You Must Be Born Again: Life of the age to Come

John 2:23-3:15 You Must Be Born Again (Life of the age to Come) Introduction: One of the reasons I love the Gospel of John so much is because we get to see and hear Jesus in private conversation with others. We get a front row seat to observe the almighty creator of the earth, as he stoops, taking on human flesh to walk and talk with man in his search for the biggest questions of life. The question that John chapter 3 deals with is the question of eternal life. What happens after this life, and who gets to be a part of that? 1. The Kingdom of God 1. Nicodemus seems to be an individual who has it all figured out. Everything but Jesus. He begins this conversation by making a statement about Jesus, “They” Probably referring to the other Pharisees, know he is from God, because of the signs…But who exactly is he? 2. Jesus answers back, getting to the heart of Nicodemus’s issue. 3. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot (does not have the power or ability to) see the kingdom of God.” 1. The big idea of this passage is the question of who’s in. Who gets in the Kingdom of God? -Who partakes of eternal life, life of the age to come? 2. The Kingdom of God - in the Jewish understanding was the long awaited rule of God, where righteousness (justice), prosperity, and peace would be established and God’s glory would fill the whole earth. (spoken of many times in the O.T. see Isaiah 11) 1. Every religion or philosophy in the world has a view of the afterlife, some greater than others, some not so great. Jesus, here, affirms for us that there is a life after this life - it is life everlasting, the kingdom of God, or life of the age to come. There is a future after this life ends, and according to the Bible it more glorious than we can possibly imagine. 3. So who gets in? Nicodemus? us? the religious, the helpless, the do gooder? The answer is nobody. Nobody gets in unless they are born again. 1. This news came as quite a shock to Nicodemus. Nicodemus would have thought he already had a part or a place in this Kingdom…. he was after all he was a Jew, a son of Abraham and the covenant, not only that but a Pharisee, and a ruler in Israel (part of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish equivalent of the Supreme Court), and a teacher of the Jews. Nicodemus is an admiral person, He is pulled together, successful, disciplined, moral, religious, yet open minded. He’s the complete “good person” package. 2. Here is the surprising insight to Nicodemus’s problem, Sin is not just failing to live up to God’s righteous standard, Sin is also looking to something else besides God for your salvation. It is putting yourself in the place of God, becoming your own savior and Lord, as it were. Nicodemus thinks he has right of passage to the kingdom based on his own righteousness. 2. You Must Be Born Again (Born From Above) 1. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 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.”Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? 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. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” 1. The issue of who gets into heaven and who doesn’t isn’t a moral issue - meaning it’s not about what we do or don’t do. Nicodemus is a clear picture of that, if it were about being good, he would be in! Jesus makes it clear that flesh (human ability) cannot bring what is needed. What is needed is a new birth, from above, a birth of water and the Spirit. 2. There are many different views on what it is to be born of water and the spirit. But an indication of what Jesus is taking about is that he tells Nicodemus that he being the teacher of Israel should, of all people, understand this teaching. 3. This turns us back to the O.T. of which Nicodemus would have been considered a scholar. In Ezekiel 36 we read: 1. “I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 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. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. 28 You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.” -Ezekiel 36:24-27 2. This passage is in line with other O.T. passages about God’s kingdom, where God rules over the world, and over his people. 3. We see in this passage that those who are a part of that kingdom have been washed from uncleanness (filthiness, stain, sin) and that they have been given a new heart and have been given the Spirit within them, enabling them to walk in God’s kingdom ways, and obey his rules. 1. This is most definitely what Jesus is referring to here in John 3: A cleansed and renewed (or regenerated) people for the renewed (or regenerated) kingdom -God’s kingdom. 2. What Nicodemus, and all others need in order to see and enter the kingdom of God is not anything that can be produced by man. Nicodemus is an example of the best that man can produce; he is a living example of what John 1:13 told us earlier “….children of God, (are) born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” 3. According to Jesus, nobody is in, everybody is out. So how do we get in? By being born again (or born from above). 4. At this point Jesus shows Nicodemus that he really doesn’t know much… Jesus is sharing with him the most basic things of God’s kingdom, something he should have known as the teacher of Israel, but Nicodemus is clueless. 3. Salvation Through Christ Alone 1. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” 1. Jesus makes it clear that this work of being born again comes through “looking to” (a metaphor for trusting) the Son of Man. 2. How does that work? 1. Jesus reference to the serpent that Moses lifted up takes us back to Numbers 21:5-8. During their wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites grumbled against Moses, and were punished by poisonous snakes invading the camp, killing many of them. God gave Moses the remedy: he was to make a serpent out of bronze and put it on a pole and hold it up for people to look at. Anyone who looked at the serpent on the pole would live. 2. Just as Moses lifted up the serpent on the pole so must the Son of Man be lifted up (a reference to the cross), becoming a curse for us, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. 