One More Pharisee | John 3:1-16 | Justin Leitch

Well, good evening, King's Church, if we haven't met, my name is Justin. I'm one of the pastors here. And like John said, we are grateful that you are here worshiping with us this evening. And I just want to take a second to share with you a little bit about this one more thing that he was talking about. If you missed.

Last week, we kind of rolled out our vision, direction, where we're headed, what we sense God putting on our heart for this year of 2026, which is why we're calling this year the year of One more. One more comes from Luke chapter 15, which we read through last week together. And we see God's heart for one more lost sheep, one more lost coin, and one more lost son. Now, the reality is that every one of us, if we're following Jesus, at one point, we were one more lost in the far country, and Jesus came to save us. And as a new church just starting this past September, one of the main reasons we came here was to engage in Wilmington and at UNCW and to be a part of decreasing losses and increasing worship by the grace of God.

Right? And so as we're praying through, thinking through what 2026 is gonna be about, we're like, let's just rally together as a church to have a heart for one more this year. Our prayer for you is that every one of you would have the opportunity to introduce someone to Jesus. We want all of us to know the one more love of God to us, but then also to more faithfully live out that one more love of God through us to the world around us. And what we're praying for and what we're hoping for is that the gospel of Jesus get into new nooks and crannies and places and families and workplaces and neighborhoods all over Wilmington and the dorms of uncw.

And so what we're praying this year that God will do just far more than we could ask or imagine. There's a couple things coming up that I'm really excited about with one more that we're kind of building in to help us rally around this. We've got our one more nights, one more Sundays, one more nights. The first one's coming up Monday night, February 2nd. And we want all of you to be there.

We're gonna cancel community groups that week. We want your community group to meet here for that event. Cause that's gonna be a special time. It's really gonna be a moment in the life of our church where we spend time together. Worshiping God, praying together, significant time in prayer, and just remembering this vision and direction together for the year of one more.

It's gonna be a special time. Make sure you come. We'll have childcare, all that stuff. So mark your calendars for that. But the other thing I'm excited about is our one more Sundays.

There's special Sundays we have dripped throughout the year. That will be moments where we'll ask that you prayerfully invite someone who's close to you but far from God to come and worship with us at church. And our commitment is to do the very best we can to present the gospel clearly and at least. At the very least, we'll tee you up for a softball at dinner after church where you can take them out and ask what God is doing in their heart or what they thought about the message. That's our heart.

That's our desire. We want you to be praying about who you might invite to come and worship with us. And I know that not everybody in your family or your friends that you're praying for someone that you love is far from Jesus. I know not all of them are gonna want an invite to a church, and that's okay. Praise God.

They take time to bless them, to care for them, to serve them, to show them the love of Christ. But here's what I'm believing for this first one on February 8th is that some of them will. That some people will respond with a yes to an invitation to church from a trusted friend who's been caring for them. And we'll get to worship together and share the gospel with them. So be praying for those couple events, be preparing for them, be ready to invite people.

And we're excited to see all that God will do. I just wanna take a and pray for this year. Pray for 2026 and ask God to just breathe on it and use it for the sake of his name, his glory. Then we'll jump in with the message for today. So let's pray.

Father, we are so grateful that when we were far, you saved us. God, we pray that you would stir in us a zeal and desire that overcomes the awkwardness of talking about spiritual things. To share the incredible news of the gospel and the urgent news of the gospel with the people around us who we pray you'll save God. We know that this message of the gospel is significant. It's eternally important.

And we pray that you would move in power and go before us, God. We pray for the one more night that you would just speak to each of us and remind us of who you are. We pray for one more Sunday that you would lead many people to accept invitations and join us to worship. And we ask that you would save, that you would move in power. Salvation belongs to you.

You did not desire that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance and go. You are slow to anger. You're abounding in compassion. So we ask, calling on your character, that you would overflow in mercy to our friends around us and show them the goodness of your love. In Jesus name we pray.

Amen. Amen. All right, well, today we are continuing in our series called One More, this five week series that we're walking through to kick off the year of One More. Last week we Talked about Luke 15, this heart, these parables from Jesus, about One More that shows us the heart of God. And over these next four weeks, we're going to look at Jesus having encounters with four different kinds of people in the Gospel who were One More to him.

All right, so today we're going to be in John chapter three. You can turn there now. You're probably already made your way there. But in John chapter three, we're going to see Jesus encounter a man named Nicodemus, a Pharisee. And I know as you hear John 3, you probably already know some stuff about that chapter.

