Heavenly Father, we thank you
that we can approach the throne of your majesty through the blood
of your son. You ordained him before the foundation
of the world for our salvation. And that in and of itself is
probably something we should always have in the forefront
of our mind, how great you are. that everything we have is from
you, and you are certainly greater than your gifts. So, Lord, we
come to you now by the blood of your Son, and we ask that
you be with us and unfold to us the truth. We don't have any
truth but what you tell us. There is no truth but your word.
And that truth is found in the Lord Jesus. He is the truth itself,
and the Spirit of God reveals Him. So we come, Lord, entirely
dependent upon you, and utterly needy. We pray you'd be with
Shelby Fortner. This is the anniversary of her
husband's death a year ago and we think about her. We pray Lord
that you'd be with our sister Janelle and that you would comfort
her and increase and purify and uphold her in the faith that
you've given to her in the Lord Jesus so that she would see that
having Christ she has all things and to live is Christ and to
die is gain and and that you would through her teach us to
live for your glory and with an eye towards eternity and not
for this world and with an eye towards our own short lives.
Help us, Lord, to find comfort in all that you've told us in
your word and to hang upon your word and live upon it as our
only food. and drink for our spiritual souls,
our spiritual lives. And we thank you for all that
you've given us in this world, for our children, for our wives
and our spouses. We pray, Lord, that you would
bless us and our families, be with the families in our church,
especially those who have little children. We ask you to be with
Anna and Amber, who are expecting children, and that we would think
about one another, think about your gospel, and live to your
glory, hanging on the Lord Jesus by this faith you've given to
us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. We're continuing tonight in the
gospel of John chapter three, and I've given you a handout,
and clearly as we go through this, you will recognize that
we've been over this material at the beginning, but I wanna
get to verse five, and so as I go through the first few verses
here, I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on them as I did when
we first went through them, but I wanna remind you of them because
it's helpful for us to see these things. One thing that, a couple
of things I want you to draw your attention to, that when
we study the gospel, we're studying God's work. And as I think about
that, we study God's work all the time. There's no sense in
studying our work, is there, or any other man's work. We also
study God's word. We don't study the words of men,
or what they claim to be true, because we know God's alone is
true. We study the work of God in our
salvation, don't we? That's what the gospel is. It's
the gospel of our salvation. And so studying the gospel of
our salvation, we're really studying God in his perfections, the perfections
of his character and nature, in his attributes, as he makes
himself known in his son. So this is all the things that
are true when we study the word of God, the gospel of our salvation. When we study the work of God
in our salvation, we study to know our salvation in Christ
and only in Christ's work. We study these things and it
humbles us, and this is what we're going to see tonight in
John chapter 3, and we study to give us faith, the Lord gives
us faith, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God,
and study to increase our faith and bring our faith to maturity
in purity of the truth we believe, the one we believe by that truth.
And we study God's work of salvation in our salvation to stiffen our
resolve, to stiffen our resolve to abandon all of our own defenses
and all of our own works, every plea we might have, every defense
we have, and hang with no other support than the bare word of
God concerning his son. the salvation of sinners by Him
according to God's sovereign will and His eternal purpose
in Christ. This is something we do. We study
to leave off all that is ours in order to lay hold on all that
is Christ's. And then we study also the work
of God in our salvation so that we might find a full assurance
and a full confidence of hope in Christ alone without the need
for any additions. This is something that we do
when we read the scriptures, which are able to make us wise
unto salvation. We're studying the work of God
in our salvation in order to find our full assurance. in Christ,
not in ourselves, so that we might walk in the confidence
of what God has said, living upon him by faith. And then also
we study the work of God in our salvation, so that we might give ourselves to him
in the submission of our own confidence by trusting Christ
only in that expectation of hope we have in Christ in his will
and his work alone who gave himself for us and who gives himself
to us. To abandon all that we are and
find our all in Christ, and then to submit ourselves to Him in
that faith, and to give ourselves in our life in the submission
of our own will to Him and our own work. Jesus did that, and
it's quite a marvel if you think about it. It's one thing to die,
say, yeah, I'll take a bullet for my friend Joe. the bullet
comes, you die, it's over. It didn't last long. It's another
thing entirely to go through that process day by day with
the humiliation of the false accusations against you and the
hate that Christ experienced while he was doing the will of
God and doing it for the salvation of men's souls. That's an entirely
different level of submission. Then we also study God's work
in our salvation that we might worship God with this thankful
awe and adoration that comes upon us when we consider His
work. And then, the last two things
I want to say here is to, we study God's work in our salvation
that we might find in us, by God-given faith, a compelling
and a constraining love for Christ, so that all we do, we do for
the love of our Savior and the glory of God, because we love
to see Him glorified. So there's many things I could
say about that, and I'm sure you can think of others, but I want to
bring those to your thoughts, because as we read these words
here in John 3, we're studying the work of God in our salvation.
