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Born From Above: The Only Way to See the Kingdom (John 3:3) · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to Reformed thinking. It's really good to have you
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  with us. It is.
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  Great to be here. Today we're going to try and
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  tune out all the noise of the Daily News cycle, all the pop
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  psychology, and just open up a text, a text that's probably
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  been read more times than we can count, but maybe, you know,
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  understood a lot less than we imagine.
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  We're opening the Gospel John chapter 3 to look at a
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  conversation that really changed the course of history.
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  It's a conversation that draws the line between life and death.
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  I mean, it's that serious. We're looking at the encounter
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  between Jesus of Nazareth and a man named Nicodemus.
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  Yeah. And our goal today is to do a
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  real deep dive into what true conversion is.
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  We're going to 0 in on John 3.3, a verse that, well, it really
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  acts as a gatekeeper to eternity.
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  And just to set the tone right out of the gate, this isn't
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  going to be a light, feel good chat about, you know, adding a
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  little spirituality to your morning routine.
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  No, we're grounded here in the Protestant Reformed tradition,
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  and that means we're going to take the text seriously, even
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  when maybe especially when it confronts us.
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  That's the only way to approach it, really.
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  I mean, we live in an age that loves spirituality, it really
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  does. But it's usually a spirituality
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  without any surrender. Right spirituality on our own
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  terms. Exactly.
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  We like the idea of connection, of a higher power of self
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  improvement, but the whole assumption we operate under is
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  that sincerity is enough. You know, if a person is just
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  trying their best, if they're putting in the moral effort, if
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  they're generally a decent person who respects Jesus, then
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  they've got to be OK with God. It's the good person argument.
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  You hear it everywhere. I'm a good person.
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  I'm a good neighbor. I pay my taxes.
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  I don't hurt anybody, so I'm in. Spot on.
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  And that is precisely where the scandal of this text just
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  explodes. The Gospel of John doesn't just
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  quietly close the door on that kind of human confidence.
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  Yeah, it slams it shut. It slams it shut, it bolts it,
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  it puts a guard in front of it. We're going to see the this
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  text. It's a verdict, verdict on human
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  inability. It's not a program for self
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  improvement. It's a proclamation that
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  something totally supernatural has to happen to us.
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  And the verse we're circling is John 3.3.
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  Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born from above,
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  he cannot see the Kingdom of God.
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  It's a verse a lot of us have on a coffee mug maybe.
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  But when you stop and actually look at the grammar, the
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  context, it is terrifyingly exclusive.
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  It's the most exclusive claim you could possible make.
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  It tells us that our problem isn't that we need a better
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  instruction manual for life. The problem is we need a new
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  life. Period.
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  So let's let's unpack this. Before we even get to Nicodemus
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  showing up, we have to understand the scene just before
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  this the. Context is everything here.
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  We're in Jerusalem, it's Passover, the city is packed.
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  Jesus is performing signs, miracles, and the text says the
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  crowds believed in him. I mean, on the surface that
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  sounds like a massive success story.
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  It looks like a revival, doesn't it?
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  John, 2.23 says. Many believed in his name when
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  they saw the signs that he was doing.
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  I mean, if we were running a church growth conference, we'd
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  be high fiving in the hallway. The numbers are up.
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  The numbers are up. People are excited, but then
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  Joan just drops this theological bomb in the very next verse.
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  He says that Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them
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  because He knew all people. That is such a chilling
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  distinction. They entrusted themselves to
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  him, but he refused to entrust himself to them.
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  And it's a play on words. In the Greek, the word for
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  Belize and the word for entrust come from the same root.
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  The crowd had what you could call a sign Faith.
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  A sign Faith. Yeah, they were impressed.
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  They were wowed by the miracles. But Jesus knew what was in man.
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  He knew that raw enthusiasm based on spectacle is not the
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  same thing as a heart that's been fundamentally renewed.
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  So the problem wasn't a lack of evidence.
