New Birth - A Passport To Heaven!

A little girl had been attending Church for a while. One day, she asked her mother “Where did people come from?” Her mother answered “God made Adam and Eve and they had children and that is how all of us came.”

A couple of days later she asked her father the same question. The father said “This is a long story but the short answer to your question is that all of us evolved from monkeys.” The confused little girl returned to her mother and said, “Mommy, how come you told me that we were created by God and Daddy said we came from monkeys?” Without missing a beat, Mom said “Well, dear, it is very simple. I told you about my side of the family and your father told you about his.”

As funny as that is, in a spiritual sense it does matter which family we belong to because it is the difference between eternal life and eternal death. All of us are born into this world through a physical family but this morning we are going to talk about what it means to be born again into the spiritual family of God. To do this, we will use the story of Nicodemus found in the 3rd chapter of John’s gospel. Reading from vs.1:

1 There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him." 3 Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."

From what we can see, Nicodemus was a good man. Better than many of us for sure. We are told he was a Pharisee which means he was meticulous in keeping the religious law. Besides, Nicodemus was also a ruler meaning he was on the powerful religious council called the “Sanhedrin.” If you listened to the conversation, Jesus added to his credentials identifying him as a “Teacher” of the Jews. In other words he had mastered the word of God. But, there was a turmoil inside of him that caused him to come to Jesus by night.

I am sure he had seen or heard of Jesus doing so many miracles – the blind were made to see, Leper’s were cleansed and even the dead were raised to life! No matter how religious anyone was, no one had done such miracles before. He was curious - perhaps he too wanted those gifts or powers and to get to the bottom of it he starts a conversation with Jesus saying: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs unless God is with him.”

Without really answering the question, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he wasn’t going to make it unless he was “born again.” In other words an academic or theoretical knowledge of God and some good deeds are not going to be good enough to make it into God’s family.

Nicodemus is a good example of many good Christians. They are loyal members of the Church and support it with tithes and talent. They seldom miss a worship service. They even know the scriptures pretty well. All these are great but Jesus says unless we are “born again” all this good work will not get us to heaven.

Are you born again my friends? Are you content to be a proto type of Nicodemus who came close but not close enough to inherit eternal life or do you want to leave all that religion aside and instead open your heart and welcome the Holy Spirit into your life?

There is a big difference between being born of the flesh and being born of the Spirit. Birth of the flesh gives physical life but birth of the Spirit gives eternal life. Nicodemus never understood it so he asked Jesus:

"How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" 5 Jesus answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus asked a very logical question that makes earthly sense. How can you be born again or born twice. And Jesus said, the new birth is of water and the Spirit. Jesus himself took water baptism of John and then we are told the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove.

Physical birth comes through the intimacy of human love shared by male and female. Spiritual birth comes through the intimacy of God’s love and us in which His life merges into ours as he starts living in us. It happens when his precious Holy Spirit begins to live in us.