The Message to Nicodemus: “You Must Be Born Again”

I want to invite you to turn to the Word of the Lord in the Gospel according to John, chapter 3, where we see an encounter—one of these personal encounters of Jesus Christ with individuals that reveal much to us about His heart, about the priority evangelism has in the life of the Lord, about the salvation of a soul, and about the way we should go about evangelizing people. These encounters are useful both for evangelizing and for helping us understand how to evangelize and what elements constitute effective evangelism.

Last Sunday we spoke about the Samaritan woman, about this person’s encounter with Jesus Christ in the Gospel according to John, chapter 4, and we saw that this woman is a woman of questionable reputation. She lives a somewhat promiscuous life; there have been six men in her life. I imagine that the women in her community regarded her with fascination and also with fear that she might choose their husbands. She has a past, and yet hers is a heart that needs Jesus Christ, and there is something in her that arouses the Lord’s compassion. That is why Christ approaches her, ministers to her, speaks to her, and reveals Himself to her. It is important for us to see how He gradually leads this woman to a knowledge of Him and to complete acceptance.

And one of the things this woman does is become a great evangelist, and that is what I mean when I speak about why it is important for us to bring others to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. You know, new believers are often the best evangelists because they know other people who do not know the Lord.

After a certain amount of time in the Gospel, we Christians often retreat into our own bubble and cease to have contact with people who do not know Jesus Christ. But people without a religious background often have unbelievers as friends, and those friends are a good resource; and you do not need to possess great biblical knowledge or anything like that. All this woman had was a fresh discovery of Jesus as Lord and Savior, and she simply said to her fellow villagers, “Come and see this man who has told me everything about my past and who is clearly the Son of God.” When she brought them to Jesus, the Lord did the rest, and her whole village was converted.

And one of the things we must do in our Christian walk is invite others. But notice this as well: I believe that often one of the things we can do is simply invite them to come to church. Perhaps she could not preach the Gospel because she did not know how, but she brought them so the Lord could speak to them and so they could come to know Him. You can do that: invite someone to come to a service; invite them to come to a special activity, a dinner, or a women’s retreat. Those are good opportunities for you to invite someone. Tell them, “Look, I’ll pay your admission or your dinner or whatever it may be, but I want you to come and listen.” And God can use that means to bring someone to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. It is a beautiful passage that reminds us of the value the Lord places upon a single soul.

And now, in chapter 3 of the Gospel according to John, we have another personal encounter: Jesus and Nicodemus. Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman could not be more different in their backgrounds, their reputations, and their importance in society.

Let us look at this chapter. Verse 1 of chapter 3 says, “There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.” Unlike this Samaritan woman, a woman of no importance whatsoever—indeed, a woman with a negative image—Nicodemus is a man of prestige. He is an important man and probably a religious man, because he is a member of the sect of the Pharisees and has a certain reputation among them. That is a very great difference, and yet the Lord reaches them both. There is no difference between them, because they both have an eternal soul within them, and that is what is important to save.

Nicodemus approaches the Lord, and it says, “He came to Jesus by night.” Why does Nicodemus come by night? Because he does not want his Pharisee friends to know that he is interested in Jesus Christ. How many people are like that? Undercover evangelicals, right? They are like those detectives who open their jackets like this and show their badges, right? And then they close them and hide them again. How many undercover detectives, undercover evangelicals, are here? I hope you are not one of them.

Do you know that if there were more evangelicals in Boston who dared to testify about Christ, things would be very different? Everywhere you go—to the hospitals, for example—you find Christian doctors and Christian nurses. Let me tell you, there are Christian teachers by the dozen in the schools—pardon the expression. There are Christian social workers, a great many of them in Boston. There are businessmen who go to church on Sunday. There are university professors who are Christians, and yet society remains unaware of it because they are often like Nicodemus: they love Jesus and are interested in Him, but they have not had that face-to-face encounter that turns them into bold, battle-hardened people whose only agenda is to advance the Kingdom of God.

We must be that kind of believer. Do not be a Christian by night; be a Christian in broad daylight. Dare to testify about your faith. The devil has instilled fear in us through all kinds of cultural rhetoric about respecting diversity and people’s privacy. Many times there are people who want you to speak to them about the Gospel, but we look at them and allow ourselves to be intimidated by their outward appearance, even though they are interested. We need to make the decision to be radical Christians committed to the Kingdom of God, amen? Ask God to give you that ability, that courage to testify about Jesus Christ, to speak to others about coming to the Lord’s feet, and to be a Christian whom those around you recognize as such.

