To be among the people of God.
And to have His Word that we can
open and look into.
Let's turn, to begin with, to Titus chapter
3.
And we'll read from verses 3 to 7.
I'm using the New American Standard Translation.
Titus chapter 3 and verse 3.
For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient,
deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending
our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating
one another.
But when the kindness of God our Savior
and His love for mankind appeared, He saved
us not on the basis of deeds which
we have done in righteousness, but according to
His mercy, by the washing of regeneration, and
renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured
out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our
Savior, that being justified by His grace, we
might be made heirs according to the hope
of eternal life.
As the Lord wills, I'll be speaking to
you these three days on the subject of
regeneration, and it is a glorious subject.
We see that right here in these verses
we've looked at.
You notice the contrast, verse 3, we were.
There was a time.
And what was the description of what we
were?
Well, foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved, hateful, hating one
another.
What a contrast between that and what follows.
God's rich mercy, where He pours out His
Spirit upon us by the washing, and the
renewing, and the outpouring, all of these things.
What a contrast.
What a miracle, I say.
This is something right off the bat, you
see, regeneration is something supernatural, it's something miraculous,
it's something divine.
It's a radical thing.
You see that right off.
It's something radical.
But I've read these verses, not only because
they introduce the theme of regeneration, but because
they tie regeneration in with another great Bible
doctrine, and that's the doctrine of justification.
And you see that right here in verse
7, that being justified by His grace.
These two things always go together.
Justification, regeneration, they're inseparable.
They're very different, but they're inseparable.
Now, Brother Michael's going to be touching on
justification, so I'm not going to spend much
time on that, but I want to say
a few things in the introduction here, just
to bring out the contrast between justification and
regeneration.
We know that man's great problem is sin.
But I want to remind you, first of
all, that sin problem has two parts.
First of all, man has a bad heart.
He's corrupt on the inside.
And we have that in Mark 7, the
Lord Jesus brings this out.
Let me just read it to you.
From within, out of the heart of men,
proceed.
And it's not their environment, and it's not
their heredity in that sense, but it's from
within, out of the heart of men, proceed.
The evil thoughts and fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries,
deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as
deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.
All these evil things proceed from within and
defile the man.
So that's talking about the heart problem.
And every man that we meet anywhere on
the street, the natural man has got a
corrupt and polluted heart.
He's got a bad heart.
But that's not his only problem with sin.
If by some miracle he could have a
brand new heart and never commit another sin
the rest of his life, he'd still go
to hell.
Why would he go to hell?
Well, because he not only has a bad
heart, but he's got a bad record.
He's got a criminal record.
He's a fugitive from justice.
And he's got a bad record in the
eyes of God's law.
All the sins that he's already committed.
Now that's an objective problem on the outside
of him.
You see, it doesn't matter what happens to
him on the inside, he's got that problem
on the outside that needs to be dealt
with.
Now, beloved, God takes care of our bad
record in justification.
He justifies us.
He imputes to us the righteousness of Christ.
And those sins are laid on Christ and
He pays for them.
That's justification.
He takes care of the bad heart in
regeneration.
He does something on the inside, changes us
internally.
Justification has to do with something that takes
place in heaven.
It takes place in the courtroom of God,
where He pronounces me to be right in
the sight of His law.
Regeneration takes place down here on earth inside
of the heart of man.
See the difference?
Justification is a declaration on the part of
a righteous judge.
He makes a declaration.
It's not an act of power in the
sense of exertion of power.
It's a declaration about the way things really
are.
God's not pretending anything.
When He says, your sins have been paid
for, they really have been paid for.
When He says, look here in the book,
it looks like to me you've got righteousness
laid to your account, it really has been.
Somebody really did that righteousness for you and
that's the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's making a declaration about the way things
really are.
Your sins, that one sin, whatever the sin
is, the worst, most wicked things you've ever
done or can ever remember, they're not floating
around in the air.
They actually came down on the Lord Jesus
Christ and He actually paid for them.
And the judge looks in the book and
says, this thing's paid for, it really is.
