You Must Be Born Again - John 3:1-16 (03.08.2026)

Please remain standing as a way of honoring the reading of God's word.

Today's scripture reading comes from John 3, 1-16.

After I finish reading, I will say this is the word of the Lord.

Please respond by saying thanks be to God.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are

a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

Jesus answered him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again,

he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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

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

Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water in the

Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where

it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

Nicodemus said to him, How can these things be? Jesus answered him,

Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what

we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly

things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man

be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes

in him should not perish but have eternal life. This is the word of the Lord.

Hello. Good morning. This is great. Good boy.

All right. So as Ben said, my name is Benji. So it's, I know many of you,

of course, but it is a treat to come and be able to worship with you guys this morning.

And I think it's Philippians, Paul talks about this, but where he really emphasizes

partnership in the gospel and how, I mean, that's what we get to be a part of,

that there are men and women an hour away in Lakewood, some of you have been

there, some of you have not,

but who are praying for you all and are excited for this church being planted.

And so, yeah, it's a gift that we get to work together in ministry.

So let me pray for us, and then we'll get going.

So Father, again, we thank you so much for this morning. We are grateful for

the opportunity to come together as your people.

And we pray, Lord, that you'd lead us now by your spirit. We ask,

Lord, that you would glorify yourself, that you would glorify your son,

Jesus, and that you'd encourage us, Lord, your people. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right. So, you need some participation here.

All right. And I will stare at you for a long time. Look, I'm kidding. I won't do that at all.

But if I were to ask you, what's the most popular verse in all the Bible, what would you say?

John 3.16? I don't know what I would have done if you said Leviticus 16.

Yes, John 3.16. It's a very well-known verse.

We all know it. Many of us probably grew up in homes where we heard that we

learned it maybe in vacation Bible school or whatever else.

One of the first verses that probably you memorized.

You want to take a stab at it right now?

No, we won't put you on the spot. That's okay. It's all right.

But it's a well-known verse.

We know John 3, 16 really well. We see it everywhere, even outside of studying

scripture, even outside of being a Christian in the Bible belt,

at least, you probably have come across it.

Probably seen it on a sign like SportsCenter.

You know, you got the college game day and somebody's in the back with a sign,

John 3, 16, or maybe an athlete's got it written somewhere on his uniform.

Maybe it's quoted. It's on a bracelet. a hat. We know John 3, 16.

And of course, it is a good thing that this is a very well-known verse because

essentially it is the gospel in one sentence, right?

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever would believe

in him would not perish, but have eternal life.

That is a good verse to memorize, right? So if you hear nothing else this morning,

hear that, and believe on Christ.

But as familiar as we often are with John 3.16, sometimes we are not as familiar

with its broader context.

John 3.16, of course, does not just.

Show up in Scripture by itself, right? But actually,

it occurs at the end of a much broader conversation that Jesus is having with

this religious leader named Nicodemus that we just heard read.

So, he's talking with Nicodemus, and the conversation actually starts.

It starts with another statement that is just as important,

just as weighty as John 3.16, although maybe a little bit more mysterious for

us, a little bit maybe less comfortable.

Before Jesus ever says those famous words, for God so loved the world,

he first tells Nicodemus, this very religious guy, He tells him, unless he is born again.

You cannot see the kingdom of God. He says, you must be born again.

Okay. You must be born again. So in the broader context of John 3.16,

in this conversation that we just read, we're going to work through in just a second,

Jesus introduces us to the concept of the new birth and the necessity of the new birth.

And he forces us to deal with a fundamental question about humanity's spiritual condition, okay?

Now, so as we look at the passage this morning, we're gonna ask two very broad

questions, just big, big questions.

First of all, why do we need to be born again?

And kind of baked into that will be an explanation of what does that even mean

to be born again, okay? Why do we need to be born again? And then secondly, how?

How does this happen? How are we born again? So that's where we're gonna go, very simple.

Why do we need to be born again? And how are we born again? So first of all, why?

So Nicodemus, Nicodemus, we read, he's this Pharisee, okay? Anybody familiar with the Pharisees?

