SPEAKER_00: Today's reading is from John chapter three, verses one to fifteen.
SPEAKER_00: There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher, come from God.
SPEAKER_00: For no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old?
SPEAKER_00: Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: That which is born of flesh is flesh, and which is born of the spirit is spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born again.
SPEAKER_00: The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.
SPEAKER_00: So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Nicodemus said to him, How can these things be?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered him, Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
SPEAKER_00: Truly, truly I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.
SPEAKER_00: If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?
SPEAKER_00: No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
SPEAKER_00: And 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.
SPEAKER_00: And so reads God's word.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to you if you joined us while we're singing.
SPEAKER_02: My name's Mark.
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to be uh looking at that passage that Jung read for us from uh John chapter three, quite a famous interaction of Jesus's.
SPEAKER_02: And encourage you to have that open in front of you if you can.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, there are some uh Bibles on a table down here, but if you have them, uh if you have a phone, you can just Google John 3 ESV, and that will bring you to the passage that we're looking at.
SPEAKER_02: One of the verses that uh that John records for us is Jesus' words to Nicodemus here in verse E8.
SPEAKER_02: He says that the wind blows where it wishes.
SPEAKER_02: You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.
SPEAKER_02: So it is with all those who are born of the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_02: The wind blows where it wills.
SPEAKER_02: Becoming a follower of Jesus is rarely a straightforward path.
SPEAKER_02: There's no formula, there's no rite, there's no ritual.
SPEAKER_02: It's different for everyone in lots of ways.
SPEAKER_02: Of course, there are commonalities and overlaps, but everybody's experience of the wind of the spirit blowing through their life is different.
SPEAKER_02: It's one of the things that we love about doing membership interviews, is we get to hear your story of how the wind of the spirit has blown through your life.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you had a journey like that of Saint Augustine's.
SPEAKER_02: Saint Augustine's mother prayed for him every day.
SPEAKER_02: But St.
SPEAKER_02: Augustine didn't want much to do with Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: He was far more interested in wine, women, and song, particularly the women part of that.
SPEAKER_02: And it was a rather dramatic conversion at a time when he was uh in a pear orchard and he heard a voice saying, Take it and read it, take it and read it, like a girl singing.
SPEAKER_02: He picked up the letters of Paul and read them, and came under the conviction that he needed to be a follower of Jesus, and it was such a dramatic reversal of his life.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you've had something like that.
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe your story is a bit more like C.
SPEAKER_02: S.
SPEAKER_02: Lewis.
SPEAKER_02: You're C.
SPEAKER_02: S.
SPEAKER_02: Lewis, writer of Chronicles of Narnia.
SPEAKER_02: He was an English professor in Cambridge and, or in Oxford rather, I should say.
SPEAKER_02: And uh he long loved mythological stories.
SPEAKER_02: He loved the intellectual stories of Odin sacrificing himself to himself.
SPEAKER_02: He loved the idea of Mithras dying and rising.
SPEAKER_02: He loved it in all of the myths, but when it came to Jesus, he found it quite bland, unengaging, distasteful.
SPEAKER_02: Until one day he was on a bus journey.
SPEAKER_02: And if you read his account of that bus journey, he simply says, When I got on the bus, I didn't follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: I was not a believer.
SPEAKER_02: And when I got off the bus, I was.
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe it's a conversion story like that of Rosaria Butterfield.
SPEAKER_02: You don't know who Rosaria Butterfield is, perhaps, but she was a lecturer in English literature and queer theory at Syracuse University in New York.
SPEAKER_02: She was writing against Christianity and one day received a letter from a Christian pastor.
SPEAKER_02: And that letter was not full of judgment or hate.
SPEAKER_02: It was an invitation into a conversation.
SPEAKER_02: And so she spent years around this guy, his name was Ken, around his dinner table, listening to him, listening to how he interacted with his family, listening to how he engaged with his faith in such a natural way, listening to how he even confessed his sins and faults.
SPEAKER_02: And so she says, my Christian life unfolded as I was living my normal life.
