In the Bible Christian Ministry
Sunday 8-16-26 (Born Again, Part 2)
  • I Love to Praise Him
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  • One Thing Remains
  • Already Here
  • SERIES: Born Again: Spiritual Regeneration & Total Renewal
    LESSON 2: The Wind That Leads to the Cross
    PRIMARY SCRIPTURE: John 3:8–17
    SUPPORTING SCRIPTURES: Numbers 21:4–9; Isaiah 45:22; Isaiah 52:13; John 12:32; Galatians 2:20 ; Zechariah 4:6

    John 3:5–7 NIV
    5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’

    I. ME: The Comfort of Our Own Sweat

    There is a deceptive comfort in hard labor. When you put your head down, grit your teeth, and work until your muscles burn and your palms blister, you walk away with a strange sense of satisfaction.
    Even if the task was grueling, your ego feels secure because you can point to your effort and say, "I did that. I earned this. I made this happen."
    For years in our spiritual lives, many of us have that exact same mindset: we grab what we feel we need to get whatever jog need to get done complete and we start working.
    We tell ourselves that if we just push harder pull harder on personal discipline, if we just work more on willpower, if we just sweat enough in our moral habits, we will finally arrive at spiritual maturity.
    But if we are completely honest with ourselves, many of us have been pulling, pushing and working like this for five, ten, twenty years—and we look up at where we are only to realize we’ve been working but we haven't progressed.
    We are spiritually exhausted.
    We are carrying burnout in our souls.
    Our hands are raw, our strength is spent, and our anxiety is through the roof.
    Yet, when someone tells us to put those tools down and try something better, something different, something proven—-we refuse.
    Why? Because as long as we have tools in OUR hands (NOTICE I said OUR), we feel in control.
    Even when we are spinning in place, running on a treadmill, our pride whispers, "At least I'm doing something. At least I'm trying."
    We prefer the exhaustion of self-reliance over the need of surrender.
    Corporate Spreadsheet and Evaluation - point to the WORK you did as you evaluate yourself.

    III. GOD: The Wind & The Exalted Christ (John 3:8–17)

    1. The Sovereign Breeze & The Call to Sail (John 3:8–12)

    Look at how Jesus addresses Nicodemus under the midnight sky in verse 8:
    John 3:8–12 NIV
    8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” 9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. 10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?
    "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
    Called us to Sail. Didn’t call us to row.
    Take you from a rower to a sailer
    Sitting high on the Judean ridge, feeling the sudden, unpredictable evening drafts sweep across the city, captures both the physical "wind" and the Holy "Spirit."
    Jesus is confronting Israel’s premier theologian, philosopher :
    "Nicodemus, you have spent your entire life trying to calculate God like an academic equation.
    You built a theological system you could manage and control.
    But the Holy Spirit is not an employee you can schedule; He is a Wind you can only yield to.
    You cannot command Him, you cannot bottle Him up, and you cannot manufacture His power through moral sweat.
    If you want to see the Kingdom, you have to drop your what you have, recondition your heart, and allow.”
    Nicodemus responds in verse 9 with the bewildered cry of an exhausted rower: "How can this be?" Jesus gently cuts through his intellectual pride in verse 10: "You are Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?"
    Jesus reveals that spiritual rebirth cannot be mastered with the intellect; it must be received through childlike surrender.