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  I mean they saw the signs with their own eyes.
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  Not at all. The problem was the condition of
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  the human heart itself. Correct.
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  You can be impressed by Jesus, You can be intrigued by Him.
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  You can even follow Him around for a while because of what you
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  think He can do for you and still be spiritually dead as a
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  doornail. That's the tension we're sitting
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  in when Chapter 3 opens. And it's right into that scene
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  that Nicodemus walks onto the stage.
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  The perfect character for this moment.
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  Yeah, let's talk about Nicodemus for a second, because I think
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  it's easy for us, you know, 2000 years later, to just caricature
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  the Pharisees. We see them as the bad guys in
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  the story. The villains with the long
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  robes. Right, but if we were actually
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  in 1st century Jerusalem, Nicodemus wouldn't be the
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  villain, he'd be the hero of the story.
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  Oh absolutely. I mean, if salvation were based
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  on a resume, Micodemus would be at the front of the line handing
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  his in. First John tells us he's a man
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  of the Pharisees, a ruler of the Jews.
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  Later, Jesus himself calls him the Teacher of Israel.
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  So this is not some Pagan scoffer off the street.
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  This isn't a corrupt tax collector.
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  This is a man who is the absolute pinnacle of human
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  religion, morality and education of his day.
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  He's learned, he's disciplined, he's theologically orthodox,
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  he's probably wealthy. He's the guy you want on your
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  elder board. He's the guy you'd want running
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  the seminary. That's it.
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  He keeps the law not just when people are looking, but
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  meticulously in private. He fasts, he tides, He knows the
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  scriptures forwards and backwards.
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  The reason Jesus chooses Nicodemus for this specific
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  conversation? It cannot be overstated.
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  He picks the best man to demonstrate that the best of men
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  are but men at best. That's a powerful way to frame
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  it. I mean, if Nicodemus doesn't
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  qualify, then who possibly could?
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  And that's the whole question, isn't it?
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  If the man at the very, very top of the moral and religious
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  ladder is told he's not even in the right building, what hope is
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  there for the rest of us who are, you know, still struggling
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  on the first rung? Now the text makes a point of
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  saying he came to Jesus by night and people have speculated a lot
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  about this. Was he scared of what his
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  friends would think? Was he just, you know, busy
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  during the day? But in John's Gospel, Light and
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  Darkness, they're never just details about the time of day.
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  No, John is a master of theological symbolism of double
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  meaning. Light and darkness are huge
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  categories all through his gospel.
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  So sure, Nicodemus coming by night probably does suggest some
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  practical caution. He's got a reputation to
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  protect. Five course.
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  But symbolically, it's telling us something much deeper.
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  Here's a man approaching the light of the world, but he
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  himself is still walking in the shadows.
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  He is, spiritually speaking, completely in the dark.
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  And look at how he starts the conversation, his opening line.
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  It's flattery, really. Rabbi, we know that you are a
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  teacher. Come from God.
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  It's a very polite, very logical, very academic opening.
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  He's trying to categorize Jesus. He says no one can do these
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  signs that you do unless God is with him.
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  He's using reason. He's seen the evidence, the
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  signs, He's done the math in his head and he's come to a
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  conclusion. And his conclusion is?
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  His conclusion is that and Jesus is a divinely authorized
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  teacher. But you see the trap in that
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  right? He's immediately put Jesus into
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  a safe, understandable box. You are a teacher.
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  That is the deadly trap of religious respectability.
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  He thinks he needs more information.
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  He thinks he's coming for a discussion with a colleague.
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  He approaches Jesus almost as a peer.
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  You know, 2 scholars sitting down to hash out some fine
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  points of theology. He's assuming his fundamental
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  nature is fine, he just needs a little more illumination, a
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  little more teaching to round things out.
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  He. Thinks he needs a tutor.
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  Jesus knows he needs a creator. He doesn't need a tune up.
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  He needs a total heart transplant.
