Born Again (John 3:1-15) || 02/15/26

John 3:1-15 “Born Again”

Introduction:

Every once in a while, some new teaching or discovery reshapes how we see reality.  Before the 1850s, doctors didn’t understand germs. Many believed disease came from bad air or bodily imbalance. Then germ theory changed everything. What had once seemed invisible suddenly explained life and death. Another example would be Copernicus, who discovered that the earth rotated around the sun instead of the other way around. This discovery reshaped the way we view the universe.

In our passage today Jesus’ teaching about being born again does the same thing. The teaching was so powerful it shook the most educated of Israel. It shook the nominal church out of her coma during the Great Awakening through the preaching of George Whitefield, and when it becomes not just a teaching but our reality, it shakes us from death into everlasting life.

Outline:

         Jesus’ teaching in John 3 leads us to looking at the new birth from three perspectives: Who needs it? Who accomplishes it? And How can it happen? (repeat).

Point 1: Who Needs It

John introduces us to Nicodemus as a man at the top of Israel’s religious world. He was a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, and later Jesus calls him “the teacher of Israel.” Not a teacher. The teacher. If anyone looked like they had life all figured out, it was this guy.

In verse 2 Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, not an optimistic word in John,  and says, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher come from God for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him”  He approaches Jesus cautiously (at night), with confidence, but also with curiosity. He gives some professional courtesies but then Jesus interrupts him in verse 3  saying. 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

  Can you imagine? This ‘made man’ has come to Jesus with professional courtesy and Jesus responds by saying: Nicodemus, you may teach the kingdom, but you have actually never even seen it. 

Why would Jesus respond this way?

Well the key is last week’s text at the end of John 2 in verses 23-25 “Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.. Jesus sees through appearances. He sees through titles. He sees through religious reputation.

And what does He see in Nicodemus? Not spiritual life but spiritual blindness. All his learning.
All his authority. All his morality. None of it could earn Nicodemus a place in the kingdom.

Nicodemus needed the same thing the worst sinner in Jerusalem needed: to be born again.

Application:

This challenges our sensitivities.

In our contemporary world, you hear people talk about two types of Christians. There are Christians then there are those “born again” Christians. Those ‘born again’ kind, they are the radical kind. You know, Johnny who doesn’t drink, doesn’t chew, and doesn’t hang out with people who do. That is a saying from the South, but maybe here it's the personal who very loudly abstains from social media. They are the Christians that have the hard pasts, who need a complete reset. The people who prostituted themselves, were addicted to drugs, ruined their families, spent some time in prison. You know, the rough types. Those sinners… They really need to be “born again,” and die to that old way of life. Well, that is true, those people must be born again, as we will see in John 4. But the deception in that kind of talk is thinking that those who have lives that are “put together” don’t have to be born again.

Here is Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel, Pharisee, and politician, the most elite theologically, politically, and intellectually you could be in Israel, and Jesus is telling Him that all that means nothing if he is not born again. And Jesus is teaching us that if Nicodemus needs it, then we all do. There is no such thing as a Christian who has not been born again, The new birth is not a higher tier of Christianity it is Christianity, and the new birth is a necessity to enter the kingdom.

Transition:

         Nicodemus wouldn’t have been just confused, he would have been quite offended. Jesus just told the most religious man in all of Israel, you’re not in the kingdom. Verse 4 indicates Nicodemus’s frustration when he says “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Nicodemus is scoffing at Jesus, but he is also asking a question that resonates with almost all the “achiever personality types” out there. What must man do, or better yet, what must I do then to enter the kingdom. Nicodemus is asking how is he able to accomplish this. And Jesus’ answer again cuts straight to the heart. Man is not able to do this, only God can.

Point 2: Who accomplishes it?

         What Jesus does next is a mark of Hebrew literary rhetoric called a parallelism. What Jesus does is restate in verse 6 what he has already said in verse 3, but words it just a little different to draw our attention to something. In verse 3 Jesus says “Truly Truly, I say to you unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” In verse 56 Jesus says “Truly Truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” These two verses are nearly identical, except born again is being replaced by born of water and Spirit. This is what Jesus is drawing our attention to, because although being ‘born again’ sounds like a new idea, it is actually an old promise.

