YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN – GOSPEL OF JOHN If you have ever in your lifetime seen a baby being born in a delivery room, you know that your eyes have witnessed one of the most awesome, powerful moments ever in your life. In fact I had the privilege of watching both of my children, Dawson and Haley, being born as I was there in the delivery room. How many of you out here have ever witnessed the birth of a child? Pretty awesome stuff. It goes from chaos to celebration in a small moment of time. I can remember the first time when I was a rookie with Haley. Heather had been through her whole Lamaze training and she was a bit stressed out to say the least in the delivery room. And I was trying to recall some of my words that I had learned like, ‘you’re doing great, keep up the good work, way to go, Babe, hold your breath.’ ‘Wait, no, breathe,’ as you are frantically stressing out in that moment and hearing your wife in agony. And then I remember when the doctor came in and it was time to give her one of those epidurals. Now my wife doesn’t like needles, and her fear of needles is about as great as my fear of snakes. And so she chose to not look at the needle. And when I saw the needle, I passed out and – just kidding. But after looking at this needle I realized that this was seriously the largest needle I have ever seen in my life. It was about two feet long. And when they took this screwdriver of a needle and began to stick it in her back, I remember thinking to myself as I tried to call on that Lamaze training, it’s no big deal, babe, it’s no big deal. Lord, help her, help me. Because I was feeling for her in that frantic moment. And then we went from chaos to celebration. We went from one sense of ‘ouch’ to another sense of ‘awe’ in a very small fraction of time. And as I held my baby girl, and as I held my baby boy two years later, I observed an awesome, life changing moment. What Heather and I experienced that day was not just a child that was born, but the beginning of a new relationship. And that is what takes place. When a child is born, a relationship is initiated between a mother and a father and their child. And that is what happened to me. And it was awesome. And if you have ever observed it, you have seen it as an awesome thing too. But let me say this. There is something more awesome, more powerful, more all inspiring than watching a child being born. And that is when a child is born again. That is when it gets really awesome. And you sit out there and you go what do you mean, I’m confused? I have heard about this born again stuff, dude, and I don’t know what you are talking about. And perhaps you are kind of like Dennis Miller who said, “Man, I hate when the Christians tell me that I have to be born again or I’m going to go to hell.” He said, “Pardon me, but I think I got it right the first time.” Do you get it? He was born once and that was enough. Page 1 of 16 pages 10/25/2009 YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN – GOSPEL OF JOHN Well, when we think about being born again, that can be confusing. When I became a Christian, my buddy Charlie and I were hanging out in San Diego, and I remember him saying, “so you’re a born again Christian, Bobby?” And just kind of making fun of me and laughing about it. “You a born again Christian, Bobby?” And he was just having fun with me, and I really didn’t know what he was talking about. See I was a born again Christian, but I didn’t know I was a born again Christian. Because no one ever taught me what that language meant. And so some of you might be sitting out there going, well, am I born again or not? Am I okay or not? And you might be confused, because it is confusing language when you first start hearing about it. So instead of being creative in my title, I just want to be clear this morning. And I want to ask you, “Are you born again?” And you say what do you mean by being born again? Well, we are born physically, but we must be born spiritually. Because according to Ephesians Chapter 2 and verse 1, “We are dead in the trespasses of our sins.” Did you know that your body is material, which is flesh, and immaterial. And you have a spirit, and when we are born our spirit is dead to God. We are born with a fallen nature. Why does everybody do things that they hate that they do sometimes? Why do we walk around with guilt? Why do we not have the power to live the kind of life that God wants us to apart from God? Because we have a fallen nature, and we need to be born again. Are you sitting in this room this morning and wanting to know that when you die you could have the hope of going to Heaven? Do you want to be forgiven of the skeletons in your closets? Of the secret sins that have plagued your life for years? Do you want to know a sense of fulfilment in your life? A sense of purpose? Do you want to have a sense of meaning in your life where life is bigger than just dreaming about retirement and walking along a sandy beach? It is bigger than a self-centered vision that is all about you, but is about giving your life away. Because God created you to give your life away to Him and to others. Do you want meaning? Do you want purpose? Do you want hope that goes beyond the grave? That comes from being born again. Now when it comes to what happens when we die, many different beliefs hold different things. If you were to talk to a Muslim they keep their fingers crossed and they hope that when they stand before Allah someday that their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds, and that Allah will grant them entrance into Heaven. If you are talking to a Jehovah’s Witness they would hope that they are one of one hundred and forty four thousand people that can experience the Heavenly kingdom. If you are a Mormon and you are thinking about the afterlife, what you are striving for and hoping for is that someday you will become a god and have your own planet. And that you will have a wife where you have spirit children that have their own planets. And Page 2 of 16 pages 10/25/2009 YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN – GOSPEL OF JOHN basically you and your wife are having spirit children throughout eternity while you have your planet out there with your family that you create. If you are an Atheist, you don’t really think much about beyond the grave because to you it is just that you die and you go into the ground and that’s it. You’re done. You’re annihilated. But to a Christian they believe that if we are going to go beyond the grave and live forever and be with God, what the Bible teaches is that we must be born again. So, if you will, turn in your Bible to the gospel of John. Remember there are four gospels where we can learn about the life of Jesus, and they are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And we are so blessed because sometimes we sit around reading all these other books when we have an opportunity to learn about Jesus Christ, about God, about how He loves us, about what we are here for. And I would encourage you to just buckle up this morning and learn about this idea of being born again. Now what is going to take place is a gentleman by the name of Nicodemus is going to come to Jesus. And Jesus just finished cleansing the temple at the Passover. Every year people would come together for this Passover feast, and Jesus showed up and He was very, very infuriated because of what was taking place in the temple that was not honouring to God. In fact they were abusing the temple. They were religious, but they weren’t relational with God. And so Jesus ends up cleansing the temple and now what happens here is Nicodemus is going to come to Him. And we pick up in Chapter 3 and verse 1, “Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.” Now we only learn about Nicodemus in the gospel of John. There are sixty-six books in the Bible, thirty-nine books in the Old Testament, known as the Old Covenant, and twenty-seven books in the New Testament, known as the New Covenant. And we only learn about Nicodemus in this one book in the gospel of John. We also learn about him in Chapter 7 and verse 50 and here is what we see taking place there.