Turning Point

Guest (Male): What does it mean to be born again? It's more than just an expression. It's the requirement for becoming a Christian. Have you met that requirement? Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah takes a closer look at the second birth as he continues his new series on the Holy Spirit. To help you know for sure if you've been born again, here is David with the conclusion of his message, "Born of the Spirit."

Dr. David Jeremiah: I used to hear people say being born again and realize they had no idea what they were talking about. That is not just a colloquial expression for a Christian. It's a description of what happens. We're born first physically, and then when we become Christians, the Bible says we are born again spiritually.

Have you been born again, or are you just a one-birth person? You can't go to heaven unless you're born twice. Someone put it this way: if you're born once, you die twice. If you're born twice, you only have to die once. And that's the truth. That's what the Bible teaches.

If you are only born once, you will die physically and spiritually, which is to be separated from God. If you become a Christian, if you're born again, you may die physically someday, but you will never die spiritually and you will be with God forever. That's the truth. That's what the Bible teaches.

We'll have part two of "Born of the Spirit" in just a moment, but let me tell you first of all about this book that we are making available during the month. It is the background study of this whole subject on the Holy Spirit. The book is called *The Holy Spirit You May Not Know*. It's 250 pages, a hardback book that is the third in a series of books on the Trinity.

We've done one on God, one on Jesus, and this is the third one on the Holy Spirit. It is the resource for the month of June, which means when you send a gift of any size to Turning Point this month, all you have to do is say, "Please send me the book on the Holy Spirit," and it will be on its way before you know it. We hope you let us do that. It will be our great privilege. I think you will be encouraged and uplifted and moved along in your walk with God because of this book, and we want you to have it. Please ask for your book when you send your gift today.

Friends, here we go with part two of "Born of the Spirit" from John chapter 3, verses 1 through 8. Until the Holy Spirit comes to live within you because you have invited Christ to be your savior, you haven't been born again.

The good news about being born again is something I've reveled in often as I've thought about it. I'm going to give it to you. It's a little formula. It goes like this: if you are born twice, you only have to die once, but if you've only been born once, you've got to die twice. It works like this: if you've been born physically and spiritually, the only death you have to worry about is physical death, and you might even beat that rap if the rapture happens.

But if you've only had one birthday, if you haven't been born again into the family of God, you not only have to die physically, but after you die physically, you will face the second death, which means eternal separation from God. That's spiritual death. That's what scripture calls the second death. Physical death is the separation of the soul from the body. Spiritual death is the separation of the soul from God forever. You don't want to mess with the second death, I promise you. And the way you escape the second death is get born twice.

The experience of the new birth: what are the effects of it? How does it happen? How can it be? That's the question Nicodemus had. He was trying to put it all together in physical terms and it wasn't working for him. He said, "Can a man get back into his mother's womb and be born a second time?" Let's hope not, for everyone's sake.

Jesus, in essence, told Nicodemus that the new birth was a mystery. As I've pictured these two men talking on a flat-top roof out under the stars, it's easy to visualize a night breeze rustling the leaves of a nearby tree as Jesus spoke. And then Jesus said, "Nicodemus, it's just like the wind," and he gestured to the trees. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but you cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.

There's a little play on words here because the word wind and the word spirit are the same Greek word, the word *pneuma*. We get the word pneumatic brakes from that word. What did Jesus mean when he said that the work of the Holy Spirit in the new birth is like the wind? Well, first of all, like the wind, the new birth is unseeable. You can't see the new birth.

You cannot see the wind; all you can see is what it does. Trees bend, leaves swirl, branches break. The Holy Spirit works in the same way. You cannot see him enter a heart, but you sure can see the results as guilt is replaced by joy, bitterness with forgiveness, and fear with faith. It's like planting a seed. You cannot see the life inside, but soon green shoots are appearing. The new birth is invisible, yet it always shows up later on in the effects of it, in the life of the person who experiences it.

The new birth is also unpredictable. The wind is unpredictable. Meteorologists can study radar and satellites, but how many of you have been in storms that were never predicted or places where storms were not predicted? We used to have a joke where I grew up where they would say, "I just shoveled four inches of partly cloudy off of my driveway." That's kind of how it is. We think we know how the weather works, but we don't know how the weather works.

Meteorologists can study, but storms shift without warning, and the Spirit works in the same surprising way. I wish I could tell you all the different ways that I have observed people coming to Christ in the 50 or so years that I've been doing this. A woman pressing play on an old cassette tape, a driver driving a truck hearing a gospel broadcast, a teenager overhearing some friends talk. None of that comes from a textbook, but the Spirit is not limited by our methods. He moves where he wills.