Now, look at the handout here, and I will refer you to John
chapter 3, The first verse was about Nicodemus, his background,
his position as a ruler, his religious background, his name,
and that he came to Jesus by night and called him a rabbi,
comparing himself, putting himself on the same level as Christ. And therefore, this man was clearly
needing humility. He didn't have it at this point
in time. But the Lord Jesus humbled him. He humbled him by addressing
his great need of salvation. That's always a humbling thing
when the thing we need most in life that we're not seeking,
that we think we might have through some false notion of our salvation,
the Lord Jesus comes and he shows us the truth. And it takes away
all that we formerly trusted in and shows what we truly are. So Jesus starts in verse three,
He responded to Nicodemus, he said, verily, verily, I say to
thee, most certainly true. You can take this, this is the
word of God. This is the truth. This is an
unalterable truth. This is the only way. These are
all true of what Jesus said in those words, verily, verily.
This is exclusively the exclusive way of salvation. What I'm about
to tell you is the truth of how God saves a man. But he does
that in a way that both reveals the truth and takes away from
Nicodemus the pride of his heart. He says in verse three, Jesus
answered and said to him, verily, verily, I, saying to thee." So
now, when we come to salvation, we're going to hear that this
is the voice, the word, the truth that's in Christ. I say unto
thee, the Lord Jesus said, except a man be born again, he cannot
see the kingdom of God. So the first thing we see here
is that Nicodemus was blind. He thought he could see. How
can I enter into the kingdom of God? Jesus says, you can't,
you're blind, unless you're born again. And so Neither Nicodemus
nor us can see until the Lord gives us sight. That's the lesson
here, isn't it? We're studying here the work
of God in our salvation. We can't see unless God gives
us sight. And so, also, what we can't see
is the kingdom of God, which we went over last week. I hope
that you heard that because I wasn't able to record it. But the Kingdom
of God is God's rule as King by His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ,
in the hearts of His people, by His Spirit, and over all things
in life and in eternity. He reigns in heaven. And his
kingdom is coming on earth because we are to pray, thy kingdom come.
And that kingdom comes through the gospel because Jesus said,
I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it. So the kingdom of God is God's
rule over all things for his people, his rule in their hearts
by his son, by his spirit in their hearts, the spirit of his
son. And this is something that God has to bring us into. When
we looked at the Kingdom of God last week, the one thing that
stood out was the majesty and the centrality of God's sovereign
rule in heaven over all things, to the glory of His Son, and
His own glory in His Son. And therefore we see here that
in the Kingdom of God, in that very notion, this is God's realm. This is where God discloses Himself.
This is where his people are. This is where his rule is perfect. There's no violation of God's
rule in this kingdom. Everything works according to
God's will and glory. And so when you see the kingdom
of God, when you see that God is sovereign in majesty and his
perspective, is the only real perspective that he rules sovereignly,
that is carried here in John chapter three. It right away
puts us in a state of mind that we can't barge into this kingdom. We don't enter by force. We don't
take it. it's given to us to enter. We're
brought into it. The access is through the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ and we're brought in through the
blood of Christ by the Spirit of God when he births us. So
that's what Jesus is saying here. You can't see it. You can't see
it. Now, I listed several verses here on page one and following
that when Jesus talks about Nicodemus, he's really describing him and
us. Not just him, but us also. And
the first one I listed was in Titus 3. You can see that in
verse three, we were also, we also. So I like those words,
we also, because it puts us in the same place as Nicodemus.
We also were sometimes foolish. When we read about Nicodemus,
it's fun to read about these people in scripture and find
their weaknesses, because then it kind of makes us feel better.
But actually, it's meant to humble us right alongside of them. And
it's also meant to encourage us that if God saves sinners
such as these, He would save us, He can save us as well. So
we also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, and so
on. All those things that we were,
serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy. That
malice is this constant spite that we have towards others,
and a desire for vengeance, and envy because we want what they
have, but we don't deserve. It was given to them, but it
makes us angry. We want bad to come upon them,
hateful, and hating one another. This describes us. But after
that, the kindness and love of God our Savior towards man appeared,
not by works of righteousness which we have done. God always
guards his salvation by excluding our contribution, not by works
of righteousness which we have done. But according to his mercy,
he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of
the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus
Christ our Savior, that being justified by His grace, we should
be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life." What amazing
grace that text of Scripture gives to us. It's like the people
who first heard Jesus in Luke 4, when they heard the gracious
words that He said. These are such gracious words.
