4OMJlNIatsw

0:48John chapter 3, verse 1. Now, 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 have come from God as a teacher, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered and said to him, Truly, truly 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? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he? Jesus answered, Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of the water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus said to him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said to him, Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?

2:03Well, appreciate all the hard work and effort and thought that went into putting this silly little story to drama. But it communicates something. And one of the things, Christmas is about salvation. In case you haven't dialed in, we celebrate it every year. And one of the things I wanted to do years ago was communicate the whole corpus of systematic theology on the subject of salvation in little short stories that I could communicate to my children. And that's what you've seen here: the Christmas cat. And it really does explain a major component of systematic theology. And I'm talking about what we call the Christian. Biblical anthropology. Now, that sounds big, but that sounds like a word you may not understand. But listen, kids, if you understood this message today, if you understood the story today, you will understand, you already do understand a major component of biblical theology, a very important one called biblical anthropology, which means the biblical view of man. How does the Bible view our situation and our present state, and what do we need? What is really our problem?

3:38And really fundamentally, why do we need to be born again? This is language that is scoffed at. Why do you need to be born again? I remember a man who was mocking. He said, What about Christians? They need to be reborn. They're like refried beans. They don't get it right the first time, so they had to be refried. And I said, Yeah, but refried beans taste better. So maybe you need to be refried. But let me just share with you some thoughts. And this is going to sound a little bit like you're in a systematic theology class.

4:19But you ought to get it because you should be able to draw the connection in parallels. Just talk about the very fact that we do not automatically over. Obey God's law is an indicator that something is fundamentally wrong with us. Why do we have to teach children to obey? Why do we not just automatically, all the time, do everything that God wants and wants to and do it perfectly? It tells us there's something fundamentally wrong with us. And that goes back to the fall of humanity. And that's what the Christmas cat gives us an insight into this biblical doctrine about the fall of humanity and what has taken place and what needs to change and where true nobility in God's eyes comes from.

5:08We live in a society, I'm going to quote somebody right now. One person said it like this: we live in a society in which, by and large, the fact of the fall has been ignored and forgotten. Thus, diagnoses of the human predicament are devised, and prescriptions for human betterment are proposed, which ignore the central cause of all malice, criminality, and disorder. In short, the ultimate result of the fall of man is ignorance of the fall. And since the fallen condition of humanity is ignored, it is scarcely surprising that the offer of salvation is ignored as well. If you don't understand the fall, you won't understand.

6:00Salvation. And so Jonathan Edwards spoke about concerning the end for which God created the world. God created the human race to share his glory with us. And he created us to share his glory in three specific areas: his knowledge, shares his knowledge. We get to study his world and study what he has made, his moral holiness, his character. He created the world that we might share and display and enjoy his moral holiness and to share his joy and happiness. He made man in his likeness for companionship, for communication, to be his ambassador and to rule over the realm that God placed him. Everything was good. Everything was good. But then the fall came. And you know that famous verse, God, in Genesis 2:16, the Lord commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden you may freely eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat from it, you will surely die. That was the prohibition. God had made this incredible garden. He had given man all these good things. And he says, Here, go do whatever you want. By the way, just don't eat from this one tree. Listen to me. If you're going to be my ambassador, if you're going to image who I am, you need to listen to who. I am and trust who I am, so that you will then display who I am.

7:37So, the prohibition specifically addressed to Adam, and it was a clear command: you have all kinds of trees to eat from, go enjoy it, just honor my word. Well, then the temptation comes, you know, the story. But the temptation really boils down to a question: Will Adam rely on God to help him distinguish the difference between good and evil, or will Adam decide for himself what is good and evil? And that's the same issue with us. Will you rely on God to help you distinguish the difference between what is good and evil or not? Oops.

