Three16: ReBirth with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the Medichurch podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at Medichurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life.

God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Well, it's great to be back with you guys.

Before we jump in, a couple of things.

Number one, I have some people to think.

Two weeks ago, I was out and Pastor Andrew Richardson came over from City Church.

Young guy, brought incredible passion and energy, served us so well.

Show him some love.

He watches us online.

About eight years ago, Pastor Noel, our worship pastor here at Meta and I, we were both worship leaders.

Um, but I was also preaching at the time, and I looked at him at a FUDRUCKER's after talking to him for a couple of hours and said, bro, you can preach.

Like you have a lot to say.

And if you've been here over the last three years, you have watched him in his development.

And last week was such an incredible step up.

He served us so well and gave us such a powerful word, so much vulnerability.

Show Pastor Noel some love.

As Ryan mentioned, um, right after service, I'm gonna share a little bit about what I think is the most important process that we offer for you to go through here at MetaCurch.

So I know how it normally goes.

I say amen, and you start gathering your stuff to beat the Lutherans to Denny's or whatever.

But today, we're gonna sit for a few minutes so you can find out about this opportunity that is in front of you.

We are in a brand new series called 316.

Uh, if you've spent any time around church or scripture, you might be clued into what that means.

And if not, that is so beautiful, and this is the place for you to be.

We're basing this off of what is most likely the most famous of all of the verses in the Christian scriptures, which is John 3.16.

John 3.16 says this for God loved the world in this way.

He gave his one and only son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.

If you grew up around church and you only have one verse memorized, it is probably this verse.

And if you grew up in my church, it's probably memorized in the King James Version.

This has serious understanding, not just in the church, but in the culture.

About 10 years ago, when Tim Tebow was at the height of his college career in a nationally syndicated game, across his eye black, under his helmet, he wore John 3.16.

It became the most Googled thing that week.

About a decade before that, some of you know a little bit about the totally real, totally legit.

If someone tells you it's fake, they don't know what you're talking about.

World of professional wrestling, right?

John 3.16 was used in maybe a little sacrilegious way by stone cold Steve Austin for his Austin 316 branding.

And now at MetaCurch, we are gonna use this verse for five weeks to help us build in the context of what is probably the most important verse and maybe the most important sentence that has ever been written in history.

In this one verse, we have the totality of the gospel, which means the good news of Jesus.

Today we are gonna start by looking at just a few of the verses at the beginning of John chapter three, and we're gonna start right now reading verses one through three.

It says this there was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, and this man came to Jesus at night and said, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.

And Jesus replied, Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

My message today is re-birth.

God, we love you, and we're overwhelmed by your love for us.

In the Psalms, it says, What is man that you are aware of us?

Who are we so small in the scale of the universe?

And yet you intimately are concerned with our lives, you care about our well-being, and you have a plan for each and every one of our futures.

And I pray, God, that a day will not go by that we do not stand in absolute awe of that.

Today we are trying to understand what it means to be born again, to be rebirthed.

And so help us today.

We love you, and we pray this in Jesus' name.

If you're ready to learn about rebirth, say amen.

What does it mean to be born again?

I don't know if you know this, but we are all born.

Yes, it is something that we all share in common.

And no matter how different we are as people, and one of the things I love about Metachurch is we are an incredibly diverse congregation from way different walks of life, different backgrounds, different experiences.

However, we all, with all of humanity, share one thing in common.

We have all been born.

And you had virtually nothing to do with it.

At one point, all of our parents had a little bit too much fun at a Santana concert, and nine months later, we just showed up.

You had no say in the matter, you were simply born, just like everyone else.

Being born the first time means you're alive.

Being born again means you start truly living.

And we talk about born again, and we're gonna look at it in John chapter 3 through a spiritual lens, spiritual rebirth.

John 3 · chapter mention

But I contend there are other forms of rebirth that we also experience during our times on earth.

There are rebirths that are social, relational, psychological, career-oriented, and we have all of these different experiences of new seasons, new births, but we have to understand a rule about being born again.

