Dead in a Spiritual Grave

We live in a day, friends, where you can become a Christian without God. All you have to do is walk an aisle and repeat a little prayer and join the church, and you join that church with the same effort it would take to join the local health spa. But there was a time in this country, about 150 years ago, where they would not let you join the church unless you first provided credible evidence of regeneration.

George Whitfield, the great British evangelist, when he was preaching to 20,000 people out on Boston Common, was approached by a local minister who asked, Mr. Whitfield, how many converts have you had since you've been among us? To which the great Whitfield replied, I don't know, sir, but I shall be back by these parts in a year or two, and then I shall look for the evidence of their salvation. But we get along fine today without God. We just make ourselves Christians and then go on to hell.

But it's the Holy Ghost that regenerates the spirit and takes the heart of stone and makes it a heart of flesh. A man gets saved by a divine operation of the Spirit of God, and this is so because man lies dead in a spiritual grave. And that's the title of my message today, friends.

Dead in a spiritual grave. And my text can be found in John's Gospel, in Chapter 3. You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. We will study this familiar passage of God's Word, where we find Jesus having a conversation with a religious man by the name of Nicodemus.

And if anybody back then was religious, it was the Pharisees. And this man, Nicodemus, thought he already had religion when he went to see Jesus. But he soon found out he did not yet possess what he needed to enter into the kingdom of God, and that he needed to be born again, much like much of us today, friends.

You know, we don't hear that expression much anymore. But about 40 years ago, that's all you heard. Born again.

A believer back then was referred to as being born again. You see, friend, if you are not a born-again believer, you are yet dead in your sins in a spiritual grave. You have yet to hear His voice, which can raise the dead to life.

Listen to the words of Jesus, as seen in verse 6. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again. Let me pause here, friends.

We live in a very dangerous time, where sudden death is all around us. You could die very unexpectedly in this uncertain world, in a dangerous society, where people have gone down right and left. Just being a member of a church won't cut the mustard when you die, friend.

Just being a good person won't get you into heaven either, for it's not by works, lest ye should boast. Ye are saved by grace. Listen, friend, a work of grace must be performed on the heart by the Holy Spirit in regeneration.

That's what it means to be born again. You must be joined by faith to a living Lord. It's the life of God and the soul of man.

That's what the Scotsman Henry Schugle called it. Now let me finish with our text. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.

So is every one that is born of the Spirit. Let me ask you, friend, are you washed in the blood and born from above, or are you dead in a spiritual grave and still dead in sin? Ye must be born again. It was the preaching of the doctrine of regeneration, that's birth, revival, after revival, especially the Scottish Revival known as the Camp Buslang Revival, where under the preaching of William McCulloch, the local pastor, and George Whitfield, the traveling evangelist, were preaching ye must be born again, and men and women cried out as if they'd been shot through with a cannonball.

What must I do to be saved? Whitfield commented on the scene that it looked like a battlefield with people strewn all over the ground, and that's the need of this hour, friend, in a day where we make ourselves Christians. I was once myself an unconverted church member, and I was yet dead in a spiritual grave until I heard God's voice as it came to me in all power, authority, and majesty, and His Spirit took my heart of stone and made it a heart of flesh sensitive to spiritual things, and He planted in me a new disposition for holiness, for without holiness no one can see the Lord. Listen to me, dear friend.

Ye must be born again. Let us pray.