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A story I read recently that has absolutely nothing to do with the sermon, but is a good one none-the- less... 

"Being Reborn ..... A Chance for a Do-Overl"    Jack Keating          Cicero United Methodist Church  February 28, 2010   Text: John 3: 1-8                                  The Second Sunday of Lent

            A story I read recently that has absolutely nothing to do with the sermon, but is a good one none-the- less... Little Johnny's mother saw him playing church with the family cat. The cat was sitting there quietly while Johnny preached his sermon to the cat. Johnny's mother smiled and went back to her work. A little while later, she heard a huge commotion where Johnny was supposed to be playing. She heard the cat meowing and hissing. Obviously something was dreadfully wrong and she rushed to the door and looked out to see Johnny shoving the cat into a tub of water. "What are you doing to the poor cat?" yelled his mother. "I'm trying to baptize the stupid thing," Johnny yelled back. "You can't do that to a cat. It's afraid of water." "He should have thought of that before he joined my church."

Have you ever played the game "If I had my life to live over again?" The older and more experienced you get, the more you probably play this game --- the more you say to yourself, "Man, if c only had a second chance!" And as life goes on it only gets worse! And you begin to worry and fret about things you never had the chance to do, and it begins to weigh you down. Just before his death, Martin Luther King thought about this and wrote: "Shattered dreams are the hallmarks of our mortal lives."

One of the most agonizing problems of our human experience is that few, if any of us, live to see our fondest dreams fulfilled---- it seems the hopes of our childhood and the promises of our mature years are unfinished symphonies. And then you start to say to yourself, "Well, if I had my life to live over again..."

If I had my life to live over again, I would have completed college and gone on to be ordained. I probably would have gone into a music ministry and maybe traveled with the Gaither Vocal Band. Of course, starting my life over and doing that would also require different genetics and certainly a better voice, as well! Of course, this is just my fantasy but it does help me explore my more realistic desires and starting over is what I wanted to talk about today.

Because it seems to me that when it comes to having a relationship with the Creator who made us, unless we start over again .... we'll never make it! And Jesus told us exactly that in this morning's scripture reading from John's Gospel. The message is uncompromising, clear and abrupt on this point, "T tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again," (vs. 3) "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit." (vs. 5) And the word "unless" is categorical here, isn't it? Unless there is rain there are no crops. Unless you're born again there's no Christianity. You have to start again. Jesus tells us, in verse 7, "You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.'"

So Jesus is telling it straight to Nicodemus here, a person cannot be a Christian unless he or she is born again. They cannot enter the Christian life unless they're born again. It is fundamental and foundational to the Christian experience. So in today's scripture, we're going to look at three steps you can take to start your life over.

The first step is...

1.         Start your life over by having your own private talk with Jesus. Nicodemus was a man of distinction and outstanding character. He was intelligent, honest, upright and well known in the community. John tells us that Nicodemus was a man of the Pharisees, 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 the signs that you do unless God is with him." (3: 1-2)

No doubt, Nicodemus, who was a member of the Sanhedrin, had heard about Jesus. Perhaps he came at night so he could have a private meeting with Jesus and ask all the questions he wanted to ask. He was a religious man. We know, since he was a Pharisee, that he took his religion very seriously. These folks were strict, narrow traditionalists. He was a "ruler of the Jews." He was used to being first among his associates. He stood in a high position in the ruling class in Jerusalem. But, as we see in his estimation of Jesus, Nicodemus also had a keen sense of discernment. "We know", he said, "that you have come from God as a teacher."

But most importantly, in this episode, we see that Nicodemus was a seeker --- a person who was sincere in his quest for the kingdom of God. But, in spite of all his religious knowledge and enthusiasm, he was also a spiritual failure at this point. Here was this nice, sincere man with a sincere hunger for truth who comes to have a private talk with Jesus in the quietness of the night, away from all those who could be distracting. And he comes to Jesus so that he could have a private conversation about his very own, personal needs.