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  And this is where the confrontation, I mean, just
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  begins. If you look at the text, Jesus
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  completely ignores the compliment.
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  He doesn't say, oh, thank you, Nicodemus, that's kind of you to
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  say you're a pretty good teacher yourself.
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  Nothing. He just cuts right through it.
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  It's almost, it's almost rude by our social standards.
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  It's a verdict. It's not a dialogue.
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  Jesus bypasses all the pleasantries because he sees the
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  desperate, desperate spiritual condition of the man standing in
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  front of him. And he responds with this
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  phrase, Truly, truly, I say to you.
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  In the Greek, that's I on, on, on.
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  Right, and we usually say Amen at the end of a prayer.
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  It means so be it or I agree, but Jesus puts it at the
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  beginning, yeah. That's unique to him.
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  When Jesus uses the double Amen at the start of a sentence, it's
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  like a judicial oath from the throne of heaven itself.
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  It signals that what he is about to say is non negotiable
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  absolute divine truth. He's staking his own authority
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  on this statement. He's saying listen up because
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  this is the verdict of God. And then comes the barrier.
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  That one little word. Unless.
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  That little word ina may in the Greek.
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  It's the grammar of exclusion. It establishes an absolute
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  unbendable condition. It's the gatekeeper.
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  It is the gatekeeper. Doesn't matter what you're
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  carrying in your luggage, your religious pedigree, your
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  morality, your Bible knowledge, if you do not meet this one
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  specific condition, the door does not open.
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  Unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of
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  God. So that just slams the door on
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  every human achievement. It's not unless you try a little
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  harder, or unless you go through this ritual, or unless you join
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  the right denomination. It creates a universal barrier,
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  and this is so offensive. It was offensive to Nicodemus
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  and it's offensive to the modern ear.
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  We like to think there are many paths up the mountain.
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  We like to think that God grades on a curve, but Jesus says no.
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  There is a specific singular event that must happen, and
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  without it the result is no sight.
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  You are blind. You can't even see the Kingdom,
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  let alone enter it. OK, so let's get into the
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  mechanics of this this event. This is where we get into what
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  you called the grammar of grace. We're talking about verse 3.
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  Unless one is born from above that verb to be born.
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  There's something really important about the grammar
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  there, isn't there? Oh, it's everything.
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  The Greek verb is janetha, and it's in the passive voice now
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  for anyone who hasn't thought about grammar since high school.
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  Which is in most of us. Right.
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  The passive voice means the subject of the sentence is being
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  acted upon. The subject isn't the doer of
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  the action. The subject is the receiver, the
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  action. So if we use the analogy of a
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  physical birth, an infant doesn't decide to be born.
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  An infant doesn't contribute. Exactly.
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  Think about your own birth. Did you have a meeting and
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  decide you know what? I think today's the day.
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  Did you labor to bring yourself into the world?
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  Of course not. You were completely passive in
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  the whole affair. You were acted upon by your
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  parents. Jesus is deliberately choosing a
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  metaphor that strips us of any and all contribution.
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  And this brings us right to a major theological term, one
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  that's central to the Reformed tradition, monarchistic
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  regeneration. It sounds like a $5 word, but
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  the concept is actually very clear.
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  Monarchism just comes from 2 Greek words that mean one
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  working. It means that in the act of
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  regeneration, of giving new spiritual life to a dead soul,
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  God is the sole active agent. God does all the work.
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  The Sinner is simply the recipient.
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  And this stands in stark contrast to synergism.
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  Right. Synergism is the idea of
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  cooperation. God does his part, and then you
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  have to do your part. God throws you the life
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  preserver, but you have to generate the willpower from
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  within your dead heart to grab onto it.
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  This text just destroys that idea.
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  You cannot decide to be born any more than a corpse in a morgue
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  can decide to get up and walk out.
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  The Westminster Confession says that in this effectual calling,
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  man is altogether passive. Altogether passive until
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  quickened by the Holy Spirit. It's such a blow to our pride.
