In his book the Problem of Pain, CS Lewis sums up what I think many would agree with: “There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason.”
We’re fine with the idea of a loving God, but we’re less accepting of a God who judges.
With the idea of hell, It can seem unfair. We can feel tempted to justify why hell doesn’t exist. Or maybe we think that hell is really just for people who are really, really bad.
Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” It’s noteworthy that in the Bible, the person who has the most to say about hell is…Jesus. To reject Jesus is to reject his gospel. It’s to reject his grace.
And ultimately there is no excuse in the Bible for this rejection. God displays his glory and grandeur in nature as Romans 1:18-20 says
FOR THE WRATH OF GOD IS REVEALED FROM HEAVEN AGAINST ALL UNGODLINESS AND UNRIGHTEOUSNESS OF MEN, WHO BY THEIR UNRIGHTEOUSNESS SUPPRESS THE TRUTH. FOR WHAT CAN BE KNOWN ABOUT GOD IS PLAIN TO THEM, BECAUSE GOD HAS SHOWN IT TO THEM. FOR HIS INVISIBLE ATTRIBUTES, NAMELY, HIS ETERNAL POWER AND DIVINE NATURE, HAVE BEEN CLEARLY PERCEIVED, EVER SINCE THE CREATION OF THE WORLD, IN THE THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN MADE. SO THEY ARE WITHOUT EXCUSE.
-ROMANS 1:18-20
People who want to reject hell or who question how a holy God can judge are showing the sinfulness of their hearts.
I was watching a video recently. It was a back and forth between an atheist college student and Christian apologist Frank Turek. In the video, the student said she didn’t believe in God, or in the resurrection of Christ, but she believed that if there were a heaven, she should be able to go there.
But why? Why would you get to be with God when you don’t believe in him?
Why would God MAKE YOU be with him when you lived your entire life without any desire to know him? God extends grace freely. He extends the offer of salvation to all who will accept it.
But what’s not an option is saying no. What’s not an option is trying to earn our way to God. The vanity of thinking that we can make ourselves worthy. The vanity of opposing God, of rejecting him and thinking that you should still get to be with him.
WE THINK WE’RE GOOD PEOPLE. BUT THE GREATEST SIN WE CAN COMMIT IS REJECTING THE GOD WHO MADE US.
God honors the choice a person makes to reject him and to reject heaven. But what he will not allow is for us to approach him on our terms.
Hell is the logical conclusion of wanting to live this life without God. If a person doesn’t want God now, then why would they want him in eternity? D.A. Carson says, “Hell is not filled with people who are now holy. It’s filled with people who still love their sin and will not bend the knee. And receive the punishment for that sin, in an ongoing cycle, world without end. And that’s what the gospel saves us from.”
I think that’s important to understand. God isn’t rejecting people who have a desire to know him. People who come to him, knowing their unworthiness, knowing their sinfulness.
God is just. His judgments are just.
People aren’t condemned because they didn’t have enough time. They aren’t cast away from God because they didn’t have an opportunity.
God isn’t vindictive. He’s not losing his temper. But he is righteous. He’s perfect. And heaven is a perfect place. God is overwhelmingly glorious.
The gospel isn’t: well no one is perfect so just try to be decent.
Some liberal churches undermine the necessity of believing in Jesus. Or reduce him to someone to a good teacher. And the best possible roe model for how you could live your life, but not really as being THE way, THE truth, and the life.
But that cheapens the work of Christ. Because he didn’t come just to give some good moral lessons.
Undermining the doctrine of hell might seem like a convenient solution to something you don’t want to think about, but it introduces the infinitely greater problem of making Jesus a liar.
The point of the gospel isn’t saying that you want God because you’re afraid of hell. It’s about wanting to be WITH God.
And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
Prayer: Father in heaven, let those of us who know Christ set are minds on things that are above. Let us put an end to areas of sin. May we be a people who love you and who’s first desire is to know you better. Pray that your grace can be communicated to all of us. Remind us of the great forgiveness which you offer to all people. Let us approach you this day. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Intro
When I was in college, I had this pair of jeans that I loved. Every time, I put these jeans on, magic was in the air. Every time I put these jeans on, you could almost hear the angels sinning.
