And if you are born of the Spirit of God, then the Spirit of God’s work is going to be worked in your heart and in your life. There is going to be attitudes. There are going to be reflections of the Spirit of God’s ministry in your life if you have been born of the Spirit.
Do you ever wonder what born again really means? Well, spoiler alert, it’s not about a do-over or cleaning up your act. It’s a radical, spirit-driven rebirth, unseen like the wind, but impossible to ignore.
This is Hope for Today with David Hocking. And on today’s program, we’re picking up right where we left off in John chapter 3 last time, where Jesus rocks a religious leader’s world with a truth ball. If you’re not spiritually reborn, you won’t even see the kingdom of God.
Buckle up, because this message isn’t just deep. It’s life-altering. Stay tuned.
Just before that, I want to tell you about a very special free download at davidhocking.org. This is called Your Quest for God by Hope for Today friend Richard A. Bennett.
This book takes you on a deep dive into the big questions about God, challenging you to reflect on your spiritual beliefs through a biblical lens. We have this available in multiple languages, and you know it’s perfect for anyone searching for truth and wisdom on who God is. And by the way, it ties perfectly into today’s topic, and you can grab a copy right now.
There’s no obligation. Just click on the link, download it, you got it. Grab your free copy of Your Quest for God right now at davidhocking.org.
And here’s David with day two of his message. You must be born again.
Now let’s take a look at the nature of spiritual birth. And I’d like you to notice four things from verse four to eight. One is the concern of Nicodemus himself.
He brought up the problem of age, and he brought up the problem of birth. How can you be born when you’re old? And how can you get back into your mother’s womb and be born?
To him, it seemed like nonsense. But I have to dip into this a little deeper, friends. Did you know that the Pharisees taught that Gentile proselytes who would follow all that they told them would be born again?
Yes, there’s something in the background here that is not often recognized. This particular man, Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, would use the exact same term to a Gentile proselyte who would be converting to Judaism as he would instruct him in all the regulations. And many Gentiles complained about the Pharisee loading on them burdens that they could not keep.
Jesus even spoke about it and rebuked them for it. They laid on men such heavy matters, they could not even follow them. And they were being discouraged.
And he told them that you are keeping them from the kingdom of God by your many traditions and commandments. So how fascinating that Jesus would say to him, Oh, no, you don’t have to follow the 621 commands of the Torah, nor do you have to follow the over 1,000 commands you’ve made up in addition to that. You don’t have to do any of that.
What you have to do is be born again. And he would be immediately confused because that’s the term they use of those Gentile proselytes who would do all of it. Except your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees who cannot enter the kingdom of God.
So he takes the term he’s familiar with and now deepens his understanding of it. What does he say? Take a look, please, at the condition for entering the kingdom of God.
Verse 5, Jesus answered. Most assuredly, hey, he answered. There was no question.
But can’t you see the question? There’s a question from Nicodemus on how can a man be born when he’s old, and can he enter a second time in his mother’s womb? But there is no question that began it.
In verse 2, he said, you’re a teacher who comes from God. No one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. And then Jesus answered.
Wait a minute. Can’t you hear it in your ears? The logical words that follow verse 2 from Nicodemus, if Jesus had given him the chance were, well, no man could do this unless he was come from God, but, but you are not from Jerusalem, you are from Galilee.
But our Pharisees were not consulted about this. You have not talked to us. You have not come to the Sanhedrin.
But you have done nothing to overthrow the Roman Empire. But you are deceiving the people and the common people who do not know the law following you and not following us. But you are causing trouble, Jesus.
Jesus never waited for him to say anything else. Don’t you love the Lord? Some of us are coming with all of our answers and our questions and obstacles, and the Lord, by the power of the Holy Spirit, just reaches in with the divine finger and just touches your heart and say, why don’t you be quiet for a while?
I got something to tell you. You got to be born again, Nicodemus. Well, how is that possible?
That’s silly. But Jesus answered and said, verse 5, Assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, notice it does not repeat the preposition because it’s trying to reflect the Greek grammar here. It’s one act.
It’s not water is one thing, and then you’re born of the Spirit is another thing. Whatever it means to be born of the Spirit is the same thing it means to be born of the water. And that’s a problem in interpretation.
In the New Testament, water is a symbol of God’s word. Also in the Old Testament. The Old Testament, for instance, in Psalm 119 verse 9, how can a young man cleanse his way by taking heed unto thy word?
Thy word have I hid in my heart, and I might not sin against thee. How about John 15 3? Jesus said, Now you are clean through the word, which I’ve spoken unto you.
