I don’t know anybody who doesn’t need, from time to time, a fresh start. No matter who you are, no matter where you have been, no matter what you are trying to do, you just need, sometimes a fresh start, a new beginning. Trying to fix things the way they are won’t work; you need sometimes to start all over from the beginning.
Several years ago my wife asked me to build some cabinets in our house. The job looked like a piece of cake. There was a nice open space at one end of the room, and all I had to do was build some kind of frame, put a counter top on it, make some shelves over here on the left side and some more over here on the right side, and then put cabinet doors on the front. Easy, right? No problem, done in a flash, right?
Wrong! Wrong! What she failed to tell me was that first, I had to deal with a window in that wall. The window was too small, she said, and so, by the way, while you are building these cabinets, could you also enlarge the window? And, oh yes, when you get the window opened up, how about bookshelves on either side of it, from the ceiling to the new counter top.
Now have you got the picture? I am standing in front of a blank wall of concrete blocks, with one little narrow window up here, and nothing else. Just open up the window and build the cabinet and the shelves.
Well, I started. But, brothers, I started in the wrong place. I started with the cabinet down on the floor. You see, I wanted quick results, and so I started with the thing I thought I could do right away. I built a frame and put some siding on it and laid the counter top out, so that I could step back and say, “Look what I did” and so that the boss – I mean the wife – would applaud and say, “What a good husband I’ve got.” I mean, I like the goodies, right? I like making something I can see and I like having somebody tell me I’m doing well.
But there is more to the story. A whole lot more. After I got the basic cabinet built and the counter top laid, then I decided to start on opening up that window. I knew exactly how to do it, or so I thought. These are just concrete blocks and all I have to do is take out the old window frame, knock out a couple of rows of block, and build a new and larger frame for the larger window. So I got my sledge hammer and went to knock down the wall.
But guess what? I had already built the cabinet and the counter out here, and I was supposed to hammer up here, and I couldn’t get to it. I couldn’t reach the place I was supposed to hit, and even if I did, I was going to trash my new cabinet with broken concrete! I went at things in the wrong order, and messed myself up. So I took apart the cabinet I had just built, so that I could do the window.
Now the story isn’t finished yet. I finally did, by hook and by crook, build a window frame, and went running off to the glass shop to buy a large piece of double strength glass to put in there. Now if you were going to get a piece of glass for a window, what would you need to know first? The size of the opening! You would need to measure first, wouldn’t you? Well, duh. I said, “Oh, they will know how big it should be. Four rows of blocks this way, four blocks that way, they’ll know. And the guy at the glass shop said he did know. He cut it, I paid for it, I brought it home, I went to put it in – what do you think? You are way ahead of me. Too small! About three inches too short! Nothing to do but trudge back to the glass shop, this time with measurements in hand, and buy another big, expensive piece of glass.
I needed a fresh start, didn’t I? I had made so many mistakes that each mistake was causing another mistake. Do you know what I finally had to do? I finally had to tear out quite a bit of my cabinet work and start all over again. Fixing up what I had wasn’t good enough; I needed a fresh start.
Brothers, that’s the way life is sometimes. You need a fresh start. You need to go back to the beginning and quit messing around with what you’ve done, and start all over.
That’s what Jesus meant when he said to the man named Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” “You must be born again.” You need a fresh start. Nick, it’s not working for you, is it? And it’s not working because you keep on trying to tinker with what you’ve got. But you can’t fix it just tinkering with what you’ve got. You need a whole new start. You need a whole new life. You must be born again.
Naturally Nicodemus was puzzled by this. He told Jesus he didn’t get it. “How can anybody be born again? I can’t go back to my mother and be a baby again. How can a man be born again? How can I get a fresh start?”
I
Some of us think that if we feel guilty enough that will be a fresh start. Some of us think that if we dwell on our mistakes and sit and brood about them and tell ourselves how much of a mess we are, that will start us on the right road. But, you know, just feeling bad about yourself is not enough. It’s something, but it isn’t enough. I could have sat all day and looked at the mess in my basement; I could have kicked at the broken blocks and cursed the counter top and wept over the cabinets, but nothing would have changed. It’s not enough just to feel bad about yourself. Believe me, that’s not why we are here tonight. We have good news, not bad news. You may feel guilty over a lot of things you’ve done, and that’s understandable, but that’s not really a fresh start.
