Okay, so let's come back and
look at these words in John's Gospel. What a powerful, what
an extraordinary meeting this is. What a view we have of a
man brought out of darkness into the light of the Lord Jesus Christ
and what remarkable things our Lord says to him. In verse three,
Jesus answered and said unto him, John chapter three, verily,
verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot
see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, how
can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second
time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, verily,
verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of
the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is
born of flesh is flesh, That which is born of spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee,
ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth,
and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it
cometh or whither it goeth. So is every one that is born
of the spirit. Nicodemus' last words are in
verse 9 of chapter 3. Nicodemus answered, and said
unto him, How can these things be? It's a great question isn't
it? It's a question that can be asked
only when free and sovereign grace and the new birth and the
two natures are revealed to people. So you can understand religion,
can't you? You can understand the notion that God loves everyone
and Jesus died for everyone and God wants to save everyone. and
that you can accept his offer of salvation on account of your
activities of your free will and then if you get your life
right and cleaned up you can assure yourself by looking at
what you have done that you are right with God. Nicodemus was
shocked to learn that he with his life and with all of his
morality was not able to enter the kingdom of God. And such
is the wonder of the gospel of sovereign grace, that it's not
understood by the natural man. They didn't understand who the
Lord Jesus Christ is. When we talk of sovereign grace
and we talk of the gospel, we're talking about a hymn. We are
describing the Lord Jesus Christ. There was a horrible thing I
saw on the internet the other day where these two esteemed,
three esteemed theologians were talking again and again and again
about the gospel being an it. The gospel is a person. The gospel
is a description of the Lord Jesus Christ and it's a description
of who he is. And it is a mystery, isn't it?
Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh.
The new birth. is absolutely essential, isn't
it? You must, you must be born again. You cannot see, you cannot
perceive the kingdom of God. Nicodemus came with a we know,
and the Lord Jesus Christ says you don't know anything at all.
And here in verse nine, Nicodemus is finally quiet after having
asked that great question. The new birth which we looked
at last week is absolutely essential because we are dead in trespasses
and sins. We're dead in those sins. We
are not only dead but we are captive according to Ephesians
chapter 2. We are captive to Satan in that
deadness and in those sins. And we can't even see what the
sins are and we can't even see what the captivity is until the
Lord brings us life. We're dead and we need life.
Nicodemus didn't need an education, he needed life. He needed spiritual
life from God. Those that are in the flesh,
no matter how moral and how upright they are and how religious they
are, if you're in the flesh you cannot please God. That's what
God says. In this flesh, says Paul, Having
been converted in meeting the Lord Jesus, in this flesh dwells
no good thing. The carnal mind is enmity against
God. enmity against God. That means
hatred. That's what the carnal mind is.
And you can dress it up in all the religious garb of the world. You can dress it up in all of
what people might call Calvinism or Arminianism or Judaism, anything. You can dress it up in anything
and it's still exactly the same on the inside. It's a heart matter.
The Lord Jesus Christ is seeing our hearts right now as he did
Nicodemus, as he saw through all of the nonsense on the outside.
He saw through all that men esteemed. See, Nicodemus had to be taught
total depravity. You must be born again because
you're totally depraved. And what's that mean? It means
the totality of your being was destroyed in the fall. Every
faculty, your mind, your understanding, your affections, your will, every
faculty is controlled by sin. And we want to think, don't we,
that we're a bit better than someone else. You want to say,
use the Hitler defense. Well, I'm not as bad as Hitler. You have no idea. We have no
idea of how bad we are. And we have no understanding
whatsoever of the extraordinary restraining hand of God upon
humanity. We have no idea. We're blind
and we're dead. Nicodemus needs new life. He
had to be taught about total depravity, but he had to feel
total depravity. He had to feel the fact and know
that he was totally unable. It's total inability. And those
things lead to a total dependency, and that's what Nicodemus questions.