How about John 17 17? Sanctify them to thy truth. Thy word is truth.
Ephesians 5 26. That he might sanctify and cleanse by the water of the word. Does the Bible use water as an illustration for the cleansing of the word of God in our lives?
Yes. Is that what is meant here? It’s a possibility.
1 Peter 1 23 says, We’re born again of the incorruptible seed of the word of God. So the agents of the new birth are the Holy Spirit, using the word of God to cause us to be saved. And most of present Bible teachers believe that.
View number 4, and the correct one. In this case, I frankly admit to you, I don’t know what the correct view is, but I have strong reasons why I believe the fourth view. I take it more from the Jewish background than I do from what we hear today a lot.
Nicodemus is a Pharisee. Nicodemus knows the Bible. As a matter of fact, the Pharisees knew the middle letters of the Bible could tell you the total number of letters in any book of the Bible, and many of them had the entire thing memorized.
All 22 books of the Hebrew Bible. Don’t be surprised at that. There are Jews today in Israel who have the entire Bible memorized.
A few years ago, I happened to be in Israel when they had the National Bible Contest. An 18-year-old Israeli soldier won that contest. He was asked on the news, which I watched, is there any verse in the entire Bible that you do not know?
He said, I cannot think of one.
18 years old. It is not a surprise that they knew the entire Bible. What I’m trying to say to you is, I think Jesus, knowing how Jesus answered, how he wonderfully used Old Testament scriptures and all that he taught, I think he was referring to something that Nicodemus knew well.
Remember he said, you can’t enter the kingdom of God. To a Jew, the kingdom of God is going to be established on earth. Israel is going to be restored with Messiah ruling and reigning.
They called it entering the land. Jesus called it entering the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God will be set up on earth.
The Bible teaches it. The throne of his father David, the Messiah, will sit on, and he’ll rule from Jerusalem over the whole world. So the Jewish mind is at work here.
Turn please to Ezekiel chapter 36. There is a passage that teaches exactly what Jesus said. Ezekiel chapter 36.
And I think this is probably it. I don’t know for sure, but I think it is. In Ezekiel 36, there is a passage that teaches that you have to be spiritually cleansed and have the Spirit of God work in your heart in order to enter the land.
Ezekiel 36 verse 25. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean. You got to be born of water.
I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new Spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
I will put my Spirit within you. You’ve got to be born of the Spirit. And cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my judgments and do them.
Watch this. Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers. You shall be my people, and I will be your God.
Did the Old Testament teach the need of spiritual cleansing and spiritual rebirth, the work of the Holy Spirit, in order to enter the land that God had promised to them? The answer is yes. Back to John 3.
That’s what I think Nicodemus understood him to mean. And I think spiritual cleansing, the spiritual birth of Ezekiel’s promise, is what was in the Lord’s mind. And so in general, you can say, a spiritual cleansing that gives you a brand new start, a spiritual awakening.
We become partakers of the divine nature. I’ll put my spirit within you, it says, is what it means to be born again. And I look at the condition of entering the kingdom of God and argue, that is the point.
In verse 6, we have a contrast between the two births. Watch this carefully. There’s some misunderstanding here.
In verse 6, Jesus said, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. In one commentary, very fine one, it says the flesh is always used in the New Testament as a symbol or metaphor for the old sin nature of man. So, what Jesus is saying is that which is born of the flesh is flesh.
It’s just continuing to be the depraved nature of man, but that which is born of the spirit is spirit. So, the contrast is between depravity and the new life in the Lord. It’s a pretty good point.
Another view is that when it’s born of the flesh is flesh, he’d be referring to external things like the Pharisees would do. So, the contrast is between the outward and the inward, between the external and the internal. Another commentary says that the flesh is limited, the spirit is not, and so it sees it in that way.
Another commentator says that, well, no, it’s referring to physical. That which is flesh, meaning physical body, is physical body. And that which is born of the spirit is spiritual.
And I like that one too. But it seems to me the simplest point of all is the one that’s overlooked. What Jesus is saying is that everything reproduces after its own kind.
Whatever is born of the flesh, if it be physical, is flesh. And what is born of the spirit is spirit. The point is powerful to a religious man who’s into outward appearances.
Let me tell you something, friend. If you are born of the spirit of God, then the spirit of God’s work is going to be worked in your heart and in your life. There is going to be attitudes.
