In Pastor Jerry Zepnick's sermon titled 'Born Again Of The Spirit,' he delves into the Gospel of John, Chapter 3, focusing on verses 5 through 10. The sermon emphasizes the necessity of being 'born again' to enter the Kingdom of God. Pastor Zepnick explains the concept of being 'born of water and the Spirit,' emphasizing spiritual cleansing and renewal through the Holy Spirit. He stresses that salvation is an individual experience, initiated by God's grace and not by human effort. The sermon highlights the personal nature of salvation, urging believers to examine their hearts and affirm their faith. Pastor Zepnick also explores the role of the Holy Spirit in transforming believers into new creations and the ultimate goal of drawing nearer to God through worship. He uses various biblical references and analogies to elucidate the spiritual rebirth process, underscoring the joy and value of salvation. The sermon concludes with an invitation for those who do not yet know Christ to seek Him and experience the joy of salvation.

Good morning, family. Good morning, brother. So this morning we will continue in the book of John, Chapter 3. Last week we went, we went like I had posted verses 1 through 8. The content of that, the weight of it is so great that I'm going through a portion of that again and moving forward very little in it.

So today I'll be going, John chapter three verses five through 10. I'll read in starting out verses one through 10 to get us our spot back. And so if you want to follow along, we have Bibles in the end of the benches. And if you need one, go ahead and grab it and follow along. It is John 3, verses 1-10.

And it reads, There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, We know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered and said to him, most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

Jesus answered, most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh. That which is born of Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I say to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.

So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered and said to him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said to him, are you the teacher of Israel and do not know these things?" It goes on, I had a hard time deciding where to stop it. That to me is the spot and We will begin in this. Let's open in prayer.

Father, this morning, we thank You for this Word, this message, this command to those who wish to see You someday, Lord God. I pray for our hearts this morning from those who have not been saved and don't know you and maybe don't care to that their hearts would be moved, Lord. Pray for those who have been saved a very long time that you would continue to move in their hearts and lives, Lord God, to help us see, all of us, what we can have in you and what it looks like, Lord. Help us to rejoice and worship you, I pray, this morning in Jesus' name, Amen. And so as we're heading into this Christmas season, New Year, New Year's resolutions, all of those things, I really want us to see who Jesus is.

That was John's hope in the Gospel altogether in the first place. And that was the focus of this entire book, that you would be convinced that you would see that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. That He is God incarnate. And so, 2031, I'm going to read again until I say 2031 and somebody shouts it back to me. I'll keep on reading this to start out.

It says, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. And so, you may have life in His name. You have no life if you don't have life in His name. And this season of Christmas that we're walking into, which is God coming to earth, God giving us His Son, that we get more out of it than we ever have. That our eyes are opened as we walk into this and that our hearts are changed, our affections don't look the same.

And so, this is, Text is, last week we talked about, you must be born again. This is not optional. And we talked about, before this, we talked about in verses 24 and 25, Jesus did not commit Himself to these people that all professed that they knew Him because He knew their hearts. And the point there is that wherever you are this morning, Jesus knows your heart. He knows your heart and He knows your affections.

He knows where you're at. He knows your struggles and He is there with you. And I want you to carry that today and right through not just this message, but the reality of Christmas, of New Year, of your life, of your entire life. I want you to see that gift that you have in salvation. So this is not just to validate your salvation, because when we hear a command from the Word of God, you must be born again.

I don't care how long you've been saved. You're going to step back and you're going to take your salvation and you're going to hold it in front of you, and you're going to say, yes, I am. I know this. I know this. And so this is not just to validate, but also to see the value in your salvation.

To see the cost of it. To see the value that you have. The treasure that you have in Christ, in your salvation. And that in having that, you can rejoice. You can rejoice.

You can be joyful. You can know that Christ is your Savior. Now last week I did say a couple of things that I need to clarify on. And one of those was that God does not save groups of people. He has done that in Pentecost.

There were people that weren't saved in Pentecost as well, but He did save a group as His Spirit came upon them. I have studied many revivals in which the Spirit came on people, and many people came to Him and were alive. My point is that salvation is individual in your heart. It's between you and God. And your salvation, I don't care how long you've been saved or if you've never been saved, but your salvation doesn't need to look like somebody else's.