He reaches hearts we might never expect. The wind blows where it wishes and the Spirit works in ways that continually surprise us. If I had all your stories here and how you came to Christ, there would be almost as many stories as there are people. God is not stereotyped. He works in all of us in a different way. He gets into our lives, he causes things to happen to us that make us stop and think. Maybe the things that have happened this week have brought you to church today. You never know.

We read in the life of Joseph that sometimes people mean things for evil, but God means them for good. Maybe you're here because of the anguish in your soul over all the events of this past week. Listen to me: God will use anything to bring you to himself, and his methods are unpredictable. The new birth is unseeable, it's unpredictable, and it's unstoppable. Try holding up your hand and telling the wind to stop. It will not listen.

You cannot stop it. In the same way, no one can stop the Holy Spirit. A person may say they want nothing to do with God, but one day they begin asking questions and feeling a pull toward Christ. Of course, that is the Spirit at work. He has been called the Hound of Heaven because his love never gives up and his pursuit never ends. Maybe you've been praying for someone in your family for a long time and you think there's no use to continue. Don't stop. The Hound of Heaven may be on his trail and you will find out about it later.

So the new birth is unseeable, it's unpredictable, it's unstoppable, and then it's undeniable. Laws can guide people, schools can teach knowledge, and families can set rules, but none of these can change a heart. Only the Holy Spirit can take away sin and remove guilt and make someone new. That is why in prisons today you can find men and women who once lived violent and broken lives who are now reading scripture and singing hymns and sharing Christ with others.

The world looks on in disbelief and asks, "How can such change be possible?" The answer is clear: the Holy Spirit's been at work, and his power to transform lives is undeniable. So the experience of the new birth and the effects of it, what about the explanation of it? Jesus didn't try to explain the action of the Spirit much beyond that. So how would I explain him?

Yet at the same time, I think there are some things we need to know about this new birth, truths that are important. This new birth is the result of two agents acting together. Listen to what Jesus said. He said, "Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." Just as in physical birth it takes a man and a woman to have a child, in spiritual birth it takes what the scripture calls water and the Spirit.

Now we know what the Holy Spirit is; that's the second agency on this list. As far as the second part of that verse, we don't have any doubt. The Bible says, "You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his." I want to take just a moment to correct a doctrine that keeps floating around all the time, and that is that you become a Christian when you accept Christ, but you have to wait for the second blessing to get the Holy Spirit.

People come up and ask me, "Do you have the Spirit?" Let me give you the answer. The Bible says right here: if you don't have the Spirit, you are none of his. You cannot be a Christian and not have the Holy Spirit. When Jesus comes to live within your heart, the Holy Spirit comes to live within your heart. You're baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ. So don't let anybody tell you you need something more. You have everything that you need. It's not that you need something more; the something more needs more of you.

It's not that you need the Holy Spirit because you're a Christian and haven't received him yet, because that is not possible. The Bible says if you do not have the Spirit, you are not his. Everybody get that? You may not need it now, but someday somebody's going to come to you and stick their finger in your face and tell you you're a second-class person because you don't have the Spirit. Don't forget where this verse is. Take it out and read it to them.

It's pretty plain. It's not hard to understand. It isn't open for debate. It's what the word of God says. You can't get saved without the Holy Spirit. You may think you're getting to Christ without the Holy Spirit, but even if you don't know what he's doing, he's working in your heart. It isn't difficult to understand that Jesus is talking here about the Holy Spirit. But then he says you have to be born of water. Some people say that means you have to be baptized, but that's not what this means. There's no evidence in the scripture whatsoever that baptism is a requirement for salvation. It's an act of obedience for those who have already been saved.

So what does the word water mean? Let me help you with that. Psalm 119 and verse 9: "How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to your word." Ephesians 5:25: "Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word." Having read those two verses, what do you think the water is? It's the word of God. The Bible says that in order to become a Christian, two agencies are involved: the Holy Spirit and the word.

How does that usually work? Someone has given you a scripture or you've heard a scripture in church and the Spirit of God begins to work on you and he takes the scripture that you've heard and he drills it into your heart and you become convicted of your need and you become a Christian. The things that bring a person to Christ are the word of God and the Holy Spirit. So according to John, we were brought into existence spiritually by the word of God. The water is the word.

