Ambushed by Goodness, Part 2

Paul is referring here to a brand new birth, a new beginning.

You see, you've had one birth that was physical. Paul says you need now, by means of the Holy Spirit, to experience a second birth, which is spiritual. That transaction where you understand the gospel and say, Lord, I want you to save me, is the moment of that new birth, that genesis in your life.

What did Christ accomplish for you? The salvation God offers through Christ is an amazing gift that frees you from the guilt and punishment of sin. The way God delivers this salvation to you is described in God's Word as grace. But God's grace comes to you in sudden and surprising ways. It's as if God ambushes you with His grace.

Today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen Davey concludes a message he began last time. He's looking at the grace and goodness of God. This lesson from the series called Remarkable Christianity is called Ambushed by Goodness. See, remarkable Christianity, which happens to be the genuine item, delivers the truth of this remarkable redemption. It's paid in full by Jesus Christ himself with no help from us.

No help from us. Paul writes the same progression to the Ephesian church. He says, among them, we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, there it is again, but God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. That's how he saved us. I can't begin to tell you how thrilling it is to clarify the gospel, certainly from this pulpit, but in individual meetings.

Just this past week, to meet with a couple in their mid to late 60s and attending our greenhouse class have been coming since this past Christmas suite. He said to me as we met in my office, he said, you know, I wasn't raised in a church that talked about the gospel and certainly never used the word saved. He said, but I hear that a lot around here. And he said, it's piqued my interest. He said, I've been going back through the New Testament and he says, I'm seeing that word saved all over the place. I explained to him what the word meant and the gospel, how Christ alone would redeem us. He bowed his head and prayed in his own words, Lord Jesus, I am asking you right now to save me.

I'm 58 years old. Dear Flock, Christianity does not give any of us room to gloat, but God has given us all of eternity to be grateful. We have a remarkable Redeemer. Secondly, we have been given a remarkable redemption. Thirdly, we are under a remarkable reconstruction. Notice the middle part of verse five, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit whom he poured out richly through Jesus Christ, our Savior, so that being justified by his grace and he continues on.

Let's stop here and just unpack that particular part of his sentence. By the washing of regeneration. There are those who would say that the ordinance of baptism saves or it's sort of like the last thing. You're not really saved until you do that. They've spilled a lot of ink over the fact that you can't become a Christian until you've been baptized. That our sister, Erin, was not completely saved. It wasn't really fully ratified until she was, as my son said, dunked under the water. Well, all you have to do is read the phrase and notice the agent doing the baptizing.

Would you notice that? By the washing of regeneration and renewing by the college pastor. Oh, wait. Maybe it ought to say the senior pastor.

No, not even close. Who's doing the action? Who's doing the baptizing? The Holy Spirit.

He's the agent. Which means this is a reference to an internal spiritual cleansing of the heart, pictured externally after the fact by water. Water baptism. In fact, I'll take for a moment the argument of those who believe in baptismal regeneration. That is that you've got to be baptized to be saved. I'll take one portion of their argument, which I agree with, that in the mind of the apostles and in the early church, there was no such thing as a non-baptized believer.

One followed the other. I mean, they couldn't even conceive of such a thing. Why would anybody follow Jesus Christ and not want to identify through the ordinance he instituted, which pictures identification with his death, burial, and resurrection? Somebody says, well, you know, I get nervous in front of people. I understand that.

I don't like public speaking. I understand that. I don't want to be seen with my hair all wet by a thousand people.

Okay, I understand that. What if water gets up my nose or something? What if they forget to bring me back up? Listen, the physical demonstration of washing, which illustrates the internal act of cleansing, is wonderful. But let's not back the physical into the spiritual and redefine regeneration, because if we do, we have added something we do for God in order to be saved. And we were just told it isn't anything we could do, not the best thing we could do, saves us. In fact, if you have to be baptized in order to be saved, you're actually going to have to depend on somebody to baptize you, which means now you're depending on another human being.

What if he doesn't show up? The word Paul uses here for washing is not baptizo, baptism, which means to immerse, but lutron. It's a reference to a bath, a spiritual internal bath, and we use it for an external bath, the kind you take on Saturday night, whether you need it or not, right? That's how vile we are. We don't need a little washing. We don't need them to take our heart and just maybe spot clean here and there. We need the entire thing entirely cleansed, bathed. That's how vile and sinful we are. The Holy Spirit gave us the whole bath.

