John 3:1-21
“Born Again?”
By: Rev. Ken Sauer, Pastor of Grace UMC, Soddy Daisy, TN www.graceumcsd@yahoo.com
Gosh there are a lot of unhappy people in this world.
I was speaking with someone this past week.
They were sharing with me their insecurities, their fears…
…this person is so unhappy.
He said to me, “I always feel as if I am lost.”
I would imagine most of us have felt lost many times during our lives, but to feel this way ‘always’ is a terrible burden indeed!!!
Toward the end of his life the Apostle Paul was able to say: “I know what it is like to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.
I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”
Contentment is what this world is starving for.
It is what most every person desires.
Why, then is it so elusive?
Paul follows this statement up with, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”
Contentment and the secret to being content is found in Christ and Christ alone!!!
It’s not something we can attain from external powers.
We will not find contentment in human institutions.
We will not find contentment in trying to follow certain “guidelines to living” or “certain rules.”
It just doesn’t work.
It has to come from within—no matter the circumstance…
…it has to come from Christ and complete reliance on and faith in Christ’s love for us!
In our Gospel Lesson for this morning we come upon a man named Nicodemus.
We are told that Nicodemus was a Pharisee and “a member of the Jewish ruling council.”
It is also believed that Nicodemus belonged to a distinguished Jewish family—kin to a certain Nicodemus who was the ambassador to Pompey, the Roman emperor back in 63 BC.
It is amazing that this Jewish aristocrat would come to this homeless prophet who had been a carpenter in Nazareth, so that he might find the key to life and living.
That’s like the Pope asking me, “Ken, how can I find God?”
Nicodemus was a Pharisee.
He was one of the elite who dedicated their lives to keeping thousands of rules…to keeping every detail of the law of the scribes.
And he was a ruler of the Jews.
Which is to say, he was a member of the Sanhedrin.
The Sanhedrin was The Supreme Court of the Jews.
Again, it’s amazing that Nicodemus would come to Jesus at all.
We are told that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night when it was dark.
The writer of the Gospel of John likes to use the symbolism of darkness and light throughout his Gospel.
This situation is no exception…
Nicodemus came to Jesus as a man lost in the darkness…seeking The Light Who is Jesus!!!
In Nicodemus’ heart, there was a great unsatisfied yearning.
A great unsatisfied yearning for peace and contentment.
Nicodemus may have been an extremely successful man, but his worldly success still left him as empty and desperate as the rest of us.
Perhaps Nicodemus felt as if he were always lost—all the time.
When Nicodemus came to Jesus, he told Jesus that no one could help being impressed by the signs and wonders Jesus did.
Jesus’ answer was that it was not the signs and wonders that were really important; the important thing was such a radical change in a person’s inner life that it could only be described as a new birth!!!
We might tend to think that the idea of being “born again” has only Christian roots, but this is not true.
As a matter of fact, this idea goes back many thousands of years.
This idea was not new to the people of Jesus’ time.
The Greeks used the idea of being born again in their “mystery religions.”
And the Jews, well, when a person became a Jew, they were regarded as having been born again.
The sins the person had committed before the conversion were all done, and now the new convert was a new person.
The Jews knew the idea of the New Birth, and thus, Nicodemus knew it very well.
The world today knows, very well, the term of being born again.
It has been used by politicians, presidents, and celebrities.
It has been preached by about all the television evangelists.
Most people have a friend or family member who is a self-described “born again Christian.”
Yes, this world, as well as the world of Jesus day is quite familiar with this term—born again.
But unless it is experienced, that is all it is: a term.
A misused, and misconstrued and misunderstood term at that!!!
Many times to separate up voting blocks, the media will use the term “born again Christians” to define one category of religious folk.
Others are called plain old Protestants, or Mainline Christians or Catholics.
Yes, the term born again is very misunderstood, even within the church!!!
I remember, when I was a kid, thinking a born again Christian was somehow a second class kind of Christian.
