BECOMING: The Truth - Change is Required

This podcast is the Ministry of Grankway Baptist Church.

For more information on our church, please visit Grandparkway.org.

You guys can of course be seated.

My name is Lance Williams.

I'm one of the pastors on staff here at Grway.

As you guys know, Neil is in Costa Rica.

And so they get him today, and you all get me, which is, I think, is a good exchange for the people of Costa Rica and the people of Grand Parkway.

So glad you guys are here today.

We start a new series.

We were supposed to start it last week, but Neil had a fit, and so we pushed it back just a week.

But we are starting our new series called Becoming.

Becoming.

It's really a series on spiritual formation, which is why I get to do this today.

And so, really, what are we becoming?

Well, the answer to that is we're becoming people, we should be becoming people that are more and more like Jesus as we progress.

And so there's basically four weeks to it.

We'll start today with basically this one sweeping topic, and that is this.

The truth is that change is required.

Now, I just said a couple different words in here, maybe bad words in church, required being one of them.

When we say the word required in church, it's like, you know, all of a sudden things are freaking out and the earth is off-kilter and we don't know what to do with ourselves because this is supposed to be a place of freedom and not necessarily requirement, but change.

There's one thing the Bible continues to tell us is that the God who is unchangeable, immutable, he doesn't change at all.

The one thing that he requires of humanity is change.

That's an interesting uh paradigm for sure.

But let me just ask you this.

We're gonna be in the book of John, chapter three, and the first five verses of that chapter.

If you don't have your Bible today, uh we are gonna be on page 887 of the Bible at the end of your row.

We will be using the Bible today, so ask your neighbor to pass it on down.

Passages will come up on the screen, but it'd be great uh if you just got to know uh your Bible, God's word, so that'd be a great thing.

But again, the truth is that change is required.

And as you guys turn there, let me ask you a question.

What do you think of when you hear the phrase born again?

What do you think of when you hear the phrase born again?

For some of us, it it's it's something that is positive.

Uh for more cynical people like myself, uh, I think of like the 700 Club.

Uh I think of uh of loons that have misused the term born again.

Uh I think uh of maybe just someone who's burned me in the past that oh, I'm a born again.

Uh and it's kind of getting thrown out here and there.

And maybe that you think of Billy Graham.

That was the other thought.

My first thought, but maybe down the road.

Maybe you think you Billy Graham.

I remember the first time I saw a Billy Graham crusade on TV.

I never went to one, but I wasn't a believer uh from when he was doing most of those, uh, much less alive.

But I remember seeing one on TV, and he I think he was in Texas Stadium, and he was in the middle of the football field, and it was completely empty on the field, and I thought, that is the strangest thing ever.

Why are there no people on the field?

They're all in the stands.

What is going on?

Well, then he started to give the invitation of being born again and the field filled up with people as they came and responded to the call of God to be a changed people.

What do you think of when you hear the term born again?

Pastor and author.

He actually writes a lot for the Gospel Coalition these days.

Pastor and author Kent Hughes says this about the term born again and how our culture has hijacked it, a Christian culture as well as our American culture.

He says, born again has been pirated, emptied of its meaning, dragged through the gutter, and then given us back to us, minus its power.

When you go home today, and maybe you say to your neighbor, I'm a born-again Christian, which is really a redundant term, I'm born again.

Uh some people may cringe.

In fact, a recent poll in our nation, not necessarily the Houston or Richmond or Sugarland or the Bible Belt, but in our nation says that 75% of your neighbors would rather not have somebody next to them who calls themselves born again.

A laugh from the back, but an ouch to the rest of us.

75% say that they'd rather not have a neighbor who's born again.

Why?

What happened?

What in the world has gone wrong?

How did it get hijacked, pirated, and then handed back to us empty and void of its power?

What has gone wrong?

We're here today to answer that question.

It's a question that Jesus answered in the third book of John.

And as we turn our Bibles, that's where we're headed today.

Uh we only have basically two points to our sermon, so you can start celebrating now.

Uh but the bit the the the reality is this is that being born again, and that term born again, we're gonna try and redeem it a bit back to its original uh uh status here of what the Bible declares of being born again.

I don't know if you can overemphasize what it means.