He's not pretending anything.
He's making a declaration as a righteous judge.
Now that's justification.
Regeneration, on the other hand, is not a
declaration of a judge.
It is a creative work by an omnipotent
Creator.
Different kind of thing, you see.
And that takes place in the heart of
man.
It's an act of creative power.
Justification takes care of my condemnation in the
eyes of the law.
Regeneration takes care of the perversity and defilement
in the center core of my being.
That's what regeneration does.
Now, I like to illustrate it like this,
and I was talking to one of the
brothers about this earlier, I think it was
Brother Tom, were we talking about this thing
of the college student.
When I was in college, I used to
work hard to get an A, try to
get an A at the end of the
course.
And that's the way it always was, that's
the way it is for college students.
But there was one class I had that
was different.
I think God allowed it, just so I'd
be able to give this illustration.
And what happened, I didn't realize it until
years later, but what happened was we got
to class on the first day, and there
were just three or four of us, it
was a senior level class, it was actually
a chemistry class, and I had studied physics,
but they let me in because when you
get far enough in chemistry, you get into
physics.
And I was in there, and there was
two or three others, and we were all
majors, all studied this stuff for years.
The first day, the teacher said, I don't
want you to worry about your grade, you've
all got an A.
He gave us an A at the beginning
of the course.
Now, beloved, that's what justification is.
God gives you an A at the beginning
of the course.
He says, you've already got your A.
Now, there's two types of responses to that.
There's a response of the legalistic, pharisaical religious
man, the lost religious man who is trying
and striving to get his A at the
end of his life.
And he doesn't like that idea of justification
by faith.
He doesn't like that because the only reason
that he's toeing the line, and the only
reason he's reading his Bible, and the only
reason he's doing, quote, good works, is because
he's trying to get that A one day.
And he doesn't like the idea of God
giving that out freely.
And you know, actually, in his heart, he's
envious of these sinners that get to go
out and sin.
You know, I wish I could do that.
That's what he's thinking.
I wish I could do that.
And so he's mad about that.
That's the way the Jews were, many of
them.
On the other hand, you have this lawless,
immoral man that hears that stuff about getting
an A at the beginning of the course,
and he kind of likes that.
He said, well, now if I could get
an A at the beginning of the course,
then I could just tear my book up
and throw it in the trash can, spit
on the teacher, and go out and do
my own thing.
Now beloved, the vast majority of churches are
filled with people just like that.
And the theology of our day calls them
carnal Christians.
Now what about this?
Does God justify a man?
Does He pay for his sins legally, just
so that he can go ahead and steal
and murder and rape and pillage and have
immunity from ever being put in prison?
What kind of a God would that be?
The lost man has a higher opinion of
God than that.
Lost people, many times, they know at least
one thing.
If there's any God, He's got enough integrity
that He's not going to let a man
go to heaven without changing him.
You see?
God won't do that.
It's impossible.
And the answer to it is this.
At the same time God gives you that
A at the beginning of the course, He
fixes you up on the inside so that
you love to study the material.
And that's what regeneration is.
That's what it is.
What about it this afternoon?
Is there anything in you that just loves
God just because He's God?
That just loves to read the Bible?
Or do you read the Bible and study
the Bible?
You know, you have to do this.
I've got to do that in order to
try to earn this favor with God.
Is there even a little spark of just
love for God because He's so lovely?
And as pastors, I could ask you the
question, What about your people?
Do they read the Bible?
Do they study the Bible because they just
love God?
Or do you have to tongue lash them
and beat them and try to get them
to do that by being mean to them?
See the difference?
If you have to do that, you're dealing
with a bunch of goats, not sheep.
If you've got sheep, they love God because
that's what it is to be a Christian.
Christians follow God and walk with God because
they love God, not in order to try
to get eternal life.
That's something that has been given to us.
Every one Jesus said that hears my word
and believes Him has sent me has eternal
life, not something you hope to get one
day.
You have eternal life.
It's something that's given to you at the
beginning of your course.
