From time to time God's Spirit has guided
us to break from our normal studies in
Romans and concentrate on some topic that he
wanted us to think of as a family.
And I sensed this morning that I should
share not on the subject in the bulletin,
but on simply how to be born again.
Just explain simply and plainly how to be
born again.
And I thought that was important to do
because the phrase is so popular today.
And there are so many ideas going round
about the new birth.
And yet, the new birth has always been
the same down through the centuries.
And there are not many ways to be
born again.
There is only one way to be born
again.
And so I'd ask you if you would
be good enough to forget even the things
you know about it.
And just let's coolly and calmly and quietly
deal with this magnificent truth that God has
given us.
Why do we need to be born again?
Answer, because there's a tragic flaw in our
personalities.
There's a radical flaw in our personalities.
There's a crookedness in us that we all
feel.
And we feel it should be straight.
There's a disintegration that we are all aware
of.
And we feel there should be integration instead.
That's why we need to be born again.
The answer is almost the same as anything
that comes from a factory and either at
the factory or in transit.
It was in some way damaged.
Then it has to be sent back to
the factory and made again.
That's why we need to be born again.
What is the radical flaw?
You'll recognize it immediately I give you the
illustration.
You're going home one night about five o
'clock to your roommate or to your partner
or to your family.
And you decide it's springtime and I feel
happy and I want to make them happy
tonight.
So you buy flowers or you buy ice
cream.
And you go home looking forward to making
them happy.
You get home.
There's nobody home.
So you make a cup of coffee.
Put the flowers in the vase or put
the ice cream in the freezer.
And you drink the coffee.
And there's still nobody home.
And then you turn the television on.
And you watch for a while and then
your tummy rumbles.
And you have another cup of coffee.
And then you get out the potato chips.
And you take some potato chips.
And you sit there for about another half
hour.
And then an unbelievable thing happens.
Right alongside that beautiful, kindly, generous desire you
have to make them happy, there springs up
another attitude that is utterly different.
And it's an attitude that begins to say,
Where on earth are they?
And it just grows and grows.
And the two desires are going along inside.
And it's unbelievable to you.
You can't imagine how an evening that was
to be so perfect can turn out to
be so lonely and so tummy rumbling.
And at last, of course, they arrive home
at 9.30. And they tell you that
they forgot to mention that they were going
shopping that evening.
Well, they don't meet an ordinary human being.
By this time, you are a raving lunatic.
And you lay on them every error they
ever committed over the past centuries.
And you tell them off for spoiling your
evening.
And then as you stalk up to bed,
the corner of your eye catches the sight
of the flowers or the ice cream that
you were going to use to give them
such a happy evening.
And, of course, your heart just sinks.
That's what I mean, loved ones, about a
radical flaw in our personalities.
All of us human beings are aware that
there is one side of us that seems
to want to be unselfish and good and
kind and outgoing.
But alongside that, there is another side of
us that wants to be cruel and wants
to be selfish and wants to take in
for itself.
It's as if we're schizophrenic.
It's as if there isn't one personality inside
us, but there seem to be two.
There seems to be a Dr. Jekyll who
is kind and loving and unselfish.
And there seems at the same time to
be a Mr. Hyde who is cruel and
selfish and hates.
And our world is full of books of
all kinds and techniques of all kinds for
somehow lessening this conflict or modifying it so
that at least we can get on with
our lives in some sane fashion.
And these books continually work on the principle
that we should try to lessen the evil
side in us as much as possible.
The evil side of our temperaments we should
lessen by habits of mind control, by ways
of thinking about people and thinking about ourselves
that will somehow diminish the evil to the
point where it virtually disappears.
But virtually is the key word.
Because what all of us have found is
that that's all these techniques or these books
ever managed to do.
They seem to diminish the evil side of
our temperaments to the point where it almost
disappears.
But somehow we find that what we're really
doing is trying to encourage the good side
of us to be stronger and stronger so
that it can control the bad side of
us.
And now we've discovered that the good side
only wants to do that so far, up
to a certain point.
And then we find that the good side
that we're trying to encourage, it seems to
break away in all directions itself.
It seems to be shot through with evil
too.
And there comes a time when even it
doesn't want to control the bad side.