He says, well, how can it happen? You've told me stuff. And the
Lord Jesus has used the most extraordinarily simple words
and the most extraordinarily simple terms. And yet Nicodemus
has to say, and I'm pleased he does, how can these How can these
big things be? The New Birth, as we saw last
week, is not a change, it's not a reformation, it's not the removal
of the bad habits you have and the gathering of some good ones
that everyone can esteem and you can hold your faith in. It's
putting something there that wasn't there before. You can
whitewash, as the Lord says of them in Matthew 23, you can whitewash
the tombs as much as you like and you can decorate them with
gold and make them as pretty as you like. The inside is what? Dead men's bones. Dead men's
bones. A new heart must be created. A new heart that did not exist
before. A new birth. To become partakers
of the divine nature, you have to have a new birth. Our first
birth, in our first birth we received our parents nature and
flesh gives birth to flesh. But in our second birth we have
a spiritual life, a life from above. The new nature understands. The natural man can understand
religion. He can understand the logic, as it were, of Arminianism. And he can even understand the
logic, as it were, of Calvinism. And then he can understand that
maybe Arminianism is wrong in all sorts of things and Calvinism
is right and it's still just dead man's bones if they've not
been born again. The natural man can't understand
the grace of God. That's why they find the grace
of God so offensive. That's what happened in Nazareth,
wasn't it? The Lord Jesus Christ yesterday was explaining God's
sovereign grace in saving Naaman and bypassing all the letters
in Israel, saving that Gentile woman and not all the other widows,
and they found him offensive. The new birth. is required, a
new birth, a new life that didn't exist before, a new life that
is lived in faith and repentance. No man can come, no man can come,
says John 6.44, except the Father which has sent me draw him. You must be born of water, and
of spirit. Last week we looked at these
things in the most simple terms and I think they were probably
the terms that Nicodemus understood, but obviously there's much more
in it and I wanted to spend some time contemplating what it is
to be born of spirit. born from above, born in such
a way that we're able to see and able to enter the kingdom
of God. Water naturally refers to our
first birth but also born of water and spirit refers to this
spiritual birth that Nicodemus and everyone else, everyone else
born of Adam needs before they can see the kingdom of God and
enter the kingdom of God. It's a figure, water is a figure
that's used in the other gospel, in the other accounts in this
gospel in John 4, chapter 4, when the Lord's having that remarkable
conversation. That's one of the things that's
delightful about John is that we have these long conversations
with people. In John 4, 14, she's asking, She's asking for
this water, this living water, in verse 11 and 12. And Jesus
answered and said unto her, whosoever drinketh this water shall thirst
again. If you drink this water, this
fleshly water, this water of this world, you'll thirst again.
But whosoever drinketh the water that I shall give him shall never
thirst. But the water that I shall give
him shall be in him a well of water springing up to eternal
life. What a glorious picture. We are
born again. We're born again of the water
and the word. In John chapter 7, the Lord speaks
of water. In chapter 7 verse 37 at that
feast, he says, in that last, that great day of the feast,
Jesus stood and cried and said, saying, if any man thirst, let
him come to me. and drink, he that believeth
on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall
flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him
should receive, for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because
Jesus was not yet glorified. That doesn't mean the Holy Spirit
was not in this world, it just wasn't given in that manifest
way that he was after the resurrection of the Lord and on that glorious
day of Pentecost. So the water speaks of the Spirit
of God and it speaks of the word of God. Christ loved the church,
Ephesians 5. loved the church and gave himself
for it that he might sanctify it with the washing of water
by the word. We looked at that verse last
week in James chapter 1 verse 18, isn't it? Of his own will, of his own will,
begat he us with the word of truth. I do love what the Lord
said to Pilate, didn't he? He, those that are of the truth
will hear my voice, will hear the voice of God. He began, he
asked, with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first
roots of his creatures. 1 Peter, that passage that we quote
so often. We're being born again, not of
corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth
and abideth forever. New birth is essential. But the
means to the new birth is essential. It's essential that people hear.
It's essential that people hear the truth of the gospel. We give
thanks. Paul thanked those Thessalonians. He was thankful to God for them.
in 2 Thessalonians after that extraordinary passage about God
sending a powerful delusion. He says, But we are bound to
give thanks always to God for you, brethren, beloved Lord,
because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through
sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. You
can't believe the truth unless you've heard the truth. The truth
must be declared. The truth of who the Lord Jesus
Christ is and what He is doing, what He has done, what these
extraordinary scriptures declare Him to be, they just must be
declared. They just declared. We declare them and walk away
in a sense. That doesn't mean we walk away
from people and don't pray and care about them. But faith doesn't
come without hearing, and there must be a clear object of faith
without hearing the words of truth. You must hear the words
of truth. It must be born again, but there
is a means to it. See the Spirit of God. takes
the Word of God, the Living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, and causes
it to live with a life from above. They're born of water and of
Spirit. The Word of God and the Spirit
of God bring forth life, bring forth life. They're born of God,
they're born of God. John began that remarkable passage
in John chapter 1 verse 12 by talking about what it was to
be born again, wasn't it? But as many as received him,
to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them
that believe on his name. How do they believe on his name?