    II. The Misconception of the Sailor & The Athlete's Dilemma

    Romans 9:16 NIV
    16 It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.
    When we accept this new life we then assess all that it will take to get us to where God wants us to be and we look across this vast lake of life that we haven’t done very good at but now I have tools. So we get our oars, get in our little boat and start rowing. Harder, faster, stronger.
    But on this lake we also see sail boats.
    When a rower is in the middle of a lake, sweating, straining, and pulling with every ounce of physical strength, they glance over and see a sailboat gliding effortlessly across the bay.
    To the exhausted rower, sailing looks almost offensive.
    The sailor looks like they are just laid back, leaning against the hull, cruising with the wind, doing absolutely nothing. The rower thinks, "Must be nice. Look at them taking the easy way out while I’m over here doing the real work."
    What the rower completely misunderstands is that being a sailor requires not less work, but an entirely different kind of work—a total reconditioning of the soul.
    Sailing is not laziness; it is the master art of alignment and surrender.
    A sailor cannot manufacture the wind.
    A sailor cannot dictate the direction of the draft, force the velocity of the gale, or command the skies to move on their timetable.
    A sailor must submit completely to a power that can never be controlled, but must always be trusted.
    A sailor has to work when the water is dead calm.
    When the wind isn't blowing, the sailor isn't asleep—they are inspecting the rigging, mending the canvas, checking the rudder, and setting the mast so that the exact second the unseen breeze begins to stir, the vessel is positioned to catch it.
    Rowing relies on your own strength; sailing relies on a power beyond yourself.
    A Weary, Resource-Strapped Community: By 520 BC, when the work finally resumed, the people were poor, plagued by drought, and deeply discouraged . They were a minor, politically weak province under the massive thumb of the Persian Empire .
    The Missing Monarch: Zerubbabel was of the royal line of David, but he was not a king. He had no standing army, no sovereign political power, and very limited material wealth.
    God Told Him I CHOSE YOU
    The Promise: In this context of physical, financial, and political weakness, the Lord's message was a guarantee: The completion of this temple will not depend on your geopolitical leverage, military strength, or financial reserves, but on the sovereign activation of My Spirit
    We want to get to where we know God wants us to be but we only know to do one thing: WORK, WORK, WORK. but we forget
    Zerrubbabel Like How. I don’t HAVE!!!!!!
    Zechariah 4:6 NIV
    6 So he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty.

    Surrendering your need for control to trust that unseen power is the hardest work a human heart will ever undertake.

    Athlete

    Imagine an elite track athlete who has been running sprints their entire life. They’ve logged thousands of miles, lifted hundreds of tons of weights, and built their life around their personal workout regimen. But they’ve hit a brick wall. Their times are plateaued; they aren't getting a fraction of a second faster.
    In walks a world-renowned, championship-proven coach. The coach looks at the runner and says, "If you want to reach the next level, you have to throw out your entire routine. I need you to change your stride, alter how your foot strikes the ground, unlearn your breathing technique, and abandon the workout plan you built with your own hands. I need you to trust my training."
    What is the hardest part of that challenge for the athlete? It’s not the physical exercise—they are already an athlete; they know how to sweat.
    The hardest part is the surrender. It is unlearning what they thought was true, abandoning the pride of their past routine, and submitting their entire future to the wisdom of the coach.
    That was Nicodemus’s exact crisis on that Jerusalem rooftop in John 3.
    He was Israel’s elite religious athlete. He had the pedigree, the credentials, and the blistered hands of religious rowing. But Jesus looked at him and said, "Nicodemus, you must stop rowing. You must undergo a complete reconditioning from above."
    Romans 9:16 NIV
    16 It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.