Well, right off, as we approach this subject
of regeneration, I want to say this, we're
only going to scratch the surface.
And you knew that already, but I want
to say it again.
The Bible gives at least ten or twelve
representations of regeneration.
We're going to try to look at nine.
Every one of these is very instructive.
We'll try to look at three every day.
And as the Lord wills, that will be
the plan.
How does the Bible describe regeneration?
What is regeneration?
Well, first of all, it describes it as
a new creation.
So number one out of these nine things,
new creation.
And you see that from the word regeneration
itself.
This word palingenesis, again create, again plus genesis.
In other words, the Bible is saying that
what takes place in regeneration is something on
the order of what took place when God
spoke the universe into existence.
That's what we're dealing with when we talk
about regeneration.
Well, morally speaking, it's a bigger miracle that
God does anytime, anybody, anywhere becomes a Christian.
There's a recreative work on the part of
God.
2 Corinthians 5.17 of course comes to
mind.
Therefore, if any man...
Now, beloved, we've got to remember this, because
in our desire to believe the best about
people and stuff, we can soften it down.
But the fact is, if any man, anywhere,
be in Christ, he's a new creation.
He's a new creation.
There's a creative work that takes place and
he's new.
Old things have passed away.
All things have become new.
Any man, anywhere, he's a new creation.
You meet somebody that's not a new creation,
they're not a Christian.
It's a miracle, a creative miracle that takes
place.
Maybe we ought to turn there.
2 Corinthians 5.17. Notice what he says
in the next verse.
All these things are from God who reconciled
us to Himself through Christ.
All of this comes from God.
God is the one who does it all.
We have no part in this whatsoever.
A thing cannot create itself.
Isn't that obvious?
It'd have to be there first in order
to create itself.
What part did you have in your creation?
You didn't have any part in it because
you weren't there.
This is God's work, you see.
God does something.
He does a creative work in the heart
of man.
Well, the Bible calls this a creation over
and over.
Let's just look.
I want to turn to the various passages
and give you a feel for how frequent
this is.
Galatians 6.15. Here it comes up again.
Paul says, For neither is circumcision anything nor
uncircumcision.
One thing that matters.
New creation.
That's the bottom line.
It doesn't matter any type of external things.
It doesn't matter how many external things are
done to you.
Or how many external things you've done.
The only thing that matters is are you
a new creation?
Are you a new creature?
That's the only thing that matters.
And then in Ephesians 2.
These famous verses.
By grace are you saved through faith, that
not of yourselves.
It's a gift of God, not of works,
lest any man should boast.
Verse 10.
For we are His workmanship created.
Now, sometimes the words translated and some versions
translated made or make.
It's the very same word as this word
used in creations.
Very same root of the thing.
And it's created.
We are His workmanship.
Look at that.
We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus.
For good works which God has prepared beforehand
or foreordained that we should walk in them.
Now, think about this.
When Paul thinks about being saved by grace
through faith, automatically it comes into his mind
there's a creative work that took place.
We are His workmanship created.
You see that?
Same idea again.
This is a created work.
And he says God has created every Christian
that's been created.
He's been created in order to achieve something
that He has before ordained.
He's marked out.
And what He's before ordained is, is there's
going to be some good works that are
going to go on from there.
So God does a creative work and makes
this new man in such a way that
he'll walk in those good works.
He always will.
You see, they're ordained.
That's the way this work is.
He's prepared beforehand that we would walk in
them.
Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 15.
By abolishing in His flesh the enmity which
is the law of commandments contained in ordinances
that in Himself He might make, and here's
the word again, create the two into one
new man, that is Jew and Gentile, created
into one new man, thus establishing peace.
The whole church is a creation.
It is a created thing.
You cannot organize.
The church is not an organization.
It is a supernaturally created organism.
That's what the church is.
And the church is this new man.
The whole church is created as a new
man.
Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 20 and
leading on to verse 24.
He says, You did not learn Christ in
this way, if indeed you have heard Him
and have been taught in Him just as
truth is in Jesus, that in reference to
your former manner of life you lay aside
the old man which is being corrupted in
accordance with the lust of deceit, and that
you be renewed in the spirit of your
mind and put on the new man, which
according to God has been created in righteousness
and holiness of the truth.
