Hallelujah! You can take whatever sin you have tonight and say, “Lord, pardon me, pardon me for I have sinned against You. When I want to do some wrong to somebody else, it’s really against you first because You made me serve You and that’s against Your will. Nicodemus says, “Teacher, we know You are from God because nobody can do what you do except they come from God. (John 3:2)” Do you know what Jesus said? Did he say, “Nicodemus, I am so glad you woke up and smelled the coffee because you see me do miracles so long and now you are coming to me acknowledging Who I am”. Did He say that? No. Do you know what He said? He said, “I tell you the truth, you’ve got to be born again.” He said, “You must be born again.” What was he doing? He went to the heart of the matter. He said, “Your religion, your efforts, your acknowledging that I am the Son of God, you know, even like flattering. It’s not going to do you any good. You got to become born again.”
Nicodemus says this in John 3:4; Nicodemus scratched his head and said, “How can a man be born again when he is old? How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb?” You know that’s a fair question, right? He says, “You want me to become born again? What do you mean by born again? What do I have to do? Are you telling me that I have to go back into my mother’s belly and then come out a second time?” Jesus said this, He said, “Truly, truly I say to you except a man is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” He can’t. He can’t. He’s got to be born of water and the spirit. And then He says this: “That which is born of the flesh - that is your mother’s belly, your human body, that’s flesh - But that which is born of spirit is spirit.
So He says, 7. “Don’t be amazed, don’t marvel that I said you must be born again.” Finally this verse, 8. The wind blows wherever it wants. It goes from whatever direction it comes from. However you can’t really tell, you can’t really tell. Can you see the wind? I can’t. Neither can you. But if I am standing here and all of our Bibles close this way all of a sudden including mine and we hear a sound; we can tell that was wind, right? And it probably came from there somehow, either through a fan or from an open window. So what is that saying, my friend? It says that Jesus said, “Just like the wind when it comes all of a sudden, you can know it’s there by the effect. You can see an effect come forth. Even though you can’t see with your eyes. So is the Spirit of the Living God.” The Holy Spirit once He starts working in your life, you are going to start hating sin. Amen! Some of you may have experienced that. You start thinking, “I hate this life!” It’s not somebody saying, you know what, “I abused my body so much, I don’t want to live. It’s not that.” It’s “I don’t like the thing that caused the abuse. I want to live but I hate the way I live.’
How many of you want to change your life? Praise God! God is able to do that. And I want to tell you, that God loves you. God is able by the Holy Spirit to let you see your own heart as if an X-ray was shown right now. Because our heart is so corrupt, the Bible says, and we are so blind to sin. Human nature hates to hear when somebody says, “Brother, you got to change the way you are living.” The first instinct is “Who are you talking about? Why don’t you take the speck out of your eye or the log out of your eye before you point a finger at me?” Right? That’s human nature. Instead of saying humbly, “You are right, you are right. I’ve got to change some things, but I need help.” See, that’s the perfect place to start.
If God is holy, if God is full of power, full of love, you know what he wants from you. He wants you to say, “YES LORD, yes Lord!” All he wants us to do is say, “I agree with you, God. Lord, I am getting down on my knees. Lord, you are right and I am wrong. I am wrong. You are right. If you make the way for my soul to be cleansed even tonight through the blood of your Son Jesus Christ and Your Holy Spirit is going to change me from the inside out, then one day, I am going to come out like a butterfly. All of the past sins and the darkness of that cocoon; you know when it’s not a butterfly before it becomes a butterfly; it is shut in the dark. No hope, no light, just the waiting period of hopelessness. One day the butterfly comes out. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit.
God can so transform your life to the point where He gives you the power. When somebody comes and says, “I have a deal for you.” It’s really the devil that is working through people and he says, “You can make a million dollars if you stick with me. All you got to do is follow this program.” The Holy Spirit will help you to say to that voice, that person; “I am already rich way beyond you can ever imagine because my God has done for me and will do for me more than I ask or imagine. Amen! He can do everything for me. I don’t need to try to become a millionaire. I don’t need to feed my ego with that thing that’s going to make me proud. I don’t need to smoke another joint because that stuff is destroying this body and I come to find out one day this body is the temple of the Holy Spirit! So if the Holy Spirit lives in me, this thing has no part in me, is out of my life. God will give me the power to do that.
