Regeneration II Like the Wind: How God Comes to Men

Regeneration II
Like the Wind: How God Comes to Men
John 3:1-9

Introduction:
Read 3:1-9

Last time I described the manner of humanity’s approach to God as being in the cloak of darkness. “Flesh gives birth to flesh” Jesus said; in other words, dead things beget dead things; darkness causes darkness; Water jars that can’t cleanse only beget Water jars that can’t cleanse; desecrated temples only bring about more desecrated temples.

“How can these things be?” we ask. The short answer is found in Genesis 2, “If you eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die.” We who are Adam’s descendents are all born spiritually dead because through one man’s sin all die.

Nichodemus- this learned teacher of religion came to Jesus in the cloak of darkness (that is spiritually dead) and instigated a conversation about spiritual things but all he did was to prove his ineptitude in these matters; this son of Adam is a natural man and the “natural man does not know nor can he receive the things of the Spirit… because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:14).

So instead of asking Jesus the nagging question that burns on the hearts of all men, Nichodemus tries flattery.

And can you blame him? I remember I once met a famous preacher; I was so impressed by him that I became tongue-tied. When I came face to face with this modern-day Spurgeon, I could hardly even formulate a single intelligible question. All I could think to say was how much I liked his preaching… how original was that? Have you ever done that when you met someone famous?

Maybe that’s how Nichodemus felt. After all, he already had the testimony of John the Baptist- “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” And if Nichodemus were sincere, he would have admitted that John the Baptist’s credentials were impeccable and his witness about Jesus true.

Then there were the miraculous signs: The theophany at his baptism; the water into wine miracle; the clearing of the temple and probably many other miracles that attested to the divine origin of this teacher and his teachings.

What do you say to such a man, who is really not just a man, but God incarnate? Can you imagine what it will be like the day you see Jesus face to face? What will you say to him? I’ll probably be fortunate if I can even say, “Yyyyyour Ssssso Ggggreat!”

“Rabbi, we know that your teachings are orthodox because nobody could do the signs that you do if he were not teaching good doctrine” says Nichodemus.

Isn’t our man-made religious attempts to approach God just flattery? I mean they are at least an external attempt at flattering God but more likely they are just occasions for more self-flattery. “See how religious I am.” “Yes Jesus we endorse of your deeds for what they can do for us and we want to canonize them so let’s build a temple in your honor along with one for Moses and one for Elijah.

Do you wonder who Nichodemus is talking about when he uses the pronoun ‘we’? As in, “We know that you are a teacher from God.”

The answer may be found back in 2:23 (Read verse). Nichodemus may have been among those who believed in Jesus’ name because of the signs, but it wasn’t a saving belief (even the demons believe that way). They believed but only in a cognitive way, like the way we believe that Stephen Harper is PM; but they lacked the internal regenerating witness. That’s why it says, “Jesus did not commit himself to them… for he knew what was in man” (2:24a, 25b).

“You must be born again!”

The natural man cannot discern the spiritual things of God. Can a leopard change his spots? Can a Camel pass through the eye of a needle? Can a cat be born of a dog? Can flesh give birth to Spirit? “Can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” was Nichodemus’s crass response.

The short answer is an emphatic and vigorous NO!

A leopard cannot change his spots; a camel cannot pass through the eye of a needle, flesh cannot enter the Kingdom of God. The unregenerate Sons and Daughters of Adam can never redeem themselves from their death sentence. We are most miserable creatures.

Galatians 5:19-21 says that the “works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, factiousness, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like.” Light cannot come from darkness.

But what is impossible with man is possible with God. With God a leopard can change his spots, a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, and humans can please God so that he delights Himself in them. But only God can do that. Christians are walking miracles.

Verse 3, Jesus completely disregards Nichodemus’s attempt at flattery. He goes to heart of the problem and says, “Amen, Amen… truly, truly I say to you, unless a man is born again, born from above, born of the Spirit he cannot see the Kingdom of God; he cannot behold the Lamb, or see the angels of God descending and ascending upon the Son of Man because he is blind and full of darkness and death.”

Aside: [Next week I want to concentrate on verse six and look into what Jesus meant by conjoining water with Spirit saying, “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.” Just is not adding anything to what he has already said so far about being born again. But this is an aside worthy of at least an entire sermon if not a book the size of all the teachings of the church since Pentecost.]
But I want us to keep the flow of Jesus mishnah so that do not lose the urgency of the matter and so we can move towards an expedient application. Look at verse 7 (Read 7-8).