And here's the rule: rebirth requires real death.

Rebirth requires real death.

So let's talk about some of these rebirths that aren't spiritual rebirths necessarily.

You know, when you're a child, good authority figures will tell you when you grow up, you can be anything that you want to be.

Now, is that 100% accurate?

Probably not.

You're probably not gonna be a professional athlete.

Statistically, you're probably not gonna be an astronaut.

But I will say this when you're a child, the chances of it are not zero.

The world is open to you.

You wanna be a teacher, you wanna be a lawyer, you wanna be in construction, you wanna be a contractor, whatever you wanna be, all of the options are available.

And at some point, you become an adult.

And you have to pick a lane.

You have to figure out how you're gonna spend your life, pursue your career, do your work, and that's a part of growing and maturing and evolving.

It's part of how you contribute to society.

And if you're doing work that is passionate for you, it's part of how you contribute to the world around you.

So when you choose that career, you are birthed into a new season of your life.

But what you may not realize is you have experienced a very real death to all of the other options that were once available.

Doesn't mean you can't change careers later, but in that moment, you are dying to all the jobs you didn't take in order to be birthed into something new.

There are relational rebirths.

When you get married, at the moment that you stand up and say, Till death do we part, I do, I do, kiss your bride.

At that moment, you are birthing a marriage, birthing a new relationship, a new season.

You know, when you are young, there are lots of fish in the sea.

And the opportunities are boundless.

When I was in elementary school, you know, it would have been tough because there was an age difference, but Christina Aguilera was still single, you know.

The opportunities are endless.

And at the moment you say, I do, we're birthing something new, but you must realize you are also putting to death every single other romantic option on the table.

And so some people are struggling in their marriage because they have walked into what is new without putting to death what is leaving behind.

And a true rebirth requires a real death.

This is what sobriety is: it is dying to your dependence on something of this world to help you navigate this world and being birthed into a new sobriety where you are depending on a higher power.

Rebirth requires real death.

And every story worth telling is a story of rebirth.

Every movie that you watch, every novel that you read, every story, the main character must die to something, die to expectations, die to a dream, die to a season of their life in order to become the hero that they were created to be.

And the same is true in our life.

Some of you have had kids, and I see this all the time.

There are parents who resent their very own children.

Because when you give birth to a child, it's a literal birth and it's a rebirth of your marriage into a brand new season.

And you are putting to death that honeymoon period where there were no children waking you up at all hours of the night, where you could walk from bedroom to kitchen butt naked without traumatizing somebody in your house.

You're putting that to death.

And if you don't put it to death, you won't experience the rebirth.

You'll end up presenting the very kids that have brought you into the new season.

Rebirth is a part of living, not just being alive.

And Jesus came to present the realest reality, and he came to present to us the most critical of rebirths.

You see, all the other ones in your relationships, in your careers, in your psychology, in your outlook, in your worldview, all of those are things that will help you live a good life right here and right now.

The rebirth that Jesus offered will help you not only live your fullest life now, but it will help you fulfill and secure what comes after this life.

Jesus came to teach us about a spiritual rebirth.

We're right at the top of John chapter three, and part of the reason we're taking five weeks to do one chapter of the Bible is to really understand the context of what was happening when the most important sentence ever spoken was spoken.

In John chapter three, Israel, which is Jesus' context, was in a power struggle.

I started putting this sermon series together two or three months ago, and there's been a massive shift on the global stage, which of course is Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

And we live in the instant information age, and so all of us are seeing on our screens and on our smart devices all day long the images and the videos of just the tragedy of what is going on over there.

And what's happening is a power struggle, a power struggle.

And Russia is trying to extend its power through taking more territory, and Ukraine is trying to preserve and protect its sovereignty, its own power by fending them off desperately.

And a lot of people are wondering like, why exactly is Russia doing this?

It doesn't make any sense.

You know, now they're sanctioned to the teeth, you know, and people are struggling over there and starving over there, and this is terrible.

