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January 29, 2020 12:01 am
When God regenerates us, He washes away our moral and spiritual filth to create something beautiful. Today, Steven Lawson contemplates the profound spiritual cleansing that people experience at the new birth.
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In second Corinthians, we read that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation and never puts a new heart into a dirty soul.
He puts a new heart into a sanitized cleansed soul and the result is that because he cleanses and puts in his new heart he make something beautiful of our lives. Does he not because before you and I are sinners. All of us soon as a polluting effect on everyone stating that we simply can't remove ourselves, but we fix it today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. Steven Morse returns to a series on the new birth, and he will focus on the only one capable of removing that stain and replacing it with truth and goodness and beauty Willie coming out to our sixth session on the new birth and what we want to address in this time together is that the new birth is a cleansing birth. This presupposes really the doctrine of total depravity that our entire inner person has been polluted by sin and needs cleansing and that we have been marred by wickedness and we need for regeneration to to wash us and to cleanse us before we address John chapter 3 and the cleansing nature of regeneration.
We could just pause for a moment and think yet again about total depravity.
When we say total depravity.
What we mean is not that every person is as depraved as I could possibly be. But that depravity has extended to the total person the mind, the heart every inch and every ounce of us is like a drop of cyanide into a glass of water it permeates the whole says that when we read, for example, in Romans chapter 3 we see that the totality of our being is plagued by sin are our throat is an open grave. Paul says, our tongues are deceiving under our lips, is the poison of ass.
The mouth is full of cursing's and bitterness. Our feet are swift to shed blood in our eyes. There is no fear of God and so just moving from body part to body parties representing a certain aspect of our inner soul in our inner life, we see that the totality of our being, has become polluted by sin.
That's why last time we talked about the comprehensive nature of regeneration that it must affect the entirety of us, but we also want to add that there must be this cleansing element. In other words before God puts in the new heart. God must cleanse the soul as well. A new heart going into a cleansed soul. I know at home that when my wife claims the sheets, and is time to go to bed. She expects me to be clean and to have clean pajamas on his as I go to bed it makes no sense to clean up the bed and its claim but now I'm dirty and get into it self-defeating and so God is the same as he gives to us, this new heart of flesh. He also cleanses out the soul into which he puts the new heart. So that's what I want us to consider in this session, Lewis Burke off the great systematic theologian, writes that the governing disposition of the soul is made holy.
And this happens in regeneration so as you have your Bibles with me again in John chapter 3. There is one verse in particular that I want to address it is John chapter 3 and verse five in this text Jesus says truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit that's our emphasis, born of water and the spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God is an absolute necessity to be born of water and the spirit in order to enter into the kingdom of God. Now there are various interpretations for water water and the spirit. What is Jesus saying here as he speaks of being born again in the other verses. He doesn't mention water, for example, in verse three. Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.
There's not a drop of water in verse three in verse six that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Again, no mention of water.
Verse seven you must be born again. Once again, no mention of water. Verse eight, so is everyone who is born of the spirit, but yet in verse five.
There is the inclusion of water and the spirit. So what is this me therefore possibilities here that we want to consider.
The first is some have taken this to mean the water of physical birth the birth of a baby is accompanied by the release of fluid from the mother, and that is just a known medical fact. However, the word water is never used in the Bible.
In this way, and so it seems to be a strange assumption, and this would also be inconsistent with the way the ancients described a physical birth so I think the more modern way than an ancient way. So I think we dismissed it. He is referring to the fluid involved in a physical birth or water of the second possibility is water baptism that there would be baptism associated with the Christian faith. That certainly is true and one of the ways that we are marked out publicly, but Nicodemus would not have understood Christian baptism there.
There was no Christian baptism. At this time and certainly water cannot wash away sin only the work of Christ in the work of the Spirit in regeneration and so I would dismiss this from being the water of baptism. The third possibility is that it's a picture of the word of God, and there are great Bible teachers who have taken it this way, Jamesburg, Emory Boyce, one of my mentors and exposition takes it this way, and there are some verses that would maybe indicate that John 15, three you already clean because of the word that I've spoken to you.