Every time I put these jeans on, I looked so good, that the girls on campus were too intimidated to even talk to me. Having such a perfectly good fitting pair of jeans was a joy that most people have never even known. But over time, the jeans began to develop a hole in them. At first, I ignored the hole. But eventually the hole got worse and worse until I eventually had to make the hardest decision I had ever had to make. What do I do with these jeans? I didn’t want to throw them away. So I thought about it. And then I got the idea to use safety pins to try to pin the hole shut. But I wanted to do a good job. So I used like a lot of safety pins. Pinned the jeans closed. Put them on. I thought “I am so smart.” Later that evening, I was going to an event and a friend came to pickle up. I sat down in the car. And the moment I sat down, ripped right open. We were still waiting on someone else to get to the car so I had a moment to think. Options were running through my head. I’m thinking “can I go like this? I can’t go like this.”
So I get out of the car and start walking back to my fraternity house. But as I’m walking, I’m getting poked by the safety pins. And no matter what I do, as I’m walking, I’m getting poked. It kind of felt like, imagine that you’re walking with a porcupine between your legs that’s attacking you. I tell you that story for this reason. You can have something that you really love, but that you need to let go of. Because holding onto it will cause you a lot of pain.
We’re continuing our series: the Forensics of Faith this morning.
Last week, we talked about regeneration. That’s being born again. It’s God giving us new Spiritual life. This week, we talk about sanctification. Sanctification is the process of being made holy once someone has come to faith.
Regeneration happens once. Sanctification happens throughout life. When we are regenerated, we are given a new Spiritual disposition and volition to follow God. Sanctification is a lifetime of fruit of that work of regeneration.
Sanctification must be accompanied by regeneration. Because we cannot be sanctified without the means of the Spirit and we don’t have the Spirit without the new life which is found in Christ.
And the main idea from our text this morning is that God makes the unholy holy.
And we have two points today: who is sanctified and how we are sanctified.
I. First, Who is sanctified.
The text says: And we all, who with unveiled faces
I think that it helps to give some background. When Paul talks about our faces being unveiled. It’s referring to Exodus 34. In that chapter, Moses is given commands from God and Moses is in the presence of the Lord. As a result of this experience, Moses’ face becomes illuminated.
Moses’ face is radiantly glowing and the Israelites are afraid of this. You might be thinking “that’s crazy, I wouldn’t be afraid.” Yeah ya would. Half of us can’t handle seeing a spider, I’m pretty sure a man with a glowing radiant face would be a bit disconcerting.
So Moses would put the veil to preach to the people but when he was finished preaching, he would put the veil back on.
But the text in Exodus also tells us that when Moses would go to speak to the Lord, he would take the veil off. And so our verse this morning is saying that all believers are now able to approach God as Moses did, with unveiled faces. 2 Corinthians 3:16 says that when a person turns to God, the veil is removed.
We have the great benefit of all being able to approach the Lord. We have that privilege because of the work of Christ.
God grants us access to himself. God isn’t distant from us.
If you’re a private in the military and you need to talk to someone, you don’t go directly to the general. You follow the chain of command.
If you work for a large company and have an issue, you don’t go directly to the CEO, you go to your supervisor. There’s a chain of command.
God isn’t distant. He’s not too busy with other things. We have access to him. Something that is so utterly profound and wondrous that we oftentimes don’t even stop to question what a glorious privilege that is.
We don’t have this great wall of separation between us and God, because of what Jesus has done for us. Jesus has enabled us to enter the presence of the Lord.
It’s true of all Christians and it is only true of Christians. Because we are sanctified through the Holy Spirit. It is given to all who have faith in the gospel. Which is why I make this point often. But a true and sincere faith necessarily results in a changed life. Because it’s not us who are making ourselves Holy. It’s the Holy Spirit who is making us holy.
II. How we are sanctified
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18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
That’s profound. We who contemplate the glory of the Lord, who behold the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into His image.
The means through which the Lord sanctifies us are the pillars of Christianity that I talk about so often. God sanctifies us through knowing his Word.
2 Timothy 3:16 says All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.
To know God’s word is to begin to know God. To know how he has revealed himself. To know what the Bible says about God, what it says about us, and what is says about his salvation in our lives. Without the Word, we are just guessing and inventing our own theology and our own God. But the Word points us to God and to truth.
Jesus prayed to God in John 17:17 “sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth.”