Generally. Yeah. So he's a Pharisee. He's a teacher of the Bible, basically.

Okay. He's a teacher of the Torah, the law. So he knows it very well.

He's a leader. It says it here, that he's a leader of the Jews.

This is Nicodemus. But this guy, even though we probably know the Pharisees

were having an issue with Jesus, right?

They weren't getting along and they were like, This guy's, you know,

he's, we need to deal with him.

But yet Nicodemus comes to Jesus in secret at night, which is interesting.

Okay. He comes, he comes to Jesus.

Clearly he personally is curious.

He's very curious about Jesus. We can infer from chapter two earlier that he's

probably, he's heard Jesus teaching.

He's probably seen some of the things that Jesus has been doing.

And he wants to know who in the world is this person.

Okay, he's curious. And I mean, in fact, that could be you this morning.

I don't know everyone here, but that could be you. You could be generally,

I'm just kind of curious about this guy, this Jesus guy, okay?

So he comes to Jesus and Nicodemus says, Rabbi, we know that your teacher come

from God for no one could do these things unless God were with him.

So he knows there's something about Jesus, something going on here,

but he's essentially asking Jesus, okay, who are you?

Who are you? Why are you teaching? You're teaching.

How is it that you're doing all the things that you're doing? Who are you?

And then Jesus' response to him is that's where it's a little unexpected. Okay.

So instead of telling Nicodemus who he is, Jesus, as he often does, we read through the.

To the heart of the issue. You ever do that when you want to get to something

in the conversation with someone and you're beating around the bush?

You know what you want to get to, but you just kind of have to go all around. See, Jesus being God...

Just cuts right through the conversation and gets to the heart of the matter.

And what he does first is diagnose a problem, okay?

Which is not just Nicodemus' problem, but it's the problem of all humanity,

problem of all mankind, me and you included.

Jesus' answer to Nicodemus, he just responds, you must be born again.

You must be born again. Or it can also be translated, you need to be born from above.

You need to be born from above. He doesn't say you ought to be Nicodemus or,

you know, it'd be a great idea. You're doing really great.

But this is just one other level. Just be born from above.

He doesn't say that. He says you must be born again.

And an interesting thing happens here with the yous in this passage that we

probably don't pick up in the English, but in the Greek, he first is addressing

Nicodemus, singular, you, you Nicodemus. And then he says, you,

plural, must be born again.

In other words, we all understand this. Y'all, y'all need to be born again,

is what Jesus says to Nicodemus.

And the reason that he says this is because Jesus knows.

Jesus knows. He understood that Nicodemus, just like the rest of the world,

just like the rest of humanity, had a problem. Jesus knew that the world was

spiritually dead today.

And in need of new life. That's Jesus diagnosed that problem.

That's something the Bible is abundantly clear about.

And so ever since Adam and Eve, so Ben said, we've got about three hours,

you guys used about three hours of preaching. So we're going to go back to Genesis.

I'm kidding. Totally, totally kidding. Some people were looking at me like, oh.

So, but all the way back to the garden, Adam and Eve, ever since they first

sinned and sin entered the world, ever since that point, all of us have been born into sin.

We've been born into a sin nature. That's where we start.

That's day one, born into a sinful nature. As a result, Paul will say this in

Romans, he says that none of us are righteous, not a one. Doesn't matter what

it looks like on the outside.

None of us are righteous. All of us have sinned. We've all fallen short of God's glory.

And what we earn for that, what he says later in Romans 6, the wages of our sin is death.

It's death. He says that also in Ephesians 2 and Colossians 2,

both of which say that we were dead.

Dead in our trespasses and in our sins.

And that death is not just inevitable physical death.

Well, because of sin, one day, therefore, we're all going to die physically.

It's not just about that, but it's even more so about present spiritual death.

It means that because of sin, we've been separated from the life of God.

We're separated from him. This is man's natural state because of our sin.

By nature, all people are spiritually dead in sin and in need of new life.

That's all of us. And what that means is because of our sin,

we have no spiritual ability, no inclination on our own toward God in any saving way.

None. Obviously, we're alive physically. We're alive physically,

intellectually, emotionally.