They've got to hear about his name. They've got to hear him
described. Our issue with the rest of this
religious world around here And our union and our joining with
many of our brothers and sisters around the world is all about
the truth of who the Lord Jesus Christ is. Every issue of doctrine,
every issue that people want to hold dear is always, in some
way, a description of the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified.
So to change the nature of God because you find predestination
or election or particular redemption offensive, is to change the very
character of the Lord Jesus Christ. I need, like Nicodemus, I need
an absolute sovereign saviour. I need a successful saviour. One that tries and fails is no
good for me. One that loves me and can't save me. I don't want
that sort of love. It's not going to help me one
little tiny bit. One whose blood was shed but
that blood doesn't save me. That blood is no use to me. We're
great sinners. We need a great saviour. We need
a sovereign king as a saviour. We need a clear object of faith.
And that's what preaching the gospel is, isn't it? We are again
and again and again taking this word and saying, this is who
the Lord Jesus Christ is. And if people find it offensive,
we just keep on preaching who he is. The Spirit takes that
word and you, you who know him, you have been born again. You
have experienced that haven't you? Not that we base anything
on experience, but again and again God has taken his word
and it's just been riveted into your mind and you can't get it
out of your mind. And it becomes, as he says, doesn't
it become spirit and life to you? They become the most extraordinary
powerful words. They have a power and a life.
which comes from above in the hearts of God's people. So it's
the Spirit, says the Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit that quickeneth,
John 6.63, the flesh profiteth, how much? How much? Nothing, he says, nothing, the
flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak to you,
they are spirit and they are life. The Lord is going on to
speak of heavenly things and he's going to speak to Nicodemus
about ascending to heaven. So to ascend into heaven is this
whole matter of salvation is to be entering into the very
presence of God. Heaven is my throne, earth is
my footstool, no man has ascended into heaven except he that came
down from heaven. And if you're going to heaven
The only way you go there is in him. and with Him, and by
Him, and through Him. No man comes to the Father but
by me. No man comes to the Father but
by me. By my doing, by my surety engagements
in that eternal covenant of grace, by my drawing them, by my holding
them, by my, we come in Him. You must be born again. And for
those who are, Christ is all, He's all. He's all in salvation. He's all in blessing. He's all
in acceptance. He's all in assurance. He's all
in redemption. He's all in righteousness. He's
all in holiness. He's all in wisdom. He's all
in absolute sovereignty over all this world. He's all in the
new creation. He's all in the new birth. Christ
is all, and He's in all. So God will only accept you,
hidden in His beloved. hidden in Him, crucified with
Him, buried with Him, raised with Him. He's got to hide us from what
we were in Adam. He's got to hide us, take our
sins away and hide our sins from Him. He's got to hide our righteousness
and strip it away altogether. He's got to hide our best deeds
from him. He's got to hide all of our sins
from his sight. I am the way, says the Lord Jesus
Christ. I am the door. I am the good
shepherd. There is no other way. There
is no other door. There is no other shepherd. You
must be born again. And what is the source of this
new birth? God's sovereign will. It's the sovereign mercy of will. I love what Romans 9 says, isn't
it? I will have mercy on whom I will
have mercy. I will have mercy. Every time
we read a will and a shall and it's in the hands of our great
God, we know that for sure and for certain it must come to pass.
Every time we hear a will and a shall in the mouths of man,
we have every reason to doubt it altogether. For he saith to
Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will
have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it's
not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but God
that shows mercy. So there is a source of this
new birth, and it is the sovereign will of God. And he sends his
word out into this world. of the gospel, the word of the
truth of the gospel, and this water of this word comes to this
world, and it causes life, and it causes growth. I've been caused
to think this week about what happened to Mary in Luke 1, chapter 35. Mary asked a similar question.
