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[0:00] John chapter 1 verses 11 through 13.

[0:25] ! But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

[0:45] May God add a blessing to the reading of His Word. Would you please be seated? I'll never forget the frustration that I experienced along with many of my other classmates my freshman year in high school in science class.

[1:00] We had a classmate that drove us crazy. And He drove us crazy not because He misbehaved, not because He spoke whenever the teacher was trying to speak, teach us, not because He would walk in late or ever be a distraction in class.

[1:20] No, He was a nuisance for not all the typical reasons. He was a nuisance because He seemed to always do the right thing. He never missed a day of school.

[1:36] He was never late to class. He never goofed off, was always paying attention. Most frustrating of all is that He got 100% on every test that we took.

[1:50] Every time, I'm not exaggerating. And He's off, He's doing something very important for some very important company right now. He was always doing so well and it drove us crazy.

[2:04] I remember before tests, the rest of us, most of us, were nervous. You know, we had our textbook there and we were flipping through the pages trying to cram as much information into our minds as we could before the test was handed out by our teacher, but not him.

[2:22] He was always calm, cool, collected, sitting straight up in his chair. He had a sharpened number two pencil. He had another one right here at the top of his desk in case something happened with this other one.

[2:33] Totally prepared, totally confident, knowing without a doubt that he was going to ace this test. And not only that, he would always finish the test first. And he would turn it in way before the rest of us were done.

[2:46] And you know what he would do in his free time? Study for other classes. He'd have his other textbooks out and he'd be reading those and so it drove us crazy. Then I remember there came a day where I don't know if we convinced our teacher to do this or she thought to do this, but she told us that for this one test, she would grade it on a curve.

[3:04] What this meant in our class is that the highest score would be determined by whoever scored the highest in the class. So say, for example, the student scored an 88.

[3:16] Well, she'd consider that an A+. So there was a lot at stake here. I mean, you could get a D on a test and end up with a C. So we all were excited about this.

[3:27] However, we knew there was a problem because we had a kid who liked to get 100% on every single test that he took. So I'm telling you that throughout that week leading up to that test, we did all that we could to try to persuade him within reason.

[3:40] You know, not we'll beat you up if you don't do bad on this test. But you know, hey, what can we do? We will carry your books to class, right? We'll carry you to class if we have to.

[3:50] I mean, whatever it is, like just do a little bit worse, just a little bit worse that will help the rest of us. And so the test day came, and as always, he was ready.

[4:03] As always, he finished first before everyone else. And you know what happened? You know how he did? He got 100% on the test. And it drove us crazy.

[4:15] We couldn't understand that. Why? Think of all the friends that he could have made if he just would have missed a few questions, but he didn't care about any of that.

[4:25] We just couldn't understand him. And that's the case with curve breakers, isn't it? They always seem to be that student that is always singled out because they make others feel uncomfortable because nobody likes somebody who, by comparison, makes them look worse or feel worse about themselves.

[4:50] Jesus Christ was the ultimate curve breaker. He was perfect in every single way. Yet the outcasts of society loved him.

[5:02] Probably because he saw them, because he actually paid special attention to them. He was willing to speak to them and not overlook them, whereas others were. But it was those who had the seats in the places of honor.

[5:15] It was those who thought that they had power. They're the ones who couldn't stand Jesus. They thought they were perfect.

[5:25] But then once the perfect came, they realized just how imperfect they truly were and they couldn't stand him. Sinful people are uncomfortable in the presence of the holy.

[5:41] The saying goes that there is fellowship among thieves. Have you ever noticed that criminals don't seek out friends from law enforcement? Right?

[5:54] In a similar way, sinful misery does not seek or love the company of purity. It's uncomfortable. Jesus was different.

[6:06] And that made people feel uncomfortable around him quite often. For example, Luke chapter 5, verses 1 through 7. This is very on in our Lord's ministry as he's calling his disciples.

[6:21] On one occasion, a crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God. And he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret. And he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.

[6:35] Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.

[6:48] And Simon answered, Master, we toiled all night and took nothing. But at your word, I'll let down the nets. And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.

[7:01] They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help, and they came and filled both the boats so that they began to sink. So if ever there was a time where the disciples were annoyed with Jesus, I believe that this was one of those times.

[7:16] Simon Peter was a fisherman. He was experienced. He knew what he was doing. This was his career. And he had been up all night trying to fish, and he had little to nothing to show for his hard work.