And I think about the thief on the cross, what his salvation looked like when he got to heaven. Remember, Alistair Begg did a thing about him that said He got to heaven and they asked, well, where do you stand on the doctrine of regeneration? He's like, I don't know. Well, what do you think about Moses and the prophets? I don't know.

Well, what are you doing here? He said the man on the middle cross said, I can come. And that's all any of us are doing. That we have life in Christ. And I want us to focus back down on that.

Because another point I wanted to make to clarify from last week is that salvation is the simplest thing in the world. You submit your life to Christ. Anyone can have it. The poor, the blind, it doesn't matter. The child, it doesn't matter.

You look unto Christ and be ye saved. It's the simplest thing in the world. And It's a work of God. And so, the sovereign work of God through the power of His Holy Spirit, and aside from that work, none of us would be saved. Now, there is an effort on our part.

Many are called, but few are chosen. That the calling that we have is intertwined with our response to that. And it is not a thing where we get saved and we can kick back and do what we want, because God's in control now. This is not the case with Christianity, not with biblical Christianity anyway. This is not the case.

We surrender our lives. We die daily to Him. We walk in His precepts. We function in them. And so, this is something that God does that we don't initiate, but we see its effects.

We see its work. We see this as the greatest news that we could ever know. And the reality that we didn't do it, we didn't initiate it, we didn't save ourselves, That to me is great news. Because if I did it, I know that I'd screw it up some kind of way. That in the long run, that there's some kind of way that I would turn my back on it and give it away.

And so, I don't have to rely on my own works or my efforts. I have the power of the Holy Spirit that lives inside of me that can empower me to live a life solely for Christ. And as I grow and walk and discipline myself in that through the reading of the Word and hang on to those fundamental truths of His Word, I grow and this world, the things of this world grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. Right? Okay, there we go.

And so, the end goal, the end result, that this needs to draw us nearer to God. That this reality that it's His work, not my work, that it's His work and in the end, we need to be thankful to Him. This is the act of worship. This is the fundamental real act of worship. And so, we need to be enamored by Him.

We need to sit back and just be in awe of Him and what He has done in our lives. And verses 1 through 5, they talk about, I talked last week about the necessity of the new birth, that it is not an option. And I think sometimes we look at it like, saved again, not saved again. I'm going to church, I'm a good person. My wife is saved, my husband's saved, my mom is saved and my dad is saved.

And I'm close, you know, so I'm good to go. No! That's not it. It's individual. It's of the heart.

It's a necessity. And the first thing is We can't have true worship without salvation. Did you ever see a person that's not saved worship? They mumble. They don't sing.

They don't have the joy of the Lord inside of them. The words mean nothing. The second thing is we can't see the Kingdom of God without being born again. You will not see the Kingdom. And then the reality that we can't perceive the Kingdom of God because it falls on deaf ears.

And like Nicodemus in the text, Matthew 13.13, Therefore I speak to them in parables because seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. See, this is the mind, this is the sight, this is the vision of those who are not born again. They don't see it, they don't hear it, it falls on deaf ears, And so what good does it do? You can't perceive unless you're born again. So verses five through seven, I wanna kinda start with here this morning.

And that talks about the purpose of the new birth. The purpose of the new birth. And Jesus answered most assuredly, and here he's not saying you must be born again. He's drawing pictures and God in his mercy and grace, he gives us pictures. Like a little child, You give them something, you don't give them a book to read, you give them a coloring book, right?

You give them a box of crayons and they're all over the page. Okay, they got a picture they can see, it's a little ducky or it's a whatever it is. And they get these pictures. Well, God in His mercy and grace, He gives us pictures. And He gave Nicodemus and all of us a picture.

You must be born again. Well, Nicodemus didn't get it. Most people today don't get it. How can that happen? How can this happen?

And so he gives Nicodemus another picture. You need to be born of water and the spirit. Still, flum, right over his head. And so He just does not understand it. And this is what Nicodemus, he just cannot wrap his mind around.

The fact that without the grace of God, you or I wouldn't see it either. We wouldn't see it either. Ephesians 2, 8, 9, "'For by grace you have been saved through faith is a gift of God. It's not of works lest any man should boast. It is a gift of God.

This grace. And so here Jesus refers not to the literal water. He's not talking about the water or baptism in infant or an adult baptism, but to the need for cleansing, to the need to be cleansed. And we talked about that a little bit last week. I said the little boy goes out and he gets all dirty and he's mud from head to toe.