It's tarnishing their legacy, and so we have the easy answers, you know, like, well, Putin's crazy and he's evil and he's a dictator, and fair enough, man.

Maybe all of those things are true.

But what you have to understand is that while the rest of the modern world sees ourselves as countries that are set on a map, we all have our space, so let's cooperate.

That's not how Russia sees itself historically.

It doesn't see itself as just another one of the countries, it sees itself as an empire, and empires expand.

That's what they do.

They're playing a different game than the rest of the world is playing.

In Russia, the people who are seen as great leaders aren't the people who developed economically, aren't the people who looked out for the welfare of Russian citizens.

It's the people who expanded the empire to the farthest point.

Playing a different game, what you have to realize is for almost all of human history, that was the game that everyone was playing.

See, we grew up with a map of the globe that, with very few exceptions, hasn't changed at all your entire life.

It's set, you've got the space you've got, we've got the space we got.

We're America, you're Brazil, your Japan, let's all get along.

For almost all of human history, you would have to redraw the map of the globe almost every year.

There were not countries, there were competing empires, and it was conquer or be conquered.

We're watching it heartbreakingly in real time right now.

And if you think about the plight of the Ukrainian people, if you think about the devastation of being occupied by an outside force, if you can imagine losing your sovereignty and your independence as a people, then you can begin to understand Israel in Jesus' time.

Their problem was not the Russian Empire, it was the Roman Empire.

And the Roman Empire was doing what empires do, it was expanding its territory to expand its power, and it was doing it at a rate and an efficiency that the world had really not ever seen before.

Eventually it caught up to Israel, God's holy land, and the Israelites, God's chosen people, and pretty soon they were under Roman occupation as well.

This is the situation that Jesus was birthed into.

And on the hearts and the minds of the Jewish people in Jesus' day was really one thing and almost one thing only, which is God deliver us from Rome.

It was a power struggle.

The power of the empire versus the power of God's people, desperate to get their land back, their sovereignty back, their independence back, and their control back in their land.

They were outmatched, outgone in every respect.

But the Jewish people had one thing up their sleeve, and this was called the Messiah.

The Messiah was promised, and the Messiah was coming.

And they believed through the lens of their circumstance that the Messiah would come as a man of great military might, and the Messiah's purpose would be to drive out Rome.

We're in John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

In John chapter 3, they are celebrating the Passover.

John 3 · chapter mention

The Passover is a celebration of when God delivered Israel from Egyptian occupation, and you know they are praying fervently every Passover for God to do it again and deliver them from Roman occupation.

That is the context to begin understanding.

John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

In verse 1, it says, There was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

Now, Pharisees, that's a religious designation.

But in Israel, the religious elites were also the political elites, which is why it says he was a Pharisee and therefore a ruler of the Jewish people.

Jesus had shown up on the scene.

He was a nobody from nowhere.

If he was living in America, he was from Nazareth, we would have called those people in Nazareth the rednecks.

Now, no shame, I'm from Lampas.

In San Antonio, you call that the Rednecks, okay?

Nazareth is the backwoods of Galilee.

Jesus, for 30 years of his life, was a carpenter, not highly educated, not famous in any way, no followers, no power.

He did not come from money.

In fact, he was raised in incredible poverty.

We know that from scripture.

A nobody from nowhere who at 30 years old began traveling, speaking words of authority no one had ever heard before, and demonstrating the power of God through healing people, miraculously healing people, calling demons out of people, and even demonstrating power over the elements of nature itself.

Now, some were wondering if Jesus might be the Messiah.

However, the Pharisees, the religious elite, they quickly grew to hate Jesus.

And the reason is because Jesus would not quite get on their schedule.

They had the way things were supposed to go.

And every time there was a confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees, instead of joining them and sucking up to the powers that be in order to come together and fight against Rome, instead, Jesus would call out these religious leaders for using their power and authority to lift themselves up at the expense of all of the people they were supposed to be taking care of.

Now I know that doesn't sound like any religious organizations today, right?

Can't even imagine it.