All right. If you have never been around church before, this might be the one spot you have heard of in the Bible, because it's our like, it's our number one, John 3, 16. That's the one one we're talking about today. On top of that, the phrase born again comes from this chapter, which is just significant and rich in the Christian culture and our understanding of who God is, what he has done, and how we as people relate to him. So we've got some heavy hitters in here.

But the concern every time we go to a passage that's familiar to people who have been in church for a long time is that we kind of assume we know what's going on. We maybe take the 10,000 foot view of the verse, we get it, we move forward. But we might miss some of the intricacies of what God is revealing about himself and about us in a lot of ways in this chapter. So what we're going to do is we're going to read through John chapter three. We're going to understand some of God's heart for us in this chapter.

But before we get there, I want to go to the end of John chapter 2 to set some context. So look at the last couple verses In John, chapter two, right before it, verse 23, it says, now, when he, Jesus, was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs, the miracles that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people. He needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in them. Jesus at this point was in Jerusalem.

He's got crowds starting to follow him. There's a lot of excitement. We see there's miracles taking place, and people are worked up about Jesus and who he is. This is a chapter where Jesus flips tables, drives the temple clear of some people that were treating it inappropriately. And it's also just after Jesus turns the water into wine.

So he's developing some fans, as you could imagine. But his miracles, they excited people so much that many people were ready to believe in him, were ready to trust in him. But here's what I want to show you about the end of John chapter two. This is what's important to understand. It says that many believed in him, but verse 24, Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them.

That word for believed in 23, and entrust in 24 is the same word. The end of John chapter 2 is raising a problem for us early in the Book of John that we're gonna have to work out. All right? And the problem is this. There is a kind of belief that Jesus does not believe.

There's a kind of belief that humans can have about Jesus that Jesus does not believe. There's a kind of belief that we can hold that is not saving faith. And so what we're going to see in this chapter, in chapter three, answering that question of chapter two, we're going to see a few different truths about what it means to be saved. And we're going to understand kind of cut right to the heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. If you are kind of investigating Christianity, maybe you have a friend who invited you here.

Now, maybe you're hitting some rocky circumstances and you're just. You're just spurred on to look for truth. You came on a great day because we're going straight to the heart of the Christian message. We're going to John 3:16 today. But if you're a Christian, and again, we're at church, so most of you, I think, are if you're a Christian.

What is so true about this chapter is it lays incredibly important theological framework for what we believe and how we live out the Christian life, all right? And so the warning is that spiritual excitement does not make a disciple. Spiritual excitement does not make a disciple. And this is the question that we're left with. John chapter two, and headed into John chapter three, there's a kind of belief that Jesus doesn't believe.

So what does it mean to be saved? What does that mean? And John 3 is gonna answer that question. So look at verse one with me in John chapter three, it says, now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, alright? Last week in Luke 15, we talked about the Pharisees and scribes that got a very bad rap in the New Testament because they were the ones that ultimately had Jesus crucified, right?

Just bad guys. They were the religious leaders of the day. And they had the reputation for being outwardly arrogant and religious, condescending, looking down on other people, super holy and better than thou, and the inside is just full of death. They do the right things, but they're just arrogant people. The thing is that Pharisees weren't always this way.

You see, the movement of Pharisees actually started with a group of Jews who had an eager desire to honor God with everything they could, right? They actually would memorize all 613 laws in the Old Testament so they could scrupulously keep them to the dot like that. They were doing everything they could to honor God. It started off that way, but what happened over time was they actually built something called a hedge around the law. They added laws according to their tradition that kept them one step away from breaking God's law.

They're like, we wanna honor God so much, we're gonna add extra law so we don't even get close to breaking God's law. Kind of like when we tell our kids not to open the fridge, it's not because we don't want them to open the fridge necessarily, but it's because we don't want them to spill the mayo all over the floor, right? They're giving just like, some distance from breaking the law. This is what they did. And then after they did that, they puffed themselves up with superiority.

Because, look, we don't even keep God. We don't just keep God's law, but we also keep this extra law. And then we're gonna put this law that we made up on top of others. And here's when Jesus shows up, all right? When you see Jesus being frustrated and interacting with the scribes and Pharisees, it's around the Sabbath, it's around dietary restrictions because he is breaking the laws that they made up, right?

They became arrogant over time. But here's what I want you to see about the Pharisees. That's how they got there. But the Pharisees were extremely religiously devoted. I mean, they were the most religiously devoted people you could imagine.

I mean, they have this corrupt inside, but they are keeping the letter of the law to a T. So at this point, we have a contrast, right? We've got the crowds who are kind of fueled by spiritual excitement. And that's not what makes a true disciple. Then we get introduced to Nicodemus, a Pharisee who is full of religious commitment. We're asking the question, all right, is that what makes a true disciple of Jesus?