And you expect that you're happy for him because they're boys. That's what boys do, right? Okay. And so You get them in and you strip them down, you throw them in the tub, and you grab out the big brush and the bar of soap, and you scrub them until they're clean. Well, this is a picture.

Because in so many ways, our minds cannot apprehend what God is trying to tell us here. And so, what we're seeing is a spiritual washing, a spiritual renewal or cleansing. In the Old Testament, it always refers to that. As far as talking about water, It refers to renewal or spiritual cleansing. And so Jesus makes reference to this spiritual washing.

And Nicodemus has to get this because he is the cream of the crop. He understands these things. Or purification of the soul accomplished by the Holy Spirit through the Word of God. Through the Word of God at the moment of salvation. And so, it says in Ephesians 5.26 that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word.

By the Word. Okay, so you need to be cleansed. You could be dirty and sweaty and stinky from head to toe. Your greater need for cleansing is right here. This cleanses you in that way.

You see, baptism isn't washing away your sin. And I think we all pretty much know this. Salvation doesn't come through your physical baptism, but it's showing others by public proclamation that God has washed away your sins. That's what the point of it is. And so we can only cleanse our outside, but only the Holy Spirit can clean our inside.

We need our souls cleansed. And that's the point of you must be born again. In John 13, eight, it reads, Peter said to him, you shall never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, if I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.'" It was true of Peter. It's true of us today.

See, this is symbolic. And it's symbolic today. But our hearts and our souls, our spirits need to be cleansed. So it was not washing of the feet. And Jesus uses this as an analogy, just like he talked about the Pharisees, and he said of the Pharisees, he said whitewash tombs.

Remember that? He called them whitewash tombs. A tomb on the outside, they would whitewash it. So it looks white. It looks really neat.

It looks clean. Well, on the inside, it's full of dead man's bones, remember? That's pretty gross. But it's a picture. See, God in His mercy and grace, He not only sent His Son down to us, He speaks to us in language we can understand.

Because without it, I think we'd all be lost. Hebrews 10, 22. Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. This is a work of the Spirit. This is symbolic.

It doesn't have anything to do with real physical water. I love my water and I need it. But what's more important is having your inside cleansed. It's a beautiful picture with confidence that we can draw near to God and know that He cleanses us. And so 1 Corinthians 6, 9-11 reads, Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the Kingdom of God. And such were some of you." That's a point. We can never forget where we came from. Such were some of you.

But you were washed. You were sanctified. But you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. See, this is what was done to us in salvation, and through salvation. And when we get to that, we see we are revealed with the life that we lived, and we don't want to do that anymore.

We see it and we walk away from it. And it has no appeal to us anymore. And it made me think of a song, and it made me think of the song that we finished with last week. I quoted it, and then Jess and Beck sang it. I did not have that lined up.

God did that, by the way. It was a lady by the name of Albina Hall. In 1885, she sat in a church. And there was a preacher preaching, and he went on a very, very long message. And she was in the choir loft.

And as he preached, she was struck. He preached on the resurrection and the cross. And she wrote in her flyer of her bulletin, she wrote some lyrics. She began to write lyrics. And as she walked through this, she got done and she told the pastor, she was very shy, she walked up to the pastor after, and she said, I'm sorry, but I didn't hear a lot of your sermon.

He said, that's okay, there were many sleeping. He said, I acknowledge that. And so she said, but I was writing this, and she handed him the notes, and the words were on there. And she said, I started writing, and it just flowed for me. It just came right out.

It came right across. And so I just wrote it down and she gave it to him. And he took it in his office and he read it. And There was another guy by the name of John Grape. This guy was not a composer of music, but he composed a song, a lyric or a tune that He had no words for.

And when they took the words of the song and they put them to His tune, they matched perfectly. They matched perfectly. And it was a complete work of God. And it was Jesus paid it all. Jesus paid it all.

All to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. I hear the Savior say, thy strength indeed is small. Child of weakness, watch and pray.

Find in me thine all in all. Right? That's where our message is today. That's where we're going with this. This is what we all need.

Sin had left a crimson stain. And in verse 5, He says, born of the Spirit. We need to be born of the Spirit. And born of the Spirit, what is that? There's many different apprehensions of that that are so grossly misinterpreted in the church today.