That's the way when I read Titus 3, verses 3 through 7, I think
about that. And then I list this other one
in Ephesians 2. I'm not going to read that to you now. I'll
leave that for you to read that to yourself. And I won't read
the other verses here. But I do want to get back to
page 3 and part C near the bottom to pick it up there to remind
you. This was the other thing Jesus did to humble Nicodemus.
We have to be humbled. The Lord says in Isaiah 57 verse
15 that, and let me read that to you, I've referred you to
that many times before, and it shows us if this is God's way,
if He's pleased to do this, that this is His work to make it happen.
Isaiah 57 verse 15, He says, For thus saith the high and lofty
one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, I dwell in
the high and holy place, notice, with him also that is of a contrite
and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and
to revive the heart of the contrite ones. The Lord brings us down
that he might lift us up. That's what I get from that.
And he is pleased to do that by his grace, because even though
he is high, lofty, and holy, he is pleased to dwell with those
who have been brought down and made to see that Christ is their
all. So that's what this part C is saying here. Nicodemus was
outside. He was a ruler of the Jews. He
thought that he was not only in the kingdom of Israel, but
that the kingdom of Israel was the kingdom of God, and that
Christ would come in history to rule over Israel's enemies,
for the exaltation of the people of Israel. And so Nicodemus thought
that when Christ assumed his place as king over Israel on
earth, that he, Nicodemus, would not only enjoy a place in that
kingdom, but that his place would be a position of status and privilege. He was greatly mistaken, wasn't
he? Very greatly mistaken. I'll read this to you in John
chapter one to underscore this. John chapter one, verse 12, it
says, In fact, in verse 10 of John chapter one, he says, he
was in the world, the creator, the word of God, the light. He
was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world
knew him not. He's referring to the Gentiles.
He came into his own, to the Jews, and his own received him
not. 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. That's the way they receive him,
they believe on his name. His name is Jesus, He shall save
His people from their sins. His name is Christ, our High
Priest, our King, our Prophet, and so on. Verse 13 tells us
how this comes about, how we are born again, how we come to
believe. He says, which were born, those who believe Christ
were born. Not of blood, nor the will of
the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God. This is the way it
happens. And so Nicodemus was outside. He thought he was in that kingdom.
He wasn't. He was blind. He was outside.
And that kingdom that God speaks of is the kingdom
that Christ would be king over. And only God's sons are granted
entrance into that kingdom. Now Nicodemus was not born of
God when the Lord Jesus began to speak to him. I'm in the middle
of page four on the handout. He was therefore blind and outside
and therefore subject to the saving sovereign work of God
through Christ as the only hope he had. He was blind and outside
and therefore he himself had to be subject to the saving and
sovereign work of God through Christ. We just read in Titus
3. God's work of salvation is his
work, it's not ours. And God's work in salvation is
a sovereign work. absolutely sovereign, uninfluenced
by all that is outside of himself, God saves those who deserve hell. That's the saving work of God.
It's sovereign and it's saving, and he does it through Christ
alone. So, the second point on page four, his need of sovereign,
eternal, saving mercy was in Christ. Jesus said this to him.
In verses five through eight, let's read it together. He says,
Jesus answered Nicodemus, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except
a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into
the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh
is flesh. In other words, you said, you
asked, should I be born again by my mother? No. The first birth
you had produced one thing, flesh. And that which is born of the
spirit is spirit. Only the spirit of God can produce
the spiritual life. He says in verse 7, marvel not
that I said unto thee, you must be born again, you, Nicodemus. Not just talking about any man
and every man, I'm talking specifically about you. And that's the way
God's word comes to us, doesn't it? You, sir, Nicodemus, I mean,
Jesus told Zacchaeus, Come down, I must dwell at your house today.
That's the way the word gospel comes to us. You, come down.
I want to dwell in your house today. The wind, Jesus tells
him, blows where it listeth, or where it pleases. And thou
hearest the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh.
