Disclaimer:
Due to the large amount of sermons and topics that appear on this site I feel it is necessary to post this disclaimer on all sermons posted. These sermons are original to the author and the leading of the Holy Spirit. While ideas and illustrations are often gleaned from many sources including those at Sermoncentral.com, any similarities and wording, including sermon titles, that may appear to be the same as any other sermon are purely coincidental. In instances where other minister’s wording is used, due recognition will be given. These sermons are not copyrighted and may be used or preached freely. May God richly bless you as you read these sermons. It is my sincere desire that all who read them may be enriched. All scriptures quoted in these sermons are copied and/or quoted from the Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible.
Pastor James May
BORN AGAIN
Every morning mankind arises to walk one more day into the unknown. He knows not where his steps will take him. There is a hope that our knowledge and power to create technology that is designed to better the life of each of us, will take us into a better tomorrow and a brighter future. We try to maintain a positive attitude and you will hear many voices that preach the eventual victory over all of man’s problems. Yet in spite of all our technology, all our planning, scheming and working toward a better life and a better world, the world seems to only grow more evil with each passing day.
The eyes of men are open to the world about them. We see what is happening when there are wars and fighting upon every hand. We understand, at least to some small degree, that there are diametrically opposed forces at work in our world.
Just look at the realm of politics and you will see that people running for public offices must always take a stand. Some of them will be labeled as “Liberal” or “Democratic” while others are labeled as “Conservative” or “Republican”. Some don’t know what they really want to stand for and they label themselves “Centrists” or “Independents”. Looking at these opposing views in the political arena we can easily see that there is a vast division between them that will likely never be bridged. Instead of mankind coming together in unity the division between them grows ever deeper and ever wider.
Each passing day brings new threats and all the while our leaders are doing everything they know to do to bring peace and stability to our troubled world.
The same is true in each individual life. We work hard, spending many hours in toil in an attempt to create a better lifestyle. While most us, through hard work and planning, can create a better lifestyle, there are some things about life that we seem to have no power to control.
It seems that there is some undermining power that is always at work in us. We are unable to control our own destiny. We are unable to turn things around so that we will find the peace and prosperity that we desire so much. We feel so powerless to really change our own lives. Everyday there are many people who just simply give up in this struggle and decide that life isn’t worth living. They will end their lives believing that death will bring some sort of release, when in reality, all that death brings is eternal punishment.
What a terrible thing it must be to live a life of hopelessness and desperation, then to have to spend an eternity in unmentionable torment!
Why cannot mankind solve these problems? Why is it that the more we try, the worse things seem to get? Why is it that we will never feel satisfied, and never feel that we have arrived, no matter how successful we may become in this life? Why is the solution to all of our troubles so elusive?
The reason we can’t find a solution is that the cause of all of our troubles on this earth are not carnal or fleshly. If our troubles were caused by things that we could see it would be easier to overcome them. But our problems are spiritual in nature and we can only see those problems through spiritual eyes.
Though you may have been born into this world with 20-20 vision in your natural eye, you were born into this world with spiritual blindness. That means that you can’t see, nor can you understand anything that is spiritual in nature.
You may have been born with a strong, healthy heart of flesh, but your “spiritual heart” is dead so that you cannot live spiritually without the “inner heart”, that part of you that is your source of life, your mind and your essence of being, must be given life by its Creator.
You may have been born with the ability to hear the sounds of nature and of this life perfectly. But friend, unless you have been given the ability to “hear” those things of the spiritual realm, you are deaf to what God is trying to say to you.
You may have earthly knowledge and wisdom but unless God has placed his wisdom within you, the Bible says that you are but a fool because the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s opinion and his is the only opinion that counts.
It’s only by the grace of God that you are given an opportunity to receive a new set of eyes, a new heart, and a new ability to hear what is going on in the spiritual realms. You can become a new person, re-created, regenerated, with new ways of thinking that line up with God’s will for your life, with new desires for those things that are holy, righteous and pure, instead of the appetites of the flesh that are so controlling of your every action right now. You can become instantly more understanding and intelligent and you will immediately begin to learn why the world is the way it is and what the future really holds.
That regeneration is brought about by the power of the Holy Spirit moving in your heart and life.
The grace and mercy of God has been made available to each of us that we can be made into a new creation.
