again to John chapter 3, John
chapter 3, continuing our series on the fundamentals of the grace
of God. Father, bless our study. May
our hearts be even more confirmed in the truth that we already
love, that we already know. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Now the grace of God begins with
his favorable attitude toward us, and that's actually the very
essence of it. But it extends through all the
many works that he does for us and in us. There are things that
God does for us, that is, and they are outside of us. He did
them in our behalf, and yet we are not directly affected by
them, such things as election, even redemption and atonement.
Those things were done without us being involved or even experiencing
anything from it. But there comes a time When the grace of God working
its gracious salvation in our behalf,
it must begin to work on us. For salvation is not simply deliverance
from hell, it is deliverance from sin. And seeing that we
are altogether sin, if we are to be delivered from sin, we
must be changed. And indeed the consummation of
our salvation is to be made like the Lord Jesus Christ as it respects
his humanity. Now the beginning of his work
in us is most often referred to as the new birth. Now being born again is not a
higher level of Christianity, nor does it indicate a more devoted
state or more zealous Christian. The phrase born again really
suffered during the 1976 campaign for president when Jimmy Carter
was running for president because he made much of the fact he was
a Christian and he would say I am a born-again Christian.
Now in 1976 I would have been 21 years old And I remember when I heard him
say, born again Christian, I thought, well, Jimmy, there ain't no other
kind. But born again became an adjective to put in front of
Christian and indicated someone who is more serious, dedicated. You know, they were not only
believers, they were really on fire for the Lord or something
like that. And whether or not that's what Jimmy Carter meant
by it, that's how people took it up. It also indicated those
who were maybe fundamentalists, that sort of thing. But born
again is not a separate state from being a Christian. Every
Christian has been born again, and everyone who is born again
is a Christian. The new birth is very simply
the first work that God does in a person as he begins the
process of changing him from someone who is dead in trespasses
and sins under one who is born of God. Now, this work is generally
attributed to the spirit of God and yet in as much as the new
birth is simply the impartation of life, it's also attributed
to the Father and this sort of thing. Some people try to divide
the works of salvation, the various aspects of salvation, divide
them among the three persons of the Trinity and they think
that there are these very strict boundaries. Each person of the Trinity is associated
with certain aspects of salvation, but any of them can be said to
have been done by each or all of them. And I almost hate talking
that way because we are very strict monotheists. We believe
there is only one God, and therefore I don't want to talk about all
of them as though we're talking about many gods. But this confuses
people sometimes, but generally speaking, this work of the new
birth is attributed to the spirit of God. Now, man's deadness and his rebellion
cannot be cured by man himself. Now, a dead man can't raise himself
from the dead. It's just, you know, pretty much
common sense. And as much as it's called a
new birth or a new creation, nothing can give birth to itself,
nothing can create itself. So obviously, this business of
the new birth is not something that a man causes to happen. The Lord said, you must be born
again. And those of the free will persuasion take that as
a command. They take that as a prerequisite
which we must make it happen in order to enter the kingdom
of God. And therefore, their belief is that those who believe
are born again. by the process or the act of
believing, that's how you enter into a born-again state. But
that's completely backward. How do we know this? Well, our
Lord said to Nicodemus here in John chapter 3, verse 3, I tell
you the truth no one can see, and he's using the word there
in the sense of perceive, no one can perceive the kingdom
of God unless he is born again. And he said also in verse 7, you
should not be surprised. I'm sorry, verse 5, I tell you
the truth. No one can enter the kingdom of God unless he's born
of water and the spirit. So here we have, you can't understand
the kingdom of God and For lack of a better way to put it, the
kingdom of God is simply that kingdom which is set in place
because of the gospel. It is the gospel. But you can't
perceive the kingdom of God unless you're born again. You can't
enter it unless you've been born by the Spirit. Now, how then
would a man believe if he cannot perceive the kingdom of God? How could he believe and that
result in his being born again if he can't even understand the
Gospel until he's born again? How could he enter the Kingdom
of God by faith and then be born again if you can't enter the
Kingdom of God unless you're born by the Spirit? So what we
see is this being born of the Spirit is an act of God which
he does directly, immediately, that is without any kind of mediating
influence, it is simply God creating life where there was none before. And until God does that, no amount
of instruction in the things of God will cause a person truly
to perceive and understand what God's saying. And apart from
that, one will enter the Kingdom of God. Though the door to that
Kingdom is wide open to anyone who wants to come in no one will come in or can come
in until they are born again by the Spirit of God. And why
is that? Well if entering you enter something
generally speaking by walking into it and dead men don't walk.
