Verse of the week Genesis 6:5 Isaiah 53:6 John 3:3 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. We all, like sheep, have gone astrew, each of us has turned to our own way; Jesus replied, Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. If I was going to give this one a title, which I guess I am doing, I would call it, the need to be born again. In previous weeks I have pointed out how we need to be perfect to deserve to be in Gods presence but we are not. That this brings about separation from God, death and that God deals with this by dying for us. Our sins have been paid for, we do we need to be born again. I pointed out that the reason that faith without works is dead is that we are called to love and love works, if we do not love then Gods forgiveness has had no impact on us. This is the problem, Jesus calls us to turn around form our sins and follow Him, but Genesis says that the people of the day were completely evil in their hearts all the time and Isaiah says that we are much the same. So how do we repent. God could forgive our sins while we are still evil in our hearts, He could not hold those things against us, but we wouldnt be changed. We would be just as evil as before and God would not be able to let us into His presence for the same reason as if He had never forgiven us. So the evil from our hearts needs to go. How can this be done, what if we try and do it ourselves. Well we cant for the same reason we cannot make ourselves worthy of heaven. Our efforts wont work because these are driven by our motives and our motives are evil. This is why God said that even our good works are filthy rages in His sight. So we cannot do it, so only God can. God must change our hearts, one translation of born again is to be born from above. It is God that does it. So you see that you must be born again. What does really look like, I will talk about that next week. But I can say that it is not just nice feelings, it is not feeling good in church or when you pray, it is when God changes your heart. So I will say with the preachers down through the centuries; YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN!
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 11:58:12 +0000