That's what he means. I remember when my son and his twin brother were about four years of age. We used to live in a house that had a real wood-burning fireplace and stone fireplace and out back behind the house, about two feet from the ground, the back of the chimney was a little iron door. You could open that and you could shovel the ashes out rather conveniently.

It was now summertime and I hadn't cleaned it out from the winter. Well, our twin sons found that little gate. And what do you think they did? They considered it an open door from God.

That's what they did. They threw ash into the air. They threw it all over each other. They covered each other with the ashes. And my wife said, honey, would you go ahead and call the boys for supper? And I said, sure. I stepped out on the deck and I saw aliens from outer space, big eyes looking up at me, you know, under layers of ash.

They recovered from head to toe. And I went back and I called my wife. I said, Marcia, you got to come out. I wanted her to see the kids doing something I had not put them up to.

That was important. She walked out and she said, oh, my goodness, what are we going to do? I was thinking of giving them away, but she wouldn't go for that, I'm sure. I said, let me take care of it. I went and got the garden hose. And I literally hosed them down, had them take off their clothes all the way down to their Batman underwear. And I mean, it was just soaked them good. They thought it was great, by the way.

Man, is this a good day or what? But I wasn't about to let them in the house, nor would their mother until they were perfectly clean. The idea here, in fact, the only other time this word washing appears in the New Testament, the only other time is by the apostle Paul when he refers to the bathing of the water of the word. See, we don't need the Bible to just spot clean us.

We need a total reconstruction. And this is the spiritual truth of a deep cleansing. And the Holy Spirit is the agent who is effectively, by means of the truth of the word, hosing us down. Now, there are three other words I want to point out quickly that are important to his argument here as he refers to the genuine item. The word regeneration, the word renewing or renewal, and the word justified or justification. Regeneration, renewal, justification.

Let me talk for a moment about regeneration. It literally means to have another birth. From this we get the idea of what Jesus Christ was saying in John 3 that you must be what? Born again. The word is a compound word, palen, for again and genesis. Genesis. The book of Genesis simply means the book of beginnings.

It means beginning. Beginning again, another beginning. Paul is referring here to a brand new birth, a new beginning.

You see, you've had one birth that was physical. Paul says you need now by means of the Holy Spirit to experience a second birth, which is spiritual. That transaction where you understand the gospel and say, Lord, I want you to save me is the moment of that new birth, that genesis in your life. And so to get into heaven, you're born twice, aren't you?

Life has invaded you either at conception, which I believe is the beginning of life, or at spiritual conception by means of the Spirit of God. No wonder Satan then has counterfeited this idea, going all the way back into the Old Testament days. He counterfeited the idea of animal sacrifice and atonement and the meaning of good works, and he's counterfeited the idea of spiritual death and spiritual resurrection long before Paul delivered the fuller and final declaration of the gospel that all the Old Testament looked forward to, and we look backward to.

That is the sufficient act of Christ on the cross for our redemption. But the heart of man energized by the deceiver who's blind in their minds gives them nuggets, kernels of truth. Just study the mystery religions and you'll see them. For instance, one mystery religion required their followers to go through a ceremony where they dug a pit to represent a symbolic grave. And over the pit, they placed beams in lattice-type fashion. They put the novice there in the pit, and then they killed a bull, collected the blood, and they dripped the blood through the lattice down onto the head of this individual. And then after they were finished, they moved the lattice away and they brought the person up. He came up out of, as it were, the grave, and they considered him newly born, resurrected, and they even gave him a glass of milk to signify that he was now a babe.

Sound familiar? The Stoics would use the word regeneration to refer to the planet. They believed that the planet every 3,000 years would be completely burned. The Mayans weren't the first to come up with the idea of the prediction of the end of the world. All of these mystery religions and cults illustrated there's going to be some kind of new birth, a new birth of the planet, a new birth of people or whatever, and they illustrate to me what the Apostle Paul said in 2 Timothy 3.7, they are constantly learning. They're circling, they're gathering kernels of truth, but they are never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

They don't get the full picture. God alone created the heavens and the earth. God alone brings about the new Genesis in your life as he will the new earth and the new heaven, for by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.