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  We want to be the captain of our own soul.
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  We want to at least cast the deciding vote.
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  We want to. Have some skin in the game?
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  Yes. And Jesus says no, you must be
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  born. It is something that must happen
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  to you from outside of you. OK, but there's another layer
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  here. This word Jesus uses for born
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  again or born from above. The Greek word is untethan.
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  Yeah, anthan is one of those brilliant words with a double
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  meaning. It can mean again in a
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  chronological sense, like a second time, or it can mean from
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  above indicating a source location.
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  And Nicodemus, he clearly hears again.
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  He immediately takes it to the most crass physical level.
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  He asks, how can a man be born when he is old?
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  Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?
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  He's interpreting Jesus through a purely earthly, horizontal
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  lens. He thinks Jesus is talking about
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  hitting the reset button on his physical.
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  Life, which is just ridiculous, and he knows it's ridiculous.
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  It's absurd. He's showing his own spiritual
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  blindness. But Jesus is of course, implying
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  the other meaning from above. He's talking about a heavenly
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  reality. Nicodemus is thinking
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  horizontally. How do I improve the life I
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  already have? Jesus is speaking vertically.
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  You need a totally new kind of life that comes down from God.
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  So it's the difference between, say, restoring a classic car and
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  having an entirely new car just materialize out of thin air.
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  That's a great way to put it. All human religion, at its core,
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  is about horizontal improvement. Let's make the bad person good.
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  Let's make the good person better.
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  Let's discipline the flesh. But the Gospel isn't about
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  improvement. It's about invasion.
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  It's the vertical invasion of God's life into a dead human
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  soul. And the result of this birth,
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  Jesus says, is that one can see the Kingdom of God.
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  Right, And the word foresee their idea, and it means more
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  than just physical sight. It means to perceive, to
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  recognize, to grasp the reality of something.
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  Jesus is saying that without this new birth, the Kingdom of
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  God is completely invisible to you.
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  You could be standing right in the middle of it and you would
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  and have a clue. So there's a progression.
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  In verse three you must be born to see, and then in verse 5 you
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  must be born to enter. Sight precedes participation.
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  You can't walk through a door you can't see, and you cannot
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  see the spiritual reality of God's Kingdom if you are
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  spiritually blind. Which leads us to, I think,
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  maybe the most difficult, most offensive doctrine for modern
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  people to swallow. The doctrine of total inability
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  Jesus says he cannot see. Let's just park on that phrase
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  for a moment. He cannot.
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  The Greek is udoniti. This is not He will not as if
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  it's just a matter of stubbornness.
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  It's not He may not, as if he's just reluctant.
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  It means he is not able. It speaks of a total lack of
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  capacity, a fundamental inability.
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  And this is what theologians call total inability, or maybe
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  more famously, total depravity. And we have to be really careful
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  of that term. Total depravity doesn't mean
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  that every non Christian is as evil as they could possibly be.
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  Right, it doesn't mean everyone's a serial killer.
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  No, It means that the corruption of sin extends to every part of
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  the human person. Our mind, our will, our
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  emotions, our desires. Nothing is left untouched.
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  Our will is in bondage to sin. Our mind is darkened.
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  The illustration of the blind man in an art gallery is helpful
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  here. It is.
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  Imagine a man born blind standing in the Louvre in front
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  of the Mona Lisa. It isn't that he's being
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  stubborn and refusing to admire the art.
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  He simply lacks the faculty of sight.
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  You can describe the colors to him, you can explain the brush
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  strokes and the artist's intent, but he cannot perceive the
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  painting for himself. Or to make it even stronger,
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  explaining a rainbow to a corpse.
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  That's even more fitting, biblically speaking, because
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  Paul in Ephesians 2 tells us that we are dead in trespasses
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  and sins. You can take a corpse and dress
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  in a tuxedo. That's morality.
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  You can prop it up in a church view.