Last night I presided over the ordination of a very talented young Haitian man, tremendously gifted in the secular world and in the business world, but also a man with a very strong pastoral calling and calling to serve. He invited his friends and relatives, and several of his neighbors came among them. He brought them so they could witness his ordination to the ministry. He also studied at seminary, graduated from seminary, and is starting a church. But I was struck by the fact that he invited his neighbors to come and see him being ordained as a pastor.

And when one sees that, it inspires respect in me for him, because it means that he is bearing witness to his faith. And not only that, but his neighbors think highly enough of him to come to his ordination. That is one way we can often take advantage of special opportunities when people will come and receive and hear the Word of the Lord.

I believe we should speak to our neighbors. We cannot be undercover Christians. The people around us must know who we are, and we must make sure that we give ourselves away, so to speak, and that people at our workplace know.

Nor do you have to use working hours. If we are going to testify, brothers and sisters, let us do so appropriately. If you are working, then operate your machine; give eight hours of work for eight hours of pay, amen? But there are moments—there are opportunities. Perhaps during your lunch hour someone comes over or approaches you, and you can testify about Christ. And perhaps you need to be careful, because some environments may be very hostile, and I believe we must also exercise prudence. I believe there are occasions when we must be prudent, and that is all right, but God will give you opportunities if you look for them.

I know there are teachers—for example, my sister Fanny works in the Boston school department, and the school department is extremely strict about preventing what they call proselytizing. Teachers have been fired because we live in a very hostile society. But she always finds opportunities to testify about Jesus Christ to the children and to the parents, and parents have come to church because she has testified to them about Jesus in appropriate and timely ways, shall we say. There are ways in which we can testify about Jesus.

We must be radical about that. These sermons are designed to create an awareness within us. These efforts we are making are intended to create in us an awareness that we must testify, that we must be an evangelistic church. We have a great treasure in our hands that we must share. We have no right to put that light under the bed, amen? We must place it up high so that others can see it.

Nicodemus is a man with commendable religious interests. He belongs to a very, very religious and upright sect, and he approaches Jesus by night. He is interested in learning who Jesus is. He has seen Him preach an appealing message, a generous message; there is something in His preaching that intrigues and interests him.

And so he approaches Him and says, “Rabbi”—that is, Teacher—“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.” Do you know what Nicodemus’s first mistake is? It is failing to ascribe to Jesus His true position and His true nature.

Nicodemus sees in Jesus a distinguished teacher. He sees a man who has something special that sets Him apart from the crowd, but he does not know Jesus Christ for who He truly is. So he says to Jesus Christ, “We know that You have come from God as a teacher,” and then he says, “No one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” Do you know that God was not with Jesus? Jesus was and is God, and that exposes Nicodemus as someone in need of correction.

A person can regard Jesus in that way. Many of us have known Jesus, and sometimes, even in church, we see Him merely as an important being. We view our faith as something that, yes, adorns our life, something that gives us a certain degree of tranquility and pleasure, but we have not had a face-to-face encounter with Jesus Christ for who He is: the owner of everything we have and everything we are.

Some people see Jesus as an accessory. They see Him as something that enriches, beautifies, complements, and adorns, but they do not see Him as the entire foundation of their lives. And I would say that until a person has a radical encounter with Jesus in which the Lord Jesus becomes everything to us, we have not reached the place we need to reach. I would be surprised if there were not many of us here who need that face-to-face encounter with Jesus Christ that Nicodemus is about to have.

Until the Lord becomes the totality of our lives, my brothers and sisters, something will be missing. You can tell when a person has had a true encounter with Jesus Christ because there is a passion within that person; there is a 180-degree change. And I would say—I want to be rather frank here, direct—that many people in our congregation who are sitting here today need a deeper encounter with Jesus Christ.

There are different degrees of intimacy with Jesus. There is a degree of intimacy in which Jesus Christ is something important in your life, but until you give yourself entirely to Him and recognize that everything you are and everything you have belongs to Him, something will be missing. I want to take you to that level. Do you know why? Because it is at that level of total depth that one savors who Christ truly is, where the genuine benefits of the Christian life are experienced. Until you drink that cup down to the very last drop, you will be only partially blessed.