8:23By eating, what did Adam and Eve do? They declared their autonomy from God's standard. They declared their autonomy from God's standard of good and evil, and they declared it, his standard, and him to be untrustworthy. Think about what Adam and Eve did. God said, Do whatever you want, just don't eat from this one tree. And they said, You know what? I think we're going to eat from that one tree. I think we know more than God about what is good and what is evil, and we will elevate ourselves and we will be the judge. We will even judge God, and we will decide for ourselves. God is. Not to be trusted. My own intellect, my own wisdom, my own whatever is more trustworthy than God's. That's what happened with the fall. And since the fall, mankind inherently thinks that we know more than God does as to what is good and evil. That's a condition in which we all are born in. For some reason, we just think we know more. Where does that come from? It comes from the fall. And it's important to understand that the devil did not tempt Adam and Eve to steal, to lie, to kill, or to commit adultery. He tempted them to live independently from God. That was a temptation to live as if there was no God, to live independently, to take his opinion, but to live independent from God. And that's still the point. That is what sin is today. When you live and choose to live independently from God and continue to live.

10:06Well, the impact of the fall on Adam and Eve was catastrophic. It brings into this doctrine original sin, spiritual death. Man and God separated, and boy, you saw that spiritual separation impacted all the relationships, the husband, wife, the world, brother and brother. You just see that impact of spiritual death. When everybody's doing what is right in his own eyes, then it's just a matter of power, struggle between wills and independent minds. And that's what has plagued humanity. Then there was physical death that came afterward. Spiritual death, physical death, all.

10:52Then that spread of that original sin. What is original sin? Original sin is that sinful state and condition in which everyone is born. We all inherit. Just by coming into this world, there's something we've inherited from Adam, and that is a fallen nature. Romans 5:12, it's a chapter on this. Paul speaks about this concept a lot in Romans 5. Therefore, just as though one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. So, in other words, sin came into the world through Adam. And if you think about it, the whole human race was there with Adam, biblically speaking, in his loins. Everyone was there, the whole human race. But it was more than just that we participated in that indirect sense. Adam was also our best representative. He was our federal head. That's the word they use. But he represented us because he was innocent. He hadn't sinned. He was the best. Remember how Goliath was the champion? Champion for the Philistines. And they said, if you could beat Goliath, well, you can beat anyone because he's our champion. Well, that's in the same thought. Adam was our champion. The conditions were perfectly right for him to pass this test, to put the temptation down. And he could have, and he should have. Everything was going right.

12:25But he failed. And so he sinned. And so, in other words, if you and I were put in that same situation, we wouldn't have done any better. He was our best representation. So, in both sense, he was our federal head, and he is, as theologians say, our seminal head. We were, he is, the whole human race was there, but he also represented the best that humanity could do in that situation. And so, we are born into this world. Very bottom line is, is that sin spread. That's why we don't intrinsically just always do what God wants to do all the time. We struggle with that. Sometimes we struggle to obey our parents. Why is that? And even when our parents don't ask us to do bad things, why do we struggle? There's a conflict going on in us. And it speaks of this fall.

13:27And so when you think about original sin, it includes. Includes both guilt and depravity, or guilt and pollution. Guilt. Guilt is like a legal concept that you would say, okay, you violated this law, guilty, guilty. Depravity, sometimes we call it pollution or corruption, speaks of our, it's a moral concept doing with our moral condition. In other words, we break the laws of God because we're sinners. We sin because we're sin factories. There is a corruption in us.

14:05Thus, every person is born into this world both depraved and guilty before God. Now, what does total depravity not mean, or total pollution not mean? It doesn't mean that the unsaved person cannot do anything good. No, there's common grace. The unsaved can do good and should do good through common grace. Total depravity does not mean that the unsaved commit every sin that there is. It does not mean that the unsaved are as bad as they could be.

14:41It does not mean that the unsaved, though equally spiritually dead, are equally corrupt. There are degrees of corruption, obviously, within humanity. What does total depravity mean? Well, it means sin has permeated and impacted. The whole of our being. It's pervasive. It has impacted our body. That's why we die. It impacts our mind. It impacts our emotions. It has impacted our will. It has impacted our heart. So every part of our being is touched by sin. There is no place within humanity where we are free from the effects of sin.