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  That's religion, but it's full of corpse.
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  It cannot respond, It cannot see, It cannot believe.
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  And that's the offense. It tells the modern person, and
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  it told Nicodemus that your problem isn't a lack of
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  information, It's not a lack of education.
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  I mean, Nicodemus had all the education in the world.
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  He had the PhD in Old Testament studies from Jerusalem Seminary.
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  But as Paul says at First Corinthians 2, the natural
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  person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for
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  they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them
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  because they are spiritually discerned.
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  The core offense of the gospel is that it tells us we are not
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  just sick, we are dead. So why then, why is the new
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  birth so absolutely necessary? Because the Kingdom is a
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  spiritual realm, and as Jesus says in verse 6, that which is
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  born of the flesh is flesh. Like produces like flesh can
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  only produce more flesh. You can educate the flesh, you
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  can discipline it, you can make it very religious, but you
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  cannot, by your own effort, turn flesh into spirit.
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  So all our moral reform projects are just polishing a corpse.
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  That's what it amounts to. The new birth is required
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  because we need a new nature with a new palette.
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  We need new desires, new loves, new loyalties.
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  Think of it this way. If you don't love a holy God
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  now, if you find his worship boring and His commands
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  burdensome, why on earth would you want to go to heaven?
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  Because heaven is the place where He is everything.
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  It's the unhindered presence of that very God.
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  If you hate his company here, you would find heaven to be an
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  eternal torture there. That's why we must be born
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  again, not just to get a ticket in the door, but to be made fit
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  for the environment. Now, Jesus, he doesn't let
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  Nicodemus off the hook. Later in the conversation, he
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  gives him a pretty sharp rebuke. He asks, are you the teacher of
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  Israel? And yet you do not understand
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  these things. It is a stinging question.
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  Jesus clearly expects Nicodemus to already know this stuff,
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  which implies that this whole doctrine of regeneration of the
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  new birth, it wasn't some brand new idea Jesus invented on the
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  spot. It was woven all through the Old
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  Testament. OK, so where should Nicodemus
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  have seen this? So what was he missing?
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  He. Should have seen all over the
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  prophets. Take Ezekiel 76.
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  It's the classic text on the new covenant.
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  God promises I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall
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  be clean, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I
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  will put within you and. He goes on to say, I will remove
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  the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of
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  flesh. And just notice who is doing all
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  the work in that passage. I will sprinkle, I will give, I
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  will remove, I will put. It's I, I.
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  It's all God. It is pure monarchism.
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  God promises to do for His people what they are totally
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  incapable of doing for themselves.
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  And you have Jeremiah 31, which talks about the law no longer
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  being just on stone tablets, but written on the heart.
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  Exactly. The Old Covenant was external,
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  written on stone. The new covenant that the
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  prophets looked forward to was internal, written on the very
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  heart. Nicodemus, as a Pharisee, was
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  obsessed with the external tablets.
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  He missed the promise of an internal transformation.
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  And then, of course, there's the Valley of Dry Bones in Ezekiel
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  37. The ultimate picture of total
• 18:13
  inability. Can these bones live?
• 18:15
  No, not on their own. They're dead.
• 18:17
  Dead, dead. They need the wind, the Spirit
• 18:20
  of God, to breathe life into them.
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  So Nicodemus whole theological framework was probably geared
• 18:25
  toward a physical political Kingdom.
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  For sure, he was what we might call a Zionist of his day.
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  He was expecting a Messiah to come, kick out the Roman
• 18:33
  oppressors and set up an earthly Kingdom for the ethnic
• 18:36
  descendants of Abraham. He thought his physical birth,
• 18:39
  his Jewishness, was his ticket. Jesus completely demolishes that
• 18:44
  and insist on a spiritual Kingdom made-up of people who
• 18:47
  have been supernaturally renewed.