I'm gonna try today, but I'm not really sure if you can over-emphasize the reality and the absolute importance of this term for our lives today.

Again, we'll be in John chapter 3, and I'm just gonna read the first five verses, and then we'll jump off from there into another book of the Bible for sure.

John 3 · chapter mention

But John chapter 3, let me just say this.

John 3 · chapter mention

Our first point is this uh it's really easy.

Change begins with curiosity.

If change is required, how does it start?

Change begins with curiosity.

Let's read a famous story of a guy named Nicodemus as he approaches Jesus.

Uh verse 1 of chapter 3 of the book of John.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, and 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 things that you do unless God is with him.

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

And Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old?

How can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

And Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

And I just wanted to stop right there before we got too carried away with the rest of John 3, which is a great chapter.

Uh, the most famous probably verse, uh, at least in our nation, if not the world, John 3.16 would follow all of that.

But Jesus meets Nicodemus with the truth.

Jesus meets Nicodemus's curiosity with the truth.

That's a great and unbelievably comforting reality.

But let's learn a little bit about this guy named Nicodemus.

I think we know him, but just in case we uh we don't, let me just introduce him to everybody.

He was a Pharisee, uh, which is part of the religious elite.

If you don't know anything about Pharisees, I learned some new things as I studied this week.

Uh Pharisees, there was there was never more than 6,000 at any given time.

That may seem like a lot, but that's really an elite group of men that were really charged to guard the Ten Commandments.

That was one of their main duties was to charge the Ten Commandments, to guard the Ten Commandments.

They were, of course, legalistic.

Uh they took vows to keep the Ten Commandments, and so what they did was that they had the Ten Commandments, and then they had the other 600 or so laws around the Ten Commandments, and then they created uh uh uh uh commentaries and rules so that they would not break even those laws.

And then they had uh, again, a commentary on that rule.

So they're like three or four levels out from the Ten Commandments.

Did they create all these rules which all of a sudden years go by and they're impossible to keep, and they start demanding them of everyone, and that was the culture in which Jesus walked into.

So they were certainly legalistic, they were law-centered, but they were very, very moral.

I think we have a bad view of what really the culture would have looked at with the Pharisees before Jesus gets on the scene.

The culture is looking up to these guys.

They have given up a lot, they have sacrificed much to attain the position that they're in.

Now they abused it, of course, and that's what Jesus comes to point out.

And they end up, because he points it out, they end up killing him for it.

But these Pharisees, we know that Nicodemus was a member of the Sanhedrin, which is kind of like the Supreme Court, the Jewish Supreme Court.

Uh, but these Pharisees would train at a very early age.

They were set apart at a very early age, and one of the first things that was required of them was to memorize the Torah.

Now, the Torah is the first five books of the Bible.

Let me just bring this into our minds.

I'm not sure who if anybody's memorized a piece of scripture this week.

Uh, if I was to ask for hands, there may be a smattering of scripture memorizers here this week.

But let me just kind of paint our get our minds around what these guys were required to memorize at a very early age.

Number one, Genesis has 50 chapters.

That's a good start.

50 chapters.

Exodus, 34 chapters, Leviticus, 27 chapters, number Numbers, 35 chapters, Deuteronomy, 34 chapters.

All that equates to 5,852 verses.

Hello.

Yauza.

Wow, almost 6,000 verses they had memorized in Hebrew.

Get your mind around that.

Of course, that was their native tongue, but nonetheless.

Safe to say though that Nicodemus was familiar with the law, familiar with the Old Testament.

In fact, what I think was going on in his head is he had Deuteronomy 18 in his head going, all right, Moses said that there was going to be a prophet, and that this prophet would be raised up from among his brothers.

And Moses said in Deuteronomy 18, you must listen to him.

And so I think Nicodemus is going to Jesus and trying to figure out, all right, let me just feel this out here.

Let's see how this goes, and we'll just see what happens.

Nicodemus goes to Jesus at night.

Very interesting in the book of John and in the writings of John, that what night truly represents, it doesn't just mean that he was there and it was dark and it was nighttime, although that certainly is what it means.

He didn't want to be seen by his Pharisee buddies.

So he goes at night, he gets a captive audience with Jesus, who I'm sure is probably left alone by this time.

That's all true, but also what is true if we continue to follow the theme of darkness through the book of John is that Nicodemus is probably not a believer at this time.