It's got people screaming, dancing, flopping around on the ground like a live fish. You ever get a fish, you pull it in a boat and you can't even get a hold of it. And the thing is that there are many different interpretations of that. But it says the wind blowing, the Holy Spirit. So what does this mean?

Not what some people or what we want to think that it means, but in Titus 3-6, it says, for we ourselves were also foolish. I know I'm going through a lot of our former traits on this between the last text and this one. "'We were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Lord. He poured it out all over us.

We didn't deserve a bit of it. He poured it on us. This washing and being born of the Spirit are one and the same. And it's being born again. It's different pictures that Christ is giving us to be able to see in our tiny pea-brained minds what He is doing and what He has accomplished for us.

And so this washing and being born again and being born of the Spirit, They're all the same, they all come together. So it's being made into something new. And so we were born of Adam, we were born in sin, and now we are born of the Holy Spirit. That's the difference. Not of your mother's womb, but born of the Holy Spirit.

John 1, 12 and 13 reads, "...but as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. But of God. Born of God. This is what we're focusing on. And so it came as a miracle from God.

James 1.18 reads, "...of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures." This is God working in tandem through His Word. And in 2 Corinthians 5.17, Paul pretty much celebrates this by saying, therefore, therefore, if any man is in Christ, He is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. The old one's dead.

The new one's alive. Heart of stone, heart of flesh. There is no confusion in the words of God over this. So the question is, aren't you thankful that you're not what you used to be? I thank God for this daily.

What He saved me out of, I see those close to me, I see family, friends, people at work, people in the world, and they're so hung up on it yet. I thank God that He saved me. And I thank God too that what I am now is not finished yet. That He's not done working on me. I'm being sanctified until I go home.

I'm thankful to God for that. Because as soon as I get good where I'm at, then I'm dead. God works on us all the way through our lives. It doesn't stop. And so, let's see, and then Jesus says to him, it shouldn't surprise you that I say you must be born again.

The Kingdom of God is made for the sons and daughters of God. The Kingdom of God is not made for the sons and daughters of Adam. It's made for the sons and daughters of God. The kingdom of God is not made for the sons and daughters of Adam. It's made for the sons and daughters of God.

And so, he will have only his sons and daughters in his kingdom. And so let's be honest. If you can't stand being at church for two hours on every Sunday morning or be committed to it at every possibility that you can be here or somewhere. Be alive in the fellowship and in the congregation. If you don't find joy and elation in the family that God has created.

How are you going to survive even in heaven? You're going to be worshiping God forever. It's going to be a living hell for you in heaven. Because you won't be able to tolerate worshiping God from your heart for all of eternity. It's not going to be easy for those who reject Christ.

Because He'll have only His sons and daughters in heaven, in His Kingdom. A new creature. We're given the gift of repentance for our sins. And this happens on the inside again. It's cleansed, it's changed.

But my body on the outside, it reminds me, it reminds me. I shoveled a little snow yesterday and I knew it. I work and when I wake up in the morning, I know that my vision's not what it used to be, that I got kinks and aches and we all go through it. We get handles where We shouldn't have them as we get older. It's just what we are and we ache and it's not gonna get easier and it's not gonna get better.

And so we all are aging with pains and with loss, with mourning and trouble. Over the last year, I've seen an unusual amount of death. I've experienced since just over a year ago when my dad passed, it seemed like it tipped over the first domino, and they've been going ever since. And it's been something where I recognize that God is doing something. He is relaying a message that this life is brief, that we are all going to end up tipped over, so to speak, and We will all end up in front of Him someday.

And we will all have to answer. And it's given me personally a greater picture of the brevity of life and what really matters in this life. I'm not saying I'm perfect. I'm not saying that I still don't long to do things of this world. However, things change.

Focuses change. The Packer game doesn't matter to me anymore. I'm sorry to say that. But it just doesn't matter to me. And I understand it because it used to matter to me.

I understand people's frustration. But this body will continue to fail until it's gone, until it dies. Then it's going into the ground. But here's the blessed hope of the believer. I found this and I couldn't wait to share it.

1 Corinthians 15, 50-53. So, now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption. And this is what he's telling Nicodemus. You need to be born of water and the spirit. Behold, I tell you a mystery.

We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound. The trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible. And we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption.

And this mortal must put on immortality. Doesn't that make you want to worship God? Doesn't that make you want to get along with other people? Doesn't that make you want to give the Gospel message out to others? Amen.