And Jesus had something that Nicodemus did not have. Like each of us, I think, Nicodemus was seeking  for that something more in life - looking, longing for spiritual bliss and truth to fill the hole that's felt in the human heart. Nicodemus, a man whose whole life was a religious exercise, had realized that Jesus had something he did not have.

And one of the messages of this text is just that! You may have all sorts of Christian activity: you may have grown up right and go to the right schools, having all the trappings of the faith. You may even have served as a missionary, or taught Sunday school. Or perhaps you've served in ruling councils like church boards, as had Nicodemus. Maybe you've founded your own "holy club" like John Wesley and done really excellent work in church organizations, maybe you've even figured out some new method of spirituality like Nicodemus; maybe you even got             into a routine for Bible reading and praying   but that is not enough to give you true eternal life that is born from above and felt deeply in the heart.

            The first step this scripture teaches us is that to start your life over you need to leave your own empty religious efforts behind and have a private, personal talk with Jesus. Then the second step is...

2.         Start your life over by understanding your need. You know, the phrase "born again" wasn't invented by former president Jimmie Carter. It wasn't coined by Ronald Reagan to get the votes of the Southern Baptists. And it doesn't refer to a narrow, emotional, cult-like fringe type of Christianity. I had a friend, who every so often used to say, "I'm a Christian, but I'm not one of those born-again types." And I had to say to him, as I have to say to you, that there is actually a necessity of new birth, an absolute necessity.

This isn't loony fringe. It's dynamite. And it's about a Creator God who breaks into our lives, miraculously. It's not something bizarre for dogmatic, crazy people. It's not an option - it's a necessity. And there could have been nobody more shocked to hear that you had to be born again than the man we meet in chapter 3, verse 1. No one would have been more shocked that this man in our passage: "Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council." Supposedly this man had all the right credentials to be accepted into the kingdom of God. If anyone would be accepted, he would be: he has so much to commend him. Surely he wouldn't have to start over --- not him! He's a disciplined man: he's a Pharisee. He's on the Jewish ruling council. He's a learned man: "You're Israel's teacher," said Jesus in verse 10. This man was senior teacher in Israel. He's even quite an open man; after all he comes to ask Jesus a question. So he's disciplined, able, learned, and open. He'd have been honest in business, a law and order man. He'd have been a faithful husband, a church leader, diligent in his scripture reading, and absolutely fanatical about morality, as the Pharisees were. So no one was more moral, legalistic, and upright than this man. He's a model of middle class respectability. And so he
would have been deeply shaken when Jesus said to him, "You need to be born again." It would have been a terrible shock when Jesus steps back and draws a separating line between this man and a real relationship with God, and says, "Unless you are born again you cannot know God."

And Nicodemus is so shaken when Jesus says this that he can only reply: "How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!" (verse 4) So Jesus says, "I'm not talking about physical things, I'm talking about spiritual things. You need to be born physically, "flesh gives birth to flesh ... " "Yes, you do need to be born physically, but you also need to be born spiritually" .... "but the Spirit gives birth to spirit." (v. 6) And Nicodemus, all your religious credentials: disciplined, religious, able, learned, moral--- they're not good enough." None of them are good enough. And we therefore have to conclude that if a thoroughly good person like this needs to be born again .... then you and I can be absolutely sure that you need to be born again and I will need to be born again and so does the whole of humanity.

Now why is this so? Well, the Bible says that at one stage or another we have all said, "No!" to God as God. That is why we need to be born again, because we've all said that to God. We don't want him to be God over us, we've all done our best Frank Sinatra imitation: "I've lived a life that's full, I've traveled each and every highway; but more than this, I did it my way." I've put myself at the center. I was absolutely central to all that I did, that's what's going on here. We've all said, "No!" to God as God. We've all said, "Look God, I'll take friends and family and fun and falling in love and food and fitness and all those things. But actually I will run my life my way. And my life will be about my goals, my agenda, my desires. I will be the main character, and God, you can be a footnote. You may give me each breath, but you can be a footnote, because I'm going to be god and I'm going to be central"

Now we've all done that. That is the problem. I've done that, you've done that; even Nicodemus, for all his credentials, had done that. And when we treat God like that, we use Him and ignore Him. Although to us it may seem as a small thing, we actually die in the spirit world because of it. And so we need to be born again, because it kills us when we behave like that. It's an absolute necessity therefore to be born again. So what then is new birth? What does it mean to be born again?

