this show about cats.

But if one of y’all heard me sing Kitty Rangers, you’d just think I’d lost my mind, right? Either that or you’d say he has children, which is largely the same thing. If I said to you, do you see any buildings?

Most of you would think, yeah, right, all around us. But Benjamin, if I ask you, do you see any buildings? Who am I talking about?

Charlie. When we were in the panhandle last year and there’s nothing around, you can’t see anything for miles except wheat. And he kept asking, are we at our hotel yet?

And finally I said, do you see any buildings? And that became an in-joke from our trip. See, we have these common frames of reference that don’t necessarily make sense to the outside if you don’t know them.

And so if we’re looking at their conversation through our lens and not taking into account what they had in common, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But they both would have been familiar with Ezekiel 36. With Ezekiel 36, where God was talking to the nation of Israel through the prophet Ezekiel about bringing new life to the nation of Israel.

New spiritual life from above to the nation of Israel. And here’s what God wrote through the prophet Ezekiel. He said, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean.

I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will keep my judgments and do them. This was a prophecy to the nation of Israel that the only way they were ever going to be right with him was for him to make it happen. And so he talks about the cleansing of water.

I will cleanse you like I am giving you a bath, a spiritual bath. I will put a new spirit in you that you can’t get on your own. I have to put it into you.

And so that leads me to believe with them having that common frame of reference, that leads me to believe that when Jesus says, you must be born again by the spirit and water, or water in the spirit, that he’s referring to a cleansing and a new life that only God could provide. That he’s pointing to a frame of reference that Nicodemus would have been familiar with. Because Nicodemus here is looking for the kingdom of God and how do I get in?

And he’s basing this on where he stands in the nation of Israel. And Jesus points him back to the fact that the nation of Israel does not inherit the promises of God until God changes them from the inside out with this new life from above. And so the message to him is the same.

Just like Israel, you will not inherit the promises of God until you’re given new life from above. They needed renewal. So to this leader of Israel, this man who was counting on his lineage, he was counting on his religion, his outward righteousness to make him right with God, Jesus’ message was telling him that in order to inherit the promises of God, he needed a spiritual cleansing and renewal that only God could provide. The water and spirit, they’re Old Testament references that draw our attention to the fact that only God is the one who could give us new life.

It’s not a recipe for him saying, follow these steps and you’ll have new life. It’s a reminder from the Old Testament that only God can provide the new life that we need. And this is echoed then in the next verse, in verse 6, when he says, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.

He’s saying earthly life can only create more earthly life. If you want spiritual life, it has to come from the source of spiritual life, which is God himself. And so Jesus here made it clear to Nicodemus that his righteousness, his background, his good behavior, they were not going to be enough to get him to God.

And to us today, our religiousness, our background, our good behavior, our lineage, whatever it is, they are not going to be enough to make us right with God. We need new life. And so on that basis, he tells him in verse 7 again, do not marvel.

Don’t be amazed when I tell you you must be born again. Nicodemus already should have been familiar with this idea of God granting new spiritual life. So he said, this is not coming out of nowhere.

Don’t be amazed. You shouldn’t be shocked at me telling you this. This is what God has been saying all along.

That yes, the rules are there, they’re there as guidelines for the nation of Israel, but what you really need is the new spiritual life that only God could provide. And new life is something God creates in us when we believe in Jesus. You may be thinking this morning, okay, new life, all well and good.

How do I get there. What do I have to do? If we read on, and I encourage you to read on later, but as we read on to verses 14 through 18, you know what, let’s go ahead and read it real quick.

Verses 14 through 18, Jesus said, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. 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. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

He who believes in Him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. What is it that Jesus identifies as making the difference between condemned and eternal life? There’s one word, starts with a B, believe.

He says, believe in Me, and you’ll have eternal life. Now, I know that there are Bible-believing Christians on both sides who disagree over the order of this. Our Reformed brothers would say that God creates new life in you so that you can believe.

I believe God calls us to believe and places new life in us. But what we agree on is the most important thing here that we must have faith, that faith and new life go hand in hand. You cannot separate them.

Faith in Jesus Christ, faith in who He is, faith in what He’s done for us, it goes hand in hand with new life and the two cannot be separated. We must have faith in Jesus Christ. We must have new life that only he can give in order to inherit the promises of God. And we will not inherit those promises without faith in him.

It doesn’t matter how good you’ve been. I look around this room, I see some really good people as far as I know, unless anybody’s hiding anything from me. You know what?

It doesn’t matter how good you are. I bet you’re probably not as good as Nicodemus, especially following the Old Testament law. He not only memorized it, but tried to do it.

And Jesus looked at even him and said, you must be born again. So it doesn’t matter how good you are, how many years you’ve been in church, how religious you’ve tried to be. He says you must be born again.

And by the way, on the flip side of that, it doesn’t matter how bad you’ve been in life, because it’s not your goodness that’s going to get you into the kingdom anyway. He says you must be born again. And so Jesus calls us to believe in him.

Calls us to believe in him and to receive that new life that only God can provide. And when I say believe in him, I don’t mean just that he exists. You can say, well, I believe Jesus is real. Good job.

So does Satan, right? I’m sorry, that sounded meaner than I intended it to. But it’s true.

James talks about even the demons know and tremble. They believe He’s real. That’s not enough. It’s this belief that He is the promised Savior.

It’s this belief that you and I are separated from God because we are sinners, that we can’t come to Him on our own through our goodness, our religiousness. It’s just never going to be enough to undo the wrong we’ve done that has separated us from Him. It’s this belief that Jesus died to pay for our sins and He paid for them in full and rose again to prove it.

And it’s that the only plea we have with the Father is Jesus died for me. Why should I let you into heaven? Why should I let you into the kingdom?

Why should I forgive you? Because Jesus, putting our entire trust and weight in Him and what He did. And this morning, if you recognize that you’ve never been born again, if you recognize that you are separated from God because of your sin, that that relationship is not there or it’s not right, you know that you are not where you need to be with God.

Jesus calls you to believe, to trust in him as your one and only Savior. It’s as simple as acknowledging to God what I just said, that Jesus died to pay for our sins in full and is the only way for us to be right with God. And this morning, if you understand that, you can talk with the Lord.

You can acknowledge that you understand and believe that, and you can ask him to forgive you because of what Jesus did. And he will. And you’ll have new life in Christ.