It just does. You hear that flesh and blood cannot inherit. God will complete the transformation. Born again, your body will pain, will get old, it will die, but that will only be the only death that you experience. Born twice, die once.

Born once, die twice. And so at the last trumpet, Christ appears, and your body will be raised incorruptible. Incorruptible. You don't need any more surgeries. You don't need any more haircuts.

You don't need any more back braces. You don't need any more orthotics for your shoes. You don't need any more aspirin for your headaches. Raise incorruptible. That's the purpose of the new birth, to make the sons of Adam become the sons of God.

We need to die. Have you died? Have you died? That is the question. Have you died?

Verse 8, I'm going to tell about the process of the new birth. He gives us another picture. He's saying, this is the way the new birth works. And he uses the wind as a picture for us. We do not initiate the blowing of the wind.

We can harness it, we can use it for our benefits, we can sail a boat with it, right, Nico? Yeah, we can sail a boat with it, we can fly kites with it, You can take a pinwheel and hold it up and you can watch it go. It's really neat that way. Weather veins, we can take pleasure in it by sailing and surfing and so on, but we don't initiate that wind. We don't create that wind.

We don't initiate that wind. And that's a picture that Christ is giving us. Even insurance companies call a tornado or straight-line winds The hurricanes, they call it an act of God, right? So it's an act of God. It's not something that we initiate.

It's not that, oh, the Russians, they created a tornado and they dropped it down in downtown Green Bay. No, it's not created by people. It's an act of God. It blows when it wants or when God commands it, where He commands it, how He wants it to. It's uninitiated by man.

I don't know how God does it, but I know that God does it. And we don't make or lead people to be born again. I don't do altar calls. I don't have big revival meetings. I don't believe in working under people's emotions to draw them to make a decision that's not of the Holy Spirit, that's of the music and of the moment.

Instead, Praying a prayer with them, having them sit down and say, repeat this prayer after me and you could be saved. You know what? Sometimes that works and sometimes it takes. But there's just so many false assurances of salvation through this that it's not what we do. It's not how the new birth works.

And so, we can do it like some people do it. They play a melancholy music and it works of your emotions and it picks you up and it brings you to a place of feeling sad and you break down and that can happen at a secular concert. That can happen at an Eric Clapton concert or something. I don't know. It can happen when you watch a movie.

How many people cried when old Yeller got shot in the face? Right? Okay. What about, it's a wonderful life. It's a wonderful life.

And George Bailey, right at the whole thing, he's going through it. And he doesn't understand, he doesn't believe that He's living a life without himself in it. But he's given a gift to see what life would be like without him. Well, that's not the point. The point is when he gets back, he repents and he mourns.

And he's like, I wanna go back, please, please. I wanna, Well, how many people cried during that time? See, this is an emotional thing and it draws on it. And then they have the party and everybody gives money and nobody gets back at Potter. Well, Potter faced his in the end anyhow.

But the point is that we need to let God do God's work. Through the power of the Holy Spirit in their life, and the washing and the regeneration, and the waking up comes through the preaching of His Word. It comes through singing godly biblical hymns and music that lifts up them truths. That's how it works. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

And so the new birth works in tandem with the preaching of God's Word. Romans 10, 17. So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. That's pretty basic, right? Anybody want to argue about that?

Okay, I didn't think so. And so knowing this is a work of God, our response is to receive this salvation And to thank God. To thank God. To repent. I don't know how it all works, Lord, but thank You God for doing it.

I'll never know. I'll never know why He chose me. I maybe find out someday, but there are so many more qualified people, so many more worthy. But He chose me. He picked me.

He plucked me out of the gutter of sewage of humanity. And He shook me clean and He put me up and said, there, now go! I'm going to use you. Now go. And that is how it works.

So I didn't have a part in it. I walked once He said walk. I didn't have a part in Him pulling me from that and cleaning me and putting me up and putting the Holy Spirit in me and enabling me to do anything worthwhile for Him. I had no part, even though some people would like to take some credit. And this always ends in the same place.

It always comes down to the same place where we're taking, As you get older, you get more conceited, you get more narrow-minded. Not me, of course, but some people do. I've known some. And so, as you get older, but you narrow it down to the point where You're taking more credit for your own salvation than what you ought to as we go through life until it becomes as much or more our own work than it was His work. And we get it modeled and we forget our beginnings.