And so we find that the two are
so inextricably mixed that at times we can't
tell when the good is uppermost and when
the evil is uppermost or when one is
winning and the other is losing.
And we've got to the point where we
see you just can't.
You can't tell.
For a while it seems the good is
working and then that good seems to break
away in all kinds of directions, shattered.
And it seems the only thing to do
is to destroy the whole thing and start
all over again.
And that's why we need to be born
again.
Because there is a radical flaw that runs
right through the center of each of our
personalities that is utterly debilitating and destructive to
anything we want to be.
And that's always what we're saying.
The good side is fighting against the bad
side so that I can't do what I
want to do.
Now, how did that come about?
Where did those good urges come from?
Well, loved ones, those good urges come from
the remains of the influence of the spirit
of your Creator inside you.
And there is that influence, you know.
Even the worst person here in this room
has part of the influence of the spirit
of our Creator inside them.
And at times that produces good urges.
Good, outgoing, unselfish desires to help other people
even if it means having to forget ourselves.
Those urges come from the remains of the
influence of God's spirit in your life.
And you can see that God Himself is
clearly that kind of person.
I mean, He is generous to the nth
degree.
God is extravagant in His generosity.
These spring mornings, one bird, two birds, no!
A whole hallelujah chorus and orchestra, you know.
And one's whistling and the other's chirping and
all kinds of singing is going on.
And water, a lake here, a lake there,
no!
Two-thirds of the world's surface, you know,
covered with this stuff.
And plenty of salt in it so that
we can deluge the French coast with oil
and the almighty sea will keep lapping it
and lapping it until after three years it's
washed it all away.
And underneath the ocean, colors that none of
us will ever see, colors that nobody will
ever see.
And yet that's our God, you know, generous
and extravagant and outgoing all the time.
And the urges that you feel to be
like that come from the remains of His
spirit inside you.
Now, God Himself is absolute love.
And so He made you, made you completely
unique and sent you here to earth to
do work for Him in bringing His world
into the center of His will.
And He gave you a love and a
life of His own that you can express
in a unique way that nobody else can.
And so He intended you to come and
do a definite job here for Him.
And then because you would work so closely
to Him, you'd sense His approval upon your
life and you'd be just content.
You'd go to bed each night really content
with your situation.
And of course, because you'd fit into His
old economic scheme for the world, you'd have
all the money and all the clothing that
you'd need.
And so you'd live your life in a
real sense of contentment and peace because you
were doing what your Maker sent you to
do.
Now, the security and the happiness and the
sense of significance that comes from that original
plan of God for your life, some of
that still remains in you from time to
time and sends up an odd, unselfish act
and an odd, kind word.
Because that was God's plan, you see, that
you would have so much security, so much
happiness, so much sense of significance yourself that
you could spend your whole life pouring that
out to other people.
And so the remains of that are still
in you.
And at times, you can get up on
a spring morning and you can feel all
is well with the world.
And there were odd moments in your life
when you could sense, yeah, things are right
and, oh, life is great.
And at those moments, you're able to send
out some kindliness or some unselfish thought for
somebody else.
But, of course, what happened was that our
forefathers rebelled against this whole plan that the
Creator had for us to pour forth His
love and His life.
And they resolved that they would live their
own life and be their own God.
And however intimate was the father-child relationship
that God had planned, they said, no, we
don't want that.
We want to be our own gods.
We want to set our own directions for
our own lives.
We want to pick our own jobs.
We want to make our own happiness.
We want to establish our own security.
And so our forefathers, years ago, rebelled against
that whole plan of God.
And, of course, immediately they cut themselves off
from God and from the sense of love
that He gave them.
They had to find it somewhere else.
And, of course, they began to look in
other places.
And that's where they began to insist on
their own rights and insist on their own
ways and determine their own goals and get
their own way whatever happened to anybody else.
And that, loved ones, is what is called
sin.
Sin is not individual acts and words.
Sin is that whole attitude to God.
No, I want to be God.
I want to run my own life.
I want to determine what I'm going to
do.
I want to get my own way.
I want to decide how much I'm going
to suffer or how much I'm not going
to suffer.
And that sin was bred into our race
down through the centuries and that's what you
find rising up within you at times.
That's it.
It's something that's bigger than you yourself.
That's why you can't control it.
You notice that.
You notice if you lose your temper when
you know you should keep your temper.