It was like they had been a Christian; had somehow messed it up and had become Christian again.
Whereas everyone else had been Christian all along.
We were better.
We hadn’t messed up.
Anyhow, Nicodemus was a successful man.
He was an extremely religious man.
But he was not a content man.
He did not have the peace of God which transcends all understanding.
How could he have missed it?
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Movement, had been an Anglican Priest for a number of years without having experienced the new birth first hand.
Of course he was familiar with the term, and may have thought he understood what it meant.
But, Wesley was an extremely agitated and unhappy, discontent man who tried so very hard to feel as if his sins were forgiven--but he just couldn’t believe it.
On a dangerous voyage by ship Wesley was scared to death.
He was shaking at the knees.
He was afraid to die and face the judgment of God.
And on this ship he came upon some Christians, who had been strongly influenced by Martin Luther, and they didn’t have a care in the world.
They were singing hymns and happily praising God while the ship shook with the waves and was moved by the gale.
They looked death in the face and were content and at peace.
They fully trusted God.
It was at this point that the 36 year old Anglican Priest, John Wesley, knew for sure he was lacking something that these other folks had…an assurance of his salvation.
Wesley had an unsatisfied yearning--Even though he was a highly regarded Anglican clergyman, and had been for years.
A little while after surviving the trip on the ship Wesley writes in his journal that he was coaxed by a friend to go to a certain Bible Study on Aldersgate Street in England, where a person was reading Martin Luther’s commentary on the Book of Romans.
Wesley writes: “About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.
I felt I did trust Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
That was John Wesley’s born again experience, and also the beginning of a Great Awakening—the Methodist Movement!!!
Do you know what it means to be born again?
Have you given your life to Christ over and over again, but it just hasn’t made much a difference?
Is it hard to relate to the Apostle Paul who talked about a peace which transcends all understanding, and a contentment no matter the circumstances?
If so, you may have a lot in common with Nicodemus.
In Nicodemus’ heart there was a great unsatisfied yearning.
It’s as if Nicodemus said to Jesus, “You talk about being born again; you talk about this radical, fundamental change which is so necessary.
I know it is necessary; but in my experience it is impossible!
There is nothing I would like more; but you might as well tell me, a fully grown man, to enter into my mother’s womb and be born all over again.”
You see, it’s not the desirability of this change that Nicodemus questioned; that he knew only too well.
It was the possibility!
Nicodemus was up against the eternal problem.
It’s the problem of someone who wants to be changed and cannot change himself.
Can you relate?
So Jesus answers Nicodemus by saying, “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to Spirit.”
We—human beings—by ourselves are flesh, and our power is limited to what our flesh can do.
By ourselves, we cannot do much other than be defeated and frustrated.
Can you relate?
It is the universal fact of human experience.
But the very essence of the Holy Spirit of God is power and life which are way beyond human power and human life; and when the Holy Spirit takes possession of us, the defeated life of human nature becomes the victorious life of God!
It’s through Jesus Christ that we are born again; it is when Jesus enters into possession of our hearts and lives that the real change comes.
And when Jesus takes possession of our lives, it’s not only that the past is forgotten and forgiven; if that were all, we would just continue to make the same mess of life all over again.
Instead, when Jesus takes possession of our lives a new power enters which enables us to be what, by ourselves, we could never be and to do what, by ourselves we could never do!!!
There’s a story of a man who had been nothing but a drunk his whole life until he was converted.
His colleagues at work did their best to bring him down.
“Surely,” they said to him, “you can’t believe in miracles and things like that.”
“Surely you can’t believe that Jesus turned water into wine.”
“I don’t know,” the man answered, “whether he turned water into wine when he was in Palestine, but I do know that in my own house and home he has turned beer into furniture!”
The unanswerable argument for Christianity is the Christian life.
No one can disregard a faith that is able to make bad people good!
The essential thing is to experience to power of Christianity!
Are you experiencing the power of Christianity in your life?
Christianity must be experienced!!!
You must be born again!!!