I would say not even just probably.

He's not a believer at this time.

We know that because later on in the book of John, in the upper room, when Jesus is describing the one who will betray him, Judas, and he's describing him to his to his disciples and his friends, and he looks over at Judas and he says, Hey, friend, go do what you need to go do.

Make it quick.

And then John would say right there in John 13, and then it was night.

Great clues as to the rhetorical devices that John is using.

Nicodemus goes to him at night, but it also means that he is not a believer.

And what I love about Nicodemus is that uh he thinks he's kind of got it together.

He doesn't even ask a question of Jesus in verse 2.

He doesn't say, he doesn't ask a question.

He says, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these things that you do unless God is with him.

Okay, he's not going to him, hey, I'm blind, I need to see.

He's not going to him, hey, I'm I'm I've got all kinds of diseases, my kid is dead, can you come help?

He's saying, I think you're a good man.

You must be from God.

What is he saying?

He's using his own standard of righteousness and kind of trying to measure up with Jesus.

Hey, I after all, Nicodemus has got it all down.

He is a Pharisee, he's a member of the Sanhedrin, he hadn't broken the Ten Commandments in probably 10, 15, 20 years.

And he approaches Jesus and he says, I think you're from God.

Great, Jesus says.

Good start.

But he responds in an unbelievably clarifying manner.

But let me just say this.

When we seek Jesus with heartfelt curiosity, and Nicodemus doesn't reveal his curiosity with his words, he reveals it with his presence.

And he shows up to Jesus at night, risking his response, or risking his uh his, oh, what's the word I'm looking for?

Reputation.

There it is.

Risking his reputation and going to Jesus.

Unbelievable.

And Jesus meets that heartfelt curiosity with the truth.

Jesus says that you must be born again.

And don't miss in verse 3, he says, Jesus answered him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Truly, truly.

In an age and in a day where everyone is trying to have a claim on the truth.

Jesus, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone must be born again.

What an unbelievable statement.

For us Christians, this is a great encouragement because everybody wants, they're just they're vying for the truth or trying to find the truth.

And we Christians, we know the truth personally.

He is the truth.

He's not just speaking true things, he is the truth.

We have an unbelievable encouragement in that as believers.

I love that message.

And he just says to Nicodemus, hey, your standard of morality is not good enough.

You may be respected in the community here, Nicodemus, but you can't stand on your own righteousness, on your own acts.

You can't approach Jesus going, look at how good I am.

And that's basically what Nicodemus is doing.

And Jesus says, Hey, good try.

Everyone who wants to see the kingdom of God must be born again.

That word born again is Gena'o in the Greek, G-E-N-N-A-O.

And as we kind of redeem and go back to what it originally meant, born again, it literally means this to be fathered again.

Or to be fathered from above, to be born again.

That's how we translate it.

That's kind of the literal translation to be fathered again, to be fathered from above, to be born again.

And it's a holistic change in the life of humans when you meet Jesus.

When you and I were born, we know we were born, right?

How do we know we were born?

Because we're alive.

I know it's crazy.

But you and I, when we were born, we didn't have anything to do with that process.

Our moms and our dads conceived us and we were alive.

And then we were birthed and we were alive.

And we look back now and we go, okay, I'm still alive.

And it kind of gets just pedantic and boring after a while, but this is life and we're alive.

But Jesus goes back to this just very simple analogy.

And he says, Hey, this is the truth.

You have got to change at your very core.

When you and I were born, we changed something in us happened.

We became alive.

We were not alive, we were not existing, and all of a sudden we were made and we were here.

And it was holistic.

There's not one part of you that wasn't born that day.

You look back at your birthday, you don't remember it.

But you know you were born because you were here, and all of you were born.

I'm kind of beating this horse a little bit because I think it's really important for us to understand this.

We became alive, and the same thing happened for all of us who were born again.

We can look back on that because we have this life to look back on and know.

All right, I may not have a date in mind, but if I do have a season where I can look back and go, that's when new birth happened.

That's when my nature changed.

And that's what Jesus is telling to Nicodemus.

Hey, your very nature has got to change.

You can't depend on yourself.

You've got to be born again.

Believe in me.

And that's what he'll continue to tell us in John 3.