And whither it goeth, so is everyone that is born of the Spirit. He
thought that he would be, he asked the question, how can a
man be born again? Can he enter the second time
into his mother's womb? Almost mocking Jesus, but in
doing so, he showed his own stupidity, spiritual ignorance. No, not
born a second time as you were the first time. This is the top
of page five now where I'm at. not born from your mother on
earth, not born physically as children are conceived and birthed
by earthly parents." And so that's in response to verse 4 of John
chapter 3. And John 1 verse 13, it's not
of bloods. That's what he's talking about
here. It's not of a descendant, your genealogy, not of bloods,
that we are in the kingdom of God. Nor are we born by the will
of our own flesh, because the flesh profits nothing, and the
flesh cannot please God. And all who are born of God are
therefore taught by God to take no confidence in their flesh
what they can do or what they can refrain from doing. I'm going
to read Philippians 3 to you. In Philippians 3, the Apostle
Paul says, we are the circumcision, the true circumcision, which
worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have
no confidence in the flesh. Isn't that what the Lord teaches
us day by day? No confidence. There's no basis for confidence
in your flesh. No basis for it. All that you
can do is worthless. When you do all that you're supposed
to do, say this, I am an unprofitable servant. That's what the Lord
taught his disciples in Luke 17. So this is the way it is. We're flesh only. And we take no confidence in
the flesh, and he goes on in Philippians chapter three, verse
four through seven, and shows how everything he had as a natural
man in his flesh was utterly worthless, and he counted it
all loss that he might have but Christ, only Christ. And so Jesus
tells Nicodemus, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, that
which is born of the spirit is spirit. It's not what we can
do in our flesh that we're born of God. We're taught by God to
take no confidence in the flesh. More than anything in this life,
You probably have this in your own desires more than anything
in this life. I want my children to be God's
children. Don't you? You want them in the
kingdom of God. And yet we can't even get ourselves
into the kingdom of God. Only God can make it so. And
so we never attempt to do what God has said that only God can
do. This is fundamental. What do
we do then? Do we do nothing? No. That would also be foolish. To
attempt to do what only God can do is foolish, but to then not
do anything is foolish. So what should we do? We look
to the Lord. We wait on the Lord. We ask the
Lord to do for us and for our children what we cannot do for
ourselves or for them. And what happens when we're in
that posture? When we're in that state, when we can't bring about
God's work? It's just like when we do anything
in life, isn't it? Can you glorify God? Can you
say, okay, I'm gonna do this and it's gonna glorify God? No,
God will get glory out of what you do by His will and His work. But when we look to Him to make
our work acceptable through Jesus Christ, we trust Him to do that,
then even though we can't see how what we do in going to work
and providing for our children and just living our lives, we
can't see how it all connects, Yet we trust that God, by His
grace, will take glory to Himself through all that we do, because
we trust that He will do it and make it acceptable through Jesus
Christ. That's 1 Peter 2, verse 5, it
says that. So, faith comes by hearing. And
hearing, I mean real hearing, spiritual hearing, comes by the
Word of God. And the Word of God isn't just
every word in here, without a connection or a message. It's the message
of the gospel. The Word of God has a message. That message is the gospel. And
so when I read this to you in 1 Peter, you'll get it. Look
at this in 1 Peter 1. He says this starting with verse
18. 1 Peter 1, verse 18. The Apostle Peter writes, for
as much as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible
things as silver and gold from your vain conversation, your
lifestyle received by tradition from your fathers, then how were
you redeemed if it wasn't by silver and gold? But with the
precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without
spot. You weren't purchased out of
the bondage of the law and sin and the curse and death. by the purchase of silver and
gold. It was by the blood of Christ. Verse 20, notice, who
verily Christ was truly ordained, foreordained before the foundation
of the world, but was made known or manifest in these last times
for you. So God has always intended this,
that Christ's blood would be shed for our redemption. What a phenomenal, rock-solid
truth that the Eternal God had a will, and that will was to
redeem His people by the blood of His Son, and it was a will
that was established before the world was even created. Therefore,
it had to be uninfluenced. motivation. God found the motivation
in Himself. It had to be an unguided or uncooperative
action that God determined to do it. He determined to do it
by the blood of His Son. We had no part in that. We were
the objects of saving grace. Notice in verse 21, who by Him Christ, do believe in God, because
now he's made manifest in these last times, therefore by him
we believe in God that raised him up from the dead and gave
him glory that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing
you have purified your souls in obeying the truth, and that
obedience there he's talking about is that faith he just spoke
about. Our faith and hope is in God, seeing you have purified
your souls and obeying the truth of our salvation by Christ, in
Christ, to the glory of God. He says, through the Spirit,
in obeying the truth through the Spirit, so there we have
it, the Spirit of God at work in us, giving us that faith,
unto unfeigned love of the brethren. The faith God gives his people,
by the Spirit produces a love in them for the brethren. See
that you love one another with a pure heart fervently." Not
like, well, I'm busy now. I don't need it. Oh, no. Do it
fervently. Make a plan. Pray and execute
it. Verse 23, being born again. Here it is. He's putting it all
together now. Christ was foredained. Our redemption
was by his blood. Being born again. the faith that
God gives through the Spirit, being born again, not of corruptible
seed, but of incorruptible by the Word of God. The Spirit of
God is the seed, the Word of God is also called the seed,
and so there's a union here, there's an indivisibility between
the Spirit of God and the Word, and it's called the gospel. Read
on, "...which liveth, the word of God, which liveth and abideth
forever for all flesh as is grass, and all the glory of man as the
flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the
flower thereof falleth away. But the word of the Lord endureth
forever, and this is the word." which by the gospel is preached
to you." The gospel explains all of God's word, all of God's
will, all of God's work, because the gospel is Christ and Him
crucified. Isn't that what we learned when
we studied 1 Corinthians 15? The gospel that Paul preached,
he said, I was sent to preach the gospel. Christ and Him crucified. I determined not to know anything
among you, save Jesus Christ, and this is the gospel. It's
about Him. It's about Him. This is my beloved
Son, the Father said, hear ye Him. All right, going back to
John 3, and now get us back on page here where we were in the
handout. Okay, so I've said all that that
I wanted to say in 1 Peter, and let me go on here. Let me look at page 6 in part
C there. Notice it says, with his command
to live, with God's command or Christ's command to live, his
command to hear and his command to see, the Lord attends that
command with sovereign and almighty power to raise us to life, to
give us sight, to open our ears and our hearts, and to open,
well, I said that, to open our heart. And then we call, when
God does this, we call on Christ because Christ the Lord, our
God, calls on us by his spirit through the gospel, the word
of God, by which alone we must be saved. All right, you see
that? The point I wanted to make here is that when Jesus is speaking
to Nicodemus, something is happening. The word of Christ accomplishes
his will. And Nicodemus was the object
of Christ's saving words. He was telling him the gospel.