[7:30] He wasn't making a salary. This was his job. This was his livelihood. He had to catch fish. This wasn't for a hobby.

[7:41] This wasn't for entertainment. This is what this man did to provide for his family. And he had an unproductive day at doing that. Now, think of yourself.

[7:53] Have you ever had a day where you went to work, and it was just an extremely unproductive day? Problems arose that you weren't prepared for. Things that you were optimistic about, different things happened, and you were no longer optimistic about those things.

[8:09] It just seemed like everything that could go wrong did go wrong. And by the end of the day, you feel like all you did was fix problems. You didn't really do much. You were unproductive.

[8:20] It makes you frustrated, doesn't it? I know that it makes me frustrated to come home and feel like I've had an unproductive day. It puts me in a really bad mood.

[8:31] And so I can imagine that that's the state that Peter's in. He's had a very unproductive day. Things did not go as he had hoped. And he's not in a very good mood. And then all of a sudden, this preacher man, who is not a fisherman, tells Peter, who is a fisherman, how to do his job, right?

[8:49] Or to go out and to try it again. And so I get a sense in Peter's response to Jesus that he's trying to be polite and respectful to him, but he's a little bit annoyed.

[9:01] I can imagine him thinking, look, I appreciate your concern for me, but we know what we're doing. We're fishermen. This is our job. We do this every day. But out of respect for you, I'll go out there, but I'll show you that I'm right.

[9:18] You know, when we go fishing, we need poles, we need lures, we need bait, we also need technique. Helps us to catch fish, but Jesus simply commands.

[9:35] And these fish, whatever they are doing, stop, and they obey the commands of their creator, and they are swimming as quickly as they can to be the first to jump into those nets.

[9:50] Don't you wish fishing was that easy for you? Don't you? Don't you wish you could go fishing with Jesus? Well, notice Peter's response. Some of us might think, well, he would look at Jesus and see dollar signs, right?

[10:04] Oh man, that was so easy. I could catch fish like this every day, right? I could make a lot of money off of this man.

[10:15] And some people unfortunately see Jesus in that way. But Peter did not. At that moment, he realized that he was not in the presence of an ordinary person. That he wasn't even in the presence of an extraordinary teacher.

[10:30] He understood that he was in the presence of someone who was holy. And man, that made him feel uncomfortable. Look at verse 8. Right after this. When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.

[10:51] Made him feel uncomfortable being a sinful man in the presence of someone who is so pure. In Mark 4, verses 35-41, Jesus again is in a boat.

[11:04] This time with the rest of his disciples and again on the Sea of Galilee. And a great storm arose. Great waves were crashing up against their boat.

[11:15] If you've ever been in a boat during a storm, you know how scary of a situation that is. And so, understandably so, the disciples were terrified. And in fact, we understand the Sea of Galilee can be a very terrifying place to be.

[11:30] Storms can come on all of a sudden. And it can be extremely terrifying to be out on those waters when that is the case. And so, they're terrified. And they look to Jesus and guess what? He's asleep in the stern of the boat.

[11:42] And so, they woke him up. And we see this is what they said to him. They said, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? And Jesus awoke. And he rebuked the wind and the sea.

[11:54] He said, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased. And there was a great calm. The water was like glass. And he said to them, Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?

[12:06] And look at this. They were filled with great fear and said to one another, Who then is this man that even the wind and the sea obey him? So you see, the storm scared them.

[12:18] The storm made them afraid. But what Jesus did in rebuking that storm made them terrified. They were terrified.

[12:30] Forget about the storm. Who is this that even the winds and the waves obey his voice?

[12:42] They understood they were in the presence of the holy. Jesus was different. He possessed an awesome otherness that made people feel uncomfortable around him.

[12:57] Especially those who thought that they were perfect. Especially those who are self-righteous like the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the party of the Jews who declared themselves to be the enemies of Jesus.

[13:10] He made them feel very, very uncomfortable. horrible. The Pharisees traced their beginning to the period between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

[13:22] That group was started by men who had a zeal for the law of God. In fact, the word Pharisee literally means one who is separated. It was their pursuit to be holy.

[13:35] That was the chief end of their lives. They wanted to be known as holy men. They majored in holiness. If any group thought themselves to be holy in this community, it was these men.

[13:50] And as a result of that, this group gained a lot of respect in the Jewish community. They were given a lot of praise. They were welcomed wherever they went.