Let's keep going. In verse two, this man Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. That's why we call this story Nick at night. But here's a question. Why did Nicodemus come at night?

Why did he come at night? We don't know. It doesn't say in this passage. A few reasons. It could be he might have been embarrassed to be seen around Jesus because his Pharisee friends didn't like Jesus.

Maybe he wasn't sure about publicly interacting with Jesus because he was a leader in the community and he didn't know Jesus yet, so he wanted to kind of suss him out first. Or maybe Jesus was just busy during the day and he had all these crowds and healing. So Nicodemus had to find some time at night to go get him alone so he could ask some questions and understand a little bit more. Whatever the reason is that we know that in the book of John, the theme of darkness and light is consistent from the first chapter to the end. And so what John is doing here is showing us that Jesus, the light of the world, is there.

And Nicodemus, who is in darkness at night, is coming and looking for the light. Look at verse 2. This man Nicodemus came to Jesus by night and said to him, rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one else can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. Notice a couple things here. First, he is respectful to Jesus.

He calls him Rabbi, right? He didn't have to call him that, but he really respected him. But second, he doesn't really understand who Jesus is. He's in the dark, right? He calls him Rabbi.

It's respectful. He calls him Rabbi. It's also wrong. Jesus is not just a teacher come from God. Jesus is God in the flesh, coming to teach us about who God is.

So what we see from Nicodemus in these first couple verses is that Nicodemus is in the dark, but he is sincerely seeking the truth. He's seeking the light. He, in humility, comes to Jesus and tries to figure out what's going on. Now, what we see in Nicodemus life and all throughout the Bible, we see in Nicodemus life this promise played out. This is a promise that God gives us.

He says, if you draw near to me, I'll draw near to you. He says, if you knock, I will open. So if you are in a place this evening where you feel like you're in the dark, you're looking around, you're trying to find truth, God gives you a promise that as you seek him, he will draw near to you. Verse 3. Jesus answered him.

And Jesus said to Nicodemus, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. All right, I put some space with a lot of words in between the two verses, but if you go back to chapter two, Nicodemus introduces himself. It's like a greeting. He says, rabbi, you're a teacher from God. No one can do these things.

As Jesus answered him, Nicodemus did not ask a question. Nicodemus was just giving a common greeting and saying hello. And Jesus gets straight to the question that Jesus knows Nicodemus is seeking. Remember, back in chapter two, Jesus knows what's in man, so he gets straight to the heart. And we see Jesus do this all the time in the Gospels.

All right, next week in John chapter four, we're gonna see Jesus engage with the Samaritan woman at the well. And the same kind of thing happens. Like, there's, like, a normal conversation, and then all of a sudden, Jesus just takes it where he knows it needs to go. And I'll say this as a quick aside. In our year of one more, I think we could learn something from Jesus strategy about talking about the most important things, about eternity and about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes we're so paralyzed by fear to bring up spiritual conversations with other people that we never get there. We never end up having that conversation where we offer to pray for someone or ask about how their family is doing or even ask if we could talk with them about what Jesus has done for us and how we believe it's the key to life. Jesus does not wait for a polite open door. He just barges right through, right? He says.

Nicodemus says, hey, great to meet you. And Jesus says, you gotta be born again, right? And then there's something we can learn about that. I'm not saying be a jerk. I'm not saying you need to turn people off by talking rudely and unkindly.

But I do think that you can have some questions in your back pocket just to ask people to prompt these conversations to get to the most significant thing in the world, which is the eternal reality that someone is facing, right? Be ready to ask the question, do you go to church anywhere? Did you grow up going to church? Or just what do you think about God? If they're not interested, they will let you know.

It will move on and you will be fine. But if God is working in their heart, they may be ready to hear the gospel and believe. And we don't know till we ask. So take a note from Jesus and press through some of that awkwardness. Have a conversation with some people, but take it back.

Take a look at where Jesus takes this conversation. He answers in this conversation the question of chapter two, right? If it's not this, like, spiritual excitement with the signs and miracles, and that doesn't make a true disciple, and it's not just like religious commitment that doesn't make it a true disciple. Jesus gives us the answer. This is the first thing that we learn about what true faith looks like.

And Jesus answered it really clear. He said, true faith, true belief means being born again. Verse 3. He said that unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. It's not necessarily excitement, though.

I think you'll be excited if you're born again. It's not commitment necessarily, but I think you'll be committed if this happens. But what Jesus says is if you're going to know God, if you're going to walk with Jesus, if you're going to have the kind of faith that Jesus believes in, it means that you will be born again. This phrase born again is so significant, so rich, it's so packed with different meaning. And we're gonna jump into that.