It's pretty much That simple. Now, concerning the new birth, the
Lord teaches Nicodemus two important aspects of it. And I'm going
to teach, mention them in the opposite order that he does,
that the Lord does. The first thing I want to mention
is the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit in the work of the new
birth. Now, most of what passes for
Christianity says that God is trying to get everyone to believe.
And the Spirit of God is working with everyone, trying to get
them to believe. But most people resist him, you
know, and just, well, they frustrate his purposes. But the Spirit
of God is God. And God cannot be successfully
resisted. If the Spirit of God sends His
Word to your heart, you will believe, because His Word sent
by the Spirit carries with it the very life necessary to understand
it and to be moved to believe it. Now, if you mention a doctrine
like irresistible grace, immediately people think, well, that means,
you know, God would save you even if you didn't want to be
saved. It's the opposite objection. Their objection to election was,
well, somebody might want to be saved, yet God wouldn't save
them because they're not elect. None of that is true at all.
You see, the problem with man is he doesn't want God's salvation,
period. He wants to not go to hell, but
he doesn't want God's salvation and he never will want it unless
and until the Spirit of God works in him to make him do that. So
since it is a work that is required before a person can believe,
and it's the work of giving life to the dead, is a work which
is totally in the hands of the Spirit of God, and He performs
it everywhere He wants to. The dead cannot give themselves
life, nor can they prevent the Spirit of God from giving them
life. The dead can't resist anything. Now how did our Lord express
that here in John 3 verse 8? The wind blows the it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot
tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone
born of the Spirit." Now in the Greek language the words for
breath, wind, and spirit are all the same word. It's the word
pneuma. We get words like pneumatic,
pneumonia, things like that. You know it's talking about air,
or breathing, And I assume that these things were
all connected because you gotta look at things from the scientific
understanding of people in this day. They knew without breath,
there is no life. So they perceived that breath
was essentially spirit. In fact, the tradition of saying
God bless you when you sneeze is the superstition that when
you sneeze it's your spirit trying to get out. And so I'd say God
bless you, you know, kind of keep the spirit inside so you'd
stay alive. We even see it in our language.
When it says, and of course this is from the Latin version of
breath, but when it says, when we talk about someone expires, You see the word spire in there?
That's where we get our word spirit. And when a person dies,
you know, like Moses says, we pass away with the groan. And
if they're laying there, you know, and then generally speaking,
you know, when they die in front of them, there's that last breath.
And they just breathe out. And they thought that's the spirit
going out. And the wind's mysterious. Like
you said here, you don't know where it's coming from. You don't
know where it's going. And so all these things got bundled
together in the concept of spirit. And our Lord uses these things
as sort of a play on words, if you will, on the various ways
you can use this word to demonstrate the work of the spirit, the breath
of God, the wind of God. And said, the wind blows wherever
it pleases. Now that's true, isn't it? I mean, just natural
wind. You can measure the speed of the wind. You can measure
the direction of the wind. But you can't do anything about
the wind. You can't stop it from blowing. You can't make it blow.
You can't stop it from blowing. It goes wherever it wants to. And we hear its sound. We see the effects that it has. Once again, when you consider
the scientific knowledge they had, they didn't know why the
wind blew. We kind of understand that now.