[14:00] They were given prestigious positions. They were seated in the place of honor. They liked that. Not only that, they made sure to practice their holiness so that other people could see just how holy they were or that they would think that they were as holy as they thought that they were.

[14:19] They made sure that when they gave to beggars that their coins made a loud noise as they clanged into their cups. They made loud prayers so that people could hear what they were saying and be impressed.

[14:31] When they fasted, they made sure that they let everybody know that they were in misery, that they were doing this for the Lord, though really they were doing it to be admired by their community.

[14:45] They were admired for all of this and viewed as being experts in the Scriptures and in religious practice.

[14:57] But Jesus saw right through it all. And He called them hypocrites. He called them, in one instance, whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones.

[15:07] He called them sons of hell. He said that the devil was their father. In Matthew 23, Jesus pronounces many woes upon them.

[15:18] These are prophetic oracles of doom. He said they were blind guides who were leading the blind. That their religion was not bringing people closer to God, but it was bringing them further away from God.

[15:32] Further away from the truth. And of course, Jesus being perfect in every way and all that He said was absolutely correct in everything that He had to say about them.

[15:43] And they knew it. And man, they hated Him for it. Instead of repenting, they hated Him. He was a problem.

[15:55] He made them feel uncomfortable. Too uncomfortable. And they were desperate to get rid of Him. There was one Pharisee, however, who took a special interest in Jesus.

[16:07] His name was Nicodemus. And we meet him in John chapter 3. And there we see that Nicodemus came to Jesus after having heard Jesus preach, after having seen some of Jesus' miracles.

[16:23] And interestingly, there we see also, as many commentators have pointed out before, that John mentions the time of day in which Nicodemus goes to meet with Jesus.

[16:34] He goes at night time. And that's significant for at least two reasons. First of all, it shows that Nicodemus did not want to be seen with Jesus.

[16:46] He went at a time where he felt confident that his other Pharisee brothers would not see Him. And so he went in darkness to meet with Jesus.

[16:57] He knew that things were tense between Christ and between the Pharisees. And so he didn't want to risk his place with them. Yet he was inquisitive. He had some questions. He was really needing to speak with Jesus.

[17:10] And so he went to Him, but he made sure he went to Him in secret. Secondly, it's significant because as we've seen already and we'll see throughout the rest of this gospel that John uses light and darkness as metaphors throughout this book.

[17:29] Light referring to those who are in Christ or to Christ Himself and darkness referring to Satan or those who are unbelievers who are spiritually blind. So Nicodemus comes to Jesus and he's in the dark in more ways than one.

[17:47] Nicodemus begins his conversation with Jesus by saying, Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God for no one could perform the miraculous signs that you are doing if God were not with him.

[18:00] So we see that Nicodemus is very impressed with Jesus. But he still does not understand. Jesus was not just a teacher. Israel had thousands of teachers.

[18:11] Jesus was God sent to teach and to die and to rise again for the salvation of His people. No mere teacher could do that.

[18:27] Nicodemus was also of the mind that salvation came through his heritage and through his works, through his religious practices, through his being obedient to the law.

[18:37] However, Jesus corrected him on that by telling him that salvation does not come through any of those things. That none of those things are able to save him.

[18:51] That he had to be born again. Let's pick up in their conversation in chapter 3, verse 3, through verse 8. And so Jesus answers him, Truly, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

[19:12] 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? Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water in the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

[19:28] That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows wherever it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

[19:44] So it is, with everyone who is born of the Spirit. So we see that Jesus' point here, as we will see, even more so as we go through this book, especially in chapter 3 and other chapters, is to show that salvation is of God.

[20:06] It's not something we do, it's something that God does in us. So here's the main idea for this morning's message. Salvation is not dependent upon your heritage, your works, or another's works for you.

[20:25] Salvation is all of God's doing as a result of His grace. So why is this important? Well, because this shouldn't come as a shock or a surprise to you.

[20:40] You're going to die one day. I'm going to die one day, and I believe that we will all stand before the Lord in judgment. And as the Bible says, you are going to spend your eternity either in heaven or in hell forever.

[20:58] And so it's so important that you understand, that you know for sure the answer to this question. Have you been born again? Do you know that you have experienced the new birth?

[21:13] All of eternity hinges on that question. And there's a lot of confusion today about salvation. Some think it is based on works.

[21:24] Well, if I do enough good things that I'll put God in my debt and He's got to let me into heaven. Some think it's based on heritage. Well, my parents were Christians. You know, my family is Christian.