All things have been created through him and for him. Colossians 1 16. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. 2 Corinthians 5 17.

Listen, regeneration is not turning over a new leaf. It is the birth of a new life by means of the Holy Spirit to all who come by faith to Christ alone. Now, Paul refers to another key word here.

He uses one, and I want to focus on this. It's the word renewal. He says we also are renewed, verse 5, by the Holy Spirit. Not only is there regeneration, there is renewal.

Here's the difference. Regeneration or rebirth is a moment in time. Renewal is a lifetime. Regeneration is like a once-in-a-lifetime bath. Renewal is like a daily shower. Paul writes to the Corinthians, the inward man is being renewed day by day.

Paul uses the same word again in Romans 12, verse 2, where he writes, do not be conformed to this world. Don't let it press you into its mold. It's going to do it every day.

It's going to try. Instead, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That is, your mind surrenders to the truth of the word. It's under reconstruction, so to speak. Justification is the third word, I'll point out.

Another key word. Notice the end of verse 5, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, verse 6, whom he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior. Verse 7 said of being justified by his grace.

Stop there. We're regenerated, renewed, and justified. And by the way, I want to get on just a brief rabbit trail here to tell you that this one sentence from the Apostle Paul gives us a wonderful text on the Trinity. If anyone asks you for a text revealing the activity of the Trinity, here's a great one. You have God our Savior, note verse 4. Then you have the Holy Spirit, verse 5. And now, verse 6, you have Jesus Christ. And you also happen to have a wonderful text on the equality of the Son with the Father, equally divine. Paul refers to God as our Savior, God the Father, verse 4. And then he refers to Jesus Christ as our Savior, verse 6. If God the Father is our Savior, or is it Jesus Christ our Savior, while you're at it we're told the agent involved in the act of regeneration is the Holy Spirit, is the Holy Spirit then our Savior? What's the answer? The answer to all three is yes.

Yes. Salvation is the perfect work of cooperation between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Now back to the idea of justification. It's that part of the transaction of our new birth where God the Judge declares us righteous. Because the righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to our account. It isn't infused over time, Roman Catholic theology.

It is imputed at once. The account of Jesus Christ is fully sufficient in his once for all sacrifice to pay for the record of sins we've committed against him. It's as if then in this word, which is a legal word, that God the Father is a judge.

He's got his gown on, gavel in his hand. He sees all of the evidence of our sin presented to him. He brings his gavel down, and suddenly there's no more record of any sin to our account. It's more than just simply being freed. It's having your penalty erased from your biography. There's no record of it.

Your record, in fact, is spotless. Let me illustrate it this way. Several years ago, I was driving on the freeway in another city. I was going six miles an hour faster than I thought I was. I was driving a borrowed vehicle. The wheels were larger than the original factory wheels, and the calibration was off. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I actually did have it calibrated because I was mystifying, and truly enough, it was six miles over. But the point is, instead of going 70 miles an hour, I was going 76 miles an hour, which is really bad because I just entered a township where the speed limit dropped from 65 to 55. And I know you're thinking, well, what were you doing doing 70?

Well, that's not part of my illustration, so quit interrupting me, okay? Obviously, I was in trouble. In fact, I was pulled over going 21 miles over the speed limit. So I decided to go back to court and pay the fine, hopefully keep my insurance from skyrocketing, and I stood in line. The courtroom in this little town was interesting.

It was just a classroom, and the judge's bench was a folding table, and he had stacks of files sitting in front of him and an assistant, and he wasn't wearing a robe or anything, but he was the judge. So I stood in line there with all the other race car drivers who'd shown up, and he eventually called my name, asked me if I was indeed driving that fast, and I hadn't had it calibrated yet, and I said the right thing anyway, yes, sir. He said, well, he just scribbled something. He didn't say anything to me, just writing. Then he looked up to me and he said, I'm going to do you a big favor. I said, well, thank you, sir.

Didn't know what he meant. And I would learn later it was a prayer for judgment, and it would keep it off my record after I paid the fine. So he was writing, so he handed it to me, and he said, I'm doing you a big favor. I hadn't said a word other than again say it. Thank you, sir.