So simple, and yet Nicodemus uh really has an issue with what he says.

But before we get there, let me just clarify there's no such thing as a Christian who's not born again.

Uh I heard recently of a story of a friend of the family, and well, the reason why uh she broke up with her boyfriend was because, well, he was a Christian, but he wasn't just a he just wasn't a born-again Christian.

And I just kind of walked away from that, shaking my head, going, oh, what church does she go to?

I just want to call somebody.

Because there's no such thing as a Christian who's not born again.

You're either born again or you're not.

It's not like some extra level, some next level of Christianity that, oh, well, you're a Christian, but you don't really do anything, you don't really live it.

Uh but oh, that there over there, that's a born-again Christian.

No, it's everyone who calls themselves a believer.

That's what Jesus is saying.

Anybody who wants to see the kingdom of God will be born again.

You'll be fathered again, you'll be changed at your very core.

And this is echoed all throughout the New Testament.

2 Corinthians 5, 17 will come up on your screen.

Paul writes about it, and he says this therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation, and the old has passed away, and behold, the new has come.

All throughout the New Testament.

These are some changes at your core.

I listed them out on the screen.

These are some of the things that the Bible tells you who you are in Christ.

If Christ lives in you, if he's changed your entire life, you've become born again, not standing on your own works and acts or maybe your own even linealogy.

Oh, well, my dad was a pastor, and so I grew up in the church and no.

Some changes at your core.

You change from sinner to saint.

There's not one time in the New Testament that he says, Hey, sinners, listen up.

Instead, when the author of a New Testament book is writing, he says, To the saints in the region of Galatia.

You've changed from being an enemy of God to being a friend of God.

Galatians would tell us that you have changed from being a slave to becoming a son or a daughter.

Ephesians 2 would say you've crossed over from death to life.

It would also say that you have gone from deserving God's wrath to receiving God's mercy.

The end of John 3 would say those who live in the darkness love the darkness, and you've you've gone from that to loving and living in the light.

You've also gone from being slaves to sin.

The only thing you could do was sin, no matter how looked it good to your fellow man, it was sin.

You've been slaves to sin, and now you're slaves to Christ.

What is in your new nature is that you have the ability to please God, to become obedient.

These are the changes at your very nature.

And there's more examples than this.

There are way more than that in the New Testament.

But here's the reality, and it's compelling.

I give you all those because it's absolutely compelling.

You can't say you're a believer and still live in the darkness and love the darkness and still claim to be blind.

Uh I went to uh the butterfly museum yesterday with uh my wife and two girls and and uh and Nana, their uh Melissa's mom, and we went and we were just kind of hanging out.

We go to the butterfly museum.

If you've never been, uh great little activity to do with the kids.

Uh it was packed yesterday.

Uh, and it's like a rainforest in that thing, and so you're hot and sweaty, there's people everywhere.

Uh, but it's still a good idea.

Uh, I still recommend it.

But we go and we're getting down there and we kind of pay our money and we go to the to the all the way to the back of the museum.

We go down, we're, you know, walking down the stairs, and we get to the bottom, we just kind of look it up and waiting for butterflies to land on us like that's magically gonna happen.

Uh and and they don't, and Reese's out there squatting butterflies and and and you know, just creating a chaos because that's what she does, uh, because she's my kid, that's just what happens.

Uh and so we're at the butterfly museum, and I just thought I was at the bottom, and I was just looked at Melissa and I go, could you imagine coming to the butterfly museum and you paid your good money and you walk in and there's nothing but caterpillars?

And you go, hey, this is a butterfly museum, and there's caterpillars.

And they go, No, they're butterflies.

No, see?

They're butterflies.

And you go, okay, no, they're caterpillars.

Actually, Brees just got uh a little stages of a butterfly's life: egg, larvae, which is apparently a caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly.

We lost the caterpillar within five minutes yesterday, but this is how I realized this.

Yeah, okay, technically still a butterfly, but a caterpillar.

Not yet.

That's kind of how we live life sometimes.

Yeah, I'm a butterfly.

And then you go back and you go, but man, being a caterpillar is so much better.

I get to crawl on the ground, eat dirt.

Who wouldn't want that?

But instead you've been given, we've been given if we've been born again and been changed at our at our very core.