[21:34] I grew up in the church. So I'm saved because of all those things. Some think that their salvation is totally up to them. And this passage, I'm telling you, crushes every single one of those assumptions.

[21:48] As Christians, we are also sent, why is this important? As Christians, we are sent from God to give true testimony concerning His Son, Jesus Christ.

[22:00] He is the light that dispels darkness. And when we give true and accurate and complete testimony of Jesus, we are fulfilling our God-given mission, which is to go and to make disciples.

[22:13] Like John the Baptist, who we've already spoken of, we are called as witnesses to go before the world and testify to them the truth concerning Jesus Christ so that as we see in verse 7, so that all may believe.

[22:29] That's our hope. Those who come to Christ will believe, the Bible says, through our testimony. And so it's so important that we are going. That's the vision for our church.

[22:41] These four E's, engaging, enlightening, encouraging, equipping, these are for us here as well as for our community. Our hope is to go, to engage, to enlighten through sharing the Gospel, to encourage them to walk with Christ, to equip them to go and make disciples.

[22:59] That's what we are all about here at Highland Park Baptist Church. And I believe that the better we understand how we were saved, the more we will understand why we should go and make disciples.

[23:14] So firstly, we see here in verse 11 that mankind is totally unable to save themselves. We must understand this. Mankind is totally unable to save themselves.

[23:29] And so John says again in verse 11 of Jesus that He came to His own and His own people did not receive Him. So here he's carrying on the thought of verse 10, speaking of Jesus' rejection of the world, that the world that was created through Him rejected Him.

[23:49] And now he makes the case that even God's own chosen people whom He saved from slavery in Egypt, whom He led into the Promised Land, whom He gave the law with the prophecies concerning this Messiah who would come, even these people so well prepared for the Messiah's coming when He came, even they rejected Him.

[24:21] This point that he makes isn't to bash the Jewish people, but to reveal to us that if even they rejected Him, just how deep is our own depravity.

[24:36] It's way deep. It's total. Sin has affected every aspect of our being.

[24:49] Every aspect. Now this doesn't mean that every person is as bad as he or she might be, right? I think we can all say, I hope you can say, that compared to Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Pol Pot, you're doing pretty well.

[25:06] You're better compared to them. So we're not as sinful as we could be. Rather, what this means is that every component of our human nature has been infected with sin.

[25:18] Every component. For example, if you took a sponge and if you immersed it in vinegar, and then you pulled that sponge out of that bowl of vinegar, it would be saturated.

[25:30] It would be completely full of vinegar. It couldn't hold any more vinegar. And say you wrung it out, right? It didn't have as much vinegar in it, but guess what? You would know still by the smell of it that vinegar was still in every part of that sponge.

[25:49] And you'd probably throw it away. At least I would. If we removed it, right, again, if we squeezed it out, there would still be an odor.

[26:02] And I'm telling you that like that odor, every component of the human nature smells like sin. When God created human beings, He created us in His image so that we would love Him, that we would be capable of fellowship with Him.

[26:22] And in doing so, He gave us the ability to understand truth. The truth that He revealed to us. And in that state of spiritual health, we loved God as we are supposed to love God.

[26:35] And we loved all things, other people, as God had intended for us to love them. God created human beings with knowledge, with understanding of what is true.

[26:48] He created us with a will, an ability to choose what was good, what was true. He created us with affections, a desire to please God and be in harmony with Him and with His creation.

[27:02] I want to share a quote from Jim Oreck. He says, When human nature is rightly ordered, it works like this. In submission to God, understanding is the ruler of the human soul and the primary concern of the human is whether something is true.

[27:19] Then a healthy human will choose to believe the truth and order his life around the truth. We want or we will to follow the truth when that's the case.

[27:30] We want to follow the truth because the truth appeals to us. We find it attractive. We love to do what is right and what is true. Affections then cooperate with understanding and volition so that we find pleasure in believing and in obeying God.

[27:46] In addition to these non-physical components, God gave us physical bodies with appetites, with passions. And as long as these bodies with appetites and passions were subject to man's higher purpose of knowledge and enjoying God, all was well.

[28:02] Right? We had understanding. We understood what was true and we loved what was true. We wanted to do what was true. And so with our bodies we would make sure that they were following what our will and our desires were at that time to do what was right, to do what was true, to do what was according to the will of God.

[28:21] In the Bible, the word life is used to refer to the ideal order of human nature. Before humans sinned, we had life and we were happy.