Notice here, he says in verse 24, that
a new man has been created.
You see that?
Here again, the word created.
What's this new man like?
Well, he's created in righteousness and true holiness.
What's the description of this new man?
A new man created in righteousness and true
holiness.
Now, you see again here how real this
is?
Not just words he's talking about.
There's a new man that has been created
and he has characteristics about him.
This is something concrete we're talking about.
It's not just a figure of speech.
This new man has been created in righteousness
and true holiness.
That's the way this new man is.
Now in Colossians 3, the last one we'll
look at here.
Colossians 3 and verses 5 to 11.
If you read down through here, all this
is very rich.
But he says, "...mortify the members which are
upon the earth to immorality, impurity, passion, evil
desire, greed, which amounts to idolatry.
For it is on account of these things
that the wrath of God will come."
Notice in verse 7, "...in them you also
once walked when you were living in them.
But now you also put them all aside,
anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive speech, free mouth.
Do not lie to one another since you
laid aside the old man with its practices
and have put on the new man who
is being renewed to a true knowledge according
to the image of the One who created
him, in which there is no Greek and
Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and
free man, but Christ is all and in
all."
So here's this new man again that has
been created.
And he says in verse 12, "...as those
who have been chosen by God, holy and
beloved."
That's who Christians are.
They're holy and beloved, chosen of God.
So, first designation the Bible gives us, a
very important one.
Regeneration is a creative work.
And to summarize what it tells us, it
tells us right off the bat that we're
dealing here, not with a decision, but with
a miracle.
We're not talking about some decision man makes.
We're not talking about stepping out of the
line that's going to hell and stepping into
the line that goes to heaven.
We're talking about God doing a creative miracle.
And this representation that the Bible gives us
of regeneration tells us right off the bat,
man ultimately doesn't have any hand in this
at all.
God is the One that does this work
of regeneration.
Now you can get that just from the
very fact that it's called a new creation,
and He does it.
You see?
Very far reaching.
Just that one truth would destroy a host
of errors about regeneration.
God is the One who does this, and
it's a miracle.
Second representation the Bible gives us, regeneration is
a new man.
Now we read that several places here in
Ephesians 2, Ephesians 4, Colossians 3.
We won't read all those verses again.
But it's clear that a new man has
been created.
And the whole church we saw is a
new man, and every Christian is a new
man.
Now I'm not going to spend a lot
of time on it at this point, but
I just want to say this, a Christian
is not both an old man and a
new man.
He's not both an old man and a
new man.
What else?
The Christian does not have a new man
living inside of him.
He is a new man.
And even more so, he does not have
both an old man and a new man
living inside of him.
You know the white dog and the black
dog and that thing where they're fighting each
other?
That's a very defective theology.
He doesn't have a new man.
He is a new man, and he doesn't
have both an old man and a new
man inside of him.
The Christian is a new man.
Some of you know about Augustine.
He lived a very immoral life before he
was converted, and he was going down the
street one day after he was a Christian,
and one of his old girlfriends cried out
to him, Augustine, it is I, it is
I.
And he turned and looked at her and
he said, yes, but it is not I.
He was a new person.
You remember Jesus talking to Peter.
He says, you're Simon.
I mean, he knew him through and through.
You're Simon, but from now on, you're going
to be Peter.
And what happens when you become a Christian,
God radically changes you.
Some of you know Bob Jennings, that brother.
He was one characteristic of Bob Jennings.
He was always late until he became a
Christian.
Now he's the first one there.
What's happened?
Jesus said, you're Simon.
You're going to be Peter from now on.
Now, when you become a Christian, you've got
to start getting used to being Peter.
That's one thing that makes it so hard.
Like some of these college students get converted,
then they go back to their home and
everybody says, hi, Simon, hi, Simon.
That's not who they are anymore.
And you've got to explain to people, and
a brand new Christian, you know, it's a
process, isn't it?