SPEAKER_02: In the normal course of my life, questions emerged that simply exceeded my secular feminist worldview.
SPEAKER_02: Those questions sat dormant until I met the most unlikely friend.
SPEAKER_02: Had this Christian pastor not both shared but also lived out the gospel as my neighbor and as my friend for years and years, over and over again, not in some used car salesman way, but in an organic, spontaneous, and compassionate way, those questions might still be lodged in the crevices of my mind.
SPEAKER_02: And I might not, at least not as yet, have one of the most unlikely friends, Jesus Christ Himself.
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe you were like a young teenager whose friend invited him to a Bible study, that you had no idea what to expect, but at the end of the first night you were asked, would you go again?
SPEAKER_02: And you said, Yes.
SPEAKER_02: You went for that full year.
SPEAKER_02: As an older man who you didn't know walked you through the book of Romans.
SPEAKER_02: By the end of that year, you were a different person.
SPEAKER_02: There wasn't a moment of kneeling down by your bedside.
SPEAKER_02: There wasn't a moment of praying the sinner's prayer.
SPEAKER_02: But something had changed.
SPEAKER_02: The wind blows where it wills.
SPEAKER_02: That is the common thread in all of our stories that the Spirit gives life.
SPEAKER_02: This is week two, if you're joining us, in a little mini sermon series on the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Let us remember right at the start that his most miraculous work is that he brings dead souls to life.
SPEAKER_02: That he brings a resurrection miracle in each of our hearts and can do it in your heart if you're not yet a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: The wind blows where it wishes.
SPEAKER_02: But as we begin this morning, we affirm together that only the spirit can give life.
SPEAKER_02: That's our first point.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus is bringing us to the realization that life only can be given by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Let me explain what's going on in John's Gospel.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is just beginning his ministry, and some miracles have happened.
SPEAKER_02: And so Nicodemus, who is a Pharisee, quite a well-to-do uh Jewish ruler, he is uh very highly educated, particularly in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_02: He is a leader of the Jews, one of the 70 ruling councils known as the Sanhedrin.
SPEAKER_02: More than that, he possesses this title that Jesus uses of him in verse 10.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Are you the teacher of Israel?
SPEAKER_02: Which is a formal title, basically saying, Are you the dean of theology for all of Judaism right now?
SPEAKER_02: And you don't understand these things.
SPEAKER_02: And he comes to Jesus to try and figure out who he is, what's going on.
SPEAKER_02: And so he comes to him and he begins respectfully to Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: He calls him rabbi and he says that he can perceive something.
SPEAKER_02: He claims to know something about Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: He claims to perceive that Jesus must have come from God because of the things that he's doing, because of the miracles that he is performing.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus' response, however, is that unless Nicodemus goes through a rebirth, that unless Nicodemus is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_02: That is, he cannot perceive clearly what is going on.
SPEAKER_02: Nicodemus might have seen the miracles, he might have heard what Jesus has been doing, but he cannot fully grasp what it is that the miracles are pointing to without the new birth, without being born again.
SPEAKER_02: In the same way, somebody here might come to church on the regular, they might even be part of a community group, and yet still leave saying, Well, I know what happens, and I could describe to you, they sing six songs, and there's communion every week, and Mark talks for far too long, and you could describe what's happening.
SPEAKER_02: You've perceived it, but you don't quite get it.
SPEAKER_02: You don't know why people would give of their time on a Sunday morning to do this, to sing these songs, to affirm these things, to have this shape your life.
SPEAKER_02: That's not just for the non-religious people.
SPEAKER_02: Nicodemus is super religious.
SPEAKER_02: And he also needs his eyes to be opened.
SPEAKER_02: So it's not about Nicodemus becoming more religious because he couldn't possibly do that.
SPEAKER_02: So whatever the new birth is, everyone needs it.
SPEAKER_02: And it comes not as a result of our religious or moral goodness.
SPEAKER_02: Nicodemus' response is weird to our ears.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 4.
SPEAKER_02: Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old?
SPEAKER_02: Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?
SPEAKER_02: Is Nicodemus an idiot?
SPEAKER_02: He's kind of asking about going back into his mother's womb.