[28:34] God was our ultimate source and standard of what was right and wrong, what was good and what was evil. In His love for us, God gave us a reminder.

[28:44] He gave our first parents, Adam and Eve, a reminder that our happy life depended on our continued obedience to Him. And that reminder was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

[28:58] And God told humans, He told Adam and Eve not to eat from that fruit for He says in Genesis 2, 17, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

[29:10] Adam and Eve disobeyed God and they ate of that fruit. And God kept His word. They died. Not because of some magic chemical that was in the fruit, but because the tree of knowledge represented a way of thinking and it represented a way of living.

[29:33] And as long as the fruit was left alone, Adam and Eve were showing their submitance to an order of things with God ultimately being the source of their knowledge.

[29:45] But when they seized that fruit, what their action was saying was no. Now we will determine for ourselves how to live.

[29:59] We will determine what is right, what is wrong. We will decide what is good and what is evil. We will have our own truth.

[30:12] God's threat came through and though they lived physically for many years afterwards, that day they died spiritually. Human nature became corrupted and distorted.

[30:27] Human understanding was darkened. Our affections were polluted. Our will became captivated by sin. All of those components that make our human nature all of those components I should say for our human nature fell from their original condition in that moment.

[30:48] The desires of our body for physical became for the physical world I should say. What we saw with our eyes, what was pleasing to our flesh became most important.

[31:00] and as a result of that our affections became self-centered. We thought I'll do what's best for me. We still think that. I'll do what's best for me.

[31:11] I'll determine my own truth. I'll give myself what I want. And we live as if all there is to this life is what we experience right now and suffer from the delusion that the world revolves around us.

[31:29] here's what happened. Romans 1 21-25 For although they knew God they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him but they became futile and their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.

[31:44] Claiming to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their heart to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever.

[32:10] Amen. Haven't you experienced this to be true? Do you not see this every day in our world? Can't you see that something desperately has gone wrong with us?

[32:25] That something has desperately gone wrong even with yourself? And have you noticed that people having seen this do all different kinds of things because they think it will fix what ails the world?

[32:40] And so what we see a lot of people turn to especially in our nation is to politicians thinking that sinful men and women have the ability to fix that our government can fix what's wrong with us and if ever you've gone to the DMV to renew your driver's license you know that these people do not know all that there is to know.

[33:03] Right? Goodness gracious. There's a in thinking of this I came across a story out of New Zealand of a gender confused man who took home multiple gold medals in women's weightlifting at the 2019 Pacific Games in Samoa.

[33:26] This is becoming an ever increasing turn of events not just in New Zealand but around our world that men are competing as women in women athletics and they are dominating the competition unsurprisingly.

[33:38] And so Madeline Kearns a National Review writer had a piece out last weekend in the Wall Street Journal on this gender confused man and his beating out female athletes and others who were doing the same even in our own high schools at track meets.

[33:58] In response Jack Turbin who's a freelance writer for the New York Times and is also a child psychiatry resident with Harvard Medical School called Madeline's piece on transgender athletes bigoted because apparently these days if you don't let men beat women in sports you're a bigot.

[34:22] And here's what I found really ironic about all of this. Think about it. This is the type of thing that we see happening right now in our world as people exchange the truth for a lie.

[34:36] Here we have a woman writing in the Wall Street Journal about how women's sports need to be preserved.

[34:47] Then you have a man coming in and saying that it's bigoted to preserve women's sports and that men should be allowed to beat women in them.

[35:01] This doesn't make any sense. And this is just one small example of many that we see taking place right now in our society.

[35:13] And it's no coincidence to me that the more we push God the more we push His Word the more we reject Him and move Him out of our society the more disordered things have become.

[35:25] Because if you reject your only hope for salvation then what hope is there? But rather than turn to the light people would rather flee further into darkness thinking that they'll find the answers there.

[35:40] John 3 19-20 again picking up Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus and this is the judgment. The light has come into the world and the people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

[35:54] For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest His works should be exposed. Some other scriptures that speak to this. Romans 3 10-12 As it is written the Word of God says no one is righteous no not one no one understands no one seeks for God all have turned aside together they became worthless no one does good not even one.

[36:26] Later on Romans 8 6-8 For to set the mind on the flesh is death but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God for it does not submit to God's laws indeed it cannot those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

[36:49] And then Ephesians 2 1-5 speaking to Christians and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world following the prince of the power of the air the spirit that is now at works in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind but God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he has loved us even when we were dead and our trespasses made us alive together with Christ by grace and by grace alone I'll add have you been saved?