But first, I don't want you to miss the scandal of who Jesus is talking to. Remember, he is talking to Nicodemus. Nicodemus follows all of the rules. Nicodemus is wealthy, as we learn in the rest of the Book of John. Nicodemus is a religious leader.

Nicodemus has given his life to following the Bible the very best that he can. Nicodemus is a leader in the right religion, like the Jewish people had the Bible, like they were the right ones. And it's not like Nicodemus. Life gets him to 75% and then he has to tack some things on the top, all right? His rule keeping did not get him any closer to true life with Jesus.

Jesus is saying to him, I know that you do all of the things, but you are no closer. The crowds that are excited have to be born again. And Nicodemus, you have to be born again too. Now, this is extra offensive because the Jewish people at this time actually used this phrase, born again, to talk about pagans who became Jews. They would talk about they'd been born again.

And Jesus is now coming to the leader of the Jews and saying, no, Nicodemus, you have to be born again. And I just love that Jesus uses this imagery of being born again with somebody so successful and put together. All right? Because if you're successful, if you're a competent person, you're older, a leader in your community, you've figured out some stuff in life, right? Generally, you are not in need and you're doing things for other people rather than people like helping you out, right?

You're giving resources to aid the community. You get to bless others. But this imagery of born again, what do you contribute? What did you contribute to your birth? I just asked the question.

You contribute nothing, right? You bring nothing to your birth. So Jesus comes saying, you gotta be born again. You are used to, as a successful leader, being able to provide for yourself and everyone around you. But to be with Jesus, you've gotta humble yourself and you've got to be born again.

On top of that, if you're a successful, competent person like Nicodemus, you tend to be poised and in control, right? You tend to not have emotional outbursts because you've seen some things, you've been through some things. You can navigate the ups and downs of life and you've learned to deal with it. But I have seen three births at this point, and it is anything but poised. I mean, there is shouting, there is blood, there is tension, there is excitement.

Jesus is using this intense graphic imagery of what it is gonna take for this religious leader to truly follow Jesus, right? Jesus says to him, you must be born again. Here's why Nicodemus had to be born again. Just like anyone would have to be born again. It's because the gospel is actually bad news before it's good news.

The message of the gospel is bad news before it's good news. And if I could just take a moment here and impress on our church culture, I think one of the greatest issues in our churches Today is that we have stopped talking about the bad news. We go around our communities, we get up in our churches, and we say, hey, the solution is Jesus. But so many people are asking, what's the question? What's the problem?

The Bible is crystal clear that before the message of the Gospel is good news and rightly understood, we have to get the bad news. So just all cards up front, we're a new church. I want you to know that we are a church that is going to teach the whole Bible. The Bible includes the incredible good news of God's grace and the salvation that we have through him. But the Bible also accurately diagnoses our problem.

The bad news first. And the Bible calls the bad news that we have to deal with sin. All right, it's sin. All right. So often we have reduced Jesus not to a conquering Savior who's paid the penalty for our sins on the cross, but him to a cosmic therapist and a shoulder to cry on.

When you're walking through brokenness and suffering, Jesus will most definitely be there for you. I mean, praise God for that. When you are in your lowest moments of hardship, when you're walking as a victim through a circumstance, Jesus will be there for you and will care for you. But Jesus is more than that because you're more than a victim. The reality of the Scriptures is that every one of us, in different ways, is a victim and suffering.

And we need Jesus to care for us and defend us. But the Bible's also clear that every single one of us is a villain and that we have not just received difficulty, but we have contributed to difficulty in the world. Just straight up, as clear as I can possibly be, you and I, every one of us in here, every person who has been born is a sinner. All right? We are not mistakers.

We are not stuck in bad habits that we just need to get out of. We don't need tips to do better from a life coach. We sinners who need to be saved. And just to get kind of specific about what this means, when we speak badly about someone, maybe to their face, maybe behind their back, and then maybe it gets confronted and brought up and it is awkward, it's uncomfortable, we gotta navigate. So often our normal just like, kinda human inclination is to say, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that.

Or it's to say, oh, that's like a bad habit. I need to stop that. What the Bible teaches is it goes deeper. The things we do are not just bad habits that we need to stop doing. They're actually the fruits of the reality of our heart.

See, the Bible teaches a couple things about sin. This was helpful when I learned this in college and just really unleashed a lot of kind of discipleship and understanding and repentance in my life. There's two ways to see sin. The first way to see sin, which is what we normally think of is sin, is when you do bad things. And that is true.

Like that is what sin is. You do bad things, you dishonor God. He has commands for us and we go a different way. We do bad things and it harms our relationship with him and then also it harms other people. Because rather than blessing and serving other people, we're using them.