I am not just speaking from the book, I am speaking from experience, not necessarily drugs, but other things, Ok? So we, all of us, are fair game for the devil. We have no power to overcome the devil. But Jesus Christ crushed the devil under His feet. That snake, that’s the devil, that’s deceptive. He brings your sin in a package. He says, “Just do this and you are going to get high, you are going to feel high. You are going to get your need met.” But he never tells you the price tag attached to it. He never tells you this is going to destroy you, this is going to take you to hell. This is going to affect many people. He never says that because he is a liar, He only shows you part of it. Jesus Christ says, “I am telling you the truth.” He says, “All that you have ever tried in your life, it’s all going to lead to a road that is going down to hell.”
But the day you say, “Lord Jesus, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. I want a brand new heart.” And that’s the heart of the matter, my brother. We need a new heart. Only Jesus can give us a new heart. Nicodemus here came secretly. Maybe some of you have said to the Lord, or inside your conscience, you know this thing about Jesus. It sounds ok. It sounds good. “But I don’t know that I want to make a commitment to the Lord. I don’t know that I want to be known as a Christian.” See, maybe you got a certain fear, anxiety. Maybe you haven’t had the boldness to say, “I want a new life and I want it now. And I don’t care what it’s going to cost me. I am taking all of my paraphernalia, whatever I’ve accumulated, all of my lust, all of my evil desires. All of the objects that lead to sin in my life, physical or people.” Bring it to the foot of the cross, say, “Lord, I am surrendering to you.” It’s only when you surrender your life to Jesus by faith. When you say, “Lord, I don’t know, you know. But I know one thing- I need you and I want you, Lord. I want you to cleanse me, Lord. You died on the cross for me. And Lord, You are a great savior, I am a great sinner, we make a perfect match. I need You Lord, cleanse me, cleanse me, heal me and I will walk in your way. Give me strength by the Holy Spirit.”
I want to say one more thing. There are people who know the Lord. Ok, there are people who know the Lord and they are still struggling. How many of you heard that? They are still struggling. They say one day, “It’s a beautiful day, I think I’ll go to church. I think I’ll read the word, fellowship, come here to Pacific Garden Mission, and hang out a little bit. “I feel good! I feel nice! Sugar and…? Spice! I feel good, it’s a feeling. But there’s only one problem. Monday comes along. Monday, the devil starts talking to me again. He says, “You know that feeling you had, it was just a – “Lovin’ feelin’!” That’s all it was. You are “Righteous brother!” but only for one day. But, I got you the rest of the time, so stop pretending. All of these things come.
Do you know why? When somebody says to God, “I think Lord I will try to you. I want to be with You. I need a new life. I agree with all of that. Preacher man, I agree with every single thing you said. There is only one problem. When I am by myself with my old friends, I just don’t seem to have the power. What’s happening? The same problem happened to the person who didn’t get saved. The one who really got saved and loves Jesus Christ also still got some more surrendering to do. Amen. That’s the crux of the matter. Until you and I die to self, and we say, “Lord, I am nothing without You. You are my everything. Lord, even when I come to know you. I come to Pacific Garden Mission or hear on the radio, these things that come in front of me and I know I am missing something in life, something major. I need Jesus Christ. But all these lies are coming, I feel weak.”
The Lord says “Surrender completely.” “ I surrender all.” The day you say to the Lord, whether you don’t know the Lord or you come to believe in the Lord and you’re still struggling, you who may be backsliding, come back to the Lord and say, “Lord, do a deep work in me. I still have some things to give up.” You know what happened to me. When I got saved, some years ago, I got healed. I had bronchial asthma for 11 years to the point of death. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t play, I was afraid of the future. I had my medicines – taking them day and night, you know. I kept praying. But between sin and sickness, I felt hopeless. But I loved to go to church. And I knew that there was something with God that I was missing.
Well, a friend of mine said to me. Did you know that Mathew 18:19 in the Book says that “If any two of you shall agree on earth, Jesus said this, as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father. He quoted that scripture to me. Put his hand on me, and quoted that scripture, and said to me, “I am going to pray for you. So believe and he said, start thanking God.” Well God did a miracle. No other way to explain. I have been going to my doctor's for 11 years. Within 2 weeks of May 1990, the Lord took the whole disease away. I was jumping for joy. Glory to God. You know what that did for me. That showed me that God is not just an imagination. He is not some imaginary creature. He is not just something to lean on when I feel like I need some hope. He is a Living God and He has got the power to heal you inside and out. Amen!