I remember my own personal life. I grew up in the Gospel. My mother was converted to the Lord when I was only about four years old, some twenty or twenty-five years ago, more or less (laughter), and I grew up in the Gospel. If you had asked me whether I was a Christian, I would have said, “Of course I am.” I went to high school and then to university, and I was more “Christ-ish” than Christian, because there were many things in my life that were not in keeping with the Lord. The world had a grip on my life. Intellectual vanity was something that held me captive. There was the desire to accomplish things, to succeed in the world, to gain renown, to achieve professional accomplishments, and to partake of the world’s attractions. I loved Jesus, but at a certain point I was like Nicodemus: my understanding of Jesus was partial, and something within me had to be broken.

I remember that one of the things that broke me—now that my sister Sara is here, because I experienced this over there in New York—was my father’s death. It was something that shattered my alabaster jar. It was a pain, a blow to the pit of my stomach, that destroyed me. And out of that pulverizing of my emotions, out of that weakness, God seized the opportunity to enter my heart. Something happened: from that bleeding came a weakening of the world’s grip on my spirit and on my life. Something very, very profound occurred that showed me the fragility of life and drained out of me that desire for success and personal fame that I had, and it caused me to turn toward Jesus and seek Him with greater surrender.

And from that period of spiritual mourning that I went through afterward—because that process of inner mourning lasted about two or three years—God seized the opportunity gradually to redirect my gaze toward Jesus Christ. And then there was a second conversion within me, a second conversion. And that was the time from which I can say I date my Christianity, because I told the Lord—and the moment came when I began to devour Scripture.

I would get up at 5 in the morning and read the Bible, and it was as if—I knew it very well—but it was as though I were discovering it for the first time. There was a passion in me; I was savoring the Gospel in a very different way. There was something God did in me at that moment, and I was being prepared.

And in surrendering my life, I said to Him: Lord, everything I have, everything I am, I lay at Your feet; make of me whatever You want. I did not know what I was saying, you know? Look where I find myself thirty-some years later.

I said to Him: Lord, I want to serve You however You want. I thought I could serve Him my way—in an elegant, intellectual way, one recognized by the world—but that was not what the Lord wanted for me, and He took me seriously. When I fell in love with the Lord and saw Him for who He was—not an accessory, not something that enriched and complemented my life; no, He was everything, He was the center—it brought about a crisis in me. That is why I took a year off from the university and went off to the deserts of Lawrence over there—forgive me if there is a brother from Lawrence here (laughter). I say “desert” because it was an emotionally desert-like time for me. God took me out of the university; it was as though I needed to think about what had happened to me. It was a change for me; it was something from within, because Jesus was no longer merely an accessory, nor was it simply that He came from God; He came to be God.

And that is why, when we call a person to know Christ, we say: Do you want to receive Christ as your Lord and Savior? The two go together, because many people want Jesus as Savior, but they do not want Him as Lord.

Do you know what the word “lord” means? Kairos, kyrios. In the Greco-Roman image, the lord is the owner of the slaves. We are not slaves before the Lord, by the way; God has made us children, He has made us friends. But in one sense, it is indeed as though we were His slaves. We have used the euphemism “servants of Jesus Christ,” but when Paul spoke, what he said was “slave of Jesus Christ.”

Have you reached the point in your life where you feel that, for all intents and purposes, you are a slave of Jesus? What is a slave? A slave owns no property; a slave does not belong to himself; a slave does not govern himself in any way; even his children and his wife are the property of the lord, of the owner; a slave has practically no identity of his own. Can you consider yourself a slave of Jesus Christ in terms of how you see Him?

And that is why many people have difficulty: they come to church, spend two hours there, and are already looking at their watches because they made a reservation at the restaurant for two in the afternoon, and here is the pastor talking and talking and talking. They even leave the beans cooking, calculating that by the time they get out of here they will be done so they can start making moro rice or whatever, and they are very conscious of the time (laughs). They can spend hours watching a baseball game, and if the game goes beyond nine innings, glory to God—how wonderful, even better—they enjoy it. But if the service runs a little long, they already feel uncomfortable and restless.

They allot the Lord a little time on Sunday because Sunday is the time God made for people to go to church. But if there is a service on Wednesday, or a time of prayer on Friday, or some special activity—oh, no! That is for fanatics. I am far too respectable, far too cultured to be a fanatic. They are very measured in their surrender to the Lord.

Brother: when Christ enters your life, it is to be Lord and Savior, to take His place on the throne, and until Christ becomes that in your life, you have not known Him! Now, if your loyalty is to the church, then I can understand, because one does not give that kind of loyalty to any human institution; and sometimes we confuse one thing with the other. Loyalty to the church, to the institution, can be partial, but loyalty to the Kingdom of God and to Jesus must be radical and absolute. Your identity is summed up in your Christian faith, your Christianity. You live for Jesus; you are an instrument of Jesus. You are a platform upon which Jesus can take His stand and use it however He wants. Jesus cannot merely be this man He was to Nicodemus—a good teacher, a man of God.