There are going to be reflections of the spirit of God’s ministry in your life if you have been born of the spirit. Let me tell you, if you have been born of the spirit, you are going to struggle terribly with sin. The Bible says in Galatians 5 that the spirit wars against the flesh.
These are contrary one to another, so you cannot do the things that you want. 1 Peter 2, 11 says it will be war in your soul when you decide to follow the flesh. Now, if you don’t have the war, if you find it easy to send up a storm and violate God’s word and continue doing what you’re doing without thought of what God wants, then you are not born of the spirit, no matter what you say.
This isn’t something we work up or try to prove to our friends exists. I’ll tell you, if you’re really born of the spirit, there’s a terrible war that goes inside of you when you sin against God. And sometimes we try to suppress that.
Sometimes we try to ignore that. But that’s the spirit of God’s work. And I ask you, do you produce the fruit of the spirit ever?
Is there that kind of sweet grace flowing out of your life that reminds us of Jesus? From time to time, do we see you reflecting the glory of Christ in what you do and how you treat people? Or do we see the exact opposite, and yet you say you’re born again?
This is not simply an intellectual observation, it is a very important spiritual reality. Are you born of the Spirit of God? That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.
And we are partakers of the divine nature, and it will begin to affect our lives, our commitments, our priorities, what we say, what we don’t say. I find some Christians in name only, are very comfortable, given the line in front of other Christians. But you take them out of that environment, and put them with non-Christians, and you will see something exactly opposite.
They will be secretive about their faith, if they have it, and they will be very easily led by the unbelievers around them into their practices and their lifestyle. They will not be uncomfortable with unbelievers at all. They will enjoy it, as a matter of fact.
Listen, there’s only one reason to hang around non-believers the way I read the Bible, and that’s to win them to Jesus Christ. And we are to put bridges of friendship into their life as much as possible, but I’ll tell you, believers have no fellowship with unbelievers. Those who are truly born again, we’re on a different wavelength.
We’re uncomfortable in their presence, but we are there to tell them about Jesus. We’re willing to take the flack and the hassle and listen to the trash that comes out of their mouths. Only to tell them of the love of Christ.
You call us hypocritical? Oh, no. No, no, no, that’s love bending over backwards.
But let me tell you, when you enjoy the unbeliever more than the believer, there’s something wrong. If you’ve been born again, everything reproduces after its own kind. One last thing.
Look at the main characteristic of spiritual birth. Kind of interesting, by the way, in verse 7. It says, do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again.
Remember when we were singing the old song, it had the King James English on it, and the text actually said, it was on the screen, remember that I don’t marvel not that I said to the, ye must be born again. Here’s an example where old King James is more helpful to you than putting it in modern English. Old King James separated the words correctly according to what was actually in the grammar.
Because when he said, I said to thee, it was singular, when he said, you must be born again, he did not use the singular. Otherwise you’d say, don’t marvel that I said to thee, thou must be born again. No, he didn’t say that.
He made it plural. How interesting. I say to thee, these are my words to you Nicodemus, but all of you.
How interesting that the Lord Jesus would not only count him, but every single one of you. Perhaps indicating the entire group of Pharisees or all the religious leaders. I say to you, you all, every one of you, no matter who you are, must be born again.
Powerful. What is the main characteristic of spiritual birth? Verse 8.
It’s the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. He said, the wind blows, Nicodemus. And you don’t know where it comes from.
You hear the sound, but you can’t tell where it comes from or where it goes. So is everyone who’s born of the Spirit. I love this.
That’s like looking into his eyes and saying, it’s only a question of time. We’re going to get you. All your religiosity, all of your attempts to put off the real bottom line truth.
Jesus said, listen, the Holy Spirit will work on whoever he wants to. Have you ever noticed that people say, well, I know John, he’ll never be saved. And it’s those kind of people that I think heaven smiles about and says, well, just watch.
The Holy Spirit moves in and takes a person that was Grosville and far from God, and everything that came out of their mouths was anti-Christ, and they saved them, and all of a sudden, they’re as sweet as can be. It’s unbelievable what God can do. The sovereign work of the Holy Spirit.
And I have to say one little thing about this to conclude. One day in Jerusalem, I had a room on an upper floor, and they had little balconies, and I went out on the balcony, and the wind was blowing. The wind blows almost every night in Jerusalem.
It’s 3,000 feet in the air. And as I was standing in the room, and the wind was blowing, I don’t know why, it just hit me. I’ll bet you, this is David now.