We can have curiosities. We can reason. We can choose.

We can act on things in this world. but spiritual death, being dead spiritually,

that we're separated from God, means that we can't see.

We can't see, can't desire, can't understand, can't embrace,

really, the things of God, and we don't want to.

We don't want to. Jesus explains to Nicodemus in verses 3 and 5 that unless

we're born again, you can't see the kingdom of God.

Unless you're born again, you can't enter the kingdom of God.

That's what it means to be dead in sin. Paul echoes this idea,

makes it maybe a little bit more clear.

In 1 Corinthians 2, verse 14, Paul says, the natural person does not accept

1 Corinthians 2:14

the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him,

And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

If you ever wondered why, I mean, I don't know if this is clear or not,

but Christianity, certainly not a matter of intelligence.

Case in point, not a matter of intelligence, okay?

You ever wondered how you can have some brilliant PhD physicist guys who have

all the knowledge in the world, but they think this is just craziness.

This is Christianity and the cross just foolish.

And then some folks who maybe don't even have a high school diploma are delighting

themselves in the things of God.

But then you also have PhDs over here who know and love Jesus and are not distracted

by a lot of things that others are.

And then you've got some people who maybe they just got out of high school,

but they think all this is silliness.

It's not about knowledge or intellect.

It's about the spirit. In other words, in our sinful nature,

we don't want to worship God in our sin nature.

We don't want to enjoy God forever, but we prefer other things.

That's who we are in our very nature. In our very nature, our hearts,

Calvin says, our hearts are idol-making factories.

Doesn't matter. I mean, I could name all kinds of things in here.

Some things that might be your idol, I'm not moved by, but then you bring up Blue Bell ice cream.

Things would get serious, okay? But it's true that our hearts naturally want

to worship and delight in anything other than God, the one for whom we were made.

That's man in his natural state. As a result, in our sin nature,

mankind in sin nature is living in rebellion against God.

Think about it this way. God made us for himself to enjoy him,

to live in this beautiful creation that he's given us to honor him.

But in our sin nature, what we've all done is taken up weapons, basically.

It's almost like i don't know if you guys have been tracking with iran and and

the middle east and israel and the u.s if not

well but the

crazy thing to me iran starts shooting missiles at all their neighbors around

them if there was ever hope for them to all kind of get on the same page and

go to war against us like you want to unify they start shooting people there

and of course that unites them with the U.S.

To fight again. That's how insane we are often, okay?

In our sin nature, God who made us, we say, I love college football,

and I'm going to worship that.

You should see how animated I get at a Georgia football game.

I'm going to scream. I'm going to paint myself.

I'm going to be worshiping all day at this Georgia football game.

But, you know, when it comes to church.

That's who we are by nature, right?

The Bible tells us that in our nature, sinful state, we're God's enemies.

That's what Romans 5 says. We're His enemies and there are consequences of that.

He actually goes on, we didn't read it here, but in verse 18,

he says that we are under God's condemnation, that humanity is under God's condemnation.

That's all people, all people, even people like Nicodemus.

Even people like Nicodemus. I don't think it's a coincidence that Nicodemus

is the one having this conversation with Jesus.

Think again about who Nicodemus is. He's this Pharisee. He is a leader.

He has a great reputation in society, in the community. He's a teacher of the Bible.

He's a leader of the Jews, upstanding, respectable person in the community.

Surely in regard to Nicodemus' morality, his good works, he would put us all to shame? Surely.

Nicodemus is the one that we would all look at today. We'd say,

that person's got it all together.

That's a good dude. That's an upstanding person. That's the way we'd view him.

But you see, Jesus doesn't commend him for any of that. Amen.

He's not interested in that, but just tells him very plainly,

you, even you, Nicodemus, must be born again. You must be.

See, sometimes when we think about people who are in need of salvation,

who are in need of relationship with God, sometimes, and I could be wrong,

I could be in the minority here.

Maybe we're different, but I would think sometimes our brains go to people who

their lives are just in complete disarray.

They're just living some crazy, sinful life. And you just look at them,

you're like, wow, they need Jesus.

Okay. Or we look at people who are in material need.