SPEAKER_02: He's saying to Jesus was, well, she would hate that, and so would I.
SPEAKER_02: Is he just being foolish?
SPEAKER_02: Perhaps we might give Nicodemus a bit more credit.
SPEAKER_02: He's trying to work on the same plane that Jesus is.
SPEAKER_02: He knows that he's in the realm of the metaphorical, I think.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe Nicodemus is saying something like that, like this.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe he's saying something like Jesus, there are some bells that cannot be unrung.
SPEAKER_02: But Jesus, you can't do over your life again.
SPEAKER_02: What's one thing that you regret?
SPEAKER_02: What's one thing that you would do over if you could?
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure there's lots.
SPEAKER_02: I wonder if Nicodemus is picking up on that.
SPEAKER_02: He's saying to Jesus, but there are things that you can't take back.
SPEAKER_02: There are things that you can't do over, there are things that you can't do differently.
SPEAKER_02: You can't unring a bell.
SPEAKER_02: So Jesus explains kind of in verse 5 and says that truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_02: Now we're going to come to what water and the spirit means in just a moment, but let's just affirm now what Jesus is saying at the most basic level.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is saying to Nicodemus, the only way that you can start again, the only way that you can deal with the things that you regret and that you would do over, the only way that you could know a life that is renewed is through the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: You can't do it by rite or ritual.
SPEAKER_02: You cannot cause the new birth.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is saying the wind blows where it wills.
SPEAKER_02: Same way that the wind is sovereign, you cannot tell the wind where to blow, you cannot tell the spirit where to blow.
SPEAKER_02: Only He can bring the life that Nicodemus is looking for.
SPEAKER_02: Only the Spirit brings new life.
SPEAKER_02: And that life goes on then to transform us from the inside out.
SPEAKER_02: And that's the second point.
SPEAKER_02: That the Spirit brings a change that only he can make.
SPEAKER_02: How does the Holy Spirit transform us?
SPEAKER_02: He transforms us at the level of our sight, our perception, the things that we see, we see more clearly because of his work.
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna look at that.
SPEAKER_02: Secondly, he changes us at the level of the heart.
SPEAKER_02: He gives us a new heart, new desires.
SPEAKER_02: And then thirdly, he gives us a new identity.
SPEAKER_02: That's what Jesus is pointing at in these passages.
SPEAKER_02: Let's go very quickly through them.
SPEAKER_02: You see, it's no accident that Jesus is talking about seeing, because Nicodemus is claiming sight.
SPEAKER_02: We see that you are uh from God, we perceive this.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus is saying, no, you cannot see the kingdom of God without the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in your life.
SPEAKER_02: Nicodemus saw the miracles, but didn't see what they pointed to, didn't see what they meant.
SPEAKER_02: Do you know in John's gospel?
SPEAKER_02: Uh John always calls the miracles of Jesus signs.
SPEAKER_02: Do you know why that is?
SPEAKER_02: Because the miracles are pointers in the same way that a sign is.
SPEAKER_02: So rather than looking at, okay, what uh I'm being obsessed about the miracle, you say, okay, what is the miracle pointing to?
SPEAKER_02: What is the miracle helping me to understand about God?
SPEAKER_02: Nicodemus saw the signs but couldn't see what the signs were pointing to.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and before you become a Christian, Christianity can seem very strange, perhaps even off-putting.
SPEAKER_02: The Bible can be dull and lifeless, preachers, coma-inducing, and you can wonder: is this a long sermon or a hostage situation?
SPEAKER_02: But when we experience the new birth, those aspects of Christianity take on a different form.
SPEAKER_02: It's not that preachers stop being dull, certainly they can be.
SPEAKER_02: But you see them with a different meaning, with a different import.
SPEAKER_02: You see the Bible is living and life-giving and uh and a source of uh of joy and nourishment and wisdom.
SPEAKER_02: The songs that you sing stir you and move you in ways that they didn't before.
SPEAKER_02: Even some of the sermons aren't quite so intolerable.
SPEAKER_02: Because you've been given a new perception.