But back then, the religious elites were growing wealthy, they were stacking up their power, and they were using their platforms not as a source of freedom to unlock the purpose inside of people, but as a place of judgment and fear to control the people, and Jesus was having none of it.

The Pharisees hated Jesus.

In fact, they're the ones who ultimately staged the coup that gets Jesus killed.

And Nicodemus shows up, which shows that he has real intellectual honesty, that he is super curious about this guy and where exactly his power comes from.

It says in verse 2, this man came to him at night.

Nicodemus is brave, but not that brave.

He's got some questions for Jesus, but he approaches him under the cloak of darkness.

He meets him in a back alley.

He does it in a way to make sure that none of the other religious leaders will see him talking to the enemy.

This man came to him at night and said, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.

For no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.

Now you'll notice there's not a question mark on the end of Nicodemus' statement.

However, this is an implied question.

What Nicodemus wants to do is figure out exactly who Jesus is, what he's up to, and how he is going to leverage the incredible power he has shown.

He uses a word that is central to this text.

Four times in the next four verses, in the Greek that John's gospel was written in, we see the word dunami.

The Greek word dunami is the word where we get our word for dynamite.

The word means power and not just kind of like some power, explosive, world-changing, rock the boat kind of power.

And he keeps using it in the negative way.

No one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.

In other words, only someone with the dunami, the power of God, could do what you do.

So, Jesus, what are you going to do with your power?

What Nicodemus is doing is he's vetting Jesus.

He's trying to suss out exactly what's going on here.

And he's wondering himself if Jesus is gonna be the Messiah to use all of that dunami, all of that power to once and for all kick Rome out of Israel.

And here's what's interesting is when you read the life of Jesus, a lot of times people will ask Jesus questions about what they want, and he will just sidestep those questions, not answer them, instead give them the answer, not that they want, but the answer that they desperately need.

Here's really what Nicodemus is saying.

Bro, I've seen what you do, I've seen the healing.

You control nature itself, you turn aquafina into a cabernet, okay?

We've all seen it, we've heard the stories.

Now, are you gonna get with the program and use your power, step into your role?

Are you really the Messiah?

Because if so, let's go get our kingdom back.

And Jesus says, Truly, I tell you.

Unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

And Jesus sees right to the intentions of Nicodemus' heart.

Nicodemus, you're too narrow minded.

You're so concerned with the kingdom of Israel that you're missing the Messiah.

Is actually coming for the kingdom of God.

And this can be really dangerous in our own lives because if you believe in Jesus, then you believe in his power.

Because if you believe in Jesus, at minimum you believe that he rose from the dead.

Maybe you haven't read the whole book, maybe you don't know all the miracles, but at minimum, you believe Jesus defeated death itself, the ultimate miracle.

You know his power.

And you also know that your life is very complicated and your life can get very difficult.

And your life is full of pain and your life is full of suffering, and that you have desires that are deep, deep inside of your heart, and you know the power of God.

And so you're desperate for the power of God to move in your life, but not any way it wants to move.

You're desperate for the power of God to move in your life exactly according to the desires that you have to get you out of the circumstances that are causing you pain.

And so often we approach God to tell Him what we want.

God, this kingdom I'm trying to build, this legacy I'm trying to maintain, this wealth I'm trying to stack up, these emotions I'm trying to escape.

I'm just wondering, with all that power, if you're ready to get on my schedule.

Nicodemus is a Pharisee, he's read all the Old Testament prophecy.

But you know what we can do?

We can read the Bible like cafeteria Christians, you know?

Chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes.

This is me.

This is me going by all the vegetables like this, jello.

You know, I just and so we can get into the word and be like, oh yes, oh, all power.

Oh, he loves me.

Oh, he's my father.

Oh, he wants all that's good for me.

Oh, pick up my cross, follow him.

Skip.

And so we'll skip right over the things we actually need.

And Nicodemus, man, he's trying to suss out Jesus.

And Jesus is like, bro, give it a little bit of time.

You'll know exactly who I am.