We are sanctified by God by being connected and involved in our church and through fellowship.
Hebrews 10:24: let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,
Real fellowship and community sanctifies us.
Proverbs 27:17: Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.
And those are just a couple of examples. That list is not exhaustive.
A lot of the pillars of faith are the same means through which we grow and through which God sanctifies us. As well as things like prayer and service.
But the source of the sanctification is the Spirit. And it is through this daily focus and commitment to God that God sanctifies us.
Imagine how different life is for the person who is wholly devoted to these things. Not going through the motions, not doing things out of obligation, not making excuses to procrastinate with pursuing God, but sincere daily devotion to communion with the Almighty.
God does amazing things. He transforms. He sanctifies. He makes the unholy holy.
He’s working in the hearts of his people.
God had made man good. And humanity fell into sin. But through Jesus, who has redeemed everyone who trusts in him, God is doing a work of restoration.
Illustration – art
In 1505, the great Renaissance painter Raphael painted his Madonna del Cardellino which depicted Mary with the two babies: Jesus and John the Baptist.
Forty years later, an earthquake hit Florence and the masterpiece fell to the ground and was shattered into 17 pieces. In an effort to restore the painting, another artist used iron nails and tried to put the painting back together. He then used paint to try to cover up seams. Over yeas, other attempts were made. And other dust and debris accumulated on the painting.
In modern times, there was a new effort to restore the painting. Over ten years, 50 artists worked to restore the Madonna del Cardellino. They carefully got rid of added layers of paint. The restored the cracks and creases.
What had been a beautiful design had been tarnished. It was obscured. It was inglorious. But the skilled artist was able to restore the painting to its original vibrancy and luster. Was able to restore it to what it had always been intended to be.
That’s what God does in us as we are sanctified through His Spirit.
He sanctifies us differently though. He sanctifies us in different ways at different times.
When we place faith in Christ, while we are forgiven of all of our sins, that doesn’t mean all of those sins become immediately easily manageable.
In coming to faith, there might be things that quickly fall away, while other sins linger. You might become a Christian and know certain things are sinful while with other areas, it doesn’t even occur to you.
Maybe you’ve been walking with Jesus for a couple years and you just feel this tug at your heart from the Holy Spirit. Saying the language you use isn’t honoring to God. Or maybe you’ve heard multiple sermons that address the subject of giving, and you’ve never given it a second thought. And then one day, you feel moved to greater generosity.
Maybe you struggle with control issues. Always have. Never even thought of it as sin. It’s just been second nature to you for as long as you can remember. But maybe little by little, it becomes revealed to you that it’s an area where you need work.
Or maybe God is working on something else in your heart right now. Again, he sanctifies us differently.
One person might have a greater degree of sanctification in a certain area over someone else. Something that’s a sign of Christian maturity might come more naturally, while your struggle comes easier for the person sitting next to you.
(slow)
Sometimes an area where God sanctifies us can be dramatic. Almost overnight. Maybe that happened when you first became a Christian with some things. Maybe you immediately realized that it was a sin.
Being more or less sanctified doesn’t mean a person is more or less saved or more or less right with God, because the entire process presupposes a person has faith, and it is that faith that saves. It is from God, so we must be aware that it is his work in us and not to use what God is doing as an excuse for boasting or pridefulness over someone who isn’t as far along on the journey.
It’s not that we are sanctifying ourselves, but we are enabled to participate in our own sanctification. How exactly that works contains an element of mystery. But an important part of that is obedience. Not obedience to trust in your salvation. But valuing the righteousness of God and saying yes to that.
Sanctification is never complete in us, this side of heaven. Heaven is a place without sin. And we will be fully sanctified in God’s presence. But between now and then, God is working in us. He is changing us. Where are the areas in your life right now where God is working?
What are the things that are holding you back? What are your jeans that you can’t bring yourself to throw away? Pursue God today. Pursue his will and his ways. Live for him. Again we don’t sanctify ourselves. But we do participate in our sanctification. And if there’s something in your life today where the Holy Spirit is convicting you. If there’s something in your heart that you know you shouldn’t be doing. I know it can sometimes be hard to throw those things away.
But God is always better. His gospel is always sweeter. And in turning from sin, it is meant for your own good and for your own joy.