I got the paper and walked to the edge of the classroom, opened the door, and was about to walk out, and he hollered after me. I am doing you a big favor. Let me tell you something. Doing me a big favor was a wonderful thing, but doing me a big favor and declaring me righteous are two different things. Don't get in your mind God's going to do me a big favor. He's just going to, yeah, there's probably some kind of loophole prayer for judgment or whatever.

You can do that once every seven years. I've exceeded my limit, and I know that for sure. That's why I could tell you that, but that's not what God does. See, in order for the judge to actually justify me, he would have said, you've committed a crime. Yes, sir. I'm going to take this police report, and I'm going to erase your name, and I'm going to write my name in your place.

Then I'll pay the fine, and I'll add the penalty to my record, and I'll pay the insurance, and you can have my spotless driving record because I've never broken the law. That's how Paul defines this doctrinal concept. In fact, he wrote it to the Colossians this way. Listen, when you were dead in your transgressions, I like the way he says that. Think of it this way. You're dead. You're dead. You're in deep trouble. He, God the judge, made you alive together with him, having, note this, forgiven us all our transgressions.

We got that. He goes on. Having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, that is your criminal history, and he has taken it out of the way.

How? Having nailed it to the cross. In other words, God switched the names on the rap sheet. Christ's name was written on top of the volume of all your sins and mine. Jesus Christ becomes the condemned criminal. He pays the eternal fine being eternal son, and he attributes to us his perfect record, writes our name on top of that because he never broke the law.

That is justification. He took our vileness and gave us his virtue. He took our perversion and attributed to us his purity. He took our record of sin and gave us his record of sinlessness. We have been ambushed by the grace of God.

And that's not all. Paul has one more thing to say at the very end. Not only do we happen to have a remarkable Redeemer, a remarkable redemption, we're under a remarkable reconstruction. Fourthly, he tells us we've been promised a remarkable reward. Paul writes here in verse 7, so that being justified we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. And if you're an older believer, you're going, yeah, yeah, I know that, I know that.

Wait a second. We have been made royal heirs. This heiress tense indicates it's ours in full now, bestowed upon us when we were saved.

But yet we will fully experience it one day. So right now you might be walking around the earth feeling like a peasant. You're a king. You're a queen. You have been made an heir already. It's yours. It'll just be given to you in the coming kingdom. So think of it this way.

We are not only citizens of the coming kingdom of God. We are co-owners of more than we can imagine. I close with this. The poet wrote, I once was lost in darkest night, yet thought I knew the way. The sin that promised joy in life led me to the grave. I had no hope that you would own a rebel to your will. And if you had not loved me first, I would refuse you still. But as I ran my hell-bound race indifferent to the cost, you looked upon my helpless state and led me to the cross. And I beheld your love displayed. You suffered in my place.

You bore the wrath reserved for me. Now all I know is grace. Hallelujah. All I have is Christ. Hallelujah.

Jesus is my life. When we get there, the more I study the Word, I'm under the impression that we're going to spend the first few years just saying to each other, Can you believe it? Can you believe it?

I know you preached through Titus. I was sleeping halfway through it. Can you believe it?

You were telling the truth all the time. We're here. We're going to pinch ourselves. It's going to be like we didn't see it coming. Not like it is.

Not like it is. I hope that this look at the grace and goodness of God has encouraged you today. This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Stephen entitled today's message, Ambushed by Goodness. This lesson comes from the series, Remarkable Christianity.

That series is available as a set of CDs. Call us today at 866-48-BIBLE or 866-482-4253. We'd enjoy talking with you and being able to assist you. This lesson is also available to download free of charge from our website. We make all of Stephen's teaching available to you as audio files and as written manuscripts.

To find those, navigate to the archives section of the website and search for this lesson called, Ambushed by Goodness. Our web address is wisdomonline.org and you can go there anytime. We're able to produce these lessons because of the support we receive from listeners. We'd be grateful if you can support us this month. You can make a donation online or you can send a check to Wisdom International PO Box 37297 Raleigh, North Carolina 27627. Of course you can use that address for any correspondence you have with us. I'm Scott Wiley and I thank you for listening today. Please join us next time for more wisdom for the heart.