And the Spirit of God attended that word by the will of Christ. with saving spiritual life given
to Nicodemus. And so, I wanted to point that
out. Now, number three on the bottom
of page six, the other thing we saw here is that Nicodemus
was utterly helpless to initiate or bring about his, Salvation by what he could do
and I want to look at that when I get to verse 8 So let's hold
that but look at the top of page 7 Jesus said this no man can
come to me in John 6 44 No man can come to me except the father
which has sent me draw him. I So here we have a very clear
statement of our utter dependence on the work of God, isn't it? We cannot come to Christ unless
the Father who sent Him draw us to Him. God the Father sent
His Son. God the Father draws His people
to His Son. Perfect work of God here. It's
all His work. And the word draw here in John
6, 44, literally means drag. Drag, like Peter and the disciples
drew in the net when it was full of fish. That was the same word
here as draw. And in James, James the apostle
said, don't those who hate the gospel drag you into the presence
of the judges and stuff? So they want to judge you. So
what do they do? They haul you in there. They
grab hold of you, and they bring you in. That's the work of God
the Father. But in his drawing here, even
though we have to be drawn, he does it with a heart operation. So that he draws us with the
cords of a man, as Hosea said, with the bands of love. And so
he draws us to himself through the Lord Jesus Christ. So, let's see, where do I want
to go to next? I want to get to the end. Let's go to page
number 9. I'll let you read those other
things we've gone over already, but I've rewritten them as I
was studying. So, page number 9, let's look
at verse 5. Read it again. Jesus answered
Nicodemus and said, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man
be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom
of God. So the question is, what does
the Lord mean when he says water and spirit here? Well, what is
water? What is spirit? It's interesting
that in these verses, verses five through eight, when Jesus
uses the word spirit here, as we read it in our translation
of the Bible, that they all come from the same word in the original,
which is pneuma. I think I spelled that right.
Pneuma, and every time that word is used in the original in this
text of scripture, it was translated as spirit. But the word pneuma
is the word for wind. It's also translated wind in
verse eight. Jesus said, the wind bloweth.
It's the same word, pneuma. So when you read this, you see
that when Christ spoke to Nicodemus and said, verily, verily, I say
unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he
really was saying water and wind. So he could say, except a man
be born of water and of the spirit. because there was a physical
thing and there was a spiritual counterpart to it. The word that
he used referred to something physical, but it had a spiritual
meaning. And so if we look at it that way, Then he would say,
the first bullet under this question on page nine, throughout this,
the word spirit comes from pneuma. We might therefore read verse
five as, except a man be born of the water and of the wind.
And reading it this way shows more clearly that Jesus speaks
of two different spiritual means by which we are born of God.
First, the first one is compared to water, and the second is compared
to wind. The Spirit of God is like the
wind, the pneuma. Thus, in verse 8, if you read
that, and I will, it says, blows where it listeth or pleases,
and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it
cometh and whither it goeth, so is every one that is born
of the Spirit." So Jesus is using wind physically with our own
physical experience, our acquaintance with that wind, in order to teach
us about the operation of the Spirit. And in the same way here
he's using water as a physical thing we're familiar with in
order to help us understand the spiritual truth. So, just as
in verse 8, as the wind blows where it pleases, the Spirit
of God births whom He pleases. As you hear the sound of the
wind, but you cannot tell where it came from or where it is going,
so everyone born of the Spirit of God is born without human
understanding of the Spirit's operation in the heart of that
person. That helps me understand why
Jesus used this. We can't see because it's invisible. We can't tell when it started.