And that's a dangerous place to be. If you're saved, it's not because of a preacher, it's because of the Word. Or that you're smart enough, or that you're good enough looking. It's a sovereign work of God. It's because God chose you, period.

And so, to God in the end of this, to God be the glory for this. Because I don't want to stand in a place that says, yeah, God saved me, but I received it and I work hard for Him now. And so, He needs me, right? And so I make this progression. I don't want to be in that place.

I don't want to. I want God to get the glory. Because God's the one that saved me in the first place. It wasn't me that saved me. You'll see the results.

The leaves are going to rustle. The branches are going to bend. See, others are going to see. It's a perceivable effect in you. Others will see it.

Your leaves blowing, your branches bending, your life's not what it was, your affections aren't on what they used to be. To God be the glory. And so I'm not asking, are you a Christian? If I had to step in a public venue and say, how many of you this morning are Christians? I bet 90 some percent would stick their hand up in the air.

I'm not asking that. I'm asking are you born again? Are you born again? Are you born of water and the Spirit? Have you died to your old nature and been born in Christ?

There needs to be fruit. There needs to be branches bending. There needs to be leaves rustling. There needs to be the sound of wind going through. Galatians 5, 20-24.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." Does that explain? Does that describe you? Does that describe God's work in you?

You know, there's people on the outside that are looking at your life and are looking at our life. They've got their face against the window and they're looking in to see what it looks like. Do they see this? Do they see this? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, longsuffering.

Do They see all these things in our life. So the more you grow in your faith, the more that fruit there is, the more it ripens, the more mature it comes, the more peaceful you are, The more joyful, the gentler you become. This is the result of God's Spirit at work in a person and only God can give you that fruit to begin with. This is God's fruit. It's not yours.

You can't just will yourself to produce fruit. You can't will yourself to be a more godly person. It takes work. Perseverance, it takes discipline to be in the Word of God. But we cannot produce it.

You must be born again. The difference between the fruit of the Holy Spirit and that of our flesh is that a human cannot produce the fruit that God gives. A human cannot produce that fruit. So if religious but not born again, a person's motivation is going to be for acceptance by others, for acknowledgement, for kudos, for self-satisfaction, or maybe for fire insurance even. Maybe they're doing it just because they think God is going to let them into heaven because they're being a good person, for compliments or for kudos in this life to gain notoriety for what has been accomplished for God, but is done by self-effort and for recognition.

See, the first sign of a person that is giving in the flesh is that the first thing they do when they give it, they go and they tell other people. They've got to let other people know what a good person they are. And that's not what we're called to do. It's not for God's glory and His kingdom. So you might even appear morally upright, be religiously involved and active in ministry.

I know religion that gives more to children's hospitals than anybody in the world. And the religion is bound for hell. There's also, they have The children's, what am I trying to say, the... Phewww... They're big givers of the children's hospitals.

And It is an anti-God movement. So we need to be able to identify these things, but our spirit and our work has got to be through the power of the Holy Spirit. And so even giving a time of decision, When you say you began to follow Christ, do you know that none of these is fruit or proof of a genuine saving faith? But when self is removed from this, you take yourself and you pluck yourself out and you get rid of it. When self is removed from the picture and God's way is followed, His Holy Spirit has a place to work then.

Then there's a place to obey His Word with joyful consistency. You'll be a person who serves others with no thought of yourself. It's serving others. And you do live differently than the unsaved. There's a genuine dependence on God through a strong prayer life, a constant leaning on Him.

And you're devoted to God's glory, to God's honor, the gospel of Jesus Christ, to loving one another, to caring for one another. This cannot be manufactured by the human heart, but this is a work of God's Holy Spirit alone. Verses 9 and 10, He says, how can these things be? And that's where some of us might be today. How can these things be?

How can these things be? Born of water and the Spirit, the wind, how does this work? How gracious of God to explain this again in a child's language for us to understand. We know what the wind does. We know what being born looks like.

We know what water and spirit is. But at this time, Nicodemus fails to understand what Christ Himself has just explained to him in this child's language again. But the thing is, the point is that Nicodemus was seeking. You see, he was knocking. He was there on an evening.