         As a Pharisee and teacher of Israel, Nicodemus would have heard the direct reference to one of the most famous passages on God’s promise to bring the dead to life in Ezekiel 36, specifically verses 25-27. Let’s look there now.

         I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

It is things like this that make us marvel at just how much effective of a teacher Jesus is. The teacher of Israel is now being taught by Jesus, and how does Jesus teach him? By bringing him back to the Old Testament Scriptures that Nicodemus is supposed to be master of.

Jesus tells Nicodemus “You want to know what you must do?. There is nothing in your power that you can do, this is only a work of God.” In Ezekiel 36 God is speaking through the prophet, and let’s look again at the words God uses, “I will sprinkle you with clean water, I will clean you. “I will give you a new heart, and a new Spirit I will put within you….” I will, I will, I will… Who is doing all the work…? God has promised that He is going to do this work, and when He does it is going to be a complete renovation.

The imagery John uses of birth communicates the complete and utter dependence upon God we have for this miraculous work. We can’t cause ourselves to be born. I have two young boys and I was in the room when both of them were born. Let me tell you… there was one person in that room doing a lot of labor to make it someone’s birthday, and it wasn’t me or the boys… New life is a gift of God’s grace, it can’t be earned or bought but only received.

         The natural question that follows this then, is “well if I can’t do it, if I can’t earn it then how can I know that it has happened?”  It’s the question that anyone who has a need for control or power would have.

         So Jesus pre-empting this question says in verse 8 ““The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So, it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

         It is easy to read verse 8 and conclude “Ok, Jesus the wind moves things but what does that tell me about the effects of the New-Birth?” Well, Jesus is using a play on the words Spirit and wind, in the Greek it is the same word pneuma. Jesus is saying like the wind which you can’t see but can see its effects, so too the Spirit works in invisible but powerful ways. But what is sometimes overlooked is what Jesus is referencing here. By using wind and Spirit this way, Jesus is continuing to teach the Teacher of Israel a lesson from the Old Testament, continuing His series Ezekiel, moving to chapter 37.

         Does anyone know what happens in Ezekiel 37? Yes, it is the valley of dry bones. In a vision Ezekiel comes up on a hill overlooking a valley that is filled with dry bones. Dry meaning, completely dead, no tissue, no life remaining. And God tells Ezekiel to preach over these bones, and command them to hear the word of God. Ezekiel obeys and as he preaches to the dry bones they start to put on flesh, then God’s breath which is the same word for spirit or wind blows over and into these bones and they come alive. This is the new birth, it is moving from death to life.

         Listen to how the Apostle Paul preaches this message in Ephesians 2  

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world…  But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ… For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,

         So what does this look like for us? Charles Spurgeon has an interesting memoir about a young man he was discipling who experienced this. He shares that one day over tea, Spurgeon saw the light come on in the young man’s eyes. He had finally grasped who Jesus was and what Jesus had done for him. Two weeks later, this same young man comes up to all elder at church and says “wow, what have you guys done to this place?” The elder said, “what do you mean?” The young man responded by saying “over the last few weeks you guys really shaped up the place. I mean the people are more lovely, the hymns sound livelier, I might even sing now, and the preaching is even better.” The elder chuckled and said, the change hasn’t been in us, but in you. You have been reborn, now you are starting to see what’s all been here along, the Kingdom of God.”

         Being born again is a totally comprehensive experience. You are still you but the throne of your heart is no longer occupied by you, you have eyes that are opened to the beauty of His character, ears that hear and believe God’s Word, a mouth that comes to His table that tastes and sees how good He is. It is all of you, every part of your existence has a new life breathed into it. And what is wild… is that this is just a taste of what is to come…

Transition:

         This really is a life-changing, revolutionary event, and Nicodemus can see that. Now that the teacher of Israel has been taught Old Testament promises by Jesus, he has accepted his position as student, and asks his final question in verse 9. Nicodemus asks “How can these things be?” – or how can this happen? Which brings us to our third point.

Point 3: How can this happen?