What Jesus said to Nicodemus was, "Nicodemus, you can't be born unless you're born of the Spirit and of the word." It works like this: the word of God is preached or read or heard, and the Spirit of God takes the word of God and strikes fire in the heart of a person and they become a Christian. Someone asked me once, "Why do you keep on preaching the Bible, Jeremiah? Don't you know any other book? Don't you get tired of preaching the same old book?"

Here's my answer: I'm hoping to live to be about 150, but even if I do, I'll only be just getting started in the word of God. I'm continually awed and amazed at how God takes his word and uses it to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ. Someone said, "What's your evangelism program at your church?" Well, we try to encourage people, teach people, reach people, but we have a continual stream of people coming to Christ, and there's only one explanation for it: we have a steady diet of the word of God.

It is the word of God that is continually bringing men and women to faith in Jesus Christ. If you don't use the word of God to communicate spiritual truth, you take the Holy Spirit out of his environment. The only way the Holy Spirit can work in the heart of a person is if the word of God is present. If you take the Holy Spirit out of his arena, then you've got nothing. But when the word of God is preached and the Spirit of God uses that word to bring about conversion, he does so in the hearts of those who listen.

I just keep preaching the word of God. I'm never going to quit preaching the word of God. In Nashville, Tennessee, a man came up to me and said, "I'm a long-haul trucker, and I got saved listening to you on the radio. I started listening to you once when I was flipping the dial around, and then I started listening every day, and one day it just all made sense to me and I pulled my rig at the rest stop and gave my heart to Jesus Christ." We get countless testimonies like that from all over the country.

What brought this man to conviction? Just the word of God. I couldn't do it. I never seen the guy before in my life. He didn't find the new birth through listening to David Jeremiah fill airtime on the radio; no, through the medium of radio he heard the word of God and his life was transformed. If I told you all the experiences like that we've cataloged just from preaching the Bible, you would understand as I understand that the most powerful thing I can ever do is just teach the word of God. God blesses his word. It's impossible for anybody to be saved without it, and you have to be born of the water and of the Spirit.

The examples of the new birth: I want you to take a moment and think about anybody you know who you would think would be the best candidate for least likely to become a Christian. You got any people you know like that? You work with them, maybe they're your neighbors, maybe you're in a class with them. "That person is the least likely person to ever be saved that I've ever met in my life." Do you know what? God loves things like that. He loves to take that least likely person and shove it in your face.

Let me give you an illustration. If you had asked that question of the believers in the early chapter of Acts, Saul of Tarsus would have made every list. In Acts 9, Dr. Luke, the author of the book of Acts, relates Christ's confrontation with this unlikely candidate for grace. Saul was a religious fanatic who thought he was gaining points with God by persecuting, jailing, and brutally exterminating Christians. It was his passion. He chased Christians down in Jerusalem, and he was willing to travel to distant cities to carry out his campaign of terror.

But one day on his way to Damascus to pursue yet another group of believers, he suddenly came face-to-face with the risen Christ and he fell to the ground. He had a miraculous experience with Almighty God because the Spirit of God and the word of God came together and he was born again. He got up off his face, and after his blindness went away, you know the rest of the story: he became the greatest influence for the gospel of Jesus Christ who ever walked on this earth apart from Jesus Christ himself.

How do you explain that? How do you explain the greatest enemy of Christianity becoming its greatest advocate and apologist? I think God has a sense of humor, don't you? He had a miraculous inside-out experience. He was born again spiritually, and through that new birth, his life was transformed. Yet this conversion seemed so remarkable and unbelievable to the disciples in Jerusalem that when they heard that he had been saved and wanted to join them, they didn't want anything to do with him because they didn't believe it. They couldn't believe that someone like Paul could have been changed so radically that they would be comfortable having him in their presence.

And then there's Nicodemus. He first came to Jesus at night, full of questions, but later in John 19, we find him in the daylight bringing a costly gift of spices to honor Jesus' body after the crucifixion. And Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, came also bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. Nicodemus moved from curiosity to courage, and I believe he became a Christian, that he had the new birth Jesus had explained to him.

I could go through the New Testament, but I could also go through more recent history and tell you about the people I know. I might even put one of you on my list if I know your story. "I wasn't running toward God," you might say. "I was running away from him." But somehow the Spirit of God and the word of God came together in my life and I found salvation. I was born into the family of God and my life has been totally changed.