15:29So sin has penetrated and impacted the whole. Man has the inborn capability of committing the worst sins, all of us. If the conditions were right and the situation, there is an inborn capability of committing horrific sins. And only by God's grace that we have not become what we could have been. The unsaved, it does mean that the unsaved are completely destitute of that love to God which is required by God's moral law. Look, you cannot obey God rightly unless you love God. And the problem is, we don't love God naturally. We love ourselves naturally. And so when push comes to shove, oh, yeah, we may go along with God's will for a while when it serves us. But when push comes to shove, and it really gets down to where it's between when God's will is in the way of something we really Want to do, we're ready to compromise and elevate our standard above God's.

16:37What total depravity does mean is that the unsaved tend to get worse. Total depravity also has another component to it, and that's the spiritual inability. The unregenerate person cannot do, say, or think that which totally meets with God's approval and therefore totally fulfills God's moral law. Look, you may be able to do a lot of good things and should, but you'll never, apart from God's Spirit, do something that totally is absolutely perfect before Him. Even our best works have some little bit of self in it, some little ulterial motives, some little something.

17:28The unregenerate person is unable, apart from the special working of the Holy Spirit, to change the basic direction of his or her life from sinful self-love to love for God. So, when you think about the boundaries of our fallenness, apart from God's work, we cannot get beyond the boundaries of our fallenness any more than a cat can get beyond the Boundaries of being a cat. And so we need a nature change. That is why Jesus says these words that blow Nicodemus' mind. You must be born again. You must be born again. And that's where we come to the parable of the Christmas cat.

18:20John 1 through 3, 3, 1 through 3. Now there is 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 have come from God as a teacher, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered and said to him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

18:46Who was Nicodemus? Well, Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews. He was of the Jews. He was of the Pharisees. He was a prominent person whom everyone would have thought was going to heaven. If ever there was a man that you thought would go to heaven, he was a prominent one in the Jewish community and in society and in the religion. If there was anybody you thought would go to heaven, it would be Nicodemus. What kind of faith did Nicodemus have? Well, he had the same kind of faith as the other people who were just watching the miracles and saying, wow, this is great. You're something from God. Now I know you're from God because of all. These miracles, but he is faith only was that earthly kind of faith. It was that, wow, I'm wowed. And so he goes to meet Jesus. And that's when Jesus says, you must be born again. Now, who in the drama you just saw best reflects who Nicodemus was? Who's Nicodemus?

19:58I think I heard it. Who is he? He's the cat. Yes. He is the cat. Nicodemus, he learned how to walk and how to talk. He learned to put on the best relationship. If ever there was a man who could really look like he would march right into heaven through good behavior, it was Nicodemus. Just like the cat. The cat was able to do incredible things. He was able to walk and to talk and to speak in any kinds of languages and really converse.

20:35But we knew there was a problem, wasn't there? As soon as that mouse came out, his old nature came out and he was still a cat. Couldn't get beyond the boundaries. All the training couldn't get beyond the boundaries of his fallen nature. And that's what Jesus was pointing out to Nicodemus. 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, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Being born again then is further described as being born of the water, born of the spirit. What is he talking about? Water for cleansing, spirit for new life. And this is what happens in salvation. In salvation, justification removes our guilt. You see, we have a problem. We're guilty of breaking specific sins. And so we need pardon for that which we've broken. Pardon judicially. But in salvation, regeneration changes our nature. See, we need to deal with our past offenses. That's what the cross does. We read it this morning. I have been crucified with Christ. And so our sin, our guilt of our sin, is taken away, but we still have a problem. If you just turn me loose in another paradise, I'm going to mess it up again because I'm going to go right back to my sin because I'm a sin factory.