    2. Looking to Live: The Lifted-Up Christ (John 3:13–15 & Numbers 21:4–9)

    Now, follow the narrative flow. Where does the Holy Spirit blow? What is the Spirit’s primary assignment?
    The Holy Spirit never blows through our lives to draw attention to our own performance. The Wind of the Spirit blows to turn our eyes away from ourselves and lock our gaze onto Jesus Christ.
    John 3:13–15 NIV
    13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
    In verse 14, Jesus reaches back into Old Testament history to an unforgettable account from Numbers 21:
    Numbers 21:4–9 NIV
    4 They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; 5 they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!” 6 Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. 7 The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.
    "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him."
    Numbers 21:
    Israel had rebelled against God in the desert, despising His miraculous manna as "miserable food."
    Judgment swept through the camp in the form of venomous, fiery serpents.
    People were dying everywhere. The poison was already in their veins.
    Notice what happened:
    Israel cried out for God to remove the snakes. (Do what we want the way we want it!!!!)
    But God did not remove the snakes immediately; He provided a divine remedy right in the middle of the trial.
    God commanded Moses to forge a replica of what was killing them out of fire-tested bronze and hoist it high on a wooden pole in the center of the camp.
    Think about how offensive that remedy was to human pride!
    Human instinct in a crisis wants to do something: "Let me brew an herbal poultice! Let me try to cut the poison out! Let me row my way out of this danger!"
    But God declared: No human remedy will save you. You cannot cure your own snakebite.
    God required one simple, radical, humiliating act of trust: LOOK at the bronze serpent on the pole, and live. You had to stop looking down at your rotting wound, stop trying to fix yourself, look up in absolute helplessness at God's provided substitute, and trust His promise.
    Jesus says: "That was a shadow of Me." —"to be lifted up" (hypsoō). In John’s Gospel, this word carries a majestic dual meaning:
    The Physical Crucifixion: Christ physically elevated on the rough wood of the Roman cross outside Jerusalem.
    The Regal Exaltation: Christ being enthroned and glorified as King (fulfilling Isaiah 52:13: "My Servant shall be raised and lifted up and highly exalted").
    He took the deadly venom of our sin into His own body.
    He passed through the fiery judgment of God, and He broke the power of the serpent's bite forever!
    On the cross, Jesus became our bronze serpent.
    We pray God change the world so I can thrive
    Lord make all this go away
    Lord Stop it
    HE SAID LOOK.
    WE say no. I can do this to change it. I can do that. I can...
    Salvation requires no heavy lifting from you—it requires looking to the lifted-up Christ in unearned faith.
    Why bronze? Bronze in Scripture represents judgment that has passed through the consuming fire.
    A living viper carries deadly poison; a bronze viper carries zero venom—the bite has lost its power!
    Lifted up.
    Looks like death, smells like death, But DEATH has no power, Hurt has no power, world has NO POWER
    John 12:32 NIV
    32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

    Justified vs. Sanctified

    And that day I was Justified.
    Justification vs. Sanctification.
    Justification (Dikaiōsis):
    A legal, judicial declaration by God where a sinner is declared righteous based entirely on the finished work of Christ, received by grace through faith alone (Romans 3:24–26, Romans 5:1). It is instantaneous, complete, and unrepeatable.
    Romans 3:24–26 NIV
    24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—26 he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
    Sanctification (Hagiasmos):
    The continuous, progressive work of the Holy Spirit conforming the believer into the image of Christ (1 Thessalonians 4:3, 2 Corinthians 3:18). It is ongoing, cooperative, and experiential.

    3. Charles Spurgeon's "Look" (January 6, 1850)

    This is the simple power of the Gospel.
    On a bitterly cold, snowy Sunday morning in January 1850, a 15-year-old boy named Charles Spurgeon was walking through Colchester, England. The blizzard became so violent that he couldn't make it to his planned destination, so he ducked into a small Primitive Methodist Chapel on Artillery Street.
    There were only about a dozen people inside. The regular preacher was snowed out, so an uneducated, unnamed lay preacher stepped into the pulpit. He was so thin and poor he could barely speak with authority, but he opened his Bible to Isaiah 45:22: "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else."
    The preacher read the text, looked out at the sparse room, locked eyes with 15-year-old Spurgeon sitting under the gallery, and said:
    "Young man, you look very miserable! And you always will be miserable—miserable in life, and miserable in death—if you don't obey my text. But if you obey now, this very moment you will be saved! Young man, look to Jesus Christ! Look! Look! Look! You have nothn' to do but to look and live!"
    Spurgeon later wrote in his autobiography:
    "I had been waiting to do fifty things; but when I heard that word, 'Look!' what a charming word it seemed to me. Oh! I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away. There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that moment and sung with the most enthusiastic of them of the precious blood of Christ."
    Spurgeon spent years trying to row his way to peace through religious rituals and moral agonizing. But the moment he dropped his oars and simply looked at the lifted-up Savior, the Wind of the Spirit filled his sail, and he was born again!

