-Transcript-
00:35 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the Cafe. Good to be here today. Hope you’re having a wonderful day. What a joy it is to be here today.
00:43 I thank you for tuning in, for spending a few minutes with me as we get into the Bible because better than spending time with me, it’s best to spend time with the Lord. And that’s what we do when we get in His Word. We spend time with Him.
00:57 You know, we study God’s Word. It opens up truths that we can apply to our lives, that we can live by and understand more greatly because of the Holy Spirit living within us, discerning these truths for the saved. Amen.
01:13 And for the lost, it’s that conviction to be saved and getting that Holy Spirit. Oh, it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing that God does to those that seek Him. Amen.
01:23 All you got to do is seek Him. Say, I really desire to know you, God. And get into His Word and He will show you.
01:29 Here today, we’re talking about three great truths directly from Christ. Three great truths directly from Christ. We’ll be in John 3, very familiar chapter of John, and we’re going to go through the first 21 verses here.
01:45 I’ll read them and then we’re going to talk about three great truths that come directly from Jesus. Amen. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
01:55 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 the water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
02:31 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.
02:48 So is every one that is born of the spirit. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen, and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven.
03:23 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 this world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
03:51 He that believeth on Him is not condemned, but He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
04:12 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.” All right, so here we have John 3 1- 21, a lot going on here. We’re going to focus on just the first eight verses here today, but I wanted you to get the whole scripture, the whole interaction with Nicodemus. And so what’s going on here? Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus.
04:40 Who is Nicodemus? That is a great question. I encourage you to research this on your own time as well. Nicodemus was a Pharisee.
04:48 He was somebody that was in a great power. He was part of the Sanhedrin. We believe that the Sanhedrin, this particular one that he was part of, it’s kind of like our modern-day version of the Supreme Court.
05:01 So you have local courts that’ll have cases, and as they get argued and they’re not resolved, they get escalated all the way to the Supreme Court. And that’s kind of the final ruling. And the Jews, even though they were ruled by the Romans at the time, they still had some freedom to kind of legislate or make their laws as they saw fit according to their beliefs.
05:20 And part of that meant that the Sanhedrin would hear cases and base their judgments on what they had of the Word of God, amen, the scriptures that they had at that time. And so Nicodemus was an expert, amen, and was a Pharisee. Pharisees were very legalistic, would be a good word for them, so much so that Jesus would often rebuke them because they would add more to the law and make the burden very hard on people and yet live very scrumptiously themselves.
05:49 So that, in a nutshell, is a Pharisee. And we see here some truths Jesus addresses in this scripture. Firstly, he tells Nicodemus there’s only one way to be saved.
06:01 If we look at verse 3 here of John 3, John 3:3, 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. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. So we see here a very simple truth.
06:20 Jesus tells this great master of Israel, this ruler, this judge, that look, you have to be born again to see the kingdom of God. Now, we know that God doesn’t change. The Bible says there’s no variableness or turning with God.
06:34 There’s no shadow of turning. There’s no changing. God doesn’t change his mind, amen.
06:40 God is always the same. God is sovereign, Amen. God knows the end from the beginning.
06:44 And so as Jesus, who’s God in the flesh, speaks to Nicodemus about this great truth, He’s speaking to us, letting us know the only way to be saved is to be born again. We cannot enter the kingdom of God. We cannot see the kingdom of God unless we are born again.
07:00 And so we understand this great truth. People will say, oh, can’t you be saved by your good deeds? Oh, couldn’t you be saved by who you’re related to or what you gave or whatever else? No, it is only by being born again. And we see here, as we go down in the scriptures, verse 4, Nicodemus saying to 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? You know, this is, people may laugh at that question, but many people, if they were honest, they would ask that question even to God.
07:34 And that’s what Nicodemus is doing here. And Jesus answered, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, capital S, Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.
07:49 And so we see here a delineation that the Lord Jesus Christ gives. He helps us to understand the flesh and the Spirit. And if you start thinking about this in terms of salvation, you realize when you’re born, you’re born of what? The flesh, amen? So you’re physically born, right? And you’re born of the flesh.
08:03 You’re created by God, Amen? He created you, but you’re not yet a child of God because you haven’t been born again. You have light in you. The Bible says that all have some light in them, but you’re not quite yet saved.
08:19 And so you are spiritually dead. You are physically alive, but spiritually dead, Amen And then when you’re born again and when you’re saved, you get the Holy Spirit living within you, you are now made alive. And that’s the difference between flesh and Spirit, amen? And the flesh and the Spirit war against each other, amen? Think about what the flesh wants to do.