Okay. Somehow we equate material need with spiritual need. I mean,

there is some relation to it in unreached places for sure.

But sometimes we just think about that, or we just think about people who are

just, they're dissatisfied with life.

They're just not happy and they need to find true happiness.

They're not content. And so therefore they need a relationship with God.

But we may not as quickly, when we're thinking about people who need a relationship

with God, who are in need of salvation, we may not as quickly think about people

who have it all together.

We may not think about the people who have a great family, great family.

I mean, parents whose kids, Christian kids, I wish my kids were like your kids.

I don't, you know, just wonderful families.

People who have very nice jobs, well-paying jobs. They're very responsible.

They're very competent, very successful, and not in a braggadocious way.

They're actually very wise.

They're humble people. They defer to others. People who make generally good life choices.

Make good life choices. Somebody that we might even say, man,

I would like to be mentored by that person in the business world or whatever else.

People who are even church members. Long-time church members.

Even Sunday school teachers.

We often don't think in that category. They may have all those things,

but they may not truly be able to see the kingdom of God.

They may not truly have any genuine affection for the Lord. No true delight in Him.

Maybe they just grown up in the Bible belt and it's just what we do.

This is what I know is good for my kids.

We know the right answers. I could take the test, make an A.

But maybe I'm just not Truly in a relationship With the creator of the universe.

Jesus actually gave us a very kind of scary text in Matthew chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

He says, there's going to come a day where many will say to me,

Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name?

Didn't we do many mighty works in your name?

They're calling him Lord and they're doing good things in his name.

But what does Jesus say? Response.

Depart from me. I never knew you. I don't really know you.

See, Nicodemus' example here helps us understand that the new birth,

the new birth is not just some metaphor.

It's not just a metaphor for some moral improvement. It's not just a label.

Sometimes we hear a born-again Christian means evangelical.

That distinguishes you from Roman Catholic. It's just something we put on a piece of paperwork.

That's not what born again means. That's not the new birth. The new birth is

actually a supernatural reality.

It's a supernatural reality. It is an occurrence. It's a happening that's just

as real as your physical birth and just as necessary. That's the new birth.

It's an occurrence that's just as real, just as necessary as your physical birth,

because in our sin nature,

who we are by nature, our hearts are naturally and entirely bent away from God

and the things of God. That's just who we are in our nature.

Therefore, we need to become a new creation. So Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians

5, we need to become a new creation.

We need, in fact, a new heart, a new heart, one that is inclined toward God, not bent away from him.

And this is, in fact, what God promised hundreds and hundreds of years before

this conversation, which Nicodemus, as a teacher of the Jews, should have known.

But he didn't. And of course, he says at some point, I keep looking over here

like I think the text is there. It's not there. It's here.

But he says, you're a teacher of the Jews. You don't understand these things?

But in verse 5, when Jesus said, unless one is born of water.

And of the Spirit, he's alluding here to a promise that God made in the book

of Ezekiel. Now, sometimes we hear that. Maybe you read that before.

Unless you're born of water and the Spirit. Some people think,

oh, well, that means unless you're born of water, like naturally,

birth and believing in Jesus, right?

But it doesn't really mean that. And then some people would think that's your

baptism, okay? But it doesn't necessarily mean that.

But it is a direct allusion to Ezekiel 36.

Ezekiel 36, God said this, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall

be clean from all your uncleanness.

And from all your idols, I will cleanse you.

And I will give you a new heart 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.

So you see, Nicodemus didn't just need a little moral improvement.

Like you're doing pretty good. You just need a little bit more,

but he actually needed to become something entirely new.

He needed to become something new. He needed to be born of the Holy Spirit.

And that is the need of all of us. That's the need of us all.

But if that's the case, if it's the case that no one can see the kingdom of

God unless they're born again, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they're

born again. Well, how does that happen.

How is this possible? How are we born?

Again, that's actually what Nicodemus basically asks Jesus a couple of different

times in this conversation.

He's like, how in the world is that possible?

I mean, you got to give him a little, you know, leeway here because Nicodemus

is the first one who's really hearing this.