If you are irritable when you know you
should be patient.
If you're cruel to your dear one when
you know you should be loving.
You notice that it's something that seems to
take hold of you.
It seems to rise up inside you and
you can't control it.
Now, that's because it's sin.
It's a power that our forefathers developed and
bred into the generation after generation.
An attitude to God and an attitude of
self-righteousness in ourselves that is bred into
us and is passed on to us from
generation to generation.
Now, as well as that urge inside you
that sends up those desires to hurt people
and to walk over the top of people,
there's another problem.
God made our personalities to work one way.
Out that way.
That's the way His goes.
You will need to look at His Son
Jesus to see not a thought for the
wounds in the hands.
Not a thought for the wound in the
side.
Not a thought for His own discomfort.
But always going out to other people.
Always loving.
Always giving out.
And that's what God is like Himself.
And God planned for our personalities to operate
that way.
Going out.
Having the love that we receive from Him
and giving it out to others.
Having the security that we have from Him,
from knowing that He will supply every need
of ours and then giving freely to others.
Having the sense of significance and identity that
comes from doing what He wants us to
do here on earth and then giving other
people a sense of worth and a sense
of value instead of taking it from them.
And, of course, we cut ourselves off from
all the source of that love.
And so inside we have nothing to give
out.
In fact, we have a vacuum inside us.
And so we began to take in from
the only source we could get.
And so we began to try to beat
out the other three and a half million
people here on this earth to get enough
food, shelter and clothing for us, ourselves.
We found, of course, we never had enough.
We found we always wanted more.
We started to beat out hundreds of other
people to try to beat them into a
sense of respect for us so that they
would give us some sense of significance.
And instead of giving out to others, we
began to drain from others.
Worst of all, we took some of our
most intimate relationships where we should have been
giving freely the love that God was giving
us.
And we began to use our wives and
our friends for our own enjoyment.
And then if we had any time left,
we tried to give them a little.
But usually we hadn't.
And so our whole personalities turned in.
And the personality that was to go out
like that started to work in this way
so that, do you see, the personality itself
became twisted.
So we not only had an urge within
us of sin to have our own way
and to establish our own rights, but we
also had a personality now that became twisted
and perverted so that it was as if,
you know, the Spirit of God is somehow
still in all of us in some sense.
Your little conscience at times is trying to
send out something good.
So the Spirit of God tries to send
out weakly some kindliness and some generosity to
other people, but it's as if the pure
fresh water is there, but it can't get
out of the reservoir because the pipeline is
now running uphill.
The personality is working in this way.
And the Spirit's trying to get out, but
the personality has got used for years to
taking in.
For years the personality has been taking in
from other people.
The Spirit of God wants to go out
to somebody this morning from you and compliment
them.
Compliment them.
The Spirit of God wants to say something
nice to somebody through you this morning.
But you've been so used to trying to
persuade yourself in other people's eyes that you
alone are worth complimenting that you're always searching
for compliments.
You're always looking for praise.
You're always looking for men's approval.
So it's as if the fresh clear water
wants to get out of the reservoir, but
the pipeline is running downhill now and the
water can't get up, and instead all the
drain water from all the surrounding hills filters
down this pipeline.
And so inside you, you find a tremendous
conflict.
Some little weak desires go out to be
kind and loving, but coming in is this
personality that is utterly reversed and perverted.
Now, loved ones, that's the mess that we
are in.
And you can see that every human technique
will do nothing but modify that or mellow
it out a little.
But you can see there is a perversion
that has taken place in these personalities that
you can never fix.
No surgery by a physical medical surgeon will
ever do the job.
You yourself can never change that personality.
It always wants to come in like that.
The only one who can change it is
the one who originally made it.
That personality has to be utterly destroyed, and
a new outgoing one that was God's original
plan has to be created.
Otherwise, there's no point in God giving His
Spirit of life to us, because that dear
little spirit will continue to be imprisoned within
us.
It will never get out to others.
Now, that's why a new birth is needed.
And that's what God did in Jesus.
He took your perverted, reversed personality, and He
took all that evil desire to make yourself
God, and to have your own way, and
to establish your own rights in the world
at anybody else's expense, and He put that
into His Son, Jesus, and He destroyed it
there.