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  The Kingdom is not an ethnic inheritance, it's a spiritual
• 18:52
  creation. This brings us to a really
• 18:55
  practical part of our deep dive. If John 3.3 is true, if this new
• 19:00
  birth is an absolute necessity, then it exposes a whole lot of
• 19:04
  things that we tend to rely on as well, counterfeits.
• 19:07
  Yeah, it acts like a Wrecking Ball to all our false hopes.
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  And it's good for us to name them because so many of us, even
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  in the church, are hiding behind them.
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  OK, let's start with the big one, moralism.
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  We've touched on it, but let's really drive it home.
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  Moralism is the idea that better behavior saves you.
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  It's the belief that if I can just clean up my ACT enough, if
• 19:25
  I can just be a good enough person, God will be obligated to
• 19:28
  accept me. But Jesus says born, not
• 19:31
  improved. You don't take a car with a
• 19:33
  blown engine and just give it a nice new paint job.
• 19:35
  You need a new engine. Moralism is all about the paint
• 19:38
  job. OK, what about decisionism?
• 19:40
  This is huge in modern evangelicalism.
• 19:43
  Oh, it's the dominant era of our time.
• 19:45
  It's the idea that your decision for Jesus is the thing that
• 19:49
  causes the new birth. You hear it all the time.
• 19:51
  You just need to decide to be born again.
• 19:53
  But the text says the spirit blows where he wishes.
• 19:56
  You don't decide for the wind to blow.
• 19:58
  So faith is the fruit of regeneration, not the root of
• 20:01
  it. We believe because we have been
• 20:03
  made alive. We're not made alive because we
• 20:05
  decided to believe. A dead man can't decide to
• 20:07
  accept the gift of life. Life has to come first.
• 20:10
  The action of believing is the first evidence of the life that
• 20:14
  has been given. Right, then there's
• 20:15
  sacramentalism. This is the belief that a
• 20:18
  physical act, usually baptism, automatically confers new life.
• 20:23
  People who think well is baptized as an infant or I got
• 20:26
  dunked in the river when I was 12 so I'm good to go.
• 20:28
  But Jesus makes it clear that the water and spirit he mentions
• 20:32
  is a reference to the Ezekiel promise of cleansing and
• 20:34
  renewal, not some magical ritual a person can get wet and still
• 20:39
  have a heart of. Stone.
• 20:40
  I think of Simon the magician in the book of Acts.
• 20:43
  He got baptized, but his heart was not right with God.
• 20:46
  A perfect example. All water, no spirit.
• 20:48
  OK, what about mysticism? Or, you know, enthusiasm.
• 20:52
  This is the danger of chasing experiences, the idea that being
• 20:56
  born again has to be this dramatic Damascus Rd. moment
• 20:59
  where lightning flashes and you feel a warm fuzzy glow all over.
• 21:03
  But the test of new life isn't a dramatic story.
• 21:06
  The test is the presence of new sight.
• 21:09
  Do you now see Christ as beautiful and precious in a way
• 21:12
  you never did before? That's the real evidence, not
• 21:14
  how many shivers you got down your spine during the worship
• 21:17
  service. And the last one, cultural
• 21:19
  Christianity. This is maybe the most common
• 21:21
  one in our part of the world. It's the idea that because I was
• 21:24
  born in a Christian home or because I live in a Christian
• 21:26
  nation that makes me a Christian.
• 21:29
  But as the old saying goes, being born in a garage doesn't
• 21:31
  make you a car. Nicodemus had the best spiritual
• 21:34
  heritage imaginable. He was a child of Abraham and
• 21:38
  Jesus tells him it counts for absolutely nothing when it comes
• 21:41
  to the new birth. Wow, this is heavy.
• 21:44
  It just strips away everything we naturally want to lean on.
• 21:47
  But we can't just leave people there staring into the abyss of
• 21:50
  their own inability. Jesus didn't love a Nicodemus
• 21:53
  there. No, and this is the beautiful
• 21:55
  crucial pivot in the chapter regeneration.
