This afternoon I invite you to
turn to John chapter 3 and verse 1. John chapter 3 and verse 1. Alright, now reading John chapter
3 and verse 1. There was a man of the Pharisees
named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. The same came to Jesus
by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art
a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles. Thou doest except God be with
him. Jesus answered and said unto
him, Very, very 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 into the kingdom of God. That which
is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I say unto thee,
Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it lessens.
and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell hence it cometh,
or whether it goeth. So is every one that is born
of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered and said unto
him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto
him, Thou art a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and
testify that we have seen, and ye receive not our witness? If I have told you of earthly
things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you
of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to
heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of
Man, which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the servant
in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. And whosoever believeth in him
shall not perish, but have eternal life. Reading John 3.1-15. This afternoon I would like to
speak to you for a few moments on the subject of regeneration. I would dare say there's not
one person in this room that's an adult that has not read these
words many, many times. And you're familiar with these
words. When I say those words again
to you today, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born again,
he cannot see the kingdom of heaven. It was a verse of scripture,
I'm sure, that even the smallest children in this congregation
this afternoon have memorized. You've probably set that child
on your knee and read these very words to that child. Because
these particular words are the most outstanding words we'll
find, I believe, in the book of John. They teach us something
so very, very important. And it brings us this morning,
this afternoon, to our subject. The subject is the new birth,
or we may go ahead and call it for what it is. It is a subject
of regeneration. As our Lord Jesus Christ was
sitting with Nicodemus, Nicodemus asked him that important question. and our Lord expounded to him
those words. Verily, verily. Verily, verily. Listen now to me, Nicodemus. Listen to what I'm about to tell
you. Because, Nicodemus, what I'm
about to tell you will determine what life is all about, spiritual
life to a person. who seeks to know God, who intends
to go or desires to know God, we must, in the Lord's very words,
we must be born again. No amount of education, no amount
of culture can bring us and produce within us the quality that will
be accepted before God for the entrance into the gates of heaven. We must be born again, born anew. As it was astonishing to Nicodemus
to hear, and he responded by saying, should a person go back
into the womb and be born again? That's not what our Lord was
saying. It's not necessary to be born
again as we were all born once. But we must be made anew, a new
creature in Christ. Something has to happen to us
before we can be acceptable before God, to walk with Him, to talk
with Him, to fellowship with Him. We must have that great
transaction that great miracle to take place in our life if
we are ever expecting to go into the presence of Almighty God. I would like to think today that
our Lord Jesus Christ was saying to Nicodemus, Nicodemus, I have
somewhat to say to you. Nicodemus, I have something to
tell you that is so important. Now Nicodemus, lend me your ear. Listen to what I'm about to say. I wonder, how many Nicodemuses
do you have? How many Nicodemuses do you have
in your house? How many Nicodemuses do you work
with? How many Nicodemuses do you chat
with on your computer? How many Nicodemuses do you know
in foreign countries throughout this world? How many of those
you would like to sit down and say, now Nicodemus, listen to
me. We've talked about the weather.
We've talked about politics. We've talked about health care.
We've talked about tolerance. We've talked about all of these
things. But listen, Nicodemus, listen. Listen now to what I have to
say. Nicodemus need to hear two things,
and they're my points this afternoon. Our Lord would have Nicodemus
to know these two things. And the first one is this, that
self-regeneration is not possible. It's not possible for you to
regenerate yourself. It's not possible for you today
to renew your spirit. It's not possible for you to
make yourself over. to make yourself into a different
person. So many people today are so unhappy,
so dearly unhappy in their life. They think if I can just move,
I'll be happy. Or if I could just have another
mate, I'll be happy. Or if I could just have another
job, I'll be happy. But happiness is a quality that
is within, not without. The situations around us does
not make us happy or unhappy. Happiness is within. And what
makes true happiness is to know the eternal God, our Lord Jesus
Christ. Once we have known Him, we have
happiness within our soul today. Nicodemus, he needed to know
some things. He needed to know that it is
necessary to have the generating operation, the regenerating operation
of the Holy Spirit in order to be converted unto God. Nicodemus needed to have a disposition,
a disposition to exercise the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ,
which he did not. He also needed to know that He
was completely contrary and man is completely contrary to the
will and the purpose of Almighty God. No man seeketh after God. No one wants to worship our Heavenly
Father unless he has been made anew by the Spirit of God. Those are the things that Nicodemus
really needed to know. If this were not the case, if
these things are not necessary, then every person could come
before God and say, now I accept you, here I am, take me. But man cannot come before God
because he does not have the will to do so. It's not that
we have, out here in the parking lot, we have the gates closed
today. not because we don't want people
to visit, but because of other reasons. But today, there are
no bars keeping men from coming before God. The only barrier
of men coming before God and falling upon their face and asking
God for sovereign mercy is themselves. Their sin is a destruction, is
within their own heart. And that is what regeneration
tears away. It tears the bars away. We have a song we sing around
Easter time that talks about tearing the bars away. If we expect to go into the presence
of God, there's some things that's going to have to take place in
this life. God, only God and God alone can
open the heart and put the grace of God within it. Today, in Romans
8, in verse 7, the Scripture talks about being filled with
enmity against Him. Our hearts are continually, continually
against the will and the purpose of God. That has to be taken
care of. The Scripture also says in Ephesians
2, verse 1, that we are dead in trespasses and in sins. How silly would it be for us
to go today to a funeral home and walk up to a casket and ask
the deceased person to rise up, to rise up on their own will. It's not possible. That person
is dead. That person has no life. There's
no brain function. There's no brain waves. There
is nothing going on within that person. He's dead. A person outside
of the safety of the grace of Almighty God is like that person
lying in that casket. He's dead. He's stiff. He's going to be taken to the
cemetery. He's going to be placed into
a grave. The grave is going to be covered.