We can't tell where it's going in the details of a person's
life, how the Spirit of God operates in them in order to birth them
into the kingdom of God. It's His work. We can't. And here's another thing about
wind. Can you make the wind happen? You can't initiate the wind,
can you? You can't direct it. I wish it would stop blowing
from the north and come from the south and bring some rain.
Good luck with that. You can't make it happen. You
couldn't turn on a big fan and make it happen. It's interesting. With all of our technology, with
these big fans they had put in the desert to turn the generators
and create this electrical energy, they're not changing the wind.
They're just going for a ride on the wind. So we can't direct the wind,
we can't initiate the wind, we can't prevent the wind. Have
you ever tried to stop a tornado? We can't prevent it, or a hurricane.
We can't impede it, we can't slow it down. All we can do is
see its effects. And that's all we can do. And
in the same way, no one can initiate the operations of the Spirit
of God in the heart of a sinner, to birth that sinner as a son
of God. That's the lesson here that's being brought brought
clearly to light. We can't bring that sinner into
the kingdom of God and give that sinner an understanding of the
kingdom. Spiritual sight and understanding are the result
of the operations of the Spirit and no one can get them saved.
You can't get yourself saved and the preacher can't get you
saved. He saved us. Remember Titus 3, verse 5? He saved us. Unless the Spirit
of God makes the things of God, which is the things of Christ,
known to us, then we won't know them. It is Christ who speaks
by His Spirit, and Christ who in Himself, in His person, and
by His life, in His sufferings and death, makes God and our
salvation known. This is the way the Spirit of
God works. This is the work of Christ. Always remember to keep
in mind that the Lord Jesus sits on the throne of heaven as the
Son of Man and Son of God, our Mediator. And from His throne,
He sends His Spirit to accomplish His work, and He tells His disciples
Apostles, He sends them with the Gospel so that here in the
preaching of the Gospel, the Spirit attends that preaching
with the power to bring sinners to life and bring them into the
Kingdom of God, give them sight. to let them see Christ, to let
them see God, to know Jesus Christ and have eternal life. So, to
summarize, no sinner, no saint, no person, nor any angel can
initiate, control, direct, help, or bring about the spiritual
birth of the sons of God. This is by God's will. It is
by God's work alone. And it all results from Christ's
justifying obedience and His sin-atoning blood. which obedience
He rendered, and which blood He shed for chosen sinners. Salvation
from first to last, therefore, is God's work alone. He chooses
whom He will. He saves whom He will. He does
all things, especially in the salvation of sinners, as it pleases
Him. And until we believe this, we
will never be able to worship God. We will never have true
faith, we will never know full assurance, and we will never
have any warrant from God to believe that we, though sinful
and condemned and helpless, can be saved to the uttermost by
the Lord. Because we're always thinking
we have something to do here. But if it's God's work, then
we have hope, don't we? And thus, It says in Romans 9,
verse 15, 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 is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth,
but of God that showeth mercy. So, what does the water refer
to in verse five? If that's the wind, and I mean
that's the spirit, we do that because the translation even
put the word spirit in there. What does the water refer to?
Well, it refers to the gospel and its effects in the conscience
of a sinner by the action of the Holy Ghost, when by the gospel
applied to the heart of a sinner, that sinner is enabled to look
away from himself and from every obstacle or barrier and enemy
of his soul to Christ as his all. When we believe Christ,
Scripture calls it, our conscience is sprinkled purged, purified,
or washed. So we have it in Hebrews chapter
9. I'm going to read these texts of scripture to you so that you
see them in their context. In Hebrews chapter 9, right after
the Lord says that Jesus, as our High Priest, Look at this
in Hebrews 9, verse 12. Neither by the blood of goats
and calves, but by His own blood, He, our Lord Jesus, entered in
once. Where? Where did He come? Into
the tabernacle on earth? No. Into the holy place in heaven,
having obtained eternal redemption for us by His blood offered and
taken to heaven in the presence of God. Verse 13 of Hebrews 9,
for if the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of an
heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifyeth to the purifying
of the flesh, see how he's setting it up? He's getting ready to
unload on us the truth of how Christ's blood comes and sanctifies
and purifies us. He says, how much more shall
the blood of Christ, not sanctifying and purifying the flesh, how
much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal
spirit offered himself without spot to God, do what? purge your
conscience from dead works to serve the living God. So in studying
God's salvation, what we see is that the blood of Christ cleanses
us from all sin in the presence of God. That's the fountain opened.