    4. The Cosmic Shockwave of John 3:16 (John 3:16–17)

    And right out of that wilderness story, Jesus utters the words that changed the universe:
    John 3:16–17 NIV
    16 For God so loved the world (COSMOS) that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
    We are so familiar with John 3:16 that we miss the theological shockwave it sent through Nicodemus’s heart.
    As a Pharisee, Nicodemus believed God’s covenant love belonged exclusively to the righteous descendants of Abraham, while the pagan world (Kosmos) was slated for divine wrath. But Jesus told him: "God’s love is not a tiny puddle reserved for the religious elite. God so loved the Kosmos—the entire broken, rebellious, morally bankrupt world."
    Nicademus: HOW — THEY HAVEN’T DONE THE WORK
    Look at the macro-narrative contrast John paints across chapters 3 and 4:
    In John 3, Jesus meets Nicodemus—a moral, educated, wealthy Jewish leader who comes in the secrecy of the night, trapped in his religious rowing.
    In John 4, Jesus meets the Samaritan Woman—an immoral, uneducated, rejected outcast who meets Him at noon by Jacob's well.
    High morality could not buy Nicodemus entry into the Kingdom; deep moral brokenness could not disqualify the Samaritan woman from grace! At the foot of the lifted-up Cross, all human status is neutralized. The word is whosoever—whoever drops their oars, looks at the Savior, and yields to the Spirit will never perish.
    Isaiah 45:22 NIV
    22 “Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.
    Isaiah 52:13 NIV
    13 See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
    Once you LOOK doesn’t mean you just sit, but you also don’t pick up them old oars you SAIL!!!!

    IV. Reconditioning Your Life to Sail

    Church, what are you doing with your life today? Are you still rowing?
    Let us do a spiritual audit this morning:
    Drop the Oars of Self-Justification: Where are you sweating and straining to prove your worth to God, your spouse, or your peers?
    Stop taking pride in rowing in circles.
    Willpower cannot cure your sin, fix your home, or heal your anxiety.
    Measuring yourself against other rowers. You are bigger. You don’t have time to look at others. You trying to CATCH THE WIND.
    Undergo the Reconditioning of Trust:
    Like that elite athlete standing before the Master Coach, admit that your old techniques are broken. EGO
    Let go of what you thought you knew. Trust the Coach’s process.
    Tend the Rigging in the Calm:
    Sailing is not laziness. What do you do on a Monday morning when you don't feel a massive emotional rush of the Spirit?
    You stay in the Word. You stay on your knees in prayer. You keep your heart clean and repentant. You don't do those things to force the wind to blow; you do them so that when the Holy Spirit moves, your sail is already unfurled!
    Fix Your Eyes on the Cross: When the bite of guilt, shame, or trial strikes your life this week, do not look inward at your wound. Look up to the lifted-up Christ!
    Set that Sail of readiness and prepare for the SPIRIT to take you wherever God wants you to go
    Galatians 2:20 NIV
    20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

    V. CLOSING & THE ALTAR CALL

    Are you tired of rowing today? Are your hands blistered from trying to be "good enough"?
    Jesus didn't come to hand you a heavier pair of oars. He came to be lifted up on a Roman cross so that every dying, venom-bitten soul could look to Him and live.
    Look away from your sweat. Look away from your religious resume. Look away from your failures.
    Look to the Cross. Look to the Savior. Raise your sail to the sovereign Wind of the Holy Spirit, trust Him wholly, and step into everlasting life!
    Let us pray.

      • John 3:8–12NIV2011

      • John 3:5–7NIV2011

      • Romans 9:16NIV2011

      • Zechariah 4:6NIV2011

      • Romans 9:16NIV2011

      • John 3:13–15NIV2011

      • Numbers 21:4–9NIV2011

      • John 12:32NIV2011

      • John 3:16–17NIV2011

      • Isaiah 45:22NIV2011

      • Isaiah 52:13NIV2011

      • Galatians 2:20NIV2011

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