Christ wanted to be everything in Nicodemus’s life, and that is an element repeated again and again. We have to bring people to the point where we lift up Christ before them as God, as Lord, as the Savior of their souls.

I could say much more. For now, let us say that I am speaking to those people. You have to examine yourself continually; I have to examine myself. How central is Christ to me? How central is He in my life?

When the Lord settles within you and unfolds within you, the essence He releases is transmitted and distributed throughout every part of your being, coloring everything in a different way.

I remember that time of falling in love with the Lord. So many things came from it. The Lord took me seriously because the Lord is real, and He blessed my life and my wife’s life, and He blessed my family’s life. As we have walked with Jesus, we have seen how everything has been enriched, how everything has changed. And I can say that I understand the difference between having Christ partially and having Him at the center of our life. And I still have farther to go, let me tell you, because I want to know Him more, as Paul says, and I want Him to know me more, and I want Him to have more of me and for me to have more of Him, because it is a process that never ends; it is a love story, a falling in love. Anyone who grows bored with the Gospel has not known the Gospel. The Gospel is an adventure, brothers and sisters; the Gospel is a love affair with layers and layers and layers. Christ has no end.

We grow bored because we have fallen in love with the church, or with the pastors, or with a deacon, or whatever it may be, but not with Jesus Christ. We must go directly to Him, and we must know Him for who He is, and then that changes everything. When Christ becomes real in your life, that releases an essence. That is why many of us enter the Gospel and cannot get anything right, and we keep making the same mistakes, trudging through the same mudhole. Our situation does not change; we do not feel the joy we are supposed to feel; there is no transformation; there is no change in our environment; the problems remain the same. I suggest to you that one possible reason is that you need to bring Christ inside you. You need to plant that trunk in your soil so it can grow again and blossom within you, and that is what the Lord meant to tell him.

Look at the direct way the Lord speaks to Nicodemus; it is almost rude, you know? Because Jesus has a beautiful and tender side, but He also has an upright and firm side; and when He is not given the place He deserves, He becomes a little somber too, you know? There is no way to approach Jesus without giving Him everything He deserves; that provokes hostility on His part.

It says: “The Lord responds to that compliment from Nicodemus with a confrontational answer: Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.’” If you look at it, in one sense the Lord’s answer is curt. Nicodemus might say: Lord, yes, we know that You are someone special. And instead of saying to him: Thank you, Nicodemus, I greatly appreciate that compliment; yes, I really am important—no. He tells him: Nicodemus, if you are not born again, do not even get dressed, because you are not going. He is telling him: You are missing something essential. You know Me, but the transaction has not taken place; the chemical reaction that would allow you to know who I truly am has not occurred.

Conversion is something mysterious; it is something truly magical. That image of being born again is so important for us to understand so that we can invite others into a true knowledge of Jesus Christ. Knowing Jesus is not something that goes unnoticed in the human system.

When a person receives Christ into his heart, things happen; there are changes, there are transformations, there is a permeation of that individual. It is not simply as though I met Jesus Christ and added a piece of information to my brain. Something magical must take place, an internal transformation that the Bible defines in such a radical way that it calls it being born again. It is not even merely a birth; it is a creation, a re-creation of the person.

And it is important that we alert people to the fact that they must be born again—a clean slate, a fresh start. And I believe that is why many people find it difficult to understand this matter of receiving Christ as Lord and Savior and why it is necessary to do so: because Jesus is the only one who has the power to unleash the necessary reactions in the human spirit so that the person can then be acceptable before God.

There is what is called a catalytic substance—I hope I am using the correct term in Spanish; is that what it is called? A catalyst. A catalyst, as I understand it, in chemistry, is—is that substance or that element of energy that enables a chemical reaction to take place. For example—what was that? Catalyzing agent, thank you. We have a young lady here who is a chemist and can help us with that (laughter). For example: you take one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms and put them together, and nothing happens because they are simply two substances that have no relationship to each other. But the catalyst is that which triggers something and adds a little energy—I do not know exactly how—but it enables those two things to fuse and then create a molecule of water. Energy is therefore needed; energy is needed in chemical reactions to make it possible for something to spring forth, and Jesus is that process.