• 21:58
  The new birth is not an end in itself.
• 22:01
  We aren't born again just to sit around and admire our new
• 22:03
  spiritual life. We are given new eyes so that we
• 22:06
  can look at something specific. So that we can look at the sun.
• 22:09
  Modernism leads directly to faith.
• 22:11
  The whole point of the new birth is to enable us to believe, to
• 22:15
  see and savor Christ. And Jesus uses this really
• 22:18
  strange illustration from the Old Testament to make his point.
• 22:21
  The bronze serpent from Numbers 21.
• 22:23
  It's one of the most unexpected but powerful connections in all
• 22:26
  of Scripture, he says. As Moses lifted up the serpent
• 22:30
  in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.
• 22:33
  So let's just set the scene for that story.
• 22:35
  The Israelites were in the desert.
• 22:37
  They were grumbling and rebelling against God.
• 22:39
  So God sends these fiery serpents among them, and people
• 22:43
  are getting bitten and they dying.
• 22:45
  They were bitten. They had poison coursing through
• 22:47
  their veins. They were under divine judgement
• 22:50
  and notice. They could not heal themselves.
• 22:52
  There was no medicine, no antidote they could create.
• 22:54
  They were totally helpless. And God provides this very
• 22:58
  strange remedy. He tells Moses to make a bronze
• 23:01
  and put it up on a pole. And the command that came with
• 23:04
  it was almost ridiculously simple.
• 23:07
  It wasn't work hard. It wasn't fight the snakes.
• 23:10
  It wasn't say 10 prayers. It was one word Look.
• 23:12
  Yeah, just look. Just look, everyone who is
• 23:15
  bitten when he sees it shall live.
• 23:18
  And Jesus draws a direct parallel between that and
• 23:20
  himself. He says the Son of Man must be
• 23:23
  lifted up, which is a clear reference to his crucifixion.
• 23:27
  Just as that serpent, a symbol of the curse, was lifted up on a
• 23:31
  pole to be the source of healing, Christ, who became a
• 23:34
  curse for us, was lifted up on the cross to bear the judgement
• 23:38
  for our sin. So the command for us today is
• 23:40
  exactly the same. Look and live.
• 23:42
  And this is where the hard doctrine of total inability
• 23:45
  meets the beautiful doctrine of free grace.
• 23:48
  This is where the whole paradox is resolved.
• 23:49
  On the one hand, you have. You must be born again.
• 23:52
  That's God's sovereign work. On the other hand, you have
• 23:56
  whoever believes in him, That's our action, our response.
• 23:59
  So how do those two things fit together?
• 24:01
  The new birth creates the capacity to believe.
• 24:04
  The Spirit opens the eyes of the spiritually blind man.
• 24:07
  And what is the very first thing those newly opened eyes do?
• 24:09
  They look to the sun, they see Christ on the cross, and for the
• 24:12
  first time they find Him beautiful.
• 24:15
  They find Him sufficient. They trust Him.
• 24:17
  So the focus isn't on looking at our own navel, trying to figure
• 24:20
  out if we've been born again. The focus is looking out to
• 24:22
  Christ. That is so crucial.
• 24:25
  Our assurance doesn't come from looking inward.
• 24:27
  It comes from looking outward to the cross.
• 24:29
  The must of the new birth in verse 3 is anchored in the must
• 24:33
  of the crucifixion in verse 14. God gave his Son to satisfy his
• 24:38
  own justice, so that the one who simply looks, the one who
• 24:41
  believes, has eternal life. OK, let's bring this all down to
• 24:45
  where the rubber meets the road, because we have all kinds of
• 24:48
  different people listening to this deep dive, right?
• 24:50
  Now we do, and I think it's important to speak directly to
• 24:53
  them. Let's start with the religious
• 24:54
  moralist, the person who is, for all intents and purposes, a
• 24:58
  modern day Nicodemus. If that's you, if you're the
• 25:01
  person relying on your church attendance, your solid family
• 25:04
  values, your clean record, your good deeds, please hear this
• 25:08
  verdict from Jesus. Your very goodness is the thing
• 25:11
  that is blinding you. You're trying to build your own
• 25:13
  ladder to heaven, and it will never reach.