I’ve given examples of means which God uses to sanctify us. But as we continue in this verse, I think that everything largely boils down to one thing.
We all, with unveiled faces, who contemplate the Lord’s glory.
We contemplate the Lord’s glory, we behold the Lord’s glory, we focus on the Lord’s glory. In all of these things that we do in order to pursue a relationship with God, there is to be a focus on God, a mindfulness of God, an acknowledgement of the Lord’s glory.
There is something wonderful about keeping our eyes on God.
It’s hard to have deep fellowship with the Lord, and to take great joy in him when we are actively engaging in sin.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Of course we are free to approach him when we sin. But that mentality to approach him assumes a desire to have a change in the heart. We can’t have a mind, completely focused on the glorious God of the universe in a moment when we are also willingly rebelling against his will.
It’s not him, it’s us. It’s not that he is unwilling to forgive or be gracious.
It’s so hard when we fall into a particularly bad area of sin in our lives. It can be difficult to want to turn to God in the midst of our struggles. Rather we want to hide from him. We sew fig leaves together and pretend he doesn’t see.
But continually contemplating God is transforming.
The word translated as “transform” in this passage is metamorph-oumetha, from which we get our word metamorphosis. I think that makes the idea more tangible. It’s a metamorphosis that’s happening. God is totally changing us.
We all learned about this in school with butterflies.
It starts out as an egg and then hatches.
The larva of a butterfly is a caterpillar and it grows.
Then it has the stage as a pupa where it’s in a chrysalis, which lasts several weeks, and in that span, the caterpillar is undergoing a dramatic change as it emerges as a butterfly.
That’s what happens to us when God comes into our lives. We totally change. You might be a caterpillar today, but God is making you a butterfly.
We’ve seen it in the lives of others. For those of us who are in Christ, we have experienced it in our own lives.
Maybe you can think of an area that you used to struggle with, and that now, isn’t something you even really think about or miss. The goodness of God in sanctifying us. In not keeping us the same.
We see people who are full of anger become soft. We see people who are selfish become servants, people who are apathetic become empathetic. People who walk in fear begin to walk in faith. The power of the gospel in transforming souls.
We see it in the Bible itself, amazing things happening in the lives of God’s people.
There is a transformation in the life of Paul, the author of our book this morning. He has been a persecutor of Christians but Jesus was dramatically revealed to him in the book of Acts.
Paul went on to be the greatest missionary who had ever lived, writing this book and 12 others in the New Testament.
Sanctification points us to the power of the gospel like few other things.
People who are dead in their sin are made new. First God saves us, and he frees us from the penalty of sin. And in. his. goodness, he is working a metamorphosis in our lives. The change isn’t a punishment; it’s an act of grace. We all have issues, and things we wished were different. God purges the things from our lives.
Hoarders
There’s this show I’ve seen before called Hoarders.
It’s a show about pack rats on steroids. They save everything.
Imagine sin being like that. We’ve got all this junk, but God is the master-organizer. Little by little, he’s taking things away. We’ve got so much excess, that sometimes he takes boxes away, and we don’t even notice it’s gone.
Say that you come to faith, and you have 20 things that are real issues for you. You swear like a sailor, you drink like a fish. You root for the Packers. But God chips away at our areas of sin.
You’re forgiven, but all of those struggles aren’t going to go away instantly. Over time, we are becoming more holy.
Often times, there is a lot of growth when we first come to faith. That can be a really exciting time. Or maybe there’s been another period where your relationship with God seemed more palpable. Maybe when one of your kids was born.
But it’s not the same now.
It doesn’t have to be like that forever. But it’s hard for that to improve out of nowhere. We need to focus on God. With unveiled faces, we need to contemplate the glory of God. Is there anything more important that you could think about than this?
You might casually think, “Well yeah, God is glorious, I get it, so what.”
He is the most glorious thing in the universe! He is the ruler and sustainer of the universe, the creator of the universe, of all things visible and invisible, the holy God. In every quality which can be ascribed to him, he possesses it in its superlative degree. He isn’t just a king, but the king of kings, not just a Lord but the Lord of Lords.
May we all have minds utterly enamored by the wonder of God.
Like I’ve said, God sanctifies us. We don’t transform ourselves, we don’t transform our own hearts. But in participating in our sanctification, we can actively pursue God.