We're selfish and self centered. You've heard it said before, sin tells us a lot by how it's spelled. I is in the middle. We put ourselves in the middle, right? That's what sin is.

We do bad things because of that. But if we stop there in our understanding of sin, which is true, we stop there in our understanding of sin. When we treat sin, when we fight against it, we treat it a little bit like whack a mole, right? Like, oh, that sin over there, I gotta like bop it on the head. And then another one pops up over here, I gotta bop it on the head over here.

And it ends up being like our lives as followers of Jesus. When we understand sin in that way, become a behavior management and just try not to do bad things. That's sin. The thing is that there's a second layer to sin that really helps us attack the roots of the brokenness of our heart with the gospel. This is the second layer of sin.

Sin is not just the bad things we do. It's also when we worship and serve the wrong king. Or it's when we worship and serve the wrong king. You see, the posture of our hearts, the sin of our hearts is not just a verb, a verb that we do, it's also a noun, a characteristic that kind of sits inside of us. Sin is also when we worship and serve the wrong king, right?

It's a relational betrayal of the God who created us, who gave us breath and life. It's not just eating the apple he didn't say to eat. It is saying, I'm going to be king, you're not. I'll do what I want to do, not what you say. The Bible leaves us in one of two places.

We can bow the knee before God or we can stand in resistance. And you may say, justin, that's a Little much. If you knew me, you would know I'm a pretty good person. I do lots of good things. How could you tell me that I'm in rebellion against the king Jesus.

And this is what I would say. When you're in one of these two postures, the Bible's teaching, it's important to understand. Just imagine back a few years ago when Isis was over there in the Middle east and it was this scary movement. Imagine they're having a little lunch meeting. Isis, they're together, they have a lunch meeting.

They're sitting around a table, and they're planning to blow up some school. That's their plan. That's what they're doing. And this guy is sitting down at lunch, and his buddy walks in late to this planning meeting. So he gets up out of his seat, he says, hey, take the seat over here.

You can have mine. And, oh, and half my cheese sandwiches left. You can have that as well, right? Here's the question. Did he just do something good for his friend?

Sure, yeah, he did something good. But the whole point of his goodness was in service of an opposing kingdom. In the same way, when we do good things here and there, if we are worshiping the wrong king, that good deed may even be seen as a worse thing, right? So if our knee is not bowed before Jesus, if we're not advancing his kingdom and his purposes in the world, everything that we do and think is in opposition to what he desires to have done. All right?

When we understand. When we understand that sin is not just doing a bad thing, but worshiping and serving the wrong king, it changes the way we address it in the Christian life as followers of Jesus, because we move from playing whack a mole, just popping up expressions of sin here and there, and we move to walking in repentance. We fall on our knees before Jesus, not just trying to stop sinning, but saying, jesus, I see how my flesh is rebellious against you. Would you have mercy on me? Would you forgive me?

Would you fill me with your spir and change me and transform me? And in every area of my life, Jesus, you're Lord, I'm not. It's hard sometimes to submit these things to you. I struggle with sin, but you're king. My knee is bowed, and I want to honor you.

The Bible is consistent about this language when it comes to sin. I don't share this with you to beat you up, but to build you up. Cause you have to understand the word of God. But this is why Jesus says you have to be born again. Look at how Ephesians 2 describes.

This is how every single one of us were before Jesus forgave us from our sins. This is what it says. You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. You were following the course of this world. You were following the prince of the power of the air, that is Satan, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind.

We were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of this is the bad news. The Bible teaches before we get to the good news. You and I were not strugglers in need of a coach or mistakers in need of a tutor. We are sinners. We were sinners in need of a savior, right?

This is the good news of the gospel. Jesus has brought salvation to us and breathed life into dead bodies. And if you're not a follower of Jesus, I just want you to hear me really clearly about what this teaches. This teaches us that Christianity is not primarily or first about the Ten Commandments or about loving your neighbor or even about being a good person. Those are all implications.

They're second. They're important. But Christianity is first about what God has done for us in Christ. We were broken, we fall short. But in love, Jesus gave his life so we could be forgiven and invited into new life.

You see, Christianity is not an invitation for the crowds to follow Jesus with all of their religious excitement. It's not an invitation for Nicodemus to get better, but it's an invitation to be born again. Right? We the bad news is sin and the good news is Jesus invites us into new life. All right, back to Nicodemus.