• 25:15
  You need to repent, and strangely enough, you need to
• 25:18
  repent of your righteousness even more than your sins.
• 25:21
  Repent of your righteousness. That is a radical thought.
• 25:24
  Because it's the righteous things we trust in that become
• 25:27
  our biggest idols. You have to lay down the resume.
• 25:30
  Come to Jesus as a beggar with empty hands, not as a negotiator
• 25:34
  with a list of accomplishments. OK, what about the person on the
• 25:38
  other end of the spectrum? The person who is weary, who
• 25:42
  hears all this talk about you, cannot and just feels despair.
• 25:45
  To that person, to the weary soul, the phrase you cannot is
• 25:49
  actually the best news in the world.
• 25:51
  If I told you that to be saved you had to jump across the Grand
• 25:54
  Canyon, you would rightly despair.
• 25:56
  But if I tell you that you cannot jump it, and therefore a
• 25:58
  bridge has been built for you to simply walk across, that's not
• 26:01
  bad news. That's relief.
• 26:03
  The pressure is completely off. The pressure is off.
• 26:05
  Salvation belongs to the Lord. And I would say this, if you
• 26:09
  feel the deadness of your own heart, if you are grieved by
• 26:12
  your sin and your inability, take heart.
• 26:15
  That itself is a sign that the Spirit of God is already at work
• 26:17
  in you. Dead hearts don't feel their own
• 26:19
  deadness. Corpses don't lie awake at night
• 26:21
  crying out for life. The fact that you even care is
• 26:24
  evidence of grace. So what is the call to action
• 26:27
  then? If someone is listening and
• 26:29
  asking what must I do? What's the answer?
• 26:33
  The answer is the same as it was in the wilderness.
• 26:35
  Look to the serpent, look to Christ.
• 26:38
  Don't wait for some special feeling.
• 26:40
  Do not wait for a feeling. Don't wait until you think
• 26:43
  you're regenerate enough. Look to the external solution
• 26:47
  that God has provided. Look to Christ crucified for
• 26:50
  you. Your assurance is not found in
• 26:52
  yourself by asking Have I been born?
• 26:55
  Your assurance is found in Christ by asking, is He
• 26:58
  sufficient? And if he is sufficient for
• 27:00
  sinners, then look and live. That's the gospel.
• 27:04
  We've traveled a long way tonight, from the dark streets
• 27:07
  of Jerusalem all the way to the foot of the.
• 27:08
  Cross we have from the darkness of Nicodemus night and his
• 27:11
  confusion to the light of the lifted up sun.
• 27:14
  And the central truth just holds firm the impossibility of
• 27:17
  heaven, for the natural man creates the absolute necessity
• 27:20
  of the new birth. And that necessity is met
• 27:22
  entirely by the sovereign grace of God.
• 27:24
  I just want to leave our listeners with one final
• 27:26
  thought. Jesus mentions the wind.
• 27:28
  He says the wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound,
• 27:32
  but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.
• 27:34
  And we can't control that wind. We can't schedule it, we can't
• 27:38
  manufacture it, but we can put up our sails and we can cry out
• 27:42
  to it. If you're listening right now
• 27:44
  and you realize you are nothing but dry bones, cry out to the
• 27:47
  wind. Ask God the Spirit to do for you
• 27:50
  what you cannot do for yourself. Stop trying to analyze the
• 27:54
  process of birth and simply look at the Savior.
• 27:57
  Look and live that is the offer on the table.
• 28:01
  Thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive into the hard
• 28:04
  but ultimately healing truths of John Chapter 3.
• 28:07
  It's. Been a real privilege.
• 28:08
  This is reform thinking. We'll see you next time.