That's the part of the Gospel that applies
to the new birth.
Now, loved ones, it might be good if
you just look at it.
It's 2 Corinthians, and it's chapter 5, and
verse 21.
It's the piece that we read as the
New Testament lesson.
2 Corinthians 5, and verse 21.
It's page 1006.
For our sake, He made Him to be
sin who knew no sin, so that in
Him we might become the righteousness of God.
God took the sin inside you, the independence
of Him, the urge to be your own
God, and He put it into Jesus, and
He destroyed it there.
And you see in verse 17 that that
means it's possible to create you anew, because
He did the same with your reversed, perverted
personality.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is
a new creation.
Why?
Because the old has passed away.
Behold, the new has come.
Now, some people think the new can come
without the old passing away.
And so there's a light teaching of the
new birth today that is popular.
And it says, just believe, just believe the
Lord, believe the Lord.
It's that kind of theory, sit back and
let it happen, baby.
And it just does not work, loved ones,
it does not work.
Because God knows that if the old creation
is not destroyed, the new will be absolutely
suffocated within.
And the problem is not God's unwillingness to
give us the Holy Spirit.
We already have in some sense the remains
of God's influence of the Holy Spirit within
us when we sense in our conscience that
we should do certain things that are right.
The problem is not on God's part.
The problem is on ours.
Unless we are willing for Him to destroy
the old creation completely in His Son, He
cannot do anything to recreate us and to
make us born again.
So it used to be in the old
days, in the old liberal days, when liberalism
ruled the roost in theology, people said, imitate
Jesus.
It's impossible, of course, because the old self
won't let you imitate Him.
But now there's a great deal of theorizing,
just receive Jesus, and that's all you need.
No, you'll crucify the dear Savior again inside
you, if that's all you do.
You'll crucify Him afresh inside you.
Unless you are willing for this intern personality,
for this deification of self to be destroyed
in Him.
Now, how do you do it?
You can't do it.
Only the Holy Spirit can.
Jesus said, the Holy Spirit will take of
the things that are mine, and He will
share them with you.
And the Greek word for share means He'll
make them real to you.
He'll make them real in your life.
Only the Holy Spirit can actualize in you
the complete reversing of your personality that took
place in Jesus' death.
You can't do it at all.
So do you see, you're utterly at the
mercy of the Holy Spirit.
That's the one that we've to deal with
in order to be born of God.
We've to deal with the Holy Spirit.
Now, the Holy Spirit is already dealing with
you this morning and in past days.
He has already pointed out some things in
your life that evidence that you are working
on an intern personality.
That evidence that you are still deifying self.
The Holy Spirit has put His finger on
some attitudes in you, some critical attitudes that
are obviously treating everybody else as the minions
and you as the great God who judges
them.
The Holy Spirit has put His finger on
some actions of yours that are dishonest, some
stealing that you have done, some dishonest words
that you use to other people to make
them think better of you than they ought
to think.
The Holy Spirit has already put His finger
on different things in your life that show
you clearly that you are not crucified with
Christ and you're not willing to stop soaking
life in from other people.
You're not willing to begin to live on
God alone.
The Holy Spirit has already pointed those things
out to you.
Loved ones, the first step in coming to
a new birth is agreeing with the Holy
Spirit about those things.
Stop pretending that they're just personality shortcomings.
Stop pretending that they're something that you'll gradually
grow out of.
Where the Holy Spirit points out sin in
your life, agree with Him.
That's what confess means.
Confess means agree with God.
And that's what God has said.
If you'll confess your sins, I am faithful
and just to forgive you your sins.
One of the reasons I wanted to share
this this morning was that I think some
of you are superficial about sin.
You're a little lighthearted about sin.
I was glad when several couples came to
me and said, Look, we've been living together
and we know that that is wrong.
And we are both in Jesus and we
want to be married.
But loved ones, do you see, that ought
not to exist in the heart of a
loved one who is born again.
So, I say to you, if you're fornicating
or you're being promiscuous, forget the new birth.
Stop saying you're born of God.
You are not born of God if you're
still disagreeing with the Holy Spirit on the
basic, most plain commandments of the Father.
So, you have to start agreeing with Him.
But it's the same with, you know, those
of us who think we're so religious and
continue to be critical of other people, continue
to gossip about other people.