We cross over from death to life, from crawling to flying, from slavery to freedom.

We get this new life, and all of a sudden we've got these wings and we still want to crawl.

I don't know, I just my Saturday at the butterfly museum started to talk about Melissa with it.

She goes, Are you just talking thinking about tomorrow?

I was.

Like, ah, yes, I'm thinking about tomorrow.

But I just thought about it.

Isn't that what we make born again sometimes?

We're butterflies, we've been set free from all those things we just talked about.

And yet we want to crawl.

Instead of flying around and taking nectar from flowers, we'd rather go and do whatever caterpillars do.

And then Galatians 6 says this about being a new creation because we can stand before God and say, Well, wasn't I good enough?

And he'll say, No.

Well, didn't I do all these things for you?

And he'll say, No, I never knew you.

Galatians 6, about verse 15, basically just says, hey, circumcision doesn't matter, uncircumcision doesn't matter.

Basically, you being Jewish doesn't matter, you being a Gentile doesn't matter.

You and your acts of righteousness and the law, you and your crazy life, it doesn't matter either.

What matters is a new creation.

What matters is being born again.

What matters is that you have had your fundamental core, your heart, changed by God.

The analogy he uses is that we're born.

And Nicodemus is a literal man.

He answers in verse 4 and he says, How am I going to climb into my mother's womb again?

How does that work?

And are you really sure you want me to go home and tell my mom that because she's going to freak out, and then you lost converts, and this is going to be a big problem, Jesus.

But he's literal, he can't get it through his brain, and he just says, How am I going to do that?

Can a man go back?

I mean, can you go back into a womb?

No.

What are you talking about, Jesus?

He just reiterates with the truth.

Verse 5.

Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

Now much has been said about this verse.

A lot of people will say that the water is your natural birth and the spirit is your spiritual birth.

That's a certainly legitimate translation.

I think, though, within what Jesus is saying, he's talking to a Pharisee who should have and would have known the Old Testament very well.

And I think he's referring back to a passage in Ezekiel.

I just wanted to read that for you.

If you've got your Bible, you can turn to Ezekiel 36.

Great passage to highlight, underline in your Bible.

Unbelievable comfort in Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 25.

Ezekiel 36:25

He says this, this is why I think the water, not necessarily your natural birth.

Some seem to say that this is about baptism.

I think it's just God cleansing you.

You've got to be cleansed, Nicodemus.

You've got to be cleansed.

Ezekiel 36, 25, it'll come up on the screen.

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from your idols I will cleanse you.

A lot of cleansing going on.

And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit.

I will put 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.

And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Change is required.

And that change looks like having a new heart.

Have you just contemplated on stone lately?

No?

Yes?

Maybe if you're a geologist or an engineer or you work in the oil field, you've just you've thought about stone or rock a lot.

I don't.

I was just thinking about it over the weekend, just kind of going, man, you know, stone, they don't, it doesn't move.

The only thing that you can do to move a rock is to break it and to chisel into the side of a mountain.

It doesn't move.

It's inadamant.

It doesn't live.

There's probably some mold on it because it's stationary.

That's the heart of a non-believer.

That's the heart of those who rely upon themselves who should be in, but no, they're not because they're relying on themselves.

They've not yet surrendered their life.

Stationary, there's no change, there's nothing in, there's nothing out.

And then God says, I'll take that, and that'll be mine, and I'll do away with that, just like we read in Psalm 103.

And then I'm going to give you something absolutely new.

One of flesh, one that beats, one that can take in blood and take and then push blood out.

One that can take in life and then push life out.

One that actually moves and is biologically alive.

It's worthy of shaping.

It's malleable and moldable.

And just like Jeremiah and just like Paul say, the heart is one that just gets molded together by a potter, and his name is God.

Curiosity is met by truth, and that leads to change.

Being born again, it isn't optional, isn't it?

Just this second level of Christianity.

It's for everyone who wants to see the kingdom.

It's for everyone.

Second point is this that being born of God, and this is going to sound very corporate, but being born of God produces results.

Being born of God, there are certain things that happen.

When this constitutional fundamental heart change happens, and you get a new heart, things change and produce results.

And those results, if we were just to look at the book of 1 John, and that's what we're going to do, just kind of peek in on the book of 1 John, written by the same guy that wrote John.