And we can predict it a little bit, uh, you know, with the weather
understanding, but imagine these people, it just showed up. That's
all they knew. And that's the way it is with
the spirit of God. There is no magical formula that guarantees
that the Spirit of God will be present in his power to raise
the spiritually dead. When I was in my first year of
Bible school in particular, and this school was devoted to the
idea of missions and evangelism and that kind of thing, we had
more than one preacher who talked to us about how to have true
revival. And what they did, they figured
that they come up with this series of things, if you do it, it will
bring about revival, which by that they meant, you know, you
have meetings and quote, people get saved. And it was a pattern,
it was a recipe. There is no such thing, any more
than there's a recipe for wind. Now, we do know that there's
no revival without the preaching of the gospel. We know that no
one is saved apart from the preaching of the truth, but we preach the
truth and no one responds. And when someone does respond,
what does that mean? That means at that time, the
spirit of God, according to his own will, put his power in that
word from God. and it made things happen. So there is the sovereignty of
the Spirit in the new birth. We preach, we preach, we preach,
and we have no idea if or when the Spirit of God will blow,
as it were, will breathe into these people. and make them live. But when he does, they live. And then we look at the absolute
necessity of the new birth. It's necessary that a man be
born again and not by some act that he does because the dead
men can't take action. It's necessary that he be born
again because he is called upon to believe the gospel and the
dead can't believe therefore spiritual life must be given
to them everyone who is born of god understands and believes
the gospel of the lord jesus christ and they couldn't do that
unless they had first been born again now when i say first it's
what theologians say it's a logical uh... How would you call it?
Logical prerequisite, not necessarily a temporal one. In other words,
what they're saying is as soon as a man is born again, he believes.
And so it's, it's not like, um, you know, there's this series
of events, but the easiest way for us to understand it is first
life is given. Then faith proceeds from that
life. I've likened it, you know, there's
things that are so close together as to be considered one event
and yet one must of necessity precede the other. In my office, I come into the
sanctuary. That means I left the office
and enter the sanctuary. Which should I do first? They
both happened essentially at the same time. because in leaving
the office I enter the sanctuary. That's the best way I can illustrate
that, which is a logical prerequisite and yet they happen virtually
at the same time. The Spirit of God gives life
and every living soul perceives and believes the gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ. So it is necessary But it's not
only necessary, it is sufficient. It's not as though the new birth
is something given to a person and then he's got to take that
as just kind of like it's just a seed and he's got to nurture
that and make sure it stays alive. No, the life that the Spirit
of God gives in the new birth is an immortal life. It's a life
that cannot die. And this new birth experience
is sufficient, it is sufficient to give a person, spiritually
speaking, everything he needs in order to properly respond
to God. Now here in our reality, we preach
the gospel and we We talk about the promises of God and the gospel
exhortations, look unto me, be ye saved, all the ends of the
earth, and come unto me, and I will give you rest, and believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. We give
out these promises. But we also know this, no one
left to himself takes advantage of the promises. Everyone who looks to God has
been born again. Everyone who comes to Christ
has already been born again. Everyone who believes Christ
has already been born again, because they could not have done
those things without the Spirit of God and without the new birth. And the new birth was sufficient
to cause them to do those things. You know, that's why we don't
use any of the gimmicks of modern religion in trying to get people
to make a profession of faith. There are emotional aspects to
the preaching of the gospel, but we strive, and sometimes
it takes purposeful striving. We strive not to use emotions
to manipulate the mind and wills of men to make decisions. That's why we don't give an invitation. We don't say, you know, we don't
believe that, okay, we've preached the gospel and if we just give
the Spirit of God enough time, He can close the deal. The Spirit
of God doesn't need any time at all. He speaks and it happens. And we've seen that in our congregation. So it's necessary and it's sufficient.
And this Necessity and sufficiency of
the new birth is seen in the things the scriptures use to
illustrate it. For instance, the fact that it
calls it a new birth. It uses something we understand
naturally to describe something that happens spiritually. If
a child is born, alive birth, they are completely human. They don't become more human
as time goes on. Now, of course, the Bible would
use birth because it did not understand the process of gestation.
We would argue the moment they're conceived, they're fully human.
They need to develop, but they don't ever become more human.
And someone who's been born of God is at that moment a child
of God, is at that moment a Christian, and there's no increase in their
sonship or in their Christianness. Because those are things which
are either on or off. You either are or you are not. But it's illustrated in the way
God created Adam in Genesis 2-7. It says that God formed man out
of the dust of the earth and then he breathed, now in Hebrew
the words for breath, spirit, and wind are all the same word,
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became
a living soul. Now if you were to listen to
the evangelistic efforts of your common free willer, they would
The creation of Adam would have had to go like this. God created
Adam out of the dust of the ground and he stepped back and said,
all right, Adam, come to me and I'll give you life. Well, you know, God's not that
dumb. A dead thing can't come to him.