That's his future. And for everyone who is outside
of the grace of God, he is also dead. He's going to be taken
to a cemetery, and he's going to be lured, and it's going to
be the end of him. But it's not the end for those
who are outside of God and our Lord Jesus Christ. It's the destruction
of soul to follow. He's dead and trespasses and
sins. But this evening there are hope.
In John 1, verses 12 and 13, the scripture says, But as many
as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of
God, to them which believe on his name, which were not of blood,
nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will. of man but of
God. Nicodemus, you need to listen. You need to listen because there
is no hope for you outside of the operation of the Spirit of
God. Nicodemus, you'll never call
upon the Lord Jesus Christ. You'll never call upon Almighty
God apart from a supernatural change within your life. The reasons that he will never
call upon the name of the Lord is because, first of all, Nicodemus,
even though you have a pure heritage, even though you have a pedigree,
even though you are of the ruling class of the Jews, yet grace
does not run in the blood. As a Jew supposes, holiness is
not a part of family tradition. Regardless of where and who our
family is, regardless of who our mother and father is, regardless
of what schools we attend, regardless of what neighborhoods we live
in, it doesn't make any difference. We are still outside of the arc
of safety because our heritage, our name, our blood, kin, our
mothers, our fathers, our grandfathers, does not instill within us the
grace of God. We come across a doctrine within
our country, covenant theology, where children grow up into the
church and are confirmed, much like that of another denomination. It's not so because children
can grow up into a church. They can go all to Sunday school
from the very earliest to the end and go into their adulthood
and still sit in pews without ever knowing the grace of God. Never think for one moment that
our children will be schooled into the grace of God. They will
never reach what we would like them to find within trying to
teach them about grace. Yes, we're going to teach them
about the Scripture. Yes, we're going to teach them
the moral ethics of the Scripture. But never think because we are
a child of God, never think because we be preachers, we be teachers,
that because of all of our work, because of all that I believe,
that my children will fall and come to the knowledge of God.
because of my education, because of my belief, because of my doctrine,
because of my example before them. Grace comes by only one
means and that is a supernatural change within each person through
the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. We can never, we
can never except any other truth other than that. We have an educational
system in this country, and we feel like if our children get
a good education, they'll have a good life. Much of that may
be true in some extent. But when it comes to meeting
our Maker, meeting our Lord in Heaven, standing before God,
it is not the case. It is not the case. There is
another thing. that Nicodemus needed to know,
and that is the new birth is not brought about by power of
influence of others. I've already touched on some
of this. This morning we have had the privilege of hearing
the Word of God preached through many, many wonderful years. And every message that we've
heard is a blessing. It is a grace of God to us that
He chose to put us in a place to hear the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ. But just because of a faithfulness,
of a faithful minister, just because of the faithful parents
and we have great influence within our homes, good examples, yet
that does not mean that our children, that we're going to become children
of God because we've had the best influence around us. Regeneration is a sole work of
the Spirit. Nicodemus, are you listening? Regeneration is a sole work of
the Spirit. In regeneration, one of God's
elect is the subject, and the Spirit of God is the sole agent. Unless God chooses, He has already
elected all of His children unto salvation. Until God speaks life
into a person, He is, as Ephesians has taught us, we're dead in
trespasses and in sins. There is no life, there is no
light within that person until God has opened your heart in
the work of the Spirit of God. Nothing else can be a substitute
for the Holy Spirit regenerating power of Almighty God. The subject of the new birth
is wholly passive. He does not. God is the one who
does the acting and we're the passive object of God's eternal
love. Here we have in this world today
millions, yes billions of people. And for every one of those who
enter into the gates of heaven, it is the cause and the purpose
of God through all eternity to speak life to that person. The only way life comes is through
the work of the Spirit of God. Sometimes we think that because
of hard times in our life, maybe because of sorrow that comes
to our home. Maybe because of other things
that happens into our life. We gravitate to a church. We gravitate to those who seem
to be happy, seem to have some spirit of freedom about them. And people do that. They gravitate
to a church. Things go wrong in their life
and they start going to church thinking maybe some of the joy
that I see in their life may gravitate or take root in my
life. It doesn't work that way. It
doesn't work that way. Until God speaks life into us,
we'll never know what it is really to have, to be sorry for our
sins. We'll never find faith in Christ. We'll never exercise our heart
to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, that old picture