Okay. We look at him, Nicodemus is like, what, do I go back into the womb and come out?

How did, you know, we're like, oh, Nicodemus, you silly goose.

You can't go back into the womb.

So how does this happen?

Well, here's where Jesus gives a pretty mysterious, maybe even unsettling answer

for us. Verse 8, look at verse 8.

He says, the wind blows where it wishes.

You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

So it is with everyone who's born of the Spirit.

So at first glance, again, it might seem a little unsettling,

because what Jesus is showing us here is that the new birth is something that we cannot control.

We cannot bring about on our own. All we can do is see its effect.

Okay, it's kind of like being outside and you feel the wind blowing.

You don't quite know where did it originate, where is it ending.

You just watch the leaves blow in a tree.

I'm standing right here. It's like, oh, man, it feels a little warm.

Ben's starting to sweat. We may not know. Where does the air conditioning come from?

But it'll just, I'm kidding.

So all we can do is see its effect. So Jesus is showing us here that the new

birth is entirely, it's entirely the work of God.

It's entirely the work of God. We don't contribute anything.

We don't contribute anything, just like our physical birth.

Raise your hand if you were present for your birth. This is not a trick question.

All the hands should be up. All the hands.

Okay. So how much did you help your mother? You help a little bit?

I don't know. I don't know. You actually probably made it harder, right?

You're supposed to come out head first. You're probably trying to go out with

a leg, hanging on, all these kind of things.

You helped in no way. You helped in no way. And it's the same with your spiritual birth. Okay.

But it kind of makes sense though, right? When you think about the reality of

what it means to be spiritually dead, what can a dead person do to contribute to his being made alive?

Land on the floor dead and there's an AD over there. And I thought,

well, I mean, I should get up.

I'll get it. And I'll come back and lay back down.

I know it's dumb. Dead people don't do anything.

To help themselves. The new birth is entirely the work of God, by His sovereign grace.

Because of His love, because of His mercy, God does for us what we have no power to do for ourselves.

And this, again, is a truth we see all over the Bible, everywhere.

I'll just give you a few verses.

In Ephesians 2, Paul says that God, being rich in mercy because of the great

love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, he made us alive.

But with Christ, by grace, you have been saved. He made us alive.

1 Peter 1, Peter essentially says the same thing. He says, blessed be the God

and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living

hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Then in John 6, we'll see a little later, Jesus says, it's the Spirit who gives

life, the flesh, no help, no help at all.

So you see, the new birth is entirely the Lord's work by his Spirit.

But while we can't control the Holy Spirit or contribute to His work,

it's not as though the Holy Spirit just kind of randomly goes around making

people come to life spiritually.

In the same way that God has ordained ends, he also ordains means.

Okay? Rather, the Spirit gives life.

He gives life on the basis of Jesus' sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins.

And he brings that life or applies that life to dead sinners through the proclamation of the gospel.

Okay? So, in other words, the Spirit gives life not arbitrarily,

but through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is why after teaching Nicodemus that it's the spirit who gives life,

he immediately points Nicodemus to the cross.

So he does in this very passage, Jesus is preaching the gospel.

He uses this wonderful illustration that Nicodemus would have known.

He says in verse 14, Jesus said, as Moses was lifted up, or I'm sorry, Moses was not lifted up.

Okay, Ben can clear that up later.

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be

lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

So if you're not familiar with what he's talking about here,

Jesus is talking about an Old Testament story in the book of Numbers, chapter 21.

Numbers 21 · chapter mention

So the nation Israel, Israel, they had been delivered out of Egypt, okay?

And they're in the wilderness and they're complaining, they're grumbling, they're just like us.

Is, oh, yeah, I should have just died in Egypt. What's this about?

Okay. They're just complaining. And so in judgment, God sends snakes,

these poisonous snakes into the

camp and they just start biting people and they're getting sick and dying.

And then the people recognize, Ooh, we're in the wrong here.

And so they asked Moses, would you please pray for us that these snakes would

be gone, that we'd be healed.

Okay. So Moses does, he talks to the Lord for,

And God tells Moses, build or make a bronze serpent, a serpent made out of bronze, put it on a pole,

hold it up, and tell the camp, tell the folks, whoever looks at the bronze serpent will live.