Jesus is that which enables the necessary reaction to occur within us so there may be new life. We cannot do it by ourselves. The energy is needed; the essence Christ provides is needed so that a change of nature can take place within us, because otherwise we will simply create the same thing we already are; we will continue being what we already are.

The union between man and God is like joining two things that are completely different: human flesh, utterly imperfect, sinful, inclined toward rebellion, and a pure, perfect, almighty, holy God. How can those two things be joined? Christ makes it possible. Christ somehow adds the amount of energy required to fuse those two essences and make union between God and man possible. That is why He says: I am the way, the Truth, the life. Jesus is the bridge, and we must present Jesus Christ to people so that the new birth may take place within them, so that the life of God may spring forth within them. Jesus is the answer, and we must lift Jesus up before people so that a new birth can occur.

How can we change our mindset? How can we change our behavior? How can we become radically different? How can we break the bonds that enslave our lives? An outside agent must come and make that possible, and Jesus Christ is that agent; and people must invite Jesus into their lives so that a change of that nature can take place.

I tell you that there was a change in my life when I invited Jesus to come in. I clearly remember that experience and what happened in my life, and we must bring others to that knowledge. And that is what the Lord tells Nicodemus. He says to him: Unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.

There are childhood associations with knowing and accepting Christ as Lord and Savior. The Lord Jesus Christ said that unless we became like children, we cannot see the Kingdom of God. There is something about childhood associated with birth, with the new birth, and with entering the Kingdom of God.

Do you know that many people cannot understand who Jesus Christ is or the mysteries of the Gospel? Paradoxically, it is because they are too intelligent and too sophisticated, and the language of the Gospel is a magical, mythical, mysterious, symbolic, artistic language, and it is understood through faculties other than the rational faculties. If you try to approach the Gospel through intellectual, rational faculties, you will bounce off the Gospel, because the Gospel is reached through a different faculty, and one must become innocent like a child; and we see that with Nicodemus.

Nicodemus has a highly educated, rational theological understanding, and when the Lord tells him that he must be born again, Nicodemus interprets it literally because he cannot understand the language of Jesus Christ. And he asks Him: How can a man be born a second time? Can he enter his mother’s womb again and be born? And the Lord once again tells him: Nicodemus, I tell you that unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

The Lord is telling Nicodemus: Nicodemus, set your intellect aside for a moment. Stop trying to figure out the Gospel through rational means. Do not get involved in foolish disputes with people about intellectual questions, such as: Well, if there are Martians, will they be saved or not on another planet? And where do flying saucers come from? Is the Lord also going to proclaim the Gospel on Mars, or Pluto, or other places where there may be life? Do not get into those things. Then who was Cain’s wife, if there was no one else? Do not get into those tangles; keep the conversation centered on Jesus Christ.

When people try to figure out the Gospel in intellectual terms, they will never be able to enter, and if you are struggling with Jesus Christ, let down your guard, stop reasoning, and simply open your spirit to the Lord. Tell Him that if He is real, He should speak to you and enter your life; humble yourself, become simple. That is why the Lord says: unless you become like children, you cannot enter the Kingdom of heaven. If you try to get there through the intellect, you will never be able to reach where Jesus Christ is, because the language and meaning of the Kingdom of God are totally different; another faculty is required.

Set your questions aside, go in to Jesus and introduce yourself; let Him introduce Himself, and when you speak with Jesus and He speaks with you, you will see how easy it is. Then, from the inside, you will laugh at how easily all those questions you had on the outside can be answered, because the Kingdom of God cannot be understood from the outside; it has to be from the inside.

It is as the famous theologian Kierkegaard used to say: receiving Christ is like taking a leap into the abyss; throw yourself in and believe. Believing is something like—I do not know, I do not know exactly how to describe it—it is a leap into the abyss; it is simply making up your mind: I am going to jump. And when you do, the Lord will be there, ready to receive you.

Many people believe that if they surrender to Jesus, they will also have to put their intellect away in a drawer, so to speak. Do you know that humbling your intellect before Christ also makes you more intelligent and wiser, brother? When you put your intellect into the straitjacket of the Gospel, that straitjacket exercises it and makes it stronger, sharper, and more comprehensive. When man humbles his intellect before the greatness and lordship of Jesus Christ, the Lord blesses him and lifts him up, and then gives him a sound intellect, an intellect for life—not that sharp, cutting intellect that so many people have in this century, which does nothing but poison and cause so much corruption and so much harm, as we see.

