A Fresh Start
His Healing Love • Sermon • Submitted
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Picture of man thinking
We begin life with a self-centered focus. After we have
learned about the love of God that compelled Him to give His life for us, we
are drawn into a complete surrender of ourselves to His reconciling grace,
which results in a very different life. That surrender is so dramatic it is
called new birth.
3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
4 Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”
5 Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Jesus declared, being born again as an absolute necessity. So much so, that he who is without sin decided to be baptized, leading the way for us to follow suit. But how is one born again?
What Does Born Again Mean?
What Does Born Again Mean?
14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
8 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.”
In the wilderness, the Israelites who were dying had only to look
upon the bronze serpent and they were saved. Now we who are dying in sin have only to LOOK to the Son of God upon the cross
and we will be saved.
5 Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, 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 the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
At our first birth we had no active part. In rebirth we behold in
Jesus a true picture of our loving God and experience a miracle
by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Why Do We Need to be Born Again?
Why Do We Need to be Born Again?
Three words for sin
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me.
6 Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts,
And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
41 And Moses said, “Now why do you transgress the command of the Lord? For this will not succeed. 42 Do not go up, lest you be defeated by your enemies, for the Lord is not among you.
Total inability and total depravity
5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
9 The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
Work as hard as you want to change yourself on the inside, but you labour is doomed to failure. This is something you have to let God do for you.
That totally unable, decrepit, deceitful, stony heart must be excised from us.
It must be replaced with a new heart by the master heart physician Jesus.
How Is Someone Be Born Again?
How Is Someone Be Born Again?
6 By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.
Creation 2
22 Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, 23 having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Transformation