You don't need to be worrying about me.

What you need to be worrying about is the fact that God is in human flesh in front of you.

It's not about the power that I have, I have all of it.

What power do you have to do the things necessary to get on my page, not try to get me on yours?

There's a lot happening here.

There's a lot happening.

But you have to understand a little bit of the context for this.

And Jesus says if you want to see the real kingdom, the kingdom that we're actually living for, the kingdom where all of this is headed, you must be born again.

And Nicodemus doesn't get this at all.

In the Jewish mind, you live, you die, you wait, and you hope you followed the law well enough for God to resurrect you on the last day.

That's it.

You know what that means?

That means they believed in the deep philosophical theological reasoning of YOLO.

Y'all remember YOLO?

The worst 12 seconds in pop culture history.

YOLO! Hashtag YOLO.

Oh my gosh, I hated that.

If you ever hashtag something YOLO, pray for repentance right now.

It's so bad.

It's you only live if you don't know what YOLO means, God bless you.

It means you only live once.

That's what Nicodemus thought.

We know it because look at verse 4.

This is Nicodemus.

How can anyone be born when he is old?

Nicodemus asks him.

And then he asks, I don't know, the grossest question in scripture, maybe.

Can he enter his mother's womb?

A second.

Nicodemus is an old man.

He's like, look, I know a little bit of how this works.

That's like a one-way street situation, you know.

Born again.

No, this is this is YOLO faith.

You live, you die, you wait.

And hopefully you did enough.

We're gonna be digging into all this over the coming weeks, but suffice it to say for today that as a Pharisee, Nicodemus thought he was in the clear.

He followed the law.

He loved God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind, with all his strength.

He thought he was good.

As a matter of fact, as one of God's chosen people, he assumed that at the last day he'd be resurrected.

No problem, he would see the kingdom of God.

And Jesus came, already having shown all of the power of heaven inside of him.

And he completely put a massive crater in Nicodemus's understanding of what it means to one day see and be a part of God's kingdom.

There is another step required.

You must be born again.

In verse 5, Jesus answered, Truly, I tell you.

Unless someone is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

Cannot.

Does not have the power to.

This is a conversation about power.

Jesus, I've seen you, bro.

Your power could only come from God.

And Jesus says, if you are not born again, you will not have the power to see the kingdom of God.

He responds, How can that be?

I don't have the power to enter a womb again and be born again.

And Jesus doubles down.

Unless you are born again, you will not have the power to see God's kingdom.

Rebirth requires real death.

And all of the rebirths are important.

It's important that you really get birthed into this career track that you're passionate about.

We talked about work a few weeks ago.

It is so critical that when you say I do, you stand at that altar and you pledge your life to someone that you are not only birthing a new marriage, but you are dying literally to seven billion other options.

You're dying to them all.

One person for life.

Give birth to kids, that honeymoon season, it's over.

Die to it so that you can fully live as the parents that God has called you to be.

Your spiritual rebirth is exponentially, eternally, infinitely more important than any other rebirth.

And yet, it's also the one form of rebirth that comes with the biggest obstacle.

The truth is that rebirth requires real death, and yet you on your own cannot do what is necessary to get your own spiritual birth.

The reason is because scripture tells us that spiritually you're already dead.

People don't really like this part, but God is all love, and we know he's all love because he's not a distant God who just talks about his love and then just kind of hangs up on us and stays up there.

He is an imminent God.

He's a God who put on flesh, who lived the lives just like we lived, except did it perfectly.

He experienced all of our emotions.

He stepped down into the brokenness of our world.

He lived the perfect life that you and I are incapable of living, which made him the perfect sacrifice.

God put all of the sin of all of the world, that's you and me, past, present, and future, upon Jesus and then paid for it by nailing Jesus to a Roman cross.

He died, and his death paid the price to cover your sins.

God is love.

But God.

God is love, but God is just.

It is his perfect nature that when we sin against him, separates us from him.

And when you are separated from the source of spiritual life, you end up spiritually dead.