The twenty-first century, with all its intellectual knowledge, all its scientific achievements, all its knowledge of the microcosm and the macrocosm, from human genetics to the galaxies and the cosmos, from the depths of the ocean to the heights of space—and yet this world is more terrible and more contorted than ever, because there is an intellect that kills and there is an intellect that heals. The intellect that heals is the one that is submitted and humbled before Jesus Christ: a childlike intellect, innocence, the intellect that leads to life.

And that is what Jesus is trying to show this great man, this Pharisee who is well educated in theology and in the knowledge of the law. He tells him: Look, this is not a matter of theological knowledge; it is a matter of a person, and that person is Me. You have to know Me.

Verse 13: “No one has ascended into heaven except He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man, who is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

What is the Lord doing? He is changing the terms of the conversation and telling Nicodemus: Now let us talk about Me. Let us not talk about who you think I am, but about who I truly am. I am the One who descended from heaven. I have come into the world to reveal to man the nature of the Father, the nature of spiritual things, and people must look to Me to receive salvation and eternal life.

And the Lord uses the image from Israel’s history when, during a moment of rebellion, the people offended the Lord in a terrible way as they wandered in the wilderness, and the Lord punished them by sending venomous snakes that were biting them and wreaking havoc among the people. The people cried out and repented, Moses interceded for them, and God gave Moses a formula—you can read it in the Book of Numbers—and told him: All right, Moses, make yourself a sculpture in the form of a serpent and lift it up before all the people, and everyone who looks at the serpent will be saved; they will be healed of their poisoning.

And if you think that the Gospel and the coming of Christ were an afterthought for the Lord, you do not understand. God was there, erecting an image in the wilderness of who Jesus was and how He was going to save humanity, because that serpent was a symbol of Jesus and of how we must look to Him. And now the Lord takes that story from Israel’s past and tells Nicodemus: Look, I am the One upon whom every person must look.

There is something interesting about the Lord’s using the serpent to heal serpent bites. It is like using something that is the same but now has healing power, whereas before it had the power of death. Why is this? Because man in his sin—the sin entered through one man, through Adam, who offended God, and death entered through him. And what does the Bible say? That God used a second Adam, another man, to bring life and healing to humanity: God and man.

Thus, man was an instrument of death in the Adamic fall, but now, through Jesus Christ, just as the bronze serpent came to heal the bites of the original serpent, Christ has now been appointed to heal humanity from the fall brought about by one man’s sin. And so, by looking at that sculpture and looking at it intentionally, people could receive healing.

That is what we have to tell people: look to Jesus Christ. Do not sell them a system; do not sell them a Church. Sell them a person who can make the difference.

I was telling the brothers and sisters at the nine o’clock service: if I were told that I had cancer and they told me, “Look at those flowers and you will be healed,” I would look at those flowers. I would devour them with my eyes. I would be like a cartoon character—boing!—my eyes would pop out and stick to them. I would look, making sure that I was seeing them, and I would count them one by one to make sure that the look was genuine. That is how people must fix their gaze upon Jesus, the Son of Man. We must invite them: fix your gaze upon the Son of God. Your will, your affections, your hopes, your emotions—focus everything on Jesus Christ. And that is what God has wanted us to do; that is what we have to tell people.

Do not fix your gaze upon a Church; do not fix your gaze upon a system. Religions will disappoint you, pastors will disappoint you, but Christ will never disappoint you. Put your hope in Him, set your affection upon Him (applause), and everything else will be added to you. Of course it will. Then you have to grow, you have to seek, you have to know Him better.

But the magical act takes place when you cling to Jesus, when you recognize Him for who He is, when you give Him the position He deserves, which is the only position. Until a man or woman sees Jesus in that desperate way, he or she has not reached the place where they need to be. That is why He tells Nicodemus: as the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Hallelujah.

There is another passage in which the Lord says: If the Son of Man is lifted up, He will draw everyone to Himself. He said, “If I am lifted up.” And do you know what? The Bible says that He was referring to the crucifixion, when He was lifted up. I imagine when they took that cross and raised Him up. First, they nailed Him to it, and then they raised that cross and placed Him there, looking out over everyone who was present. He was lifted up like a serpent, an image of death, a grim image—as a serpent is a grim image—the Lord was lifted up. And today, and throughout the centuries, all who have looked to Him in faith have been saved, just like the people in the wilderness.