            Well let me tell you, the first things is this: it doesn't mean turning over a new leaf. It doesn't mean ''I'm going back on my diet; I'm going to give up smoking or turn over new leaf for the umpteenth time." I'm not talking about another set of New Year resolutions, it's not about saying, "Well, I must get more morel." You couldn't get more moral than old Nicodemus. No, this new birth is a radical change that God does. It's not something that I do. It's what God does through the power of the Holy Spirit. You can see it in verse 8: "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it's going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." So it's not something I do, it's something God does - and it is miraculous.

This is a miraculous intervention from God. God brings us back to life as new people in the spirit. God radically changes our thinking. So this is a supernatural act of God in which God takes the Holy Spirit and implants that Spirit in our hearts. In other words, you might say that God gives us a heart transplant. That is what is being spoken of here. And He gives us a changed mind, will and emotion; and our whole personality wants to go in a very different direction. So we start to think the way He thinks. And consequently we start to try to act in His way.

I remember a conversation I had with a former church member about his Christian walk. He said to me, "Jack, to tell you the truth, I'm never going to keep it up--- being a Christian." I said, "Well, given your track record, I'd agree: you won't. What do you think will need to happen," I asked, "to keep going as a Christian?" He responded, "It's going to take a miracle for me to keep going as a Christian!" "Exactly" I said. We all need a miracle in which God causes a radical change to take place in our hearts. And you cannot do that by yourself.

So, how do you start you life over? First you leave your empty religious efforts behind and have your own private talk with Jesus. Secondly, you realize that you need a miraculous transformation of your heart and the third step to starting your life over is ...

3        Start your life over by responding to Jesus' invitation. Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." (v. 3) "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." (v. 5) Twice Jesus answered and twice the condition given by Jesus was a new birth. Twice the ultimate fulfillment of these conditions was entrance into the kingdom of God. But what was the question? The very obvious question on the mind of Nicodemus was" "How do I get into the kingdom of God?" Jesus answered and with the answer gave the invitation: "Come on in!"

And John, reflecting on the meaning of the Jesus/Nicodemus conversation, states God's most dramatic invitation to us in verse 16 .... "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." So what did God do? The first thing we see, He loved the world and that's us! And then what did he do? He gave his one and only Son, the Lord Jesus. So God allowed Jesus to die on the cross to take the punishment we deserve. We've all seen the artist's rendering of Jesus hanging on the cross: Jesus in the middle between two thieves; the soldiers all around, Mary, his mother is nearby --- and he cries out on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:45) Now, if Jesus is the Son of God, why
you ask is he forsaken? The scripture tells us that Jesus was forsaken so that we need never be. He died and took the sin I deserve for saying, "I will do it my way. I'll run my life my way. I know you've given me life, God, but I'll take the gifts and I'll ignore you, the Giver." That is a problem before God, and Jesus died so that we can be forgiven for that. And as you see Him dying there, you see Him dying for all the times that you've sinned against Him, so that you can be right with God. Jesus died for you as a provision for and as an invitation to be born again into His kingdom.

So how do you start your life over? Like Nicodemus you go to Jesus privately and confess that you've done it your way long enough. Like Nicodemus you will find that Jesus will know what you need even before you ask. Go to Jesus and ask him how you can know and experience God's presence in your life. You will find that with your request will come Jesus' invitation to enter into God's kingdom, God's presence. God's Holy Spirit will then do a transforming work in your heart and in your life and you will, indeed, get a second chance; you will get to start your life over.