I'm not Simon.
You've got the wrong person.
I'm Peter now.
That's what he's talking about.
Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.
Realize who you are now.
Realize what God has done for you.
Realize who you are.
If you're a Christian, you are a new
man.
And the call of the New Testament is,
realize who you are and now live according
to who you are.
That's why he says, put on these deeds
of the new man.
In other words, act like who you are.
Start being and practice what God has made
you to be on the inside.
That's the New Testament way of teaching growth
in grace.
Realize who you are.
Believe that.
Realize it.
Enter into it and then start to act
consistently with who you are.
You know, it matters how you view yourself.
If you still think of yourself as that
same old rotten person that you were, you
know, sin has something to say for itself.
And you've got to try to become something
that you're not.
Now, that's not the Bible way of teaching
growth in grace.
You don't have to try to become something
you're not.
All you've got to do is be who
you are.
That's what's got to be done.
You've got to just become who you really
are.
If you view yourself as essentially, in the
core of your being, both good and evil,
again, evil's got something to say for itself.
It really fits you in some ways.
No, it doesn't.
It doesn't fit you at all if you're
a Christian.
It goes against who you are and I
can prove it, it grieves you.
Every time you sin, it grieves who you
really are.
If you're a Christian, you're a new man
at the very center of your being and
that is the ultimate truth about you.
Deep down, God has put a new life
within you, His very life.
Now, that's not the only truth about you.
There is a more superficial truth about you
that has to do with the fact that
your body has not yet been redeemed.
We're waiting for the adoption to wit the
redemption of our bodies.
And until we get that redeemed body, we're
still going to have a conflict with sin.
That's not the deepest truth about us, it's
not the ultimate truth about us, but it's
still one aspect of our lives and the
Bible calls that the flesh.
That's not who you really are and you
don't have to live and walk in the
flesh.
That's the message.
You're a new person.
That's not who you really are anymore.
Here's a guy that was an alcoholic all
his life, he becomes a Christian, all of
a sudden on the inside he's a new
man.
He doesn't want that anymore.
He walks by the bar and that smell
of whiskey, his flesh might want to go
in there.
He doesn't.
And you've got to realize you don't have
to walk after the flesh, you can walk
in the Spirit and not fulfill the lust
of the flesh, you see.
Now, I want to belabor this a little
bit.
I like an illustration that I read one
time.
There's a factory here that's all set up
and it produces poison gas.
It's an instrument of death.
And some new management comes in with a
lot of money and they buy the place
out and they take over and they say
we're not going to produce cyanide anymore, we're
going to produce oxygen.
Total switch.
Life-giving.
And so we've bought this place and we're
taking over.
So what happens?
The old board of directors, they don't move
over into a room right beside the main
office and sit in there and yell orders
back and forth.
They move out.
And the new board of directors moves in.
You see, that's what we're talking about.
You don't have both an old man and
a new man.
You have Christ in you.
You have the life of Christ.
The old man's out of there.
And a sign goes up out front and
says oxygen factory.
Well, is it?
Yeah, it is.
It's under new management now at the very
center of things.
Now you go out there and walk around
and look at the machinery and say, what's
this thing doing here?
What's this old cyanide container doing here?
Say, this must not be an oxygen factory.
This is a poison gas factory.
No, the fact is it's an oxygen factory
and all this junk's going to get cleared
out.
It's just going to take a little bit
of time.
You see that?
Sin has no chance of living in a
Christian.
It's not going to make it.
And if we can realize, now look at
here, I'm a new creation.
I don't have to live that way anymore.
And that is doomed.
It's going to pass away.
There's no hope for it.
And I'm not going to walk that path
anymore.
I'm going to become who I am.
That's what we're talking about here.
I love the account of Nicky Cruz.
He was a gang member in New York
City.
Went wild at the sight of blood.
He'd go into these gang wars with a
garbage can over his head and a baseball
bat swinging.
And the night he was converted, he went
back to his room and he stood in
front of the mirror.
He still had his revolver on and he
still had his knife.