If the Holy Spirit has said, Do you
agree that that is not Christ?
Do you agree that that is still you
living off the world and of other people?
Loved ones, you have to agree.
If you are going to either move into
a new birth or if you're going to
continue to be born again, you must continue
to agree with the dear Holy Spirit.
Because the Holy Spirit is a sensitive gentleman.
He says, Behold, I stand at the door
and knock.
If any man hear my voice and open
the door, but he'll have to open the
door, I will come in and will sup
with him and he with me.
But if he doesn't open the door, I
won't knock it down.
The Holy Spirit is unable to actualize the
victory of Jesus' death in your personality unless
you respond to Him instantly.
I think a lot of you are in
trouble because you're still arguing with the Holy
Spirit.
I really do.
And I know it in my own life.
I find it less easy to sense the
closeness of Jesus or to sense the complete
new transformation and creation that He's wrought in
my life if at any time I step
back a little from what the Holy Spirit
is saying.
The first step is confession.
The second step is, and listen to this,
stop doing it.
Stop doing it.
That's what repentance is.
Jesus said, Except you repent, you will all
likewise perish.
You must repent.
Be sorry.
Use up three boxes of Kleenex and say
you'll try harder next time.
No!
That isn't repentance.
You stop doing the thing.
You stop sinning.
You stop it.
We're such weak-kneed little creatures, you know.
We accept all the brainwashing that anybody gives
us and now, of course, we all cry
out, Oh, I can't, I can't, I can't.
You can.
And why?
Because God has put you into Jesus and
destroyed all in you that wouldn't obey Him
and has recreated you anew.
It's been done.
The thing has been done.
All you have to do is act in
the light of the fact that you're a
new creation.
You just do it.
And every time Satan says, But you failed
a thousand times before.
For years you've been doing this thing.
Yes, but I am a new creation.
The old has passed away and all things
have become new.
My old self.
You are right about that, Satan, but that
has been crucified with Christ.
And I am now operating on the basis
of the miracle that God has wrought in
Jesus.
And you stop sinning.
Loved ones, anybody here who is still sinning
wants to sin.
That's right.
No, you can play the noble sinner stuff.
And I played it for years.
Oh, no.
I really want to stop sinning.
God has arranged the miracle in Jesus.
He has destroyed all in you that used
to sin.
All you have to do is agree with
that and stop sinning.
And it's essential to do it.
And I don't know how you all are
behaving in your marriages, but if any of
you even dream of swearing at each other
or touching each other physically in a way
that would be hurtful or in a way
that would be unkind, you have no experience
of the new birth.
You are pretending.
Because one who is born of God's Spirit
is gentle as Jesus is, is kind as
Jesus is, is pure as Jesus is.
That's what it is.
That's what the new birth is.
The new birth isn't the old struggle that
Plato and Socrates had to endure.
The new birth isn't the old struggle that
you yourself had to endure where you tried
to beat down the evil in order to
more or less 60% of the time
do good.
The new birth is a mighty change that
God works in your heart through faith in
Christ whereby He implants in you the desires
of Jesus and the love of Jesus.
And He does that if you're willing.
Loved ones, that's it.
The heart of the new birth is your
willingness.
The heart of the new birth is not
even the believing.
It's not the believing.
It's not even this, oh, receive Jesus.
You have to receive Jesus.
But that's not the difficulty of the new
birth.
There's no problem in receiving Jesus if you're
willing to let Jesus be Lord of your
life.
But if you're not willing for Him to
be Lord of your life, what you receive
is an evil spirit that imitates Jesus.
And that's why you have such an unsatisfactory
Christian experience.
But Jesus comes in when you're willing to
repent.
That is, you stop doing the things.
If you say to me, what if I
do it again tomorrow?
Then you stop doing it again tomorrow.
What if you do it again the next
day?
Then you stop doing it the next day.
I'm not talking about never sinning.
I'm just saying you set your mind ruthlessly
and relentlessly against sin.
You determine that you will fight sin in
your life at every corner.
You declare war, unconditional war on sin in
your life.
And you stop it every time you become
aware of it.
And you confess it to Jesus.
And you move on in obedience.
And you keep doing that until He brings
you into a full understanding of what He
has done for you on the cross.
But loved ones, unless you do that, you're
playing with the thing.