But when we see that, by the work of the Spirit of God in
us, when we hear the gospel and we are persuaded this is the
truth, oh, this is my shelter, my refuge, my salvation, this
is my all, then suddenly we realize that our conscience before God
can be pure because in the sight of God, he doesn't look at us,
but at Christ and his shed blood for us. And then again, in 1
Peter, So you see that here, the purging of the conscience.
to serve from dead works, to serve the living God, is by the
blood of Christ applied through the spirit to us. Purging our
conscience, the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit
offered himself without spot to God. He purged our conscience
to serve the living God. That's what the Lord Jesus will
do. And let me show you that in 1 Peter 1, again. 1 Peter 1, I've read through
this, but I didn't point it out then on purpose. He says here,
in 1 Peter 1, he says, The Lord Jesus, our redemption
was by his precious blood, verse 18, and it was foreordained by
God the Father before the foundation of the world and made known in
these last times, and in that making known, we believe in God,
verse 21, who raised him up from the dead and gave him glory,
that your faith and hope might be in God, not in ourselves,
not in keeping the law. Verse 22, seeing you have done
what? You have purified your souls
in obeying the truth. So here, that blood Christ shed
and offered in heaven is brought to us through the gospel, declared
to us, and we hear it. And like water, believing Christ
worked for us, we're washed. It purifies us. We've purified
our souls, he says here. You've purified your souls in
obeying the truth. That's the experience of it.
Look over at chapter 1 and verse 2 of 1 Peter. 1 Peter 1, verse
2. He's writing to the elect here.
He makes no apologies. He doesn't hide it, doesn't cloak
it, doesn't feel any shame about it. He writes to them, he says,
you are the elect of God. elect according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father through what? Sanctification of the Spirit
unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
So the Spirit of God, like we read in Hebrews 9 and verse 14. How much more shall the blood
of Christ, the Spirit of God takes the blood of Christ, and
He sets us apart under the preaching of the Gospel, so that when we
are set apart by the Spirit of God, it's unto the sprinkling
of the blood of Christ. That blood, seen by faith, is
applied to us. We know it's ours. We know that
it cleanses us before God. And our conscience, therefore,
ceases from trying to do, to earn that acceptance by God,
that cleansing that only Christ's blood can do. And so we, ourselves,
enter into it. We, ourselves, know the cleansing
of that blood in our conscience. And let me look over at Hebrews
chapter 10, another verse along these lines, Hebrews 10, and
I'll read from verse 14. He said, for by one offering
He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. The ones
God set apart in eternal election, the Lord Jesus Christ, by the
offering of Himself, perfected them forever. He did it, His
work, complete and perfect, never needs to be repeated, nothing
needs to be added to it. Verse 15, Whereof the Holy Ghost
also is a witness to us, for after that He had said before,
this is quoting from Jeremiah 31, This is the covenant that
I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord. I will
put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write
them." And listen, "...and their sins and iniquities will I remember
no more." God doesn't remember them anymore because they aren't
there. Why? Verse 18, "...now where remission of these is,
there is no more offering for sin." Christ's offering of Himself
remitted our sins. Therefore, God doesn't see our
sins. Verse 19, "...having therefore, brethren..." What do we have?
Boldness. To enter into the Holy is how?
By the blood of Jesus. We're persuaded of this. We come
to God by the blood of Jesus. In fact, we come to the Lord
Jesus Himself pleading with Him to save us by His own work. Verse 20, by the blood of Jesus,
by a new and living way which He hath consecrated for us through
the veil, that is to say, His flesh, and having a high priest
over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in
full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an
evil conscience. And what? And our bodies washed
with pure water. The sprinkling of the blood of
Christ is what happens when we first believe. And it happens
again every time we believe Christ, which is a continuous thing.
And our bodies, these bodies which are sinful and still plagued
with sin, they themselves are dedicated to Christ and to his
gospel through believing his work for us. It's like they're
washed. Isn't that what Jesus did when
he stooped down, took off his clothes, girded himself with
a towel, and began to wash his disciples' feet? Peter said,
I'm not going to let you wash my feet. Oh, well, if you don't
let me wash your feet, you have no part with me. Oh, well, then,
if I have no part with you, if you don't wash my feet, then
wash me all over, my hands, my head, everything. He said, no.