And he looked in the mirror and said,
so Nicky's going to be an angel now.
Well, that's the reality.
He didn't look like it, but it was
just a few days before that gun was
gone and that knife was gone.
You see?
Here's a brand new Christian driving down the
road, breaking the speed limit like crazy, singing
and praising, worshiping God.
That's much more pleasing to God than the
most self-righteous Pharisee holding right to the
speed limit.
See that?
Don't get carried away over there.
What is regeneration?
It's a new creation.
It's a new man.
We become a new man.
Now, the third one we want to look
at, it's the giving of a new heart.
A new heart.
Ezekiel 36.
We'll be looking in Ezekiel and in Jeremiah.
Ezekiel 36.
These glorious promises of the new covenant.
Verse 22, Therefore say to the house of
Israel, thus says the Lord God, it is
not for your sake, O house of Israel,
that I am about to act, but for
My holy name, which you have profaned among
the nations where you went.
And I will vindicate the holiness of My
great name, which has been profaned among the
nations which you have profaned in their midst.
Then the nations will know that I am
the Lord, declares the Lord God, when I
prove Myself holy among you in their sight.
For I will take you from the nations,
gather you from all the lands, and bring
you into your own land.
Then I will sprinkle clean water on you,
and you will be clean.
I will cleanse you from all your filthiness
and from all your idols.
Moreover, I will give you a new heart
and put a new spirit within you.
And I will remove...
Don't you like all these I wills?
I will.
I will remove the heart of stone from
your flesh and give you a heart of
flesh.
And I will put My Spirit within you
and cause you to walk in My statutes,
and you will be careful to observe My
ordinances.
And you will live in the land that
I gave to your forefathers, so you will
be My people and I will be your
God.
Moreover, I will save you from all your
uncleanness."
Now, some of these promises have to do
with the return of Israel to the land.
But in a deeper sense, they're quoted in
the New Testament referring to the New Covenant
and what God does in the work of
regeneration.
They go way beyond just anything physical and
have to do with this miracle of regeneration.
What will God do?
Well, He says that He will give us
a new heart.
Now, if you've ever felt what it's like,
the burden of that bile innermost being, what
a promise this is.
I'll take this heart of stone out of
you.
This cold, unfeeling thing, and I'm going to
put something in you that's alive and sensitive
and living.
I'll take that out and I'll put My
Spirit within you and I'll cause you to
walk in My statutes.
These are promises.
It's impossible, you see, to keep on going
the other way when God puts His Spirit
within you and causes you to walk in
His statutes.
Let's look at another one.
Jeremiah 31.
And this is the very promise that's quoted
in Hebrews 8, you remember.
Verse 31, Behold, days are coming, declares the
Lord, when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel and with the
house of Judah, not like the covenant which
I made with their fathers in the day
I took them by the hand to bring
them out of the land of Egypt, My
covenant which they broke.
Although I was a husband to them, declares
the Lord.
But this is the covenant which I will
make with the house of Israel after those
days, declares the Lord.
I will.
Here we go again.
I will put My law within them and
on their heart I will write it.
And I will be their God and they
shall be My people.
And they shall not teach again each man
his neighbor and each man his brother, saying,
Know the Lord.
For they shall all know Me from the
least of them to the greatest of them,
declares the Lord.
For I will forgive their iniquity and their
sin.
I will remember no more.
The promise of the new covenant.
Now look, here's justification.
I'll forgive their iniquities, their sins.
I'll remember no more.
We talked about that earlier.
Oh well, my sins will be forgiven.
He'll remember them no more.
The whole category has gone out of God's
sight.
Now I can just live like the devil.
No, you've got to get the whole new
covenant, you see.
What's the rest of it?
I'll write My laws on their heart.
Regeneration.
See how they go together?
Both those things.
If we could just even study the new
covenant and realize what's involved, we'll get a
lot of what it means to be a
Christian because this is what it means.
I'll forgive those sins.
I'll write My law on their heart.
And every single one in the new covenant
will have a personal knowledge of God.
Well, think of this.