Confess, repent, consecrate.
I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies
of God, that you present your bodies, a
living sacrifice unto God, which is your spiritual
and reasonable service.
You give yourself to God.
You say, Lord, I'm willing to be the
kind of child that Jesus was.
I'm willing to live as He lived for
you alone.
I give myself to you.
I separate myself from all other lesser purposes
that I had in mind about bank accounts
and homes and futures and successes.
And I give myself to you.
Do what you want with my life.
Loved ones, if you honestly confess, and you
honestly repent, and you honestly with all your
heart consecrate, God gives the Holy Spirit of
His Son to you.
He sends the Spirit of His Son into
your heart.
And a beautiful new person is born inside
by miraculous supernatural power.
And you begin to find sweet water coming
out from inside.
You begin to find love rising instead of
hate.
And you begin to find a kindly spirit
coming out from inside you so that, again,
you have to almost say, there are two
people inside me, except now you say, it
must be Jesus inside me.
I cannot account for these feelings any other
way.
But, loved ones, that's the new birth.
And it is for you, but only if
you'll have done with sin.
And I'd be glad, you know, I'd be
glad just to stand here hour after hour,
and you could ask me, is that sin?
Is that sin?
But, oh, do you see?
Do you see that you cannot be born
of God and shout at your wife?
You cannot be born of God and steal
pens from your employer.
You cannot be born of God and deceive
on the income tax returns.
You cannot be born of God and have
fights at home, domestic battles.
You can't.
Why?
Because Jesus never did those things.
And He does not do those things now.
And if He is in you, He is
not doing those.
And if you say to me, oh, well,
does that mean I can never...
No, but every time you do sin, you
realize it's an alien thing.
So, at this moment, as you sit there,
your heart rises and you say, brother, I
at times fall, but I know those are
wrong, and I'm fighting them with all my
being.
And I am determined, by God's grace, to
live clear and clean of these things.
But you're either doing that, or you're sitting
there and saying, oh, well, I have to
do my best and try to improve and
try to be better than I am, but
I don't see how I can avoid being
selfish with my wife, or being cruel to
my children, or being cynical about the people
at school.
I don't see it.
You see, your heart, it's the heart.
It's not even the outside performance, though surely
it will show in the outside performance.
But it's the heart.
Does your heart stand against sin at every
turn in your life, or does it compromise
with it?
The new birth brings you into cleanness.
Now pray and know that God will bring
you to it.
Father, thank you that it's so clear.
Thank you that you talked about it as
life and death.
Thank you that you talked about it as
light and darkness.
Thank you that you talked about it as
day and night.
Thank you, Lord, that you made it plain
that there is absolute contrast between those of
us who are born of the flesh and
who are still insisting on our own way
and wanting our own rights and using other
people to get the love and the security
that we need.
There's a complete difference between that and your
children who want only your way and want
only your rights upheld and want only to
do your will and want only to share
your love and your security with others.
Lord, thank you.
Thank you that there can be no mistaking
what is a valid new birth and what
is a counterfeit.
No, Lord, we want to come into the
rail ourselves.
So, Holy Spirit, will you show each one
of us where we're disagreeing with you, where
we're still pretending that we hate sin, where
we're still calling something our infirmity or our
weakness when it is really our downright sin,
when we're regarding something as justifiable because of
the particular kinds of artistic or scientific personalities
that we have.
Holy Spirit, show us where we're not calling
sin sin in our lives when we see
that the first big step towards you is
to agree with you.
Stop bickering and stop questioning and rationalizing and
agree with you.
Agree with you against ourselves.
And then, Holy Spirit, we see that we
have been put on the cross, that we
are new people and that there's no reason
why we can't obey our God.
If we're willing to stay on that cross
with Jesus, we can simply stop sinning.
We commit ourselves to doing that.
And then, dear Father, Lord God, who have
put up so much with so much from
us, Lord, we do not want any longer
to stab your Son to death in our
lives.
We want to give ourselves to you, to
be what you want us to be and
to live the kind of lives that you
want.
So now, Lord God, will you feel free
to pour your Spirit through us and we'll
let him out every time he wants for
your glory.
Now, the grace of our Lord Jesus and
the love of God and the fellowship of
the Holy Spirit be with each one of
us now and evermore.
Amen.