And so we are stuck because in our sins, separated from God, there's nothing we can do to reach him.

The only thing you could do is live a perfect life, and you are incapable of living a perfect life.

We're incapable really of living a perfect hour.

It's tough to do a minute.

And so we're stuck because what we need desperately is a rebirth, but we're already dead and capable of bringing ourselves to life.

Every rebirth requires a real death.

And so you do not have the power, the dunami, to work your way into your rebirth.

But, and this is vital, you do have the power given to you by God to put your faith in the one who can bring you to life.

In 1 Peter 1:3, it says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because of his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope.

1 Peter 1:3

How'd he do it?

Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from his death.

Your rebirth required a real death.

And yet it's not a death you could offer because you were already dead.

Jesus died in your place.

And when you put your faith in him, his life brings you to life.

Listen to the promise that is attached to this in verse four.

We're given an inheritance that is imperishable, it is undefiled, it is unfading, it is perfect, and it is kept for us in heaven.

You have a real problem because all of our lives end in death.

We all have birth in common.

Every one of us was born.

And the truth is, while we're living now, we will not forever.

Every person dies, and every fear you have in your life, and every insecurity that you have in your life, and every doubt that you have about your life, at some level, it is rooted in the inescapable reality that death comes for us all.

And Jesus died so that you could be reborn and Jesus resurrected to defeat death itself and take out of the equation the only thing that you truly have to be afraid of.

And if you don't know God, if you're spiritually separated from the source of spiritual life, you know it.

You don't have answers for the biggest questions of life, like what comes next, and what is life actually about, and what is my purpose for living?

And when life is so difficult, what do I do about it?

Those answers are found in a spiritual rebirth, a connection to our Father, a path, purpose, and plan for our life, and the security that when this form of our life ends, our spiritual life goes on, and it goes on into a perfection that you cannot even imagine.

And how do we do this?

How do we allow Jesus' death to bring us to life?

John 3, 16.

It says God loved the world in this way, he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who simply believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life.

You don't have the power to save yourself, to raise yourself to life, to rebirth yourself spiritually, but you do have the power to put your faith in the one who can.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, you are fully aware that life can be so difficult.

You see what's going on in our hearts and our minds, you see our frustrations, you see the things that we are afraid of that keep us up at night.

You see the areas where we are discontent, you see the longings of our soul for our lives to matter, to make a difference, to be significant.

You see our desperate need for a spiritual rebirth.

And God, I pray that today those who do not know you would understand that you are just.

And until we are covered by the sacrifice of Jesus, you cannot be with us, and yet you are love.

And you made a way through the death of your own son for us to be back in right relationship with you.

I want to ask you guys, with your heads bowed and your eyes closed, if you're here and you've never experienced a spiritual rebirth, what that means is there's no point in your life where you've made a decision to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, and that he has done what he says that he's done, that he died for your sins, rose again, and has promised to give you eternal, everlasting life.

If you've never had that moment of faith, I want to ask you to do something a little bit vulnerable and just to lift your eyes and look up here at me.

I'd love to see you.

Thank you.

I see you.

Amen.

If you're ready today to be spiritually born again, all it takes is believing in Jesus.

All who believe in him will not perish but will have eternal life.

And if you're ready to do that, I would like to help you affirm your belief through a simple prayer.

You can speak this out loud, or you can say it in your head where God can even hear your thoughts.

Pray something like this.

Dear Jesus, today I choose to believe in you.

I believe that you are God, that you came to earth, that you really died for me, that you rose again.

And because I believe in you, that I now have eternal life, I thank you for saving me.

I thank you for a rebirth.

Now let me pray for you.

God, I believe there are some in here, some watching online, who have just made the most important decision they will ever, ever make during their time on earth.

They have just made the one decision that will not only change their life now, but will change what comes after this life.

And I pray, God, that you would help us celebrate that with them.

You would help them find their next steps and begin to not just be alive, but to really start living.

We love you and we pray these things in Jesus' name.

And everyone's said.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take the next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

And I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.