Verse 4. Remember, he is in the dark and he's got some questions about this whole born again thing. He says to Jesus, how can a man be born when he is old? Fair question. Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

And he's just there like, are you really asking me to hop back into my mother's womb? And that would at the very best be incredibly awkward. But Jesus, patient with him, he explains what he means. Verse 5. Jesus says, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of the water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. All right, here in this verse, Jesus is referring to Ezekiel, chapter 36, you remember, he's referring to. He's talking with a Pharisee who would have had his Old Testament nearly memorized, probably memorized. And so when he drops these words, flesh, spirit and new birth, it's like a hyperlink that takes Nicodemus mind straight to Ezekiel 36. Just like if I say like, let it go, let it go, you all go immediately to the world of frozen, right?

Like it's just like that kind of thing that he is doing here. He's calling for Nicodemus to mind Ezekiel 36. And this was the promise in that chapter. It says, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, from all your idols. I will cleanse you.

I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. At this point in the conversation, Jesus is taking an interesting shift. The first thing that he has told Nicodemus is that to truly follow me, you have to be born again.

But what he's doing by referring to Ezekiel 36 and kind of change this conversation is he's saying there's a danger though, because the new birth is something that we can't see from the outside. It takes place on the inside spiritually with God and, and it's true, but it's not external. There's a danger that you could almost claim to be born again, but then not be any actually different and not actually be there. So Jesus is gonna address that question that we all have, like how do we know that that person claims to follow Jesus? If we could or have some idea, what does it look like for someone to follow Jesus?

Jesus says when you are born again, you will be cleansed. You will have a new heart, you'll have a new spirit, and God's spirit will live in you. I don't want you to miss how radical this promise of a new heart is. This promise of a new heart for God to put his very heart into people who have been born again is a threat to every human religious system that's ever been built, right? Every human religious system.

Every human religious system like Buddhism or Islam, Catholicism, even cultural Christianity, it's a threat. Because you see what religions do man made religions do is they do not change the inside, but they work through outward behavior modification, right? Religions, man made religions, they use the carrot or the stick, right? Religions say if you do the things that I tell you to do, then you're gonna get a carrot. You'll get 72 virgins, you'll go to heaven, you're gonna have peace, health and prosperity for your whole life.

If you obey God, you'll get the carrot. That's what religions do. Or they'll say, if you don't obey God, then you'll get the stick, right? Hell, fire, condemnation forever, exclusion from the church, excommunication, isolation. All of these things they motivate by the carrot or the stick.

All of the motivation of religion is external and outward. Trying to get us to modify our behavior, to obey God out of fear or a promise of some blessing that we want from Him. That's what religions do. But this promise, this promise from Ezekiel 36, what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus here turns that on its head. You see, Jesus is after radical obedience to the commands of God.

Don't miss that. Jesus is after complete obedience to the commands of God. But what Jesus does is he takes it deeper. He says, it is not just external obedience that I am after, like those human man made religious systems can do. Jesus is after a new kind of obedience, an obedience that springs out of love from a new heart.

Look at what he says in verse seven. He says, do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. Well, when we look at the wind or when we look outside, we can't see the wind, but we see its impacts.

This is what Jesus is saying here. He said, when you have been born again, we look at you, we can't see it necessarily. But Jesus is saying there will be signs. There will be signs that the Spirit has moved in and taken over. You see, human religions use the carrot or the stick, but this is the gospel.

The gospel is that Jesus deserved the carrot because he lived a perfect life. But in love for you, he was willing to take the consequence of the stick so that God the Father could give you the carrot as a gift, right? This is the love of God. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a propitiation for our sins, a substitute for our sins, taking our place on the cross. This is what is revolutionary about the gospel.

This is the power of the gospel that has transformed the world and our lives. It's that Jesus in love for you when you were a Sinner died for you. He went to the cross. And now our hearts are transformed by his love. So we can obey from a place of joy rather than drudgery.

Jesus is saying that he is after a new obedience. It's not an obedience based on external pressure, the carrot or the stick. It's fueled by a heart that loves Jesus, Right? We are born again to a whole revolutionary kind of obedience to God. When I was in college, I worked for a summer for a nuclear power company.

I was in the corporate office, so I didn't get to play with all the fun toys and electricity and everything all the time. But every once in a while, I go on a site visit to this nuclear reactor. And if you know anything about power or electricity, these plants can power half a state of homes and businesses and everything. They just put out so much electricity, so much energy. So as you'd imagine, when you go out to the plant, there are so many safety procedures around not touching live wires or electricity, or you'll be gone like that, like, fried in a moment.

Because, I mean, like, just hundreds of thousands of volts flowing out of this thing to power the state. So imagine if I get back to my corporate office one day, maybe 20, 25 minutes late for a meeting that I was supposed to be at. I'd been out on a site visit. I'd come back and they're like, hey, what's going on? Why are you late?