SPEAKER_02: It's maybe that your value system has been realigned.
SPEAKER_02: You know, if you're double screening, if you're watching something and listening to something else at the same time, the visuals will always win.
SPEAKER_02: One of the reasons why we struggle to understand what Christianity is about might be because while we're hearing the gospel in a Sunday morning, our eyes, the eyes of our hearts, and maybe even our actual eyes, are focusing on other things.
SPEAKER_02: They're focusing on our desires, our career, our relationships.
SPEAKER_02: When the new birth comes, God switches the vigils.
SPEAKER_02: And you see things differently.
SPEAKER_02: That's part of what the spirit does.
SPEAKER_02: The spirit also gives a new heart.
SPEAKER_02: So back in verse 5, Jesus says, unless you are born of water and the spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_02: What is Jesus talking about when he says, born of water and the spirit?
SPEAKER_02: There are three main contenders, okay?
SPEAKER_02: First possibility is that Jesus is talking about uh baptism and profession of faith.
SPEAKER_02: So what being born of water is what happens at your baptism when you're when you're a squishy little baby, we baptize you, so you're born of water, uh, and then sometime later you'll be born of the spirit.
SPEAKER_02: That would be a particularly uh Roman Catholic understanding of what Jesus is talking about in John 3, verse 5.
SPEAKER_02: That's the first possibility.
SPEAKER_02: The second possibility is that water in the spirit refers to a physical birth and a spiritual birth.
SPEAKER_02: So physical, the water there is, not to put too fine a point on it, where's Fiona?
SPEAKER_02: Fiona's gone out.
SPEAKER_02: It's amnionic fluid, Fiona's uh an OBGYN.
SPEAKER_02: This amnionic fluid, the water that breaks when a lady goes into labor.
SPEAKER_02: So you need to be born physically and then born again spiritually.
SPEAKER_02: That is another option.
SPEAKER_02: I think that both of those miss the point.
SPEAKER_02: I think that both of those are wrong.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is talking to the teacher of Israel, somebody who understands the Old Testament far better than anybody else, far better than you or I, who has memorized whole portions of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_02: And what Jesus is picking up on is a specific Old Testament allusion from the book of Ezekiel.
SPEAKER_02: Ezekiel 36, verse 25.
SPEAKER_02: God says, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean from all your uncleanness.
SPEAKER_02: And from your idols I will cleanse you.
SPEAKER_02: I will give you a new heart.
SPEAKER_02: I will put my spirit within you.
SPEAKER_02: I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
SPEAKER_02: I will put my spirit within you and cause you to work in my statutes, to be careful, to obey my rules.
SPEAKER_02: To be born of water and the Spirit is to be given a new heart by God.
SPEAKER_02: It is to be cleansed from our sin.
SPEAKER_02: Not just sprinkled when we were born.
SPEAKER_02: It's a heart that is now soft, not hardened to God, but made alive to him by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: To be born of water in the Spirit is to have a heart that is cleansed and transformed by the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_02: That is what the Spirit does.
SPEAKER_02: That is how the Spirit changes people.
SPEAKER_02: It's not just about behavioral motivation, it's about change at the level of our desires, at the level of our deepest regrets, at the level of our shame.
SPEAKER_02: Thirdly, he gives us a new identity.
SPEAKER_02: Where we get our identity from changes depending a lot on the background that you grew up in.
SPEAKER_02: If you come from a more uh Eastern or honor shame background, your identity is generally bound up with your family and the responsibilities that you have to your family, to your ancestors, to that legacy, to the obligations and duty that you feel.
SPEAKER_02: And that can either be wonderful and life-giving, or that can actually be quite stifling and crushing.
SPEAKER_02: In the West, we're encouraged to create and achieve our own identity.
SPEAKER_02: You can be whatever you want.
SPEAKER_02: Every little millennial baby or child was a little princess or a little prince.
SPEAKER_02: And so through education, through career, and through those individual choices, those expressive choices, you forge your own identity.