That's the analogy he's making here. So Jesus is saying that just as Moses lifted up the bronze serpent,

Jesus was going to be lifted up on the cross to die in our place for the forgiveness of our sins.

So that if we only look to him in faith, just look to him for who he is and

what he's done, we also will live.

John 3, 16 says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that

whoever believes in him would not perish, but have eternal life. That's the gospel.

That's the gospel. God has ordained that it is through this gospel message that

the spirit supernaturally brings life to dead sinners.

And again, this is a truth we see all over the New Testament.

Romans 1, 16 says, for the gospel is the power of God for salvation.

The gospel is the power of God for salvation, not, thankfully,

the ineloquence of a preacher or the eloquence of a preacher,

not our knowledge, not our any of these things, but the Spirit works through His Word to bring life.

Similarly, in 1 Peter 1, likewise says that believers, Christians,

are born again through the living and abiding Word of God.

Also in the book of James, James tells us that it's of God's own will that he

brought us forth by the word of truth.

We could, of course, go elsewhere. But some of you might be sitting here thinking

now, okay, I'm hearing that, but what about our faith?

How does that come into play here?

I thought, aren't we just called to believe in Jesus? And the answer is yes.

Yes. Believe. Just believe in Jesus, look to Jesus by faith and live.

But, but you see, faith doesn't just naturally arise.

It doesn't just naturally arise within spiritually dead hearts.

See, the situation for, for unbelievers and believers, it's not as though we

are just spiritually, like we're maimed.

I'm half dead, kind of like a, wow, what's the movie?

Almost, yes, almost dead, not entirely dead, almost dead.

It's not as though we're almost dead and able to do something for us.

We're dead, spiritually dead, okay?

So it doesn't just naturally, faith doesn't just naturally arise within spiritually

dead hearts, but rather as Ephesians chapter 2 tells us, even faith is a gift. It's a gift.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

Romans 10, 17 says this, faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word

of Christ or the word about Christ. In other words, the gospel.

So you see, we are both called and enabled by God to believe on Jesus.

It's all a gift. It's all a gift.

A great illustration of this is in the story of Lazarus, John chapter 11,

John 11 · chapter mention

which I feel safe to go ahead and share with you now because it'll be three

or four years before you're there. And I'm joking.

Okay. You'll forget all of this by then.

John 11. So Lazarus, if you don't know the story, Lazarus is a friend of Jesus

and Jesus is in another town.

And Lazarus, or Jesus gets word, Lazarus is sick. You need to come help.

He doesn't because he knows what he's doing.

Lazarus ends up dying, right? Jesus waits, hangs out a little bit more. Then he goes on.

And when he shows up, Lazarus has been dead. He's in the tomb four days. Okay.

And Jesus is going to tell them to move the tomb away. Move the tomb?

No, don't move the tomb. Stone. Move the stone. Move the stone away.

And they don't want to because they're like, oh, it's going to stink.

He's been in there several days now. Like he's dead. There's no, he's a dead person.

Okay. But still, Jesus says, move the stone away.

And then Jesus says, Lazarus, come out.

And then a dead person got up.

See, the Word of God went out. The Word of God went out and life came.

This is what it's like for us to be born of the Spirit.

When we were spiritually dead in sin, unable, unwilling to see the kingdom of

God, God being rich in mercy made us alive together with Christ through the

gospel, by the sheer grace of God.

By the sheer grace of God, the Spirit gave us life through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So what do we do with this?

What do we do with that? In light of what we see here in John 3,

regarding our need of the new

birth, and in regard to the means of the new birth, how are we to respond?

How do we respond to this? I've just got three thoughts, three suggestions.

Okay. The first is this.

We should examine ourselves.

We should examine ourselves, as Paul says, to see if you are in the faith.

Okay. Examine yourself to see if you're in the faith.

The example of Nicodemus reminds us, reminds us that it is possible to have it all together.

Good life trajectory, good job, good family, good kids, good schools,

good all the things, church attendance, even get a place to serve in the church.