No, he that is clean doesn't need to wash, save, his feet. And so the gospel we first believe
is the same gospel by which we're now washed, our bodies are washed. We're washed so that we might
worship God in our bodies every day. And we might do that, and
all that we do is made acceptable to God by faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ. So this washing, this water then,
is what? What is the water, then? Well,
let's go on. Look at the last bullet on page
11. He says in Ezekiel 36, then will I sprinkle you with clean
water. I will sprinkle clean water upon
you, and you shall be clean from all your filthiness, from all
your idols. Will I cleanse you, a new heart also will I give
you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will take
away the stony heart. out of your flesh, and I will
give you a heart of flesh." And so the Lord says, I will put
my Spirit within you, and I will cause you to walk in my statutes,
and you shall keep my judgments and do them, so that when we
believe Christ and Him crucified as all of our salvation, that
believing Christ is God's work in us, because that's what He
said He would do, sprinkle clean water on us, put His Spirit in
us. Then we know that we already have everlasting life, and in
believing, we find to be true all that God has said and promised
concerning what Christ has done. We have looked to Him, and we
have found in our look of faith that He is all. And so seeing
Him as our all, our conscience is clean. and so seeing him again
and again, we are washed again and again." So that there is
a close connection between physical wind and the Spirit of God, wind
is used as an analogy for the Spirit of God and water also
is used as an analogy for the gospel of Christ justifying righteousness
and sin atoning blood. so that when Jesus said, Except
a man be born, or is born of water and the Spirit, he can't
enter the kingdom of God, when we believe Christ, it's evidence
that the Spirit of God has birthed us, created us in Christ, and
given us spiritual life from the dead. But only the gospel
will do this, because only the gospel is the power of God unto
salvation. Remember what Jesus said, the
flesh profits nothing, John 6, 63, the words that I speak to
you, which are the gospel, they are spirit, they are life. So
just as when we first believe, faith came by hearing, and hearing
by the word of God, so as we continue in the faith, earnestly
contending for it in our hearts and in all of our lives, so that
we as sinners abandon all confidence in the flesh, which are our works,
anything but what Christ did and what God thinks of him for
me, then we find again and again that the message of Christ and
his shed blood to justify us before God outside of our own
personal experience, that this message brings the cleansing
to our conscience that his blood brought for us in heaven. And
this is what the father of the prodigal commanded his servants
to do when the prodigal son came home. What did he say? In Luke
15, he said, the father said to his servants, bring forth
the best robe and put it on my son. and bring the ring, and
put it on his hand, and put shoes on his feet, and now bring the
fatted calf, and kill it, and let us eat, and be merry. The best robe is Christ's obedience
for me, my all-sufficient and perfect righteousness, and the
ring on the hand is the evidence of sonship, the testimony of
our relation to God the Father as his sons by Christ the Son
and the Spirit of God. And the shoes on the feet are
the gospel of Christ as are all in salvation, all in heaven,
and all in our heart. And the command of the Father
to the servants to bring forth the fatted calf, kill it and
eat it. And to be merry is the command
of God our Father to His servants to preach Christ and Him crucified,
who Himself and in His blood is the wine that cheers the heart
of God and man." Judges 9, verse 13. What can cheer the heart
of God more than the blood of His dear Son? Remember Isaiah
53? He said it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He said in Ephesians
5.2 that his offering of himself was a sweet-smelling fragrance
to God. And what can cheer the heart
of a fainting sinner but the reviving and comforting wine
of Christ's precious blood shed for him to accomplish all of
his salvation." So the words of Christ are spirit and life,
and that is that Christ is the resurrection and the life. He
sends his spirit with the preaching of the gospel, and the word of
the Lord endures forever. This is the word which by the
gospel is preached to you. So go on reading those things.
I have some final thoughts here on page 15 I want to bring your
attention to. And when you read chapter 3 of
John, think about these things. If God's saving mercy and grace
are able to save such as those who are enemies of God, dead
in sins and alienated from the life of God by the darkness that
is in them, then nothing in me can be a barrier too great for
His sovereign, almighty grace. Nothing. And there is hope in
Christ for the most defiled and ignorant and proud and spiritually
ignorant, even dead, lifeless sinner. Isn't there? Isn't that
what we learn here? And there's warrant from God,
warrant from God. And a need in myself as one bitten
and dying without remedy, God says, look to Christ only. look
to him crucified as all of your salvation. So much so that Moses
was the one who hung that serpent on the pole, so Christ was put
on the cross according to the law and according to the will
of God. And on part D, on page 15 of
your handout, the final thoughts, if Christ by his death so saves
someone such as I am, as seen in this proud religionist, Nicodemus,
who was dead in his hypocrisy, and how much more reconciled
to him shall he save me? Oh, I'm sorry, and how much more
now being reconciled to him shall he save me to the uttermost by
his ascended, his risen, ascended enthroned and almighty saving
grace in his intercession at God's right hand. So, what do
we learn? Well, we learn we're subject
to sovereign grace, to life-giving grace. We're subject, we are
dependent on the almighty work of the Spirit of God through
the life obedience and the blood of the Son of God. So therefore,
all boasting and glory must surely be cast aside. All love constrains
us and grace saves us and everything is attributed to Christ alone.
Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that even
now, before we have the fulfillment of the consummation of our salvation,
before we appear with you in glory, even now, we enter into
the praise. Now unto Him who is able to keep
us from falling and to present us faultless before the presence
of His glory with exceeding joy, unto Him be glory and majesty,
dominion and power, both now and forevermore. Amen.