SPEAKER_02: But Jesus is saying that the new birth isn't like that.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't come to us from our parentage, our lineage, nor does it come from within us, ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: He says, that which is born of flesh is of flesh, but that which is born of spirit is spirit.
SPEAKER_02: If you are born of the spirit, your identity is bound up with the spirit of God.
SPEAKER_02: Like John says in his prologue, that we are given this new birth not by the will of man, but by God.
SPEAKER_02: So your Christian identity isn't imposed upon you by your family.
SPEAKER_02: It's not achieved by your effort, it's received as a gracious gift.
SPEAKER_02: The gift of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: That you know yourself to be a child of the living God, forgiven and cleansed, welcomed into his family, adopted forever and never to be turned away.
SPEAKER_02: That is the identity that you receive.
SPEAKER_02: That is the identity that grounds your life through all of the stresses and tumults that you might face.
SPEAKER_02: That you know who you are because of the identity that you've received through the work of the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_02: This is the new birth, new sight.
SPEAKER_02: Seeing things differently, transformed heart, new desires, and a new permanent identity.
SPEAKER_02: But how does all of this happen?
SPEAKER_02: How does all of this happen in the life of a person?
SPEAKER_02: How does the spirit transform us so completely?
SPEAKER_02: He does so by applying to our hearts the saving work of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And that's our third point.
SPEAKER_02: A salvation that only the Spirit can apply.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus in this conversation with Nicodemus.
SPEAKER_02: Nicodemus is still struggling.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 9, Nicodemus says to him, How can these things be?
SPEAKER_02: Jesus answers, Are you the teacher of Israel that you do not understand these things?
SPEAKER_02: Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, we bear witness to what we have seen, and you do not receive our testimony.
SPEAKER_02: If I've told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?
SPEAKER_02: No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
SPEAKER_02: And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him would have eternal life.
SPEAKER_02: The Son of Man here.
SPEAKER_02: The Son of Man is Jesus' favorite term for himself, right?
SPEAKER_02: So let's remember Jesus is talking about himself.
SPEAKER_02: He's describing himself as the Son of Man.
SPEAKER_02: That's a title that he takes from Daniel chapter 7.
SPEAKER_02: You can note that and read that in your own time.
SPEAKER_02: But then he makes this strange little pivot, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_02: And talks about something that we don't tend to remember.
SPEAKER_02: It's not something that we tend to teach even in Sunday school classes.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 14.
SPEAKER_02: So must the Son of Man, me, be lifted up, that whoever believes in me will have eternal life.
SPEAKER_02: Now, what's Jesus talking about?
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: Again, he's talking to somebody who knows the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_02: So we need to, we need to kind of up our game a little bit.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is talking about a time in Israel's history where they were, after the Exodus, they're wandering through the desert for 40 years, right?
SPEAKER_02: Remember?
SPEAKER_02: And you remember you might have seen Prince of Egypt.
SPEAKER_02: They come through the Red Sea and everybody lived happily ever after.
SPEAKER_02: Not quite.
SPEAKER_02: They wander through the desert for 40 years, and there are cycles of faithfulness and faithlessness.
SPEAKER_02: There are times when the community is doing really good at following God and trusting his promises and relying upon him.
SPEAKER_02: And then there are times when, frankly, they are pretty faithless, ill-disciplined, go and worship other gods.
SPEAKER_02: And God has to use his good disciplining hand to bring them back to following him.
SPEAKER_02: And in one of those times, one of the things that happens is that God, in order to kind of bring them back to their senses, sends, we'll not do this at city church, but he sends snakes into the camp, right?
SPEAKER_02: God sends snakes to bite the people in order to kind of waken them up.
SPEAKER_02: Suffering always does that, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_02: Suffering kind of brings us back to our senses and candy.
SPEAKER_02: That we think, okay, what's really going on in my life and what should I be focusing upon?
SPEAKER_02: And so the people are they're crying out, they're looking, please help us.
SPEAKER_02: We're all snake bitten, we're all dying of snake bites.
SPEAKER_02: And God says to Moses, okay, Moses, what you need to do is uh you need to make a bronze snake.
SPEAKER_02: You need to make the representation of the thing that's going wrong.