It's possible to have all that, to be moral, to be religious,

even to be a Bible teacher, and yet still be dead in sin and in need of new life.

And let me tell you, that scenario happens more than you'd think in the Bible Belt.

So many of us grew up in the church. We grow up in the church and we get shaped

by the church, which is a good thing.

But at some point, our faith is not our parents' faith. Our faith is not our friend's faith.

It's really about who do I say Jesus is? Am I just doing things because I've

been raised in a culture of Christianity?

Or have we been born of the Spirit of God? Have we been made alive?

Do we have genuine love and affection for Jesus?

Do we enjoy spending time with him?

See, sometimes when we think about like heaven and salvation and the gospel,

we just want to take it out of hell.

I'd like to not go there. I'd like to live forever. So sure,

I'll pray the prayer. I'll do the thing.

But we miss out on what is the good news really of the gospel is that you get God. You get him.

Do we have that genuine delight? Have we been born of the Holy Spirit?

And here's the thing, if we examine ourselves and we find that to be the case

where it's like, yeah, I think I'm just doing things because it's my culture.

There's no reason at all to be afraid of that, okay?

No reason to freak out. I would only just say, don't allow pride.

Don't allow pride to hinder you from admitting it.

Because if it is that you start to sense, I don't know if I really do know the Lord.

Well, you know what? That's probably the Holy Spirit bringing life.

And so what's the answer there? Look to Jesus.

Just look on Him in faith and live.

So first of all, just examine. We should examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith.

Secondly, this whole passage should lead us to thanksgiving.

To giving God all the praise and honor and glory for what He has done.

This passage helps us see that from beginning to end, salvation belongs to the Lord.

It's His. When we were dead and had no hope in sin, God, who's rich in mercy,

made us alive together with Christ.

He caused us to be born again through the living and abiding Word.

So our spiritual life, our new birth, our salvation is completely,

completely owing to God.

And so now our life, the life we now live, should be a response of worship.

This is a prayer me and the kids pray when we're driving to school every morning.

Lord, would you enable us to honor you in the way that we feel,

in the way that we think, in the way that we act, in the way that we speak.

That in every expression, everything that's coming out should be worship and

praise to the Lord out of thanksgiving for what he has done.

And then finally, finally, this passage should encourage us to share the gospel

with others, to share the gospel.

Well, if the Spirit gives life through the gospel, then the most loving thing

that we can do is share the gospel with others, okay?

Which is what Jesus, in fact, commanded us to do in the Great Commission, right?

Before he ascended to heaven, he said, go, therefore, make disciples of all

nations, every tribe, every tongue, every people, every nation,

because God so loved the world, right?

That he calls us to go out. The only reason that many of us are sitting in this

room is because of that great commission.

It's been carried out for the last 2,000 years. The gospel's going out and the

Lord's been bringing life through his word.

And here's the thing. There are people all around us every day,

every day who are spiritually dead and in need of new life.

Some lives who might look in obvious disarray, but probably far more around

us that look like they've got it all together.

Okay, we live in, I don't live here. Y'all, you all live in Johns Creek, okay?

This is an area of the Southeast that's very well to do, okay?

There's a lot of wealth here.

It doesn't say there aren't some difficulties and things, but this is a place

that it'd be easy to look at and say, oh, what do they need?

What does anybody need? Right, everybody's doing great.

But if they don't know Jesus, they have nothing. And so it should be an encouragement

to us who have received life to go out and share that life with others,

not relying on ourselves,

not relying on our knowledge, our eloquence, or anything like that,

but relying completely on God alone who raises the dead. Amen? Amen. Let's pray.

So, Father, we are very grateful for this time. Thank you for this church family

and the gift of being together.

We thank you most especially, Lord, for sending your son Jesus for us to die

in our place for the forgiveness of our sins.

We thank you, Lord God, for giving us the gift of faith, blessing us with a relationship with you.

And I do pray this morning, if there are any here who, maybe even for the first

time, need to evaluate, Lord, have you made us alive by the Spirit?

I pray that you would make that clear and help us all, Lord,

every day to look to Christ and live.

I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.