Brothers and sisters, we have to do everything possible so that many people may see the Son of God. Our task is to lift Jesus up before a humanity that is perishing, perishing here on Earth and perishing for eternity. And if you are here today, I beg you—I want you to feel desperate this afternoon, and I want you to feel that you need to look to the Son of God and put your faith in Him so that this mysterious transaction may take place, so that the life of God may be born in you, like a woman who is impregnated by a magical encounter between two elements of life: they come together and life begins to pulse in her womb. And I want you to have the same experience, to become pregnant with Christ—forgive the expression—to be impregnated with Jesus, so that the life of God may be born within you because you look at Him, because you fix your gaze upon Jesus.

And, brothers and sisters, let us make sure that we take advantage of every opportunity to introduce people to that Son of God, so that none should perish but have eternal life. And sometime in the future I want to speak about that image of perishing and having eternal life. What does that mean? People are perishing; humanity is perishing. I think of all those people who died in Las Vegas. How many of those people had Christ in their hearts?

One moment they were there enjoying good music, right in the center of the vanity of the United States—Las Vegas, the luxurious hotels with all their cheap luxury and all their corruption, the shows and all of that—worshiping people there on the stage, and a stray bullet strikes them and ends their lives. Many perished. Perhaps some knew Jesus, but I am sure they did not have the opportunity to cry out to the Lord and look to Him. Let us not allow people to perish.

Let us preach the Gospel, brothers and sisters. That is what determines salvation or eternal perdition. If you have something of great value with you, may God begin to fill us with that sense. I want every one of us who is here this afternoon to be certain that their life is in Jesus’ hands. Let us sit down for a moment, and please keep the children quiet for a moment; and if you have to move, move very quietly, because we are about to finish.

I want to ask you: if you had been one of those people who lost their life there in Las Vegas, would you have gone to be with Christ? If you were to lose your life for some reason, because of an unexpected disaster or whatever it might be, are you sure that you are going to heaven, that your eternity is guaranteed, that you have a passport to enter the heavenly realm? Are there doubts within you? What will allow you to enter eternal life and an intimate relationship with God for all eternity?

It is not your works, you know. It is not anything you have done, nor is it something you have refrained from doing. It is nothing that has to do with actions you may or may not take on Earth. There is only one thing that allows you to enter the Kingdom of God, and that is having Christ within your heart, having looked to Him in desperation, having invited Him to be the owner of your life, and having invited Him to be Lord and controller of everything you are and everything you have.

When the Father asks you, “Why should I let you enter My heaven?” you will say to Him: Lord, it is certainly not because of anything I have done, because I have no right to enter, but Christ died for me on the cross. I have accepted His sacrifice, and that justifies me, and I have the right to enter—not because of me, but because of what Christ did for my life. That is the only passport you can use to enter the Kingdom of heaven.

If you are not sure where your life and your eternal destiny stand right now, I want you to invite Jesus to enter your heart and establish Him as your Lord, your owner, your Savior. Make that transaction now. Look with your spiritual eyes; look to Jesus in desperation and allow Him to produce His fruit within you. That look will impregnate you; it will fertilize you with the life of God. Do you want to invite the Lord to enter your life as your Lord and Savior?

I want to invite you now to raise your hand wherever you are. If you have taken that step of faith, if you want to make Christ your Lord, raise your hand. I want to pray for you this afternoon; I want to surrender you, to place you in Jesus’ hands. Brother, God bless you. Look to Jesus, look to Jesus. God bless you. Anyone else? This young man here too; another hand is being raised back there. The Lord is lifted up; I am lifting Him up right now. He is there, like this, and let us see Him suspended with His hands outstretched, saying: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And you are looking to Him with hope, with great longing.

Anyone else? Raise your hand. Stand up for a moment; I want to see you. Stand up. Invite the King of kings, Lord of lords, the Son of God, to enter. There is no shame; there is no shame in surrendering to the Lord. Remember what has been said about brokenness: the vessel must be broken; pride has to be broken. Until you break your pride—the desire for privacy, the sense of personal dignity—those are the things that prevent the perfume from coming out, that prevent the grain of wheat from being broken, coming to life, and bearing fruit.

Come over here; come this way if you wish. Come over here for a moment; we want to pray for you. If you want to remain there in your seat, that is fine too. There is a verbal confession; there is a public confession. We do not come to Christ by night, brothers and sisters; we come to Christ before men, before the community. And what better place than a family setting, an environment where others of us have already done it? We are here.

What a shame for a manly man to surrender to Jesus—wow! Glory to God for the women, but how wonderful it is when men also break down and say, “You know what? I am man enough to surrender to God.” A man is never truly a man until he bows before something greater than himself.