Where you at? What's going on? And I tell them, oh, I'm so sorry. I was actually on site and there was a problem. Some wires got disconnected down right next to the nuclear reactor that powers half the state of North Carolina.

And, you know, I picked it up, but I accidentally touched the live end, and I just got zapped by like a million volts of electricity, right? The reality is I'd be dead. You know, that wouldn't work, but they would be like, hey, but you're back here and you're saying that's what happened. But we don't think that's what happened. Because if you came into contact with that much power, you would look different, you'd walk different, you'd probably talk different.

Maybe even my hair would stand straight up or something. Like, you would be different if you came into that amount of power. That's what Jesus is saying here. Jesus is saying you are born again to a new kind of obedience. And this is the reality of the gospel.

If you have understood the love that Jesus has for you, if you have understood the holiness of God and he has Captured your heart. You cannot help but be different. All right? Hear me. I'm not saying you'll be perfect, but I am saying you'll be different.

You cannot come into contact with this kind of power, the love of God for you through Jesus on the cross. You cannot come into contact with that kind of power and not be changed. If you come into contact with that Jesus, if you are born again, there will be a new kind of obedience springing out out from you. There's C.S. lewis, the author of the Chronicles of Narnia wrote in another book about three different kinds of people.

He talked about three different kinds of people. I thought it was helpful. He said, there's three kinds of people. The first kind of person is the kind of person who does not want to do what God tells them to do, and they don't do it. This is like the irreligious person, right?

Just going crazy. That's one person. Second kind of person is the kind of person who doesn't want to do what God tells them to do, but they try really hard to do it for the carrot or the stick. That's the religious person, right? I'm trying really hard.

There's a third kind of person that C.S. lewis points out. He says this kind of person, this is the Christian. He says the third kind of person desires to do what God has for them, right? They have seen the love of God for them.

They have been born again by looking to Jesus. They have a new heart put in them that loves God. And God has transformed them. He's given them new spiritual taste buds. So now they start to long for the things that God longs for.

They say, jesus, you loved me more than I could love myself. God, you designed me. Of course I will trust you. I want to enjoy time with you and be close to you. I have a new desire starting in me.

All right? Following Jesus being born again. It does not mean that you are going to be a monk, but it does mean. It has to mean that you will be different because you cannot come into this kind of power. You cannot be born again.

You cannot be transformed without signs showing up in your life. That looks like a number of different things. It might look like the sin that you used to really enjoy starting to taste bad. It might be a new hunger for the word of God, a desire to pray and enjoy God's presence. It might be just like coming to church.

You used to grow up just like, hate going to church. You go in and you're just frustrated. It's a waste of Time. And now you look forward to it every week because you get to worship with God's people. God's put a new heart in you.

All right, here's the truth of the Christian life. True holiness deep in your heart. That's not the Pharisee just outward, but it's deep in the heart. It does not come from gritting your teeth in religious effort, but it comes by being gripped by the grace that Jesus has shown. And that's why our goal, each and every week as we gather to worship, our goal here, our goal is to create a space where we get to look to the word of God, be reminded of what he has done for us and worship together so that we can be full in our hearts of the love that he has shown us.

And sent back out this week. Not to try really hard to do religious things, but to have hearts that are just on fire for Jesus. Martyn Lloyd Jones, a preacher in London in the last century, he said it like this. He said that a lecture, the goal of a lecture is information. And he said the goal of a motivational speech is action.

He said, but the goal of a sermon is worship. There should be a point in every message where the pens are put down and the eyes go up. Because our job is not to learn how to do the next right religious thing. Our desire is to be full of love for Jesus by looking at his love for us. And this is exactly where Jesus goes next.

Because the question is, if I need to be born again and if I'm truly born again, I'm gonna be changed. I'm gonna be different. The question is, how can I get there? How can I be born again? In verse 14 says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.

That whoever believes in him may have eternal life. Jesus is calling to mind for Nicodemus a story in Numbers 21 where the Israelites have been walking in disobedience and in judgment. God sent fiery serpents. These poisonous serpents started biting people. People started dying.

The Israelites go to Moses and say, we need God's wrath to stop. What do we need to do? Moses talks to God. God says something surprising. There's no anti venom.

That's not where he goes. He doesn't go to. Maybe some other solution. You'd think of even talking to the people. Have them repent for their complaining.

No Jesus or God. God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent. To make a bronze serpent bronze and to stick it on a pole and to put it up outside the camp so that anyone in the camp could see it. And what God told Moses is that anyone who looks at that bronze serpent will live right in the same way. This story, it doesn't make Sense in Numbers 21, but by the time we get to Jesus life, it starts to make sense, right?