We're just going to peek in a little bit and say, okay, what is being born of God produce?

What kind of results are there in this life?

What should a born-again life look like?

Because sometimes that can be really complicated, and God's word just simplifies it for all of us.

And let me just say this before we go down the list of five things that's going to happen, it's not a matter of you just don't sin anymore.

When you become born again, you don't just quit sinning, because that's going to be one of the things.

In fact, because 1 John 1.8, I think says, if we don't, if we say we don't sin, well then we're liars.

So this is not about just never ever sinning again.

This is about changing, and that's kind of an event in your life, and then after that, your life looks completely different than before.

And so here are the results of everyone who's been reborn, rebirthed, refathered for everyone who calls himself Christian.

The first one is this in 1 John 2, 29.

And it says this.

It'll come up on the screen.

He says, and if you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of God.

Pretty simple.

You do the right thing.

You do the right thing.

You have this appetite to do what God says to do.

No longer are God's commands burdensome, but now they're your delight.

You do what's right.

Once you meet Jesus and He rebirths you, you start to love Him.

You start to pursue holiness and run away from sin and run away from the world.

You start to obey and you quit rebelling.

You start to submit to His laws and His commands, and that's joyful.

Your nature changes, your desires change.

When your desires change, your actions change.

And when you change the way you live, you look back five weeks ago, five years ago, 30 years ago, and you go, whoo! I don't know what God was doing then, but I'm glad he did it.

Because I was a mess.

And life looks so much differently.

When God changes us, he just changes us from the inside out.

The second thing is this you won't continue sinning.

You will not have a continual habit of sin.

1 John 3, 9 and 10 say this 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.

And by this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil.

Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

Don't you love how black and white the Bible is?

Truly.

In a gray society, in a gray age, the Bible is black and white.

You won't continue to habitually sin.

And as I've talked with people over the years, a lot of people struggle with that.

What do you mean?

What does that mean?

I won't sin anymore.

I think the NIV says you won't sin anymore.

What it means is that when you look at your life and you could characterize your life, would you characterize your life as darkness or light?

And to bring comfort, I just 51% of the time, darkness or light.

Matter of fact, I had a couple of different friends recently who were just processing through this whole thing of being born again.

And I just say, okay, I'm just trying to figure out where you are.

Because I think our hearts deceive us.

I know our hearts deceive us.

The Bible says it.

So let's try and examine ourselves.

Let's try and figure out where we are.

One friend who I just keep asking, okay, are you, when you look at your life, darkness or light?

Darkness.

Okay, when you look at your life, would you say that you you really love obeying God?

Or is it kind of one of those things that you're just like, eh, I don't really want to do it?

It's kind of like the second part.

All right?

We're two for two on not a born-again believing Christian, not a biblical born-again Christian.

And then I ask the final question, so would you say that you're a non-believer?

Well, no, I would never say that.

I mean, I no.

But your life would say otherwise.

And then I got another friend who's processing through all this, and I ask him the same questions.

Oh, I think it's darkness.

It doesn't match up with the Bible.

No, I mean, I'd I'd say I'm not really excited about, you know, obeying God.

I'd say I'm not really, yeah, there's no fruit in me.

Would you say you're an unbeliever?

I'd say I was an unbeliever.

What do I do?

You surrender.

You quit trying like Nicodemus.

And you just approach him and you say, Ah, you're from God.

Take it from here, Jesus.

I got nothing.

And he says, You gotta be born again.

You have got to experience a life of changing revelation from God.

And when that happens, you won't continue sinning.

And that may be too hard for us to hear.

That our experience all of a sudden doesn't match up with what God is saying a changed person looks like.

That you won't continually and habitually sin.

Because I know that some of us, we have a sin.

I mean, I taught a whole class on it, and I don't know if I ever had more people in that class than any other.

It was called respectable sins.

And I was like, man, sin is attractive.

What is the deal up in here?

There's a lot of people in there.

But some usually we justify sin in one way or the other.

Mine would be anger or frustration.

Just get to the butterfly museum and hang on.

I was watching something last night by Jim Gaffkin.

He said, You remember when you were a kid?

And you always wondered why your dad was so angry on vacation.

And then you grow up and you go, Oh, yeah, that's right.