He says, I'll write My law on their
heart.
I'll put My law within them.
In the old covenant, the law was on
the outside of the man.
It was written on tablets of stone and
the law comes to the natural man and
it tells him what he ought to do
and what he ought to be, but it
does not give him the desire nor the
ability to be that.
Now God says, I'm going to do something
a lot better than that.
I'm not going to give you rules and
externals.
I'm going to put it on the inside.
It's what I said a little bit earlier.
If you've got to beat people into doing
stuff and tongue lash them into doing stuff,
it means they're not a new creation.
You're putting the law on them from the
outside to try to restrain a rebellious people
to get them to do what they ought
to be doing and what they would do
if they had a new heart.
He says, I'll write My law on the
inside of you.
The best that external law can do is
to give you an external righteousness.
And that's what those scribes and Pharisees had.
Jesus said, you're like cups all clean.
Take this cup that's full of filthy stuff
and just clean up the outside really good
and set it up there on the shelf.
That's what's going on.
He said, you're like graves, you know, that
don't appear.
Here you are out here.
You're lying in this green grass.
Everything's beautiful.
You don't realize there's a skeleton there about
two inches below the surface of the ground.
That's the kind of thing that the natural
man is.
He has an external righteousness at best.
But in the New Covenant and in regeneration,
God puts His law within and on the
heart.
In other words, this is the same promise
as Ezekiel 36.
I'll give you a new heart that loves
Me.
Now let's look at one more passage and
then we'll try to sum these things up.
Jeremiah 32.
Jeremiah 32 and beginning at verse 38.
Here again, we have this New Covenant.
He says, they shall be My people and
I will be their God and I will
give them one heart and one way that
they may fear Me always for their own
good and for the good of their children
after them.
And I will make an everlasting covenant with
them.
There's that New Covenant.
I'll make an everlasting covenant with them that
I will not turn away from them to
do them good and I will put the
fear of Me in their hearts so that
they will not turn away from Me.
And I will rejoice over them to do
them good and I will faithfully plant them
in this land with all My heart and
with all My soul.
Now notice here, this is the everlasting covenant.
It's the New Covenant.
Not just talking about Jews here, but we're
talking about Christians.
Notice, all Christians have one heart.
That's what He says.
I will give them one heart.
It doesn't say all Christians ought to have
one heart.
This is a promise of the New Covenant.
Every Christian has the same heart.
If you don't have the same heart with
this fellow here, I mean, in turn, we're
talking about spiritual reality, the things of God.
You're not dealing with a Christian or else
you're not a Christian.
You know, when people talk all the time,
I feel like I'm on the outside.
I just feel like I'm on the outside.
A lot of times they are on the
outside.
They don't know what it is to fellowship
with God's people.
They don't have the same heart.
I mean, you can meet a Christian, a
true Christian.
Right after I became a Christian myself, I
met a guy on a bus one time
at night and I still remember him to
this day.
I remember his name.
Why?
We had the same heart.
That's why.
It didn't take ten minutes, you know, of
talking with him.
I will give them one heart.
All Christians have the same heart.
Don't let anything move you away from the
miracle of regeneration.
All Christians are new creations.
If any man anywhere be in Christ, he's
a new creation.
Everything old is gone and everything is new.
New things have come.
And every Christian has the same heart.
I'll tell you what else.
Every Christian has the same way.
I will give them one heart and I'll
give them one way.
He gives it to the Christian.
Now some are moving faster than others.
You know, I just kind of snail along
and watch these guys go ahead.
But you're going in the right direction anyway.
See that?
Every Christian is going in the same direction,
aren't they?
I'll give them one way.
Every single Christian.
Now, here's a guy going the opposite direction.
He says, I'm a Christian.
You know what he is?
He's a liar.
He who says I've come to know Him
and keeps not His commandments is a liar.
He's not a carnal Christian.
He's a liar.
And the truth is not in him.
Well, what do we learn from all this
in this teaching regarding the new heart?
First of all, all true Christians live a
changed life.
Someone says, well, that person's a Christian, but
he's lived his whole life in sin.