There is a cleansing power in the word in Ephesians 526 speaks of the washing of water at the time of conversion, but I think that the fourth possibility is really the correct interpretation, and I was reading Dr. Sproles commentary on the Gospel of John, and fortunately for me it's position that he takes as well so I think the fourth possibility. Which is it, it represents the cleansing of the Holy Spirit in the work of regeneration. I think what we have in this text is that there are two symbols for the Holy Spirit. One is in verse five. The other is in verse eight water in verse five wind. In verse eight I think. As Jesus is teaching the new birth. He is using these two metaphors that there is the power of wind and there is the cleansing of water and both elements are true in the new birth you remember in verse 10 Jesus says to Nicodemus, are you not the teacher of Israel do not understand these things. This presupposes that Nicodemus knew very well the Old Testament. That's the only part of Scripture that has been written to this point and that Nicodemus would have a great awareness as the teacher of Israel, so having said that I wanted take us to an Old Testament passage of Scripture that Nicodemus would have known and which water pictures the cleansing of the Holy Spirit.
So if you would turn back with me to the book of Ezekiel to Ezekiel chapter 36 and in our last time together we looked at this very verse, but we began in verse 26. In this session I want to look specifically at verse 25, which is the previous verse in the Old Testament water often symbolically represented purification spiritual purification and is exactly what we see in Ezekiel 36 and beginning in verse 25. As you recall verse 26, 27 make it very clear that the context is speaking to the new birth. You've heard it said text without a context as a pretext in real estate three important things. Location location location. The same is true in Bible study, location, location, location, and so as we look at verse 25. The next two verses in context, the location of verse 25 make it abundantly clear that the matter that is being addressed is that of the new birth, and giving a new heart.
So in that context.
Look, if you will, in verse 25.
What this text says then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I can assure you this if God sprinkles water on you, you will be clean. It will not be 1/2 job it will be a full job a thorough job. Whatever God does.
He does all things well right and so as God says, I will. Please note again that this is exclusively God's initiative. This is God's work. This is not a sin, God, this is not the priest sprinkling water or some spiritual leader, immersing someone in water or sprinkling with water. Whatever the motive baptism. This is God doing this has nothing to do with water baptism. This has everything to do with divine purification with divine cleansing. God says I will note the certainty of this that when God does this, it will come to pass. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. So what kind of cleansing is being addressed here. Is it physical cleansing. Is this a bath is is like Jesus washing the feet of the disciples and Peter say oh no Lord, then give me a bath now. This is not physical cleansing of the next sentence in verse 25 I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols is a moral filthiness. It is a spiritual depravity that needs to be clinched and at the heart of it is idolatry and anything that replaces the primacy in the centrality of God in one's life. So God says in verse 25 that in the new birth.
We are cleansed from sin by the inward work of the Holy Spirit, and so by this interpretation, which I believe is the correct interpretation water is used as a symbol or a picture of the Holy Spirit, even as the wind is used as a picture and a symbol of the Holy Spirit. In fact, I believe that John three verse five could be read. This way unless one is born of water, even the spirit of water, even the spirit, one cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven where water and spirit are used interchangeably. Their use synonymously. One is the reality, the other is the symbol and this is really what Titus three verse five teaches, it teaches the very same 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, did you hear that, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit regeneration is a synonymous term for being born again or born from above regeneration is that divine act of God. Burkle says, by which the principle of new life is implanted in man in the governing disposition of the soul is made holy. And this is the work of the new birth and associated and included in this divine act is washing washing of regeneration.
That's what Jesus is saying in John three verse five. I believe that unless one is born of water and the spirit is nothing to do with baptism as I don't think it is even a reference to the word of God. I think it is a metaphor or an analogy in a word for the work of the Holy Spirit to cleanse us and to wash us and to make us pure and to make us clean as God puts the new heart into the soul. I've gone to the doctor several times. I'm sure that you have as as a child growing up ice play football and and I went to the doctor quite regularly. And if you would have an injury. I remember when they installed Astroturf for the college team that played for it and you would try to make a diving catch egos sliding across the football field and he would leave a third-degree burn or some kind of a burn on you and you go to the training room and they would need to put some gauze on you and banded you up before they would do that.
They went to clean out, you know, the fragments of the dirt in the debris that would be lodged in your burned area you have to clean that out before you put the new enter the new on that's really a picture of what God is saying in the new birth that God cleans out as he puts the new in he washes us out. Isaiah 1 verse 18. Come let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be red like Crimson, they shall be white as wool. There is the cleansing power of God by his grace in the act of the new birth. He never puts a new heart into a dirty soul.
He puts a new heart into a sanitized cleansed soul and the result is that because he cleanses and puts in this new heart he make something beautiful of our lives.