This final question from Nicodemus shows that He has understood what Jesus has said. This is not a work of man, but a work of God. Understanding that He can’t cause it to happen, he asks how it can happen. To which Jesus responds to him in verse 10 saying “are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” Jesus has already taken Nicodemus to the Old Testament twice for a lesson, and He is about to take him there again. But before He does, he lets Nicodemus know what his blindness is due to, its his unbelief. Look at verse 11.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.” – Nicodemus’ failure to see the kingdom is not from a lack of knowing the Word of God, Jesus took him to Scripture passages he would have known on purpose. Nicodemus’ failure to see the kingdom of God is due to His refusal to believe the word of God, even when being spoken to him by God Himself.  

Jesus says “we” in this verse three times. He is answering Nicodemus’ claim to council privilege and authority in verse 2 when he says “Rabbi we know…” Now Jesus, after showing Nicodemus that he doesn’t really know what he thinks he does, appeals to His council privilege and authority. The heavenly council, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And this is their testimony in verses 14-15,  

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”.

         Jesus in a climatic fashion once again points Nicodemus to the Old Testament, this time to Numbers 21. At this stage in Israel’s history, they are roaming around the wilderness and are complaining about God and Moses. So, God sends poisonous snakes to afflict them. They repent and when they confess to Moses and call out to God, God tells Moses to make a staff and put a bronze snake on it so that whoever would look upon it would be healed... So, too must the Son of Man be lifted up.

What Jesus is saying is that if looking towards the bronze serpent healed people from physical death, then looking to the Son of Man will heal people from their spiritual death. And we know what this high and lifted up means. Jesus would be nailed to the cross and lifted up naked and abandoned for all to see, where He bore our shame and paid the penalty for our guilt so that we may be made alive in Him… 

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The text is telling us we must look to Him. The Israelites weren’t healed by analyzing the snake. They weren’t healed by understanding how the venom works. They were healed by looking…. We are not saved by comprehending the hypostatic union in Christ. We are saved by looking to Him as our Lord and believing in Him as our Savior. Not as a concept to be studied, but in a relationship with a person who loved us so much He was willing to die for us. 

Jesus identifies the unbelief in Nicodemus, but then He tells him exactly what he must believe in order to be born again. The testimony of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is that Jesus Christ the Son of God was sent to die so that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. The reality of the Kingdom of God comes to live inside those who place their faith in Him. This is the New Birth; it is the kingdom of God with all its splendor becoming a reality inside you.

It is eternal life, and whosoever believes in Him (Jesus Christ) will have it.

Conclusion:

Let me close by asking have you seen Him? Has the kingdom become more real to you than this world? Are heavenly realities becoming more true within you? If you have seen it, thank God! These texts serve to remind us of just how good God has been to us. We did nothing, we could do nothing, and He has given us everything. But if you have not seen it, let me ask, do you want to? 

Do you really want to know Jesus, not just know about Him, but actually know Him as He is. Do you want your life opened up to the bigger, truer story of His kingdom breaking into this broken world? Then talk to Him right now. Ask Him to come into your life and to make you new. What we saw in those baptisms today is a picture of that. Baptism means that real change, real new birth, has happened on the inside. 

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"The only thing stopping you from seeing Jesus and becoming a new person is you. If you want to get out of your own way, but you just can't do it, ask Him. He will help you - he promised to. And if you do that today, come tell us - we weren't planning on it, but we are more than happy to leave this baptismal up for next week. You can have what you heard today, and you can have it right now. You just have to ask." If you sense Him nudging you, that’s not random. That’s Him. If something’s stirring in your heart as you hear this, don’t ignore it. Respond, answer His voice. Be born again.

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Let’s Pray.

Moment of Reflection: 

• It is our practice each week we take a moment  to quiet our hearts in the midst of the busyness of our lives and reflect on what God has been speaking to us, and also to ask Him how we might deepen our relationship with him. That might be through getting connected to a community group, giving, signing up for DOGC, or if you don’t Christ and want to - asking Him to meet you right now where you are. We believe that the Holy Spirit will best guide you on what step of faith is next for you, and we ask that you use this time to listen and speak with in your heart now. 

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Benediction 

• May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all

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