22:09And that's what happens in regeneration. God puts a new nature in us, one that fundamentally wants to please God. When it comes to push comes to shove, it's a nature that says, you know, when my flesh is at odds with God's will, there is a disposition to come under and want to please God. And when I do elevate. Myself above God, I don't feel the same way about it anymore. I'm convicted and I mourn and I long for forgiveness. And what happens in regeneration, we want to please God. We get outside the boundaries of our fallen nature and are enabled, because we're born from above, then we're able to really follow God.

22:57See, true nobility is something that comes from above and happens deep within a person. That's how we live for God. We can't live for Him. Oh, you can learn a lot of good behavior. And a lot of us associate Christianity with just learning the right behavior. But that doesn't change us. It's just like a cat learning how to walk and to talk. But what you need to do and what you need is a new heart, a new nature, one that wants to please God, one that fundamentally loves God. And that's where life begins. When all of a sudden you're awakened to the reality of God and want to love Him, then that comes from above. That's not from the earth.

23:57So John goes on, or Jesus goes. On. That which has been born of the flesh is flesh. That which is a pig is a pig. That which is a cat is a cat. That which is a fallen human being will always act within the boundaries of his or her human fallenness. That which has been born of the flesh is flesh, and that which has been born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not where it comes from and where it's going. So is everyone who is born of the spirit. You can see the effects when somebody's heart has been turned to God, when they have been kissed from above. There's a change in relationship to God and a desire to please him.

24:49Nicodemus answered and said to him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said, Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things? In other words, Jesus is saying, The scriptures are plain on this. You need a sprinkling of clean water upon your heart. You need a sprinkling of clean water upon you, as Ezekiel 36 says, to remove the iniquity. And then you need my spirit in your heart. You need a new heart so that you will go forward.

25:24At the end of Romans 5, Paul says this. So then, as the Through one transgression, Adam's, there resulted condemnation to all men, even so, through one act of righteousness, there resulted justification to life for all men. For as through the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, even so, through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous through the obedience of Jesus Christ. Just like Adam and his fall made sinners out of the many, so Christ's righteous act will make righteous, will make many righteous.

26:10You see, a relationship with God is not simply about reforming your behavior or wanting your kids to change their behavior. It involves a change deep within a person's heart. What was Jesus trying to teach Nicodemus? He had to be born from above, and so do you. This isn't a silly notion that scoffers mock. You'll never act outside the boundaries of your fallenness unless you're born from above. Pleasing God begins here with the Spirit that comes from Him.

26:50That's what Jesus was saying to Nicodemus: you had to be born again. He had to become more than just a man of the Pharisees. He had to become a man of the Spirit. And so do you, and so do we, so do all of us, if we're going to have a right relationship. You see, true nobility comes from God and must be recreated in people due to their fallen nature, which is dead to God. You see, because God was born of humanity, humanity can be born of God.

27:28We can be of his spirit now because of the work of Christ. And that's what we celebrate this year, this time of year. This is the miracle of Christmas. God being born of humanity with the purpose of bringing many sons to glory. And when you realize your utter need for the new birth and understand that you can do nothing to cause it, then you are ready to ask for it. That's where God wants you to be. You see, all these teachings take us to the very end of ourselves. You see, yes, you cannot be, no one contributes to their own birth.

28:07And this is what the scriptures teach us. You cannot cause your own birth. And when you understand that, you're in the position where God wants you to be, that you must look beyond your own realm and look to God and say to God, God, I'm at the end of myself. Please cause me to be born from above. Put your spirit within me. If that's you tonight, pray that prayer. And he will answer. When you understand that that's what you need, ask him for it. You're ready then to pray. You're right where God wants you to be and truly experience the miracle of Christmas.

29:00Let me pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for just the truth of your word. I thank you for all those who gave up their time and effort to put this silly little story to drama. Father, help us to never forget the truth that it proclaims. Father, that we need you. We need your spirit in us. It doesn't come from the earth. It doesn't come from behavioral modification. It doesn't come from any other source. It comes from you. And so we ask you that we may be born of you today and continue growing in the grace of your spirit and fellowship with your Son. Father, we thank you for all this in Jesus' name. Amen.