We are given a new heart after God.
We are given a new desire to live according to God’s will.
We are given a new vision for life.
We are given a new hope for a grand future.
The eyes of our understanding are opened and we begin to understand things that were hidden from us before.
So many of the mysteries of this life suddenly become so much clearer because God’s Word reveals them to us as we spend time in prayer and Bible study. The hopelessness and despair is replaced by joy, peace and a happiness that will stand under all the stress of life.
These things, my friend, are the results of what the Bible calls, “Being Born Again.”
The Bible contains a story of one man who was looked up to by his peers as a very successful and much honored ruler, but this man learned that all of his success and the honor that was given to him of men still left him empty and with questions that he could not find answers for.
One day, late in the evening, he decided that he was going to try to find an answer to his questions of life, happiness and eternal life. He had studied every book of the Law that man had written. He had spent countless hours in learning, studying and trying to gain understanding but he was still wandering in a cloud of darkness and could not get a grip on what life was all about.
But he didn’t want his business associates, friends and relatives to know what he was doing lest he would lose their respect and admiration. They would think that he had lost his mind and had gone off the deep end. After all, if he was as smart and as spiritual as he made out to be, why would he need to get counseling or seek knowledge from some uneducated preacher?
And so we find that after dark, he carefully moves through the city of Jerusalem, evading contact with anyone on the streets, moving through the shadows, and finally came to the place where Jesus was. He was wandering in the night, but he also felt as though he was wandering in spiritual darkness as well. Somehow he knew that the answers for all of his questions were to be found in Jesus. The Holy Spirit had convicted his heart and he knew that his only hope was in coming to this great Master, Rabbi and Teacher that had to be sent from God. Though he did not know that Jesus was God, that he was the Son of God, there was something about this man that was greater than any other teacher in Israel.
John 3:1-5, "There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."
What wild thoughts must have gone through the mind of Nicodemus as heard those words from Jesus, “You be Born Again’!
Immediately his mind goes back the moment of birth when a newborn baby is delivered from its mother. It is so tiny, so fragile, so helpless and dependent upon others for its every need. HOW COULD A GROWN MAN EVER BECOME THAT SMALL, THAT HELPLESS AND BE BORN AGAIN? Can you wonder at his question to Jesus, “how can that ever happen?”
Nicodemus was still thinking in the natural realms of the flesh. His understanding was still limited by what he could see with his eyes, hear with his ears and feel with his hands. He could not get a grasp on what Jesus was saying to him.
And so it is with all of us who first come to hear the Word of God and we hear those words, “YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN”. How can we be born again? If I have to change everything I do and become a whole different person, I don’t know how I can do it? If I have to give up friends, give up the parties, give up going to the clubs, and start living according to God’s Law, I don’t just don’t see how I can do such a thing. I can’t change that much, it’s just impossible.
Slowly Jesus began to open the spiritual eyes of Nicodemus and to help him to understand with his heart instead of his mind. The things of the Spirit must be understood only through the Spirit. A heart and mind that is bound in carnality and only knows the ways of the flesh cannot begin to understanding the ways of God, so God, in his mercy and grace will begin that process for us until we have that ability within us.
…”Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
Jesus is not saying to Nicodemus that water baptism, or being washed in water brings any special entrance into the kingdom of God. When Jesus says that we must be born “of water” he is speaking metaphorically. The water represents the grace and mercy of God that comes into your heart, and it represents the Blood of Jesus Christ that washes over your soul to cleanse, purify and restore your soul.
As a man repents of the life that now leads, makes a decision to turn his life around, and accepts the sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross as the subtitute for the punishment that he deserves, and places his trust in Jesus, giving his life and his will over to the will of the Lord, and then believes in Jesus Christ as the God who will resurrect him and give him eternal life, a wonderful thing happens down deep in his soul.
The Holy Spirit of God quits knocking on the door as we open it to allow him to come in. The windows are opened and the house is cleaned, swept free of sin, every thing is washed clean and fresh through the power of the Blood of Jesus and we are left with a brand new heart.
Though we may still look the same on the outside and this old body of flesh may still bear the marks of the old life, on the inside, where it really counts, we are a brand new creation in God. The Holy Spirit, through ways that we cannot understand, but we must accept by faith, puts us in right standing with God, gives us eternal life, and then points us toward Heaven.