He planned a time to be with Christ when Christ had time, and when he had time, when he knew that the rigors of ministry would not be weighing Christ down. When he could have a private conversation, he made a point to that. Do we make that point? Do you have a point in life where in the evening you can say, I'm gonna go have a conversation with Jesus? Do you carve that time out.

See, Nicodemus was seeking. Jeremiah 31.33. It reads, But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts. And I will be their God and they shall be My people." It's the Word of God.

This is the work of God on our hearts. On our hearts. Not in a ritual. Not in a tradition. On our hearts.

This is His work. So Ezekiel 11, 9-20, I didn't put that up. It's pretty long. If you want to write it down and look it up, it's an outstanding Old Testament prophecy. It speaks directly of the Old Testament prophecy of the coming regeneration that would come in Christ.

It speaks of God's work in the hearts of His people and also the working and moving of the Spirit. So it's such an excellent text. There's multiple verses and texts in the Old Testament that I'm sure worked in the mind and heart of Nicodemus over the course of time because he does come to Christ in the end. There is a breakthrough. Nicodemus reckons Christ as a divine teacher, yet He was unwilling to receive His teachings at this time.

He's a divine teacher. He's a really good teacher. Well, preacher, you preach such truth. I love what you say. That was such a good sermon.

Well, I ain't gonna do it. I ain't gonna do it. What, are you crazy? I'm not gonna go out there and tell other people about Jesus. I'm not gonna go out there and give my money to the church.

I'm not gonna go out there and witness and have my affections. I'm not going to give up all my hobbies? Are you crazy? They didn't agree with his own personal doctrines. Nicodemus, he said, Christ, you're a divine teacher.

No one can do these things except they come from God. He was unwilling to receive his teachings when they didn't line up, when they didn't agree with his own personal doctrines. He just didn't get it. 1 Corinthians 1.21 reads, For since in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God. It pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

See? It pleased God. The foolishness of the message to save those who believe. Childlike faith. See, that's exactly how it is.

And when I was studying my Matthew Henry, it had to say this about it. And I want you to listen to this and lay this on top of what you believe this morning. It says, Many will profess to admit the doctrine of Christ in general, and yet will not believe the truth, nor submit to the laws of it further than they please. Christ shall be their teacher, provided they may choose their lesson. Many have such an opinion of their own capacity as to think that that cannot be proved, which they cannot believe.

By wisdom, they knew not Christ." See, This is the world without Christ. And this morning, this morning, I want you to have joy in Christ. I want you to see the joy of your salvation this time of year again, as I had mentioned. And so Nicodemus still doesn't get it. We seriously need to stand back and take a look at what God has done in our lives.

If we can just stand back and see His work in our redemption, in our salvation, in our sanctification, we can stand back and we can say, God, you have done this work in our lives. When He commands us, you must be born again. And you followed that command one day in your life. And you were born again. I want you to think about what this text has to say.

The importance, the joy, the elation that we have, The treasure that we have in that salvation. 2 Corinthians 5, 20b-21. We implore you on Christ's behalf be reconciled to God. I am imploring you this morning on Christ's behalf to be reconciled to God. Why?

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. And when we see that for what it is, when we see that, Don't you just want to jump? Don't you just want to tell other people? Amen, Sister. This is the place for Christians to stand.

This is the disposition, the affections that we are to have, the focus that we are to have on Christ. New birth. We can live in the Spirit. If you were born again, I want you to go back and live in that Spirit. To live in the joy and to be thankful for God who gave it to you.

And rejoice in it. That your Christmas season might be everything. That you can have that joy in the Lord. Joy to the world. The Lord has come.

Let earth receive her King. Let every heart prepare Him room and heaven and nature sing. Are we singing in our hearts? Is this our joy for Christmas? Is this our disposition?

Is this our life? And if you don't know Christ today, know Christ today. That's all I can say. Talk to me after. Talk to Brother Rick.

Talk to many of us here. You can know Christ today. This could be your first Christmas ever. Have the joy of the Lord. Lord, we thank You for Your Word today.

We thank You for Your work in it. And we just pray, Father God, for our hearts to just rejoice in You knowing that we have this God-given gift of salvation, that You came down and You scooped us up, Lord God, in Your mercy and grace, that You cared enough. Undeserving, unrepentant man, You work in our heart, Lord God, and You move. I thank You for that. I pray for Your blessing on our day today.

Give us boldness, Lord, as we live for you, I pray in Jesus' name, amen.