How can these things be? She was told, Thou shalt conceive
in thine own womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his
name Jesus. He shall be great. He shall be
called the Son of the Most Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto
him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over
the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be
no end. No wonder he said the same things
to Pilate, didn't he? I was born as a king for this
cause, I came. Mary said unto the angel, how
shall this be, seeing I know not a man? How's this gonna happen?
I'm a virgin, how's this gonna happen? And the angel answered
and said unto her, the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the
power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy
thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son
of God. We have to be very careful about
where we draw the similarities, but what a remarkable picture
of the new birth. The Holy Spirit comes upon a
man, bringing the Word of God and plants the seed of the Word
of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. And the life of God comes
to be where it wasn't before. There's a life of God in the
hearts of men. Behold, beloved, he says, says
John, now we are the sons of God, we are begotten of him,
we're born of God, of one father, born of one seed, born by the
sovereign will of God. That's the source of it. We're
born by the Word of God. That's the seed of spiritual
life. We're born of the water of the
Word. The Holy Spirit comes with the
seed of God in quickening, in life, giving, power, and life
and faith come together. And we hear, children of God,
we hear things that other people don't ever hear. We hear God
speak to us of his son. And no wonder John in his first
epistle keeps saying, we know, we know, we know, we know, we
know, why do we know? We know because God has caused
his word to be spirit and life and to be power for us, isn't
it? Hereby we know that we dwell in him and he in us because he
has given us of his spirit. 1 John 4, 13 in chapter five,
just over the page. Whosoever believeth that Jesus
is the Christ is born of God and everyone that loveth him
that beget. We love the begetting one, don't
we? loveth him that is also begotten of him. By this we know that
we love the children of God, and we love God, and keep his
commandments. What's his commandment? Believe
on my son. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And when his commandment comes, power comes with his commandment.
And we cling to the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 11 of Chapter 5,
and this is the record that God has given to us eternal life,
and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life,
and he that hath not the Son hath not life. Isn't that extraordinary
that people claim to be born again, and then when you describe
the Son to them. At least Nicodemus was brought
to a place of honesty and humility. He came with a we know, and now
he says, how can these things be? And the Lord's going to,
as we may see, Lord willing, in the next few weeks, teach
him the most remarkable things about the Lord Jesus Christ and
him crucified. Things that he had read and known
of by heart, and all of a sudden, they take on a new meaning altogether. He that seeth the Son, and believeth
on him, has everlasting life. He that heareth my word, and
believeth on me, they have everlasting life, and they shall not be damned. There is, there is a word that
comes, there is a word that comes in power to the children of God. Seeing the Kingdom of God, entering
the Kingdom of God is the result of a new birth. It's life that
comes, isn't it? Life comes and we believe. And you would think that logically
Life comes first and then believing comes later, but in the experience
of God's people, it is just the one and the same event, isn't
it? We just have life to believe. He that seeth the sun with the
eyes of heart may see in the kingdom of God. There's no point
talking about the kingdom of God without talking about the
King. God now speaks to us. through his word where we begin
there we continue God births his people by water and the word
and we go back to the word again and again and again and it doesn't
change see we see the son was spiritualized we don't hold anything
to anyone that claims that they've actually seen the Lord Jesus
Christ in any way or howls anything on the basis of dreams and visions
they have. Feelings come and feelings go
and feelings are deceiving. We just have the word of God
and nothing else is worth believing. We see him. Paul talks of those
who love his appearing. To see him is to love his appearing.
When did we see him? We see him as our surety in the
eternal covenant of grace. We see him as our surety, our
substitute. we see him as the great great
promise giver we see him in his righteousness and that's all
of our righteousness we see him as a redeemer we see him as a
sacrifice on calvary's tree and we see him in a way that the
religious world and natural man will never see him we see him
bearing our sins in his own body on the tree we see of God suffering under the very
righteous wrath of God. So it's the kingdom of God and
his righteousness and where is his righteousness most clearly
displayed? The very righteousness of God
is most clearly displayed on the cross of Calvary. We love
his appearing. We love his appearing as the
risen Lord. We love his appearing on our
behalf in heaven. We love his appearing. Because
where he appears, we appear as well. We're seated together with
him. We love his appearing when he
comes again. Either to take us individually
back into his bosom in heavenly glory or to wrap up this whole
universe and take all of his people out of their graves and
bring them into a new creation. We love his appearing all the
time. We love his appearing because
we've been made willing in the day of his power and he is a
king, has exercised his rightful kingly rule over all of his subjects. We've been given an understanding
that we may know him who is true. See this new birth. His preaching
of the gospel brings a new view of God. We see him as he is. We don't want to change a single
thing about him. Don't you love his absolute sovereignty?