He gives us a desire for different things than we had before. We won’t have to give up anything or quit doing anything – those things won’t appeal to us anymore. The things that used to draw us so much away from God no longer have power over us for we are now dead to the things of this world and alive to the things of God.
We are “Born Again” by the washing of the Blood of the Lamb as water that cleanses every dark corner of our hearts. It’s like God turns on the fire hose and just flushes everything away so that our burdens are lifted, our minds are settled, and our whole life takes on a new and wonderful feeling. Peace floods over us and all those things that were weighing so heavily upon us, seem so much lighter now.
I must tell you that at that moment you are cleansed by the Blood of Jesus is the most wonderful moment of your life and it’s a feeling and a time that you will never forget.
But, it is also the most dangerous and vulnerable time in your life with the Lord!
The Bible carries a warning for us to not just be cleansed and then stay there without moving on into a deeper walk with the Lord. Matthew 12:43-45 "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first."
Jesus is saying this same thing when he says to Nicodemus that he must be born both of the water and of the Spirit! Unless we continue on from that time of cleansing by the Blood of Jesus, and commit our lives, and our ways unto the Lord, allowing the Holy Spirit to enter in and occupy that empty, cleaned out heart, we are in danger of allowing Satan to come back.
Too many people have been saved, cleansed and washed but have fallen back into their old lives of sin, but they don’t just go back to where they were, they are far worse than before. Once they have gone back into the life of sin, the depths of their depravity is beyond reason, they give themselves wholly unto sin and Satan will bring them deeper and lower than ever before in every attempt to keep them from ever coming back to God. Their desire for the things of God are obliterated by their desire for sin. Even though it is possible to come back to God after backsliding, it is a lot harder for the Word of the Lord to reach into your heart and it’s a lot harder for you to yield to the Holy Spirit than it was the first time because now you are fighting against every power of hell to do so.
I don’t necessarily interpret that you had a demon to begin with, even though that may be true. And I don’t necessarily interpret this passage to mean that now you will be possessed and oppressed by 8 demons instead of 1, even though that may be true.
What it means, more than anything else, is that while you initial desire for the sins and lusts of the flesh may have been terrible and deadly to your soul, the final state of the backslider will be one of absolute surrender to the forces of evil and that the depths of your sin against God will be complete and without bounds. Now wonder it is harder to reach a backslider.
So that is why Jesus says that we must also be born of the Spirit. We must allow the Holy Spirit to bear us up, to lead us along life’s journey, to teach us the ways of the Lord, and we must learn to obey and follow His leading. By allowing the Holy Spirit to have control over our lives, that cleaned out and empty heart will be filled with the love of God, desires for things of the Spirit, and the Word of God and there will be no empty place for the devils to come home to because the Holy Spirit lives there and he protects our heart from every attack of the enemy.
John 3:14-17, "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."
The Children of Israel had murmured against God, fell into sin and God had allowed vipers to invade the camp. The vipers struck and killed many of those who had rebelled against God and against his servant Moses, who represents Jesus to you and I. Moses had to make a brass serpent and lift it up upon a rod and then walk among the people. Whoever would look up to that brass serpent would be healed. If they didn’t look up, they died.
Brass, in the Word of God, is a symbol of judgment. That brass serpent upon the pole, represents the judgment of death upon the cross, for all of the sin of the serpents in your life through Jesus Christ who died for you.
God sent his only Son, Jesus, to die on a cross for you before you ever knew that there was a God. God loved you so much that he decided to choose you and give you a chance to be with Him instead of the fires of judgment. He decided to pay the price of sin for you because you could not. In his mercy and grace, he has made a way for each of us. If you will look up to Jesus, accept his sacrifice for your sin, believe that he is the Son of God and trust in him for eternal life, repent of your life of sin, and turn your life over the Lord, then you will be born again and you will be made fit for the kingdom of God.
This message is not given to condemn you this morning. Your heart has already condemned you. The guilt is already there. I don’t need to give you anymore than you have already. Jesus didn’t some to you this morning to condemn you; but to give you hope and give you a way to be saved." Have you accepted him? Are you born again? Have you received your new eyes this morning? Now is the time and the Spirit is calling and you must be born again if you desire to make Heaven your home. Come to Jesus right now!