II
And then some of us figure out that we are where we are because somebody else failed us in the past. Some of us figure out that our lives are not what we want them to be because somebody failed us. There was a father who wasn’t home. There was a boss who was a racist. There was a teacher who didn’t care about helping us learn. There was a wife who cheated on us. There was a drug pusher who got us hooked. There was a drinking buddy who didn’t know when to stop. There was .. well, you name it. We can spend a lot of time and energy wishing that the people in our past had not done what they did. But they did. And you can’t change that now.
What you can do is to recognize what they did, leave it alone, and take charge of your own life. You can be in charge of you. It’s not about what others did to you, not any more; it’s about what you can do for you. You see, when I messed up that basement, who did that? Didn’t my wife do that? She asked me to build all that stuff, and if she had never asked me to do the work I never would have made the mess, right? Just like in the Bible, when Adam and Eve sinner, and God caught up with them, Adam said, “Lord, it’s not my fault. It’s the woman you gave me, she made me do it. It’s her fault. And frankly, God, it’s your fault, because if you hadn’t put her here in the first place ... No. Not good enough. It’s not really about other people and what they’ve done. If you want a fresh start, it won’t help much to worry about what others have done. It’s time for you to take charge of you.
III
Well, if I cannot get a fresh start by sitting around feeling guilty, and if I cannot get a fresh start by blaming other people for what they’ve done to me, where can I get a fresh start? Remember what Jesus said, “You must be born again.” How is that going to happen? Where is that coming from?
Maybe it would come if I get a new job. Yes, that’s it. A new job. Training here at the mission. A jobs program somewhere that will give me a skill I can market. Would that be a fresh start? After all, that’s what the guys in the suits out there seem to be all about. That’s what DC is all about. High-rolling, successful, got their own houses and cars, eating well every night. If I could just get a new job I’d have it made. A fresh start.
Brothers, I want you to get that training. I do want you to get that job. I want you to earn your own living and support your families if you have them. I want you to have the dignity of paying your own bills and working at something useful. I want you to have all of that. But let me tell you something: the job in and of itself is not all there is to a fresh start. Working and earning money, good as it is, is not all there is to it. Because you can earn megabucks and still mess up. You can have your pockets lined with cash and still be in trouble. You all heard about Mike Tyson, the boxer? They say he blew three hundred million dollars and is now bankrupt! Bankrupt when you have had that kind of green around? That’s hard to believe. Lord, let me have one percent of that .. Let me have one hundredth of one percent of that, and let’s see what I could do with it. But just having stuff, just having money, just earning, is not the thing.
When I did that basement job of mine, I sure did find out that I didn’t know enough. I didn’t have all the skills I needed to do all that carpentry and glasswork. But I needed more than new skills. I needed more than training. When I saw what a mess I’d made in my basement, I needed some courage. I needed some spirit. I needed to know that it was possible to start all over. Because I knew I could not live with that mess one more day. I could not have that pile of rubble in my life one more night. I needed somebody to help me do what I didn’t know how to do myself. I needed a friend, a really good friend.
Because, you see, fresh starts come from down here. Fresh starts come from inside. Fresh starts come from being born again. Fresh starts mean a new you, and not just the old you dressed up in a nice suit or driving a nice car. A fresh start is a whole new you.
Jesus said, “You must be born again.” You MUST be. And then He said, “God so loved the world that He gave His only son, so that whoever trusts Him would not die, but would have everlasting life.” Let me break that down for you. God so loved the world .. God so loved Nicodemus .. God so loved Jim and Bill and Joe and Corette and Mildred .. God so loved each one of us, each one of us different, each one of us with our own histories, each one of us with our own issues – God so loved each one of us that He gave us Jesus. He gave us somebody we could look up to. He gave us somebody who would understand us. He gave us somebody who would teach us. Best of all, He gave us somebody who would fresh start us.
If you were in my basement today, you wouldn’t know that it had ever been such a mess. It looks real good today. But I didn’t do that. I didn’t make it right, all on my own. I had help. I had a real carpenter come in and work with me and make it right. And I know a carpenter for you too. I know a man who will teach you to be a workman who doesn’t need to be ashamed. I know somebody who, if you will trust Him, follow Him, listen to Him, and learn from Him, will give you a fresh start. Not just fix the mistakes and not just erase the past and not even just give you new skills. I know someone who will take the mess and make it all right. A fresh start. Born again. His name is Jesus.