1. This verse points to the fact that Human kind as a whole has been smitten with a deadly disease; a disease which perverts and defiles every part of us, a disease that blocks, or bars us from God’s pure and just kingdom. The only cure is to look at the Son of Man, dying on the cross, and find life through believing in him. 2. But why does Christ being crucified on the cross save us? 1. The Bible refers to this work as propitiation and substitutionary atonement, meaning: Christ on the cross is suffering God’s wrath against our sin. 1. Many people are bothered by the Christian doctrines of propitiation - that God’s anger and righteousness against sin must be satisfied. Yet at the same time we all have some idea of justice or a justice system. We all believe that there is evil in the world, and that evil should be punished, rather than left alone, or rewarded. We all believe in justice to an extent. Why is it hard for us to believe that God also has a justice system? Have you ever thought what God would be like if he were unjust? 2. According to God’s justice system, all have sinned (missed the mark of perfection) and fallen short of the glory of God. -meaning that no one has ever lived up to God’s justice system, God’s righteous requirement, but we are all infected with the deadly disease of sin. 1. “It would be honest to say, ‘ I’m somehow the same as those who have done terrible things. I am made of the same human stuff. There must be something down deep in me that is capable of great cruelty and selfishness…Jesus of course knows it’s there. ‘many believed in his name. But Jesus did not entrust himself to them..for he knew what was in each person’ (John 2:23-25) And while most of us, the self centeredness and sin of our hearts has not led to overtly criminal acts of violence and cruelty, it has still caused misery for the people around us, and it has kept us from serving the God who created us and to whom we owe everything and Jesus came to cleanse us of this, to purify us from what is spiritually wrong with us.” -Tim Keller Conclusion: 1. The Gospel 1. The wonderful news is that we don’t have to miss out on God’s kingdom, we don’t have to be condemned. God has provided a way! We can look to the cross where God comes in the person of Jesus Christ to bear the sins of the world, satisfying the wrath of God - God’s perfect righteous anger against sin. By belief/trust in Christ work we are saved from wrath, and made partakers of the life of God through his resurrection, life of the age to come. 2. The truth of John 3 is whoever you are, whatever you have done, or haven’t done, you need to stop looking to false forms of salvation, to pseudo saviors. They might take you somewhere, but by believing (trusting them) you don’t have life 3. If you would have life- You must look completely to Jesus (The son of man being lifted up) for your salvation. The gospel is the same for skeptics, believers, insiders, outsiders, and everyone in between. 4. We can’t explain it any further, you need the spirit to fill your life with wisdom and understanding, and that only comes from looking to Jesus 5. As you look to him you will find that the life of the age to come will fill your life now, although you may not be able to articulate how exactly or when it happened, you will find the life of the Spirit of God at work in you and the evidences of that life in all you do. 6. I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair until now had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm, one Sunday morning, while I was going to a certain place of worship. When I could go no further, I turned down a side street, and came to a little Primitive Methodist chapel. In that chapel there may have been a dozen or fifteen people. . . . The minister did not come that morning; he was snowed up, I suppose. At last, a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker, or tailor, or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach. . . . He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth [Isaiah 45:22].” 7. He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in that text. The preacher began thus: “My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, ‘Look.’ Now lookin’ don’t take a deal of pain. It ain’t liftin’ your foot or your finger; it is just, ‘Look.’ Well, a man needn’t go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man needn’t be worth a thousand a year to be able to look. Anyone can look; even a child can look. 8. “But then the text says, ‘Look unto Me’. . . . Many of ye are lookin’ to yourselves, but it’s no use lookin’ there. Ye will never find any comfort in yourselves. Some look to God the father. No, look to him by-and-by. Jesus Christ says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Some of ye say, ‘We must wait for the Spirit’s workin’.’ You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. The text says, ‘Look unto Me.’” 9. Then the good man followed up his text in this way: “Look unto Me; I am sweatin’ and great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hangin’ on the cross. Look unto Me; I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend to heaven. Look unto Me; I am sittin’ at the Father’s right hand. O poor sinner, look unto Me! Look unto Me!” 10. When he had gone to about that length, and managed to spin out ten minutes or so he was at the end of his tether. Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I dare say, with so few present he knew me to be a stranger. Just fixing his eyes on me, as if he knew all my heart he said, “Young man, you look very miserable.” Well, I did, but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before. However, it was a good blow, struck right home. He continued, “and you always will be miserable—miserable in life, and miserable in death—if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.” 11. Then lifting up his hands, he shouted, as only a primitive Methodists could do, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but to look and live.” I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said—I did not take much notice of it—I was so possessed with that one thought. Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, the people only looked and were healed, so it was with me. I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, “Look!” What a charming word it seemed to me! Oh! I looked until I could have almost looked my eyes away. 12. There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to him. . . . And now I can say— 13. E’er since by faith I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply, Redeeming love has been my theme, And Shall be till I die. (C. H. Spurgeon Autobiography, Volume 1, 87-88) 14.