It doesn’t say in the Bible, but since it blows all the time, and since they go up on top of the roof in ancient times to talk in a private conversation, I’ll bet you the wind is blowing. The wind’s blowing through their hair, and Jesus looking right at Nicodemus said, by the way, the wind blows wherever it wants to. I just love it.
Now, maybe you don’t see that, and, you know, I understand. May God lift the blindness of, no, no. But it just blessed me to feel that wind blowing and to imagine what it might have been like, as Jesus with the wind blowing in the faces said, Hey, Nicodemus, you don’t know where the wind’s coming from.
You might hear the sound of it rustling through the trees or blowing against the buildings, but you don’t know anything about it.
That’s Bible Teacher David Hocking, and this is Hope for Today. David will complete our study time today in just a moment, so don’t go away. First, Matt and I are going to share a powerful study tool by David with you.
Matt, what do we have?
As believers, it is imperative that we do not let the world rob us of our joy.
There is so much in our world today, Matt, that is right there in our face, and if we aren’t careful, we can let it rob us of our joy.
Right.
This is where your dad’s book, Principles of Joy, comes in.
Yeah, and this is for principles of joy. There are details and discussed, as revealed to Paul’s letter to the Church of Philippi.
Yeah, and the book Principles of Joy is a study of Philippians. Matt, the philosophy of our lives must be centered in Jesus Christ. The pattern of our lives must be conformed to Christ.
And the purpose of your life must be changed by Jesus Christ. And the peace of your life must be controlled by Jesus Christ.
That’s four principles in this book by your dad that take us through the book of Philippians. Now, in today’s world, do you think we need more joy in our lives?
Yes.
And can we exhaust that joy?
The joy that we can only get from the Holy Spirit. The joy that only comes from knowing Jesus Christ.
Knowing Jesus Christ and growing in Christ.
Yes, the joy that only comes from the Lord and growing in the Lord.
And Matt, I love what your dad says in the purpose statement of the book. There is no greater need among believers than the attitude of joy. It makes our lives exciting and fulfilling, and helps us to cope with the changing circumstances and difficult situations of our lives.
Yeah, but it’s found in a personal, growing relationship with Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
And he adds, may your life be filled with his joy. And you know something? You get this book and study through Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, and you’re going to have that joy that comes from a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.
Principles of Joy is the title of the book. Now, our featured offer for the month of September, and it’s just $15 when you call us at 1-800-75-BIBLE. If you listen in Canada, 1-888-75-BIBLE, or of course you can order online at davidhocking.org.
And quickly, just before David returns, I want to share something very special with you. Here at Hope for Today, we are all about spreading hope and ministering to the body of Christ, through the teaching of God’s Word. But the truth is, we need your help to make it happen.
When you support this ministry financially, you are joining hands with us in reaching the unsaved and strengthening believers. Your support, no matter the amount, will help us keep spreading hope far and wide. You can send your gift to Hope for Today, Box 3927, Tustin, California, 92781.
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Once again, here’s David.
Father, thank you that you love us like you do. And I know, Lord, from this passage that everybody in this audience who expects to enter the kingdom of God must be born again. Thank you, Lord, for the work of your Holy Spirit.
Thank you that no one, no one, in spite of their objections or obstacles or past or sinful lifestyle, can by any of that be excluded, for the power of the Holy Spirit can overwhelm all of it and cause the new birth to occur. You said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. God, I would pray that many people right now who are in our listening audience and are not sure that if they died now, they’d be in heaven, have no confidence of their personal relationship with God.
They’re not sure they’ve ever had this spiritual awakening we call being born again. Lord, would you cause them to turn to your son Jesus Christ and realize that only through him could we ever be saved. He died for our sins.
He paid for them. He rose again from the dead. And one day is going to come back.
Thank you, Lord. In Jesus’ name.
Amen.
Amen. If you’d like to know more about what it means to be a Christian, or you’ve recently given your life to Jesus Christ, well, we’d like to send you David’s booklet called What is Christianity? and a Bible Study by Mail.
Both are free if you’re new to the Christian faith, or you haven’t quite yet made that commitment. And this is a great way to ensure that you’re understanding of Christianity, and your walk with God begins with a strong biblical foundation. Call us at 800-75-BIBLE in the US and 888-75-BIBLE in Canada.
And again, Bible by the numbers 24253. And we’ll send these resources your way. Well, next time, our teacher, David Hocking, continues his verse-by-verse study through the Gospel of John with a look at the life-altering conversation Jesus had with a religious leader under the cover of night.
Be sure to invite a friend to listen with you right here on Hope for Today.