Imagine… all of Nichodemus’s religious work, his pedigree, his preparation, his ritualistic lifestyle, his seeming devotion to the Law- these things can do nothing because they are rooted in his flesh and flesh does not give birth to Spirit. Even Paul who was perfect according to the practices of the Pharisees could write, “I know that no good dwells within me, that is in my flesh” (Rom 7:18).

It is as if we, being blind, are trapped inside a dark room unaware that it has no doors and oblivious to the fact that our lame feet and hands are in chains and so with futility we grope and flail about in this room ignorant of the fact that there is no escape and that all of our striving only succeeds in further entangling ourselves. That is a picture of the human condition.

How scandalous this must have been to Nichodemus. His last words must have cracked with despair, “How can these things be?” (v. 9).

Here we see how God comes to us: like the wind. But make no mistake, Jesus is not teaching some pantheist view of the Holy Spirit that he exists in the wind.

The Holy Spirit is God, he is a person, not a force. The Holy Spirit does many things: 1) he restrains evil on earth. In fact, the only reason that humanity has not deteriorated in the ultimate cesspool of depravity, violence and godlessness is because the Holy Spirit restrains evil. But one day that restraint will be removed and the world will quickly dissolve into Armageddon.

2) Another thing that the Holy Spirit does is that he reveals sin to the world. He is our universal moral witness of our corruption so that even the most godless heathen who, having no Law, can live as though he did have the Law of God.

3) He also empowers believers with spiritual gifts so that we can serve one another and so that God can work through us. The best example of empowerment by the Holy Spirit comes in the ministry of Jesus, who said after his Baptism in the Holy Spirit, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, [why] Because He has anointed me to preach the gospel, to heal the brokenhearted, to liberate the oppressed…”

4) We are also sealed with the Holy Spirit, he anchors our salvation in Christ so that it cannot be lost. 5) As well, it is the Spirit who shows us how to pray when we do not know what we should pray. 6) He also glorifies Christ. 7) And He is working in each one of us who are Christians to conform us to the image of Christ.

But before all that can happen, the Holy Spirit must act on his own sovereign will to blow where he desires and give spiritual birth to our dead souls. We cannot receive him… we cannot repent and believe the gospel… we cannot see/enter the Kingdom of God… until he regenerates us.

John 1:12ff, “as many as received Jesus, to them he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh… but of God” born again from above by the Spirit of God.

But if our salvation is by grace and it is not of ourselves, then that leaves it totally up to God, that’s not fair! Would it be fairer for God to leave it up to us defiled earthen vessels who love darkness and shun the light? I prefer the sovereignty of God because it is full of mercy and love rather then Free Will because whenever sinful humans are given the choice, apart from the restraining work of the Holy Spirit, we will always choose darkness over light.

Thank God that He does not leave us to our own efforts because flesh only gives birth to flesh and no one can be saved that way.

And the wind blows where it will and you will not know from where it originates, or where it is destined. A friend of mine who is involved in campus ministry was telling me about an evangelistic campaign he launched at SFU a couple weeks ago. The campaign involved posters with the heading, “What’s your story?” and it contained testimonies of how Jesus has changed lives.

I guess someone went around with a similar poster containing the same heading, but the testimonies were all of people who had negative stories of Christianity (notice I say Christianity, not Jesus?). When he told me this story, I thought, usually people who go to great lengths to defame Christ are often the ones who will later go to great lengths to glorify him- look at Paul, persecutor of the Church, “founder of Christianity.”

The Wind blows where it wills.

Application:
1) Has the wind blown on your heart? Maybe He is stirring your heart at this very moment. There is no coincidence that you are here today; God may be wooing you, drawing you to himself, that’s the wind blowing, that’s the Holy Spirit. If you are a seeker or you want to become a Christian, please stay after the service and come talk to me- and I will explain that gospel to you and pray with you.

2) Or maybe you are already born again. What have you done with it now that you are sealed with the Holy Spirit. Earlier, I listed the works of the flesh from Galatians 5. But the fruit of one who is born of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control…. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:22-24). Live like you see the Kingdom of God, for you surely do see it.