Ladies and gentlemen, only eternity will allow us enough time to hear all the stories. I'm sure that will occupy some of our conversations in heaven. Places where boys and girls all over the world have experienced regeneration through the new birth into God's family. I'm not talking about personal reformation. I'm not talking about cleaning up your act. I'm not talking about turning over a new leaf. I'm not talking about trying to do better. I'm not talking about going to some religious class or catechism or spiritual seminar. I'm talking about a grade-A miracle. I'm talking about being born again into a new family, whether you were 14, 44, or 84. It still works, this gospel that we preach.

It is completely different from physical birth. The baby doesn't conceive itself; it is accomplished through the mother and the father. The baby doesn't birth itself; it is done through the mother's labor. And though there is a process that leads up to the birth, there is a moment in time, and I noticed at the hospitals how they write down the exact time. And when you get the paper, the birth certificate, the exact time is on there. And they think it is very important to note the day and the time.

We don't have any problem understanding that physical birth begins at a point in time. There's a process leading up to it, but there's a point in time when it happens. But there is also a point in time when new birth takes place. I hear people say, "Well, I've always been a Christian." That's like saying, "I've always been born." No, you haven't always been a Christian. You can't always be born; you get born at a period of time.

You say, "Well, I think I'm a Christian but I don't remember the time." Well, you don't need to remember the exact day or year; you just remember that there was an exact day and an exact year. The important thing is not that you can name the day and hour, but that there was a real point in time when it happened. It's very different to say, "I don't remember the exact date," than it is to say, "I've always been a Christian." If you're here today and you grew up in a good family, gone to church most of your life, and you think because of that you're a Christian, you're wrong.

The Bible says you don't get to be a Christian by being born in a good family. God doesn't have any grandchildren; he only has children. So if you're not born again, you need to get born again. Maybe you can say, "Pastor Jeremiah, I never heard anything like this before." Well, that's good; that's why you came to church. That's why God brought you here today. If you can't remember or if you aren't sure, that's all right too. You can take care of it today.

Let me tell you about something that happened to me. I grew up in a pastor's home and my father preached sort of like I do, maybe a little more vigorously and evangelistically. He gave an invitation, and when my father would give an invitation as a young boy, I'd be sitting with my mother and I could see how happy it made him when people came forward. And I kept asking my mother, "Can I go?" So when I was little, I went. I didn't know what I was doing; I just went through it.

I think that happened to me a couple other times, and I hear people say that all the time. What do you do when your children are so small they want to make a decision? Those are sometimes called pre-conversion experiences. Don't ever discourage that. For me, I didn't understand it. I was baptized as a child, but I didn't understand it. And I was baptized again. So I am a twice-baptized Baptist preacher. But I would never go back and do it any other way.

I don't care what you think or what others think. If you're not sure, you should get sure. Have you had a spiritual birthday? Has there been a time in your life when you prayed and asked Jesus Christ to become your savior? If you haven't done that, you need to do it. You need to take note of it, write it in the front of your Bible, and record your spiritual birthday because if you've only been born once, you've got to die twice. I want you to have two birthdays and then all that will happen is if you don't see the rapture, you'll die someday, but you won't die the second time. You'll go to be with the Lord in this place called heaven.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's a good day for a birthday. It's a good day for a birthday. Have you been born again? That's the question. If not, you can be born again today because you become born when you ask Christ into your life. When he comes to live within your heart, you become a Christian, and the Bible says that is to be born anew, born again.

All you have to do is bow your heart before God and ask him to forgive your sin. Tell him that you're sorry for your sin and you want to live for him. Ask him to come into your heart through his son, Jesus Christ. Declare that you believe that Jesus is the son of the living God and that he died on the cross, was buried in the grave, and came forth victorious over the grave after three days. Invite that person, that Jesus, into your heart. He will change you from the inside out. You will never be the same. Let us know about it. We'll be happy to encourage you anyway possible, and we'll see you again tomorrow right here on this good station.

Guest (Male): Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and senior pastor Dr. David Jeremiah. Drop us a note to let us know how God is using this ministry in your life. Write to Turning Point, P.O. Box 3838, San Diego, California 92163. Visit our website at DavidJeremiah.org/radio or call 800-947-1993.

Ask for your copy of David's new book, *The Holy Spirit You May Not Know*, a valuable resource that's yours for a gift of any amount. The prayerful support we receive from listeners like you makes this program possible. Thank you for partnering with us to deliver the unchanging word of God to an ever-changing world. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue *The Holy Spirit You May Not Know* on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.