that we have in our mind of a horse and a buggy and generally we
always see the horse pulling the buggy and someone inside
of the carriage with two straps and he taps on the horse and
the horse takes off. That's a normal picture in our
minds. But in the minds of those of
today, it's just the opposite, the horse. is being drug backwards
by the person that pulls the straps. It's reverse order. In
religion, everything in life goes the other way. But in religion,
it seems like everything goes the other way. That we are in
control. That we are in control of our
life. We are the ones that determine whether we want to worship God
or not. Our Heavenly Father is a sovereign
majesty. Our Heavenly Father is the one
who looks down from heaven and decides who he's going to speak
life into, who he's going to make you an emblem of his grace
and his mercy. Of all the rascals in the New
Testament, God chose to do that very thing to Paul, I suppose,
to make him an example of what grace and mercy can do for a
person. A person who hated God, who hated
the Christian, who hated and then had contrary opinion, who
had a terrible disposition toward the truth of God, God changed
him and made him a person who loved the grace and the mercy
of Almighty God. Paul had a disposition, yes. He had an educated disposition. And today, if you've got an educated
opinion, everybody wants to hear your educated opinion. More like
an educated fool speaking. But today, in religion today,
religion is speaking very loudly, but it speaks not with the tongue
of Almighty God. It is not the tongue of the Spirit
of God, because it's contrary to God's will. In Romans 9, verse
16, So then it is not him that willeth, nor him that runneth,
but God that showeth mercy. It is nothing within us. It is all within the working
compound of Almighty God that produces life within us. I had an occasion, an occasion
to speak, and I spoke, and I spoke as clearly as I could. The Word,
so far, has come back void. But let me tell you what has
happened. Though the Word of God went to
this person, his heart is still closed, but another has heard. And that's the way the Word of
God is. The Word of God goes out. Who
the Word of God goes out to, we don't know. We have those
that we call Nicodemuses in our life. We have those that we preach
to in this life and we pray for those that when they come to
know God, but that doesn't mean that they're going to know the
Lord Jesus Christ. The people that you may never
know are the ones that maybe God will speak to and open their
heart to find out that the message that you spoke had been seen
by other people and other people have said, I've heard what you
had to say. And now I correspond with so
many of those people in another country. They ask the questions
that I wanted the other person to answer. But that is the way
the truth of God is. We never know what God is going
to do, but there's one thing we know for sure, that God is
going to do a perfect work in men's lives. The greatest obstacle
in knowing God is the person who is listening. We are the
greatest obstacle in coming before God because we have a predisposition
against God, not for Him. We're not claiming to go to God. It is God Himself who came to
us. It is the will and the purpose
of God of sending His Son to die, not for you, but for me. But for me. As long as we think
of the world Our ministry, I think we get it all wrong. The real
ministry of the word of God is to you, to you, to you, because
God, his love is centered around people, around his elect of God. And that's how I feel about that. There is a great display of God's
power apparent in regeneration. It is an exceeding great joy
that takes place within the heart of the child that receives the
work of the Holy Spirit. I have an example to give you,
and that example is none other than what we call Easter today. On Easter Sunday, our minds are
brought to our Lord Jesus Christ and his resurrection. As our
Lord lay within the tomb, the Holy Spirit, the power of Almighty
God, brought Him to life. And our Lord arose from that
tomb, and He tucked the cloth and laid it aside, and He made
His way out of the tomb. This afternoon, the same power
that brought our Lord Jesus Christ out of the tomb is the same power
that has brought you to the knowledge of Almighty God. There is a kinship
this afternoon between your resurrection and our Lord's resurrection. As our Lord arose from the tomb,
so you now. you raise and you go with Him. Go with the Lord. Go with the
Lord. As He came forth, we go with
Him. In 1 Thessalonians 5 and verse
9 and 10, the Scripture says, For God hath not appointed us
to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who
died for us, that whether we wake or sleep we shall live together
with him. Our whole life, our whole faith,
our whole life is dependent upon that great work of regeneration. We think so many times about
faith and practice. We get so carried away about
our lives what to do now, do this, do that. I shouldn't do
that. I should make amends in this
area, which is all good, I suppose. But where we began our faith
is where we should be at this very moment. I think of the example
of Easter once again. Easter brings us back once a
year to think about one of the most important things in the
life of any child of God, and that is regeneration, about being
resurrected from being dead and being made alive in Christ Jesus. That's the message this afternoon. As we think of our Lord Jesus
Christ, as we think of his resurrection, let us think about our regeneration,
because as we began, so we shall be. in the very end. May God
bless you this afternoon.