Brothers and sisters, we are living in times of great danger. Wild beasts have been let loose and are walking through this world right now, like this individual: 500 people wounded, nearly 60 dead, taking delight as he destroyed lives. Don’t you think this is something inconceivably terrible? We have grown so accustomed to evil that we just keep eating our cereal as though nothing had happened. These are terrible times.

Our children are being corrupted by demonic doctrines in the schools, marriages are being destroyed, the world is upside down, and only Christ can protect our homes, our families, our communities. Satan respects only one name, and that is the Name of Jesus; there is no other Name given to men.

Look, we must tell people: flee for your life, escape, because these are difficult times, these are terrible times. My brothers and sisters, figuratively speaking, paint the lintel of your door with the blood of Jesus. Take a paintbrush and symbolically paint the lintel above the entrance to your house and say: this is the blood of Christ that I place over my home and over your lives. This is no time to play games with the Gospel.

In one sense—listen, I am going to say this very carefully—in one sense I am glad that things are getting worse, because the time for playing little games is over, and we must take the Gospel seriously. Both the Church must take the Gospel seriously and the people out there must take Christ seriously.

My brothers and sisters, you have come forward, and I invite you to feed on Christ. Eat of Him, take Him into yourselves, take Him seriously. Invite Him to become the owner of your lives; surrender your homes to Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus—that Name has Power, that Name protects, that Name covers, that Name illuminates, that Name heals, that Name brings hope. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

We must lift up Jesus before lost humanity. We must challenge them to make their peace with Jesus; either they reject Him or they accept Him, but we must make ignorance impossible for them, and you are entering into something very powerful right now. Do not accept Him halfheartedly; I am not inviting you to come forward here and then simply carry on as though nothing had happened—no. I invite you to surrender your lives radically.

Break the vessel; enter into a crisis. Enter into a crisis, enter into a crisis, enter into a crisis. Search within yourself for that center of surrender; that center is there. Unleash it, unleash that energy within you, unleash it. Fight for your encounter with Jesus; look until you discover Him—He is there.

Hallelujah! And that Jesus is powerful to unleash power—power for every need, for every situation, for everything you are struggling with—but fall desperately in love with Him and invite Him to spread throughout your entire being. God bless that lovely young couple, amen; God bless you. Invite Jesus in and make Him the owner of your home; surrender your lives to Him.

I long for the day when people come running to the Church to surrender themselves to Christ. The more handsome and talented they are, glory to God, the better; the more blessed they will be, and the more they will bless others as well.

Christ—we are going to tell the people, the people out there: only Jesus represents refuge and hope for this humanity. Let us invite them to bring their families, to make their homes a temple where Jesus Christ dwells so that the Lord may cover them from evil, from those venomous serpents that abound and will continue to proliferate in the world. The presence of evil will grow greater as time goes by, my brothers and sisters, and only the blood of Jesus will be able to cover us; only the Person of Jesus will be able to provide protection. We are not presenting some meek little Christ there, all tender and welcoming. He is like that, but He is also the Lion of Judah, the only One whose roar is respected by demons and hell, the only One who can protect us and cover us with His fierce love from the attacks of the devil.

Let us present Jesus, let us fall in love with Jesus, let us live by and for Jesus, let us surrender our lives to the Lord, let us bring others to the knowledge of Christ. This is war, brothers and sisters; this is it—things are now being clearly defined; this is binary. Yes or no, life or death, hell or eternal salvation and heaven—it is that simple: either submission to evil and helplessness in the face of its devastation, or protection from God for your life, for your children, for your home when you live wholly attached to Him. Which will you choose? That is all; the day of decision is now. Today, today is the day of salvation. Surrender yourself desperately to the Lord in this way, and let us bring others.

The only One—Jesus, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, hallelujah. We worship You, Lord; we lift You up. Help us lift You up before humanity. Oh, help us find that center of power which is You.

Father, raise up a fierce people, a loving and fierce people, a warrior people, a people dangerous to the devil and his hell. Oh God, give us the Word; give us the ability to bring others to the knowledge of Christ. Multiply the number of those who are saved, Lord, hallelujah. Release Your essence, Father, in this time; pour out Your Power, Father; let the whole house be filled with perfume, oh. May this city know the Name of Jesus Christ. May the Son of God be lifted up before the powers of this age, hallelujah.

Release Your Power, Lord, hallelujah! Unloose the mouth of Your people so that they may proclaim the risen Christ, hallelujah. We want more of You, Lord; we need You.