[37:43] These are just some again of many passages throughout the Bible that send this same crystal clear message that we sinful human beings are incapable of saving ourselves and so we come secondly to some good news here from John in chapter or verses 12-13 only God is able to save sinners and thank God that he does let me read those verses again but to all who did receive him who believed in his name he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God and I know that we're going a little bit over time so I'm going to save that verse for next week to really unpack that further and deeper because there's so much there for us verse 12 though tells us that though the world has rejected

[38:45] Christ and though Israel his own people who were so well prepared to receive him rejected him that God's plan was not thwarted by any of this but that word is very small but it is so powerful in the word of God though we are deeply affected by sin though it penetrates every aspect of our nature though it's impossible for us to save ourselves nothing is impossible with God to receive Christ as he says here is to believe Christ to believe in who the Bible says that he is he's the king of kings he's the lord of lords he's the savior of the world he's the son of God who lived the sinless lives that we could not live who died in our place for our sins who arose on the third day from the grave and ascended into heaven and we can't wait for him to come back in believing this the

[39:50] Bible says that we become children of God not acquaintances of God like hey God remember me I think we might know each other not just friends of God children of God children of God if you have children you know how special that is I I like my acquaintances right I love my friends but they don't come close to my children and I mean that as no offense to you I would hope that you would want that as I want that for you man to be a child of God then then you know that you are truly and deeply loved by him and so when we understand this we know that as Christians hey we're not religious people we're not simply religious people who like following creeds who we like rules give us some more rules man I love rules

[40:50] I want to be a Christian because there's so many rules doesn't have anything to do with any of that it's not simply because we like dressing up on Sunday mornings we're Christians because we've become children of God we've become this way not by our doing not by our willing it to happen but by a new birth a birth that is from above a birth that is outside of this world think about it why does the Bible why does Jesus use this example of a new birth being necessary for your salvation well think of your physical birth how much influence did you have over your physical birth do you remember as a baby sitting up in heaven hey God you know not that family looks really good or hey I got a few options for you I feel like I could fit in pretty well here you didn't have control over any of that why does he use that example to show you that just as you had no control over your physical birth so you have no control over your spiritual birth either the true nature of a believer is that they are new creations they are children of

[42:07] God they have been set free from sin and darkness they have been filled with the marvelous light of Jesus Christ how can men who are sinful go from rejecting Christ to receiving him well verse 13 says it and again we'll unpack that next week but it says very clearly who were born speaking of this new birth not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God God has done it because only God can do it so Nicodemus shows up later in John's gospel and as we talked about he came to Jesus that first time in the darkness both in physical darkness as well as in spiritual darkness and from what we know we can see that he left that conversation that first conversation with Jesus without having received him as

[43:08] Christ without having received him as his Lord and Savior but he shows up later in John chapter 19 after Jesus has been crucified let's read that together Nicodemus also who earlier had come to Jesus by night came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes about 75 pounds in weight this is an extreme amount of money to spend for these things and he spent money for these things to embalm the body of our Lord so they took the body of Jesus and they bound it in linen cloths with the spices as is the customary burial of the Jews now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid so because of the Jewish day of preparation since the tomb was close at hand they laid Jesus there now I remember we've been going through this similar study in our men's night with Tom and it was amazing as Tom was going through this that he noticed and brought to our attention that in this moment

[44:11] Nicodemus comes to bury the body of Jesus with Joseph of Marathia and it's in the daytime this man who was afraid of being seen with Jesus when he was alive now has no concern being seen with his dead body in the day why?

[44:38] we don't have anything concrete from scripture to tell us but I think it's because Nicodemus was born again at some point in time why else would he do this?

[44:53] if Jesus was just a good teacher then he died and leave him to die right? but if he understood that Jesus was something else he wasn't afraid anymore and I think that shows a complete and total transformation transformation because the new birth is radical it comes with a new heart with a new set of desires for things that begin to put our nature back into its place we know what is true and we love what is true and we seek with all of the rest of our faculties to obey what we know to be true because we know just how much God loves us how about you?

[45:49] do you know that? do you know how much God loves you? have you experienced the new birth? 1 Peter 1 3 blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ according to his great mercy listen he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead do you know this?

[46:20]  have you experienced this? man it's my great hope and desire that you do know that you have been born again you