Now I know why.

I mean, anger for me, I mean frustration for me, sure, that's my sin.

I'm hoping, I'm praying.

Oh, Lord, let me be submitted to you and surrender to you.

Change me.

I'm gonna do everything I can, but change me.

And some of it may be less subtle than that.

Maybe it's a sexual sin that keeps you kind of just doubting what's going on.

Maybe it's it's not a sexual sin.

Maybe you just can't quit stealing.

Can't quit lying.

Can't quit gossiping.

And all of a sudden your experience kind of goes, okay, I'm not really lining up with born again.

Uh okay, I'm gonna go back to that 51% part.

Maybe I'll just go 50.1% part, and we're good.

The third one is you'll love others as God loves.

And I'll just be real vulnerable in this point because I don't have this one down.

1 John 4 7 says this, beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

If you love like God loves, that's how you know that you've been born again.

Don't do this well every day.

I was uh telling my class this a couple weeks ago.

I I was filling up my my uh my car with gas a couple weeks ago over at Kroger.

Uh you get three cents off.

Who wouldn't want three cents off?

So I'm down.

Uh so I go to Kroger and I'm filling up, and we're kind of sitting there and I'm you know daydreaming about nothing, and the lady behind me uh gets done filling up, and then she gets on her phone and she kind of is you know going slowly to her driver's side door, and she gets in, and I notice she got her gas cap off.

And there's all of a sudden a discussion in me.

What should I do about this?

Because the Bible clearly says that you will love others, you will do what is right, you won't continually or habitually sin.

There are more coming, and I just kept thinking, well, what should I do about this?

You know, she's on her phone.

It's really her fault that she didn't replace her gas cap.

So we're good.

We're good.

We're just gonna go ahead and be absolved of that and not have any responsibility there.

And yes, that was me two weeks ago, and I stand before you today preaching.

That's in my heart, that's in me.

That's all in me.

Is and then I felt like the Lord just as I processed through that, going, why was that such a big deal?

Why couldn't I just go over there and say, excuse me, I'm not sure if you realize you left your gas cap off.

Would you like me to put it back on there for you?

Super easy.

Take me like 10 seconds, five steps in ten seconds of my life.

Apparently it was a life-changing decision, I couldn't do it.

And I just felt like the Lord just said, Hey, are you really that desperate to be one up on somebody?

Yeah, apparently.

My bad.

I got you.

So if you if you fill up around me, be sure I'm gonna be looking for your gas tank.

But we love.

We would love as God loves.

The fourth one is this you will obey God in faith and overcome the world.

You will obey God in faith and overcome the world.

1 John 1, uh excuse me, 1 John 5, 1 to 4 say this.

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.

And everyone who loves the Father, who uh loves the Father, loves whoever has been born of him.

By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments.

For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world.

And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith.

Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

That's why we can sing so confidently.

You have overcome the world, nothing can come against you, you're victorious, you always win.

No matter what, when we obey God and we do that out of faith, that is the victory over the world.

And you know that's happening because you're being obedient.

And the temptations and the things that come against you all of a sudden fall away and don't have any power because you're being obedient.

And for those of us that are not being obedient, if you're if you're in this room and you just, I don't know what it looks like to be obedient, I don't want obedience.

After last week, I'm not really sure how that could be, but you might be here.

And all of a sudden you can start to feel the temptations and the worries and the anxiety of the world starting to overcome you.

Why?

Because no faith that accompanies that life change.

And finally, perhaps, now all these other ones, these first four have kind of been what you have a responsibility of, you'll obey, you'll do what's right, you'll love others.

You're kept safe by Jesus.

We like that one.

That one we can cling on to.

If we're born again, man, we can cling on to the fact that we are kept safe by Jesus.

All these other ones, eh, won't continually sin.

What?

1 John 5, 18.

We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning.

Oh, there it is again.

But he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.

No matter what you feel, the evil one's not touching you.

No matter what circumstances you find yourself in, no matter what news reports you hear, the evil one does not touch believers.

Why?

Because that's what the Bible says, and that's the truth.

And sometimes, I was telling Melissa this last night, sometimes I think we value safety over even more than Jesus would value safety.

You know, Jesus left heaven to die.

That one?

Sometimes we value safety more than Jesus does.