Because this is a picture of what Jesus would do to us. This is a picture of how we would be born again, right? We are not born again. We don't contribute to our birth. We are not born again by our works, but we are born again by simply looking with faith to Jesus, right?

Look and live. Just like the venom was coursing through the Israelites vein in the desert. And there's nothing that they could do on their own to save themselves unless God intervened. And God made a way by putting the serpent on the pole. He said, just look at it by faith and you'll live.

And they were healed in the same way, the curse and the venom of sin is coursing through our veins. And Jesus was raised up on a pole outside the camp. And now the invitation for us is to look and live. If you're not a follower of Jesus, the message of the Gospel is that that cross was reserved for you and was reserved for me. But Jesus took place paying our penalties so we could be forgiven and we could have life.

The offer of forgiveness is extended to you. All you need to do is look and live, trust what Jesus has done and follow after him. Be born again by looking and living and experience the power and the holiness of God for the follower of Jesus. What does this mean? It means that our life is not about improving our religious resume by trying harder and gritting our teeth.

It means that one of the first things we need to do each and every day is we need to look to Jesus, be reminded of his love for us, have our hearts on fire for him again, and have a new kind of obedience that is sourced from joy in response to his love for us. We're not going to be perfect. You're not going to be perfect, you're going to fall short, but you will be different. There's a couple implications of this truth you must be born again that I want to share with you as we land the first one. This first implication of this truth that you must be born again is that if you've got a one, you've been praying for somebody who's close to you but far from God.

If it takes time to reach them, don't give up. You might say, what does that have to do with this. Well, Nicodemus in John chapter three sought Jesus. Sincerely, John chapter seven. He stood up for him publicly.

But at the end of John, Nicodemus would go on to break the oral tradition of laws that the Pharisees had built up to take Jesus body and bury it on a holy day. Nicodemus was one more to Jesus, one more Pharisee, part of the group of people that would put him on the cross. But Jesus saw him as one more person who could be born again. And what we see in Nicodemus life is eventually, eventually he laid even his righteous resume down and said, I need the blood of Jesus. Just listen to the words of this hymn.

Lay your deadly doing down down at Jesus feet Stand in him alone gloriously complete, weary, working, burdened one, why do you labor so? Cease your doing. All was done on a cross long ago. As you're praying for someone, know that the journey may take time. I pray that this month, this year, many people will come to faith.

But it may be years and years from now that the seeds that you plant are harvested for eternal life. Our second implication of this truth, that you must be born again. The second implication is so significant. This is the reason we go. There is one name under heaven by which man must be saved.

It's Jesus Christ. We must be born again. People are born again when he is lifted up and exalted. They hear the gospel and they believed. This is why we go, right?

This is why we planted this church four months ago. This is why we're giving $70,000 over the Christmas season to missions movements all around the world. Right? This is why I pray many of you in this room right now will in the next few years be called by God to move to some of the darkest and most lost places around the world to take the gospel to people who don't have an opportunity to hear it. Because this is true.

You must be born again. But every person must be born again as well. This truth, this is why we go. This is why, followers of Jesus, we don't just sit on our hands after we're saved, but we're spun out in joy to share the hope and the love of Christ with the people around us. So the question now is, what is God's spirit putting on your heart?

What's God's spirit putting on your heart? Right? Some of you might need encouragement and boldness to step out in faith and to share the gospel with someone who needs to be born again. Some of you might need the encouragement as you've been sharing that it could take time like Nicodemus, for God to work. You don't know what he's gonna do.

Salvation belongs to him. Be encouraged. The Spirit is ready and able to save. And continue praying, continue being faithful. But some of you may be Nicodemus.

Some of you may need to stop the striving and effort. You may need to lay down the facade of being impressive and having it all together. And you may need to be born again. Look and live. Look to Jesus, lifted up on the cross for you and find life there.

Trust him. Throw your trust on him and he will save you. Let's pray. Father, we're grateful for the love that you have shown us. We're grateful that you take care of us.

We're grateful that you give us new life. Father, we thank you for the new birth. We thank you that we have new affections and desires that are satisfied in you and not in something we have to get from you. Father, I pray that you'd make us a church that's grateful for the love that you've shown us. I pray that you make us aware of sin and wrestle through it in Christ in the right ways.

And I pray that you would encourage us in the gospel. And Father, I pray that you would use us to reach many people for you. God, I pray that many people would come home to the Father through the ministry that you allow us to do. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

Amen. Well, now I want to invite you to stand. We're going to respond, looking to Jesus, worshiping him, exalting his name. If you need prayer, you want to talk about following Jesus, you need prayer for encouragement and what God is calling you to do. We'll be up front to pray.

We'd love to receive you down anytime. During this next song, come on up and pray with us.