Does he not, there's one more verse that I want to draw your attention to along this line in its Ephesians 2 and verse 10 in Ephesians 2 in verse 10 speaks of the active regeneration what God has made us by his grace and he says in Ephesians 2, verse 10 for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which he prepared beforehand, that we might walk in them. Did you hear that we have been created in Christ Jesus.
That's regeneration. That's the new birth any man be in Christ he is a new creature, a new creation and associated with this.
He says we are his workmanship at this word workmanship is a very interesting word and it really means a masterpiece to say the Greek word, and you're in a here an English word in the Greek word proclaim a deed hear the word poem in Pacoima a poem is a literary work of art. If done well is a masterpiece appointment can also be artistic.
It can also be obtaining it can be a statute.
It can be a literary work of art but it is something that is beautiful is something that you intrinsically recognize the beauty that is in it and in the new birth, the beauty that is in it is Christ in us.
The beauty is not in our flesh.
The beauty is the image of Christ being restored in us. I don't know where this is coming from, but as I have been traveling around preaching and teaching in various places around the country and I thank God around the world. I will have a little down time and my host will cite can I take you someplace. Can I show you something and I find myself saying I can't believe I'm saying this, they'll say take me to your art museum.
I would love to see classical masterpieces and as I go.
I don't know anything about art in the since I've never had a class in art, but when you walk in and you see a Rembrandt you don't have to be a rocket scientist to recognize that is beautiful, the head is a a work of art that is that that is arresting to the into the attention that's precisely the word he says we are his workmanship. This is not bragging on us. This is bragging on grace. This is bragging on Christ in us the hope of glory and regeneration begins. This process of making us into the image of Christ and taking away those old things and restoring us and giving us these new things I've quoted segment is 517 if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things passed away all value systems are gone. Old priorities are a thing of the past, old beliefs in our ancient history. Old laws old pursuits that's behind us. These things have passed away. All they creep up their old ugly head from time to time, but the fact is that old man has been buried and that is behind us and he says new things have come. There is a whole new life that is emerging within us and it is the life of Jesus Christ and for the rest of our Christian lives. The active sanctification we are growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and we are being made more and more like Christ. But that work began in the new birth and in that moment Christ was formed in us and we could see Christ in others when they came to faith in Christ and suddenly their language changes their way of conducting themselves changes their there is a dramatic break that takes place, and it is because we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. Michelangelo was the great artist of the Renaissance and they brought down that block of marble and they said it before him, and from that block of marble. He would create a poor aim I masterpiece created David. David is in Florence Italy and they asked Michelangelo once.
How did you create this perfect representation of David said all that was easy is that I just chiseled away everything that did not look like David. That's what God is doing in our lives.
He is chiseling and pruning and cutting back everything that does not look like Jesus Christ. Ungodly attitudes and reactions and language is just removing it and he's bringing out and enhancing the beauty of Jesus Christ, who is in us, that is a work of regeneration that is the new birth. Reheat instantly comprehensively began this this work he just clean house eight cleansed us of our sin and washed us and then put this new heart on the inside of even cleansed and even washed in regeneration. Has he made you a new creature are the old things behind you are there new things that have come since the glorious work that only God can do in our lives. That's Dr. Steven Lawson with a message titled the cleansing birth and you're listening to Renewing Your Mind on this Wednesday.
Thank you for joining us. Our study this week on the new birth that has led us to a critical question that we just heard Dr. Lawson ask have you been washed in regeneration. There is good news and it's summed up in one of the great old hymns of the church Jesus paid it all, all to him. I/O sin had left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow. We invite you to continue your study of the new birth by requesting Dr. Lawson's complete series. It's 12 messages onto DVDs and that we'd be happy to send it to you for your donation of any about to look at her ministries give your gift and make a request online@renewingyourmind.org or call us at 800-435-4343. In an article for table talk magazine are elder Dr. RC Sproul said regeneration is more than giving a person the possibility of having faith. It gives him the certainty of possessing that saving faith.
The new birth is an amazing gift from God. Dr. Lawson series will help you explore more deeply to again request the 12 part series on two DVDs when you contact us today our number again is 800-435-4343 or you can give your donation of any about when you go online to Renewing Your Mind.org and let me also encourage you to download our free up you'll find hundreds of resources including videos, articles, Bible studies and blog posts to search for Liggett here in your app store tomorrow.
Dr. Lawson series points us to God's sovereignty in this new birth, what did you do to be born physically. I would say nothing of what did you do to be born again spiritually.
The new birth is a sovereign, independent economists were of God the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those whom he has marked out to be birth from above, we hope you'll join us Thursday for Renewing Your Mind