08:38 The flesh wants to satisfy your own needs. The flesh wants to be powerful and exert power and be wealthy and be popular and have pride and, you know, have all these earthly pleasures. That’s the flesh, right? And the Spirit says to be humble, to exalt God above yourself, to be a servant, to wash the feet of others, to live for others, to forsake of your own fleshly desires.
09:07 You see how they’re completely opposed to one another? And we see here in John 3: 6 that Jesus helps us understand the flesh and the Spirit and the nature of those two things, which again helps us understand my first point that the only way to be saved is by being born again. And finally, the Lord talks about the idea of faith in this world versus faith in the spiritual. Verse 8, if we go to the text here, John 3:8, the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.
09:42 So is everyone that is born of the Spirit. So we see here that the Lord is helping us understand a principle of having faith as in understanding things like the wind, which we can’t see. And so we understand the invisible nature of God, that unseen hand of God.
10:00 Amen? The way that we live in this life after being saved is the way that we understand as the wind blows. We can’t see the wind, but we understand it’s blowing. As the Spirit has come upon us, we cannot see the Spirit, but we understand the Spirit is there.
10:16 I talk about all the time, how do you know that you’re saved? You have the Holy Spirit living within you. How do you know you have the Holy Spirit living within you? Well, it’s all of those things that you feel when you have the Spirit in you, the same way you would understand the wind blowing. If you have the Spirit living within you, you’re convicted at church.
10:34 Amen? When the preaching is good or the singing is going on, you’re convicted. When you read the Word, it pops out at you. You have discernment over the Word.10:42 You have understanding you previously didn’t have. You have a heart for the lost. You love your enemies.10:47 You pray for your enemies. The Bible says, by their fruits you’ll know them. When we’re led by the Spirit, amen, it is totally different than being led by the flesh, as I alluded to earlier.10:57 And so we realize that the Holy Spirit is something that we can’t see. It’s invisible, but it’s something that we can kind of understand or look at the climate around us and see what’s happening. You know, sometimes the car will shake on the road, and I’ll look around at the trees to see if I can see some leaves in the wind to see if the wind is blowing, or if there’s a flag nearby, I’ll look up at the flagpole to see what’s going on.11:21 Well, as we live our lives, we can turn to the Holy Spirit in prayer. We can pray through the Holy Spirit. We can see, is the Holy Spirit grieved within us? Do we have the Holy Spirit alive and well within us? Are we living for the Lord? Are we serving Him? And we understand that invisibly.11:43 You know, a lot of people wish they would have a visible sign. Have you ever had someone say, I just wish God would show me a sign? And God is saying here, through the person of Jesus Christ in John 3:8, the wind bloweth where it listeth, and now hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whether it goeth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit.12:01 We don’t know, just as we don’t know where the wind came from or where the wind’s going, we don’t know where the Spirit is from, Amen, other than heaven. We don’t know it’s from God, but we don’t know exactly where it came or where it’s going. All we understand is the Spirit is a He, Amen, and it’s part of the Holy Trinity, and we have that Holy Spirit.12:19 We have Him living within us when we are saved. And to bring this full circle, Jesus is also alluding to the idea of when we’re saved, Amen, that we have the church living within us, because we are the church, because Christ is living within us. The church is not a building, Amen, it is the Holy Spirit living within us, and that is collectively the church body when we are together.12:43 And that’s another example of the Holy Spirit. When you get around another believer, and they’re a stranger, and you should feel awkward around them and all these things, but after five minutes, you’re talking to them, and it’s like you’re best friends, and you’ve known them forever. I think of a radio share-a-thon I was involved in for one of our partner stations, our KJV Cafe, and this brother, I’d never met him in my life, and I was slapping him on the back, and I was grabbing his hand, I was tearing up as he was testifying.13:09 I never met this brother, but he had the Spirit, amen, I had the Spirit, amen, and there was joy there, amen, and we understand it. Again, we can’t explain it, just like we can’t explain the wind. We could try to explain the wind, but truly we can’t explain it.13:21 The wind is of God, and the Spirit is of God, Amen, and Jesus condescended Himself down, humbled Himself to the point where He gave this simple example that we could hold on to, and understand, and digest these three truths, these three important truths, that there was only one way to be saved, and that’s being born again, Amen, and that, by the way, is only by Jesus Christ. The second truth, helping us understand the flesh and the Spirit, that dynamic, those two things that are at enmity with each other, at warfare, Amen, and the idea of faith in this world versus faith in the spiritual, understanding we have faith in the wind, we have to have faith in that Holy Spirit, Amen, and that, in a nutshell, is three truths from John 3:1- 8. I thank you so much for listening. I know I went fast today, I just had a lot to say, but I thank you so much for listening.
14:09 Take care, God bless, and Amen.