That's ridiculous.
That's impossible.
That's a lie.
It can never be.
Here's another one.
That person's a Christian, but he's never grown.
That's impossible.
I will cleanse you from all your filthiness
and all your idols.
That means God will not rest until He
makes you like Jesus.
And there's a long way to go.
I mean, there's a lot of work and
He will not stop.
You say, well, I've made it this far.
I've just got this one little thing.
Huh.
God's not going to leave that one little
thing.
I'll guarantee that.
I'll cleanse you from all your filthiness and
all your idols.
Aren't you thankful?
Don't you praise God that God would not
leave me alone?
I don't want Him to leave me alone.
Why not?
Because I've got a new heart.
You see that?
I'll cleanse you.
It's a promise.
I'm not going to stop with you.
He's telling you that.
That's how we know that all things work
together for good to those who love God
because God predestined every one of them to
be just like Jesus.
And therefore, everything that's happening to me is
happening for my good, not for my comfort,
but to make me like Christ.
I will not stop.
He says, I'm not going to stop.
I'll cleanse you from all your filthiness and
all your idols.
You see, somebody's not growing.
I'm not talking about a snap decision when
you meet somebody.
I mean, if we had met David in
the midst of his worst times.
But I'm talking about the overview of the
life.
They're going the same way.
They're going that direction and they're moving towards
conformity to Christ.
Every single Christian is.
Because God has regenerated them.
They're in the new covenant.
When he says, I will be their God,
I'm thankful for that.
He's not just talking about provision, protection, and
those things.
He's saying, I'm going to rule over you
with a mighty arm and an outstretched hand.
I'm going to be your God.
And don't we want that too?
We want Him to be our God in
every way, shape, and form.
If there's some other idol in our life,
some other rotten, dirty God that we're bowing
down to, even if it looks respectable, we
want that thing ripped out, don't we?
We want Him to be our God and
we want to be His people.
And that's His promise.
He says, I will be.
I'm not going to stop until I am
your God in every way, shape, and form.
What else do we learn from this?
Well, when we talk about a new heart,
we learn that all true Christians will persevere
in holiness.
Look at verse 40 here.
He says, I will make an everlasting covenant
with them that I will not turn away
from them to do them good.
And I will put the fear of me
in their hearts so that they will not
turn away from me.
God says, I'll not only be faithful to
My side of this thing, but I'm going
to work in you so you'll be faithful.
He does that by regeneration.
That's a very different thing than this flip
it and once saved, always saved the way
it's often used.
You know, a guy accepts Jesus and then
goes and lives like the devil all his
life and goes to heaven.
That's a lie.
I'll put the fear of me in you
so that you won't turn away from me.
We're not talking about, when we talk about
eternal security, we're not talking about a Christian
goes into a room and God slams the
door and puts a lock on it and
he's beating on it trying to get out
and he can't get out.
It says in Hebrews 11, if they had
been mindful of that country from which they
came, truly they would have had opportunity to
return to it.
You want to go back to the world?
Well, go ahead.
You've got the opportunity.
Everything's wide open.
Well, what's it say?
Now they're mindful of a better country, a
heavenly one.
They don't want to go back there.
You remember there in the Passover, they said
stay inside your house until morning.
Stay under the blood.
The blood's in there.
Stay in there until morning.
Outside's the death angel.
What would have happened if they had gone
out there?
They'd drop over dead.
But they didn't go out there.
Why would you want to?
Why, you want to get killed?
Nobody wants to.
If God has put the fear of Him
in your heart, you won't turn away from
Him.
You love Him.
You fear Him.
You want to follow Him.
You see that?
That's a blessed thing because it's a type
of security in reality that ties in with
the character of God.
He's a God who hates sin not just
in a legal way, but He hates it
period.
And He'll save us in a way that
corresponds to both His righteousness legally and His
righteousness of character.
And that's what regeneration has to do with.
Well, amen.
Lord willing, we'll go on tomorrow and look
at three more of the designations that Scripture
gives us concerning regeneration.