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Philippians 1:6 says, “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion until the day of Jesus Christ.”
God is sanctifying, he is working.
It ebbs and flows. Sometimes, it can be like we are going two steps forward and one step backward. But God is transforming us.
The text says that it is with ever increasing glory. The ESV translation says “from one degree of glory to another.” Literally it’s saying we are being transformed from glory to glory. God has transformed us into his glorious image to one point today, but it’ll be at another place in five years. It’ll be at another place in ten years.
(slow)
We are being transformed into the image of Christ. We are being transformed into a greater resemblance of his character.
And the fact that we are progressively being changed into the likeness of God should give us hope. We aren’t where we will be, but we’re better than we were. It gives us the hope of what the gospel promises. Of the work that God will do in someone who is walking in faith.
It should give us hope that for areas where we have seen defeat throughout our lives, God is still at work, we are not done. The sculptor keeps chipping away at the hard block of stone to reveal a wondrous creation. Who you are now is not who you always have to be.
We undermine the power of the gospel when we think a person can’t change. People are being introduced to God everyday. Addictions are being broken everyday. Broken marriages are being reconciled everyday. Don’t forget the power of God and what he can do. Don’t forget what he has done in your life, what he can do in your life, and what he can do in the lives of others.
I’m a huge fan of the musical Les Miserables. I’ve always been struck by the relationship between Jean Valjean and Javert. Valjean, the protagonist, spends several years of his life in prison. Javert is a policemen. Valjean goes on to be an honest man, but Javert keeps recurring throughout his life. For Javert, despite the fact that Valjean is an honorable man, he is, and always will be, a criminal. He is so focused on what Valjean has done, that he is blind to the changes in his life.
But God transforms. Whatever it is you’re struggling with, God has pulled people up from greater darkness, from lower places.
We are being transformed with ever-increasing glory
The verse includes with Which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
We are sanctified by God the father through the Holy Spirit.
If you study the whole passage we’re in this morning: 2 Corinthians 3:7-18, Paul was referring back to Moses and the blessings from God during the time of Moses. But Paul is saying that this is a new era, this new covenant is even greater than what they had in the time of Moses. Now we have the Holy Spirit which has been given to the faithful. The Spirit enables us to understand God’s word, convicts of sin, equips us with various Spiritual gifts, and many other things.
It says that we are being transformed from the Lord, who is the Spirit. The point here is that the new covenant, after the time of Christ is being experienced in believers through the Spirit. We are sanctified by God the father, and also through the Holy Spirit.
Conclusion
The gospel is the power of God for our salvation.
As we close this morning, two stories of redemption come to mind.
John Newton was a debauchorous and hedonistic sailor in the 18th century. In his twenties, he was on a ship that was caught in the middle of a tremendous storm. It was a monumental event in his life and was a catalyst in the process of his finding faith.
But Newton went on to be a slave trader. Epilepsy took him away from sailing a few years later. He began to more fervently study God’s scriptures. He would go on to serve as a pastor in England for more than 40 years.
The fact that Newton had been a slave trader would become a source of regret in his life, and he became an avid abolitionist in England. He also wrote the most famous hymn ever penned in the English language, Amazing Grace.
A second story comes to mind:
Kelly Gissandaner was executed in Georgia in September of 2015. In 1997, while having an affair, Gissendaner convinced her boyfriend to murder her husband. On death row, Gissendaner found faith, took up the study of theology, and became a mentor and Spiritual role model to other women in the prison. She went from being a woman full of hatred to having a metamorphosis that can only come from God.
God can lift you up from whatever you’ve done. Anyone who comes to him in true faith, God forgives.
In the moments leading up to her death, as the drugs were being administered, Gissendaner could be heard singing those words of John Newton, “amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, yet now I see.”
The power of God in the gospels shows us Jesus healing lepers, feeding thousands, walking on water, and conquering death. It takes sinful people in their separation from God and makes them God’s people.
Surely it can take a hateful person and make them loving. Surely the gospel can take a criminal and make them remorseful. We must not think that a person is undeserving of grace. None of us truly deserves it. But no sin is so great, no person is so sinful that the cross of Christ is incapable of forgiving it.
In the Bible, so much of the marriage language about weddings, brides, and grooms is discussing the relationship between God and his people. In the