That's why people get on a plane and go to the mountains of Costa Rica or to India or to Oklahoma City or go to your wherever.

Because safety isn't all that important to God except against the evil one.

At least not as important as we make it.

That's why he says to his one of his three really, really good friends on earth, Peter, hey, they're gonna lead you away.

They're gonna make you do things you don't want to do.

They're gonna kill you, Pete.

I don't want you to keep on following me.

Keep coming.

Keep coming hard after me.

That's a God who's come to earth to die, to serve, to love, to change hearts.

And while he was here, he had great conversations in the middle of the night with guys like you and me.

His name was Nicodemus, and he's in the Bible to give us all an example.

We can come to God with all the excuses in the world, or maybe just all the acts of self-righteousness in the world.

Oh, I haven't lied, I'm a pretty good person.

Jesus, we've got to be born again.

You gotta be changed from the inside out.

Your heart.

Stone.

Gotta take that out, put a new one in.

We're all like Nicodemus.

As we close today, we're all like Nicodemus, full of curiosity.

And God just says, truly, truly, to each one of us.

Here's the truth.

You gotta be born again.

The truth is that change begins in curiosity, but it's met with truth.

It continues in the pursuit of more truth.

And those two friends that I had talked about earlier, one who couldn't admit that he was a non-believer, and the other one who could, they're kind of like Nicodemus too.

Good guys.

Not really covered up in shame, not really covered up.

I mean, you you would see them, and they've been to church their whole lives, they've said a prayer, but nothing's really ever changed in them, and they just kind of go, yeah, I'm not really sure what to do from here on out.

Great place to be.

Just give up and surrender.

And God will absolutely take over and challenge and change you from the inside to the out.

So, my question as we leave, where are you today?

Where are you spiritually today?

If you could just listen to the Holy Spirit today as we close, where are you?

Billy Graham in one of his revivals said that 80% of the church is full is full of non-believers.

Unbelievable statistic from a man we all trust and love.

Where are you today?

Have you experienced the life change that Nicodemus so didn't really understand but sought out?

Because somewhere in the Bible, somewhere in his life, from John chapter 3 to John 7 or either 19, Nicodemus changed.

John 3 · chapter mention

Because he started out just seeking Jesus in the dark, and then you see him in John 7, and he's defending Jesus.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

You can't do that.

You gotta have more witnesses than this.

And then you see him in John 19, and his disciples are nowhere to be found.

And Nicodemus is helping Joseph of Arimathea take down Jesus' body from the cross.

And he's brought 75 pounds of spices and myrrh to anoint his body and prepare it for a proper Jewish burial.

That's a man that's changed.

It's a man that will go in front of everyone and say, I'm taking care of him.

My Pharisees' buddies, they're gonna know now.

I'm coming out.

Have you come to the point where you've changed?

Can you look back on your life and go, I know I'm alive, I know I'm rebirth because of my life, how I live it, how God's allowed me to live it.

Where are you today?

Today could be your spiritual birthday, and I'm not here to pretend that everybody changes instantaneously.

I think that's dangerous when we say, well, my experience was on October 12th, 1999, about 10.05, I changed.

Everything changed, and I know it.

I know it happened.

Because I remember.

To require that of everybody else would be like Nicodemus, be a Pharisee.

There's other people like my wife who can't really put a date or a time on it, but she can look at about a month, maybe six weeks, and go, yeah, I don't know when it was, and I don't know what happened, but there were a lot of different things that God orchestrated in my life changed over that month.

It doesn't always have to be a light switch.

Sometimes it can just be a dimmer.

And God's just consistently and constantly pushing up the light to the dimmer switch until finally it reaches the top and you can see, and your heart has been fully illumined to the truth.

Change happens.

That's the truth today.

If you guys could stand, I'm gonna speak a word of blessing over you.

Hold your hands out like this.

Now, this isn't a formula either, by the way.

But this is how we have a posture before God says we expect you.

Speak.

The immutable God, the unchangeable, has come down to earth to claim those which are his.

And he says to all of us, you must change.

You must have a heartfelt and heart transplant change to live and to see the kingdom.

If you've experienced that, go out and live, change lives, and change the world.

And if you haven't, truly, truly I say to you, you must be born again if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven.

It's the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.