He, before Adam, can know Him, before Adam can fellowship with
Him, love Him, before Adam can have any relationship with God
whatsoever, He must first be made alive. And God made Him
alive by a sovereign act. And that's how it is in the salvation
of a sinner. In the beginning of the experience
of the grace of God within us. Alright, and then Ezekiel 37,
here's one of the most remarkable illustrations
of the new birth to be found in the Bible. We don't have time to read all
of it, but it's the story of the Valley
of Dry Bones. And speaking of Israel here,
God speaking to Ezekiel about Israel, but we apply this to
the Israel of God. But there was this valley full
of dead, dried bones. And in verse 3 of Ezekiel 37,
God asked Ezekiel, son of man, can these bones live? And Ezekiel gave a good answer.
Oh, sovereign Lord, you alone know. You know. And so God told Ezekiel prophesy
to these bones and say to them, dry bones, hear the word of the
Lord. This is what the sovereign Lord says to these bones. I will
make breath enter you and you will come to life. I will attach
and goes on. And this would be like preaching
the gospel. This is God declaring what he's
going to do for his Israel and taking these dead bones and bringing
them back to life. And so Ezekiel did prophesy to
the bones. And sure enough, when he did
that, there was a sound of rattling, and bones came to bone, and tendons
and flesh appeared on them, and skin covered them, but there
was no breath in them. Now we who preach are like Ezekiel. We speak to people with dry bones,
or that are dry bones just a pile of bones disconnected and through
preaching the bones can be put together properly. We can instruct
their minds to where they have their theology connected and
we can instruct them in all manner of things that in fact for all
intents and purposes if you just had a photograph of them you'd
think it was a living thing. Now this is a little bit scary
Because I believe this is what happens to a lot of people in
religion. And they're lost and don't know it. Because from the
outside, they look like a whole person. But notice here. Since there was no breath in
them, what would happen to them? Well, leave them there long enough
and there'll be a pile of dry bones again. 9. Then God said to me, Prophesy
to the breath, to the spirit, to the wind. Prophesy, Son of
Man, and say to it, This is what the Sovereign Lord says, Come
from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that
they may live. So I prophesied as He commanded
me, and breath entered them. They came to life, and stood
up on their feet, a vast army." We prophesy to people, we preach
to people. And in preaching to people, we
train them in what the truth is, and so far as their mind
is concerned, their intellect is concerned, they know what
the truth is, they got it all organized and all that, but they're
still dead. And so we prophesy to the Spirit, that's prayer.
That's us, we call upon the Spirit of God to blow upon these, to
breathe upon these. who have heard that they might
live. And breath entered them. If the
Spirit of God hears our prayer and breathes upon those, he breathed
into them the breath of life, and they live. And then, you're familiar with
the story of Lazarus. He'd been dead for four days. And the Lord illustrates his
salvation by going to that tomb and he says, roll away the stone.
He didn't do that, why? Because people can roll away
the stone. God does what only God can do. And you know, in
preaching, in teaching, we roll away the stone. Why? We take away anything that would
block a living person from getting out of the tomb. But that's as
far as we can go with it. But then our Lord simply said,
Lazarus, come forth. He told Lazarus to do what Lazarus
could not do, but he did it anyway. And why is that? With the command
to come forth, also went the power of God that enabled Lazarus
to do what Christ told him to do. And we say to people, believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. But when we say it, it's just
so much words. When the Spirit of God says it, It gives people the ability to
do what they could not do naturally. And that is believe the Lord
Jesus Christ. And it doesn't just make it possible
for them to do so. It makes it necessary for them
to do so. You say why? Because living spirit
believes God. living spirit, it's as impossible
for a man spiritually alive to not believe God as it is impossible
for a man who's spiritually dead to believe God. Faith and unbelief
are merely expressions of the spiritual condition of a person. And the Spirit of God comes and
changes a person's spiritual condition. And therefore, they
do the impossible. All right, next week we're just
going to look at evidences of the new birth.