All Things New: Born Again Series

All Things New: Born Again!

In Revelation 21:5 Jesus said, “I am making all things new.” Not I did… Not I will (someday)… But I Am—right now—renewing everything. Unfortunately, the past life of new believers too often enshackles them to a brokenness and the newness never comes… Let’s bury the past and seize God’s bright new today!

VIDEO: “Bury the Old Self”

1. Jesus Said, “You Must be Born Again.”

And he said, “I came to give you new life,” (John 10:10) with a new heart, new direction, a new-&-living hope, faith-alive, glory-filled joy, untold spiritual riches and eternal abundance. Be excited! Why are many believers not thrilled?

Well Jesus explained this to Nicodemus in John ch. 3, and Nicodemus took awhile to let it sink-in, too. Jesus said that if Nicodemus wanted to please God and enter into the kingdom he must 1st be “BORN AGAIN,” yet Nicodemus did not understand that. So Jesus went on to explain about the love of God and about the cross. Basically, he tried to teach Nicodemus about grace…

2. The New Life Is Established by God’s Amazing Grace.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, not by works…” (Ephesians 2:8)

We have this doctrine of the Holy Spirit called “prevenient grace” that teaches us that the Holy Spirit comes to every human—before they believe; before they admit faith or even an awareness of Christ—and this prevenient grace of God ministers to the yet-to-believe soul, with subtlety, bringing events together, shining a special light and showing every reason for seekers to seek…

In Acts 17 the Apostle Paul explained that God gave every soul this place of emptiness that can only be filled by God’s grace, and so people everywhere seek-&-search for him, spiritually groping blindly, reaching out and hopefully finding God’s love. In Romans ch. 1 it explains that everyone has enough of this light to ascertain God’s grace, and that all will be responsible for their response to that amazing prevenient grace…

…And POINT #3 shows us what that response looks like…

3. Entering into the New Life Starts with…

a. Confession

b. and Repentance

Jesus went around preaching, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” And he said, “Blessed are you who recognize your need of God’s grace, forgiveness & renewal” (Matt. 5:3) Jesus understood that everything must be made new; that every person must be created as a new creature. So He showed that they must Confess—admit—the past and move forward confessionally!

So what does it mean to confess and to repent?

To Confess & Repent means that you know that you cannot save yourself.

King David confessed—even as a man whose heart belonged to God—that his sins were ever before God. In other words, he was totally honest before God, and tried to hide nothing. He had to recognize his need of God’s forgiveness, because he also knew that the wages of his unconfessed sin is death! Titus 3:5 says, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us.”

To Confess & Repent also means that you Repent of your sins.

The only way to know if you’re really confessing is that you are sincerely sorrowful about falling short of God’s glory; your heart is grieved by sin. You feel like the guy that was drowning but got saved by heroic lifeguards who risked themselves to come out & get you. And more than that, they told you not to go out into the riptide but you did it anyway, and still they came out to save you. And there’s this sense of genuine appreciation and heart-felt thankfulness-&-appreciation that they saved you. And you know that God was in Christ to reconcile you to Him, and that He came out to get you saved, now you are repenting and changing your ways, because the word “repent” simply means to turn. So—YES!—you’re sorry, but a lot of people are sorry; you are repentant: turning your life around, making a change. In Luke 13:3 Jesus said, “Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish.”

To Confess & Repent means that you have Asked Jesus Christ to save you.

The Bible says, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13) and “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31).

To Confess & Repent means that you Proclaim Jesus before others.

“If thou shall confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shall be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness: and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9, 10).

So there’s this really big deal that the Bible teaches... brings us into this blessed grace freely offered by God. It sounds like a lot, and many churches down-play the responsibility I have to live-out a confessional life, to walk confessionally and maintain an open-&-honest relationship with Jesus.