Don't you love his electing grace? We love his predestination. We
love the fact that he sovereignly rules over all things. There's
not a single character of God revealed in this book that you
don't love. We love everything about him. We love his sovereign,
eternal, everlasting immutability. This world is not controlled
by Mother Nature. What a bunch of pagans this world
has become. Every time they talk about anything now they're talking
about Mother Nature. There's no such thing as Mother Nature.
It's the Lord Jesus Christ who rules and reigns over all things.
The new birth brings a new view of God in His absolute sovereignty,
in His holiness, in His righteousness, in His justice. And a new birth
brings a new view of ourselves. We only ever know ourselves to
be sinners in the very presence of God. God must make us sinners
or we'll never see what sin is. Because until God births us again,
all we'll ever see of sin is that it's an operation, an act. But when there's a new birth,
the new nature sees the old nature, and we realize that sin is what
we are. And if sin is what we are, then
fixing the things we do is not going to fix anything. You can
polish it all you like, but it's still going to be the same dead
man's bones. People who have been born again
see themselves as what they are.
Nothing but sin. We have a new view of the Lord
Jesus Christ. We're born of water and the word.
God's means of this birthing again are incredibly important,
aren't they? And where we begin is where we
continue. Someone once said that the gospel
you believed you were saved under is the gospel you believe. I think it's extraordinarily
true, isn't it? The things that you cling on to in that first
so-called conversion are things you cling on to for the rest
of your life. Nicodemus had a lot to cling on to until he met the
Lord Jesus Christ. He begins with a we know, we
perceive, we see. He's been brought in John chapter
3 verse 9 to how can these things be? I'm now in a place where
I need to be taught. And the evidence of new birth
is faith, isn't it? Let's go back and finish in John
chapter 1 verse 12 which we read earlier. But as many as received him. That word is in the very active,
it means an active reception of him. To many as received him. To them gave he power to become
the sons of God. Even to them that believe on
his name. There is a reception of the Lord
Jesus Christ. It's a delightful reception.
It's a welcoming reception. It's a reception that he brings
to us, doesn't he? And they believe on His name.
They believe everything about His character. They believe everything
that He is described and by which He describes Himself and by which
the Holy Spirit leads His writers to write about Him. In the beginning
was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God and all things were
made by Him. We believe all those things. We believe it because
We rely on His name, everything we need to see and enter. We're birthed by God, which we're
born, verse 13 of John chapter 1, which we're born not of blood.
You're not born into this kingdom because of what your parents
have done. Nicodemus and the others thought that their lineage
to Abraham was the cause of their salvation and their comfort before
God, but you're not born of blood. You're not born of the will of
the flesh, nor the will of man. Not because a bunch of men get
together and contrive all sorts of means, and not because of
the activities of your own supposed free will. What a terrible, terrible
lie that notion of free will is. But you're born of God. We're born of God. We're birthed by God. We don't only love his name,
but we love his way of birthing us. We do love His way of birthing
us. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father,
we do thank You for the operation of our great King in this world.
We praise You, Heavenly Father, that You shut Your people up
to a revelation from above, a revelation from on high. And we pray, Heavenly
Father, that You would grant the grace and mercy to Your people
for us in his glory, that we might walk through this world,
Heavenly Father, with a sense of the peace and the joy of simply
believing who he is and what he's done. We praise you, Heavenly
Father, for your mercy to us, and we pray that you would grow
us in the simple fruit of your grace
as we walk through this world, our Father. Help us to love our
brothers and sisters. Help us and grant us, Heavenly
Father, in the grace and knowledge of your dear and precious Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that you speak truth
through your word, Heavenly Father, and we rest our eternal souls
on the promises that you have made. and we thank you that they
were sealed by the precious blood of your dear son, our Lord Jesus
Christ. We come to you in his name, heavenly
Father, with nothing of our own. Keep us that way, our Father,
for we pray in Jesus' name and for his glory. Amen.