SPEAKER_02: You need to make a bronze snake and hold it up on a pole.
SPEAKER_02: And if anybody looks at the snake as you hold it up on the pole, they'll be healed.
SPEAKER_02: Curious.
SPEAKER_02: But think about it.
SPEAKER_02: It's not that they have to do anything, it's not that they have to perform a ritual or rite.
SPEAKER_02: They look and are healed.
SPEAKER_02: That is, they trust that in the act of looking, in the act of relying upon God's provision for salvation, another way of talking about that is faith.
SPEAKER_02: By placing faith in God's means of salvation, they are indeed saved.
SPEAKER_02: They find themselves healed, right?
SPEAKER_02: That's what Jesus is talking about to Nicodemus.
SPEAKER_02: But do you see what he's saying about himself?
SPEAKER_02: Just as Moses put the bronze serpent up on the pole, so too I'm going to be raised up where?
SPEAKER_02: On the cross.
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to be raised up, suspended between heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_02: That if anybody looks to me, they're going to be saved.
SPEAKER_02: Not from the venom of a snake bite, but from the poison of sin.
SPEAKER_02: That is what Jesus is saying.
SPEAKER_02: That he is like the serpent.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus' death makes the new birth possible.
SPEAKER_02: It is the Spirit that opens our blind eyes that we might look to the Son and find ourselves healed.
SPEAKER_02: It is He who awakens faith in us.
SPEAKER_02: It is He who applies Christ's death to our sin.
SPEAKER_02: And Christ's life to our souls.
SPEAKER_02: Christianity is a crutch for the emotionally weak.
SPEAKER_02: Christianity is just something that you kind of lean upon.
SPEAKER_02: Christianity is much less of a crutch and much more of a defibrillator.
SPEAKER_02: A defibrillator doesn't make the heart stronger.
SPEAKER_02: It shocks it into life.
SPEAKER_02: The cross is the power that saves us, and the Holy Spirit, in a sense, are the He is the paddles that apply that power to our dead hearts.
SPEAKER_02: That is what the Spirit does.
SPEAKER_02: He makes us alive by applying to our hearts the sin-bearing, life-giving death of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: That means that we can be assured of our salvation.
SPEAKER_02: Because if you are looking, as those people did in the Old Testament, if you're looking to Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, you can know that he has forgiven, cleansed, and healed your life.
SPEAKER_02: If you are looking to him with the eyes of faith, trusting upon that provision, the provision of him dying for your sin that you might not have to.
SPEAKER_02: If you're looking with the eyes of reliance and obedience and dependence upon him, you can be assured that he has healed your soul.
SPEAKER_02: What's more, it stirs our evangelism, folks, that as we share the gospel with others, the Holy Spirit takes our words and uses them to bring life.
SPEAKER_02: The wind blows where it wills.
SPEAKER_02: And all of this, and here we come to our final point, all of this serves to show us the love of the Father.
SPEAKER_02: I should have got young to read John 3, 16.
SPEAKER_02: It uh it seems a shame to get to 15 and not do the most famous verse in the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: So let's come into land by reminding ourselves of these words.
SPEAKER_02: For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
SPEAKER_02: What is God's motive behind the new birth?
SPEAKER_02: What is motivating God's transforming action in our world and in your life?
SPEAKER_02: Well, this is love.
SPEAKER_02: For God so loved the world.
SPEAKER_02: Now, normally when we say that we love something, what that means is that there is something that we find lovely about it.
SPEAKER_02: You might imagine that you are in a relationship, perhaps you're dating, perhaps you're uh you're married, and you say to your significant other, you say, I love you.
SPEAKER_02: What do you mean when you say that?
SPEAKER_02: Well, in part what you mean is there are things that I find to be lovely about you.
SPEAKER_02: I I love your laugh, I love your your hair, I love the way you you make me feel.
SPEAKER_02: I find you to be lovely.
SPEAKER_02: But that's not what's going on here.
SPEAKER_02: For God so loved the world.
SPEAKER_02: The world in John's Gospel is not a geographical term.
SPEAKER_02: The world in John's Gospel does not refer to the big spinning ball in space, right?
SPEAKER_02: The world in John's Gospel is a moral term.
SPEAKER_02: The world in John's Gospel refers to all of humanity arrayed in opposition and hostility towards God by nature and by choice.
SPEAKER_02: That I don't want anything to do with God.
SPEAKER_02: I do not want his claim upon my life.
SPEAKER_02: I do not want to follow him.
SPEAKER_02: I do not like the idea that he says, You are mine, come and follow me.
SPEAKER_02: That's the world in John's gospel.
SPEAKER_02: And that's what God loves.
SPEAKER_02: All of humanity, a raid and hostility, enmity towards God, and God loves us anyway.
SPEAKER_02: Folks, you need to get this straight in your head.
SPEAKER_02: The thing that is amazing about God's love in John 3, verse 16, is not that the world is big, it's that the world is bad.
SPEAKER_02: And God loves it anyway.
SPEAKER_02: And he loves it in a way to transform it.
SPEAKER_02: He loves it in order that he might renew it.
SPEAKER_02: That is the love that he demonstrates to us in the sending of his son.
SPEAKER_02: That is the love that the Spirit impresses upon our hearts.
SPEAKER_02: God does not love Mark because he is smart or brave or funny or handsome, though those things may be true.
SPEAKER_02: He loves Mark in all of his worldness.
SPEAKER_02: And he loves him so much that he gave that which was most precious to him.
SPEAKER_02: That I might sit as a 14-year-old and be born again to everlasting life.
SPEAKER_02: That's how we get to see the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_02: That is what the Spirit has done to our dead hearts.
SPEAKER_02: That is how he makes us alive.
SPEAKER_02: And it is with that love, through the power of the Spirit, that he comforts and consoles, that he encourages and motivates us to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: The wind blows where it wills.
SPEAKER_02: That's how Jesus describes the mysterious work of the spirit.
SPEAKER_02: And when you listen to stories like Augustine's or Lewis's or Rosaria's or even mine, you begin to realize that the spirit works in strange and surprising ways.
SPEAKER_02: There's no formula, there's no ritual, there's no stereotype, just the sovereign wind of God moving.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes suddenly, sometimes slowly, sometimes through a book, sometimes through a friend, sometimes on a bus, sometimes through a long journey of knowing God's patience with you.
SPEAKER_02: And yet, as different as our stories are, the common thread is unmistakable, that only the spirit can give life.
SPEAKER_02: He is the one who stirs a restless heart like Augustine's.
SPEAKER_02: He is the one who quietly awakens the mind of Lewis.
SPEAKER_02: He is the one who draws near in the ordinary rhythms of life like Rosaria.
SPEAKER_02: And he is the one who softly transforms teenagers in youth groups all across our world.
SPEAKER_02: He is the one who is at work.
SPEAKER_02: He is the one that is at work in you.
SPEAKER_02: The wind blows where it wills, but whatever, wherever he blows, he brings about the same miracle.
SPEAKER_02: He gives you a life that you cannot produce.
SPEAKER_02: He changes you in ways that you cannot fix.
SPEAKER_02: He secures for you what you cannot earn.
SPEAKER_02: And he shows you a love that you could never possibly imagine.
SPEAKER_02: So, as we close and as we transition to taking the Lord's Supper together, ask yourself this.
SPEAKER_02: What's my story?
SPEAKER_02: Does it look like Augustine's?
SPEAKER_02: Leus's Rosarius?
SPEAKER_02: Mine?
SPEAKER_02: How is the spirit blown in your life?
SPEAKER_02: Are you aware that it's blowing right now?
SPEAKER_02: If you sense even the faintest breeze.
SPEAKER_02: A stirring.
SPEAKER_02: A question.
SPEAKER_02: A conversation, a longing harasslessness.
SPEAKER_02: Don't resist it.
SPEAKER_02: Because the spirit who blows where he wills is the spirit who will bring you.
SPEAKER_01: If you found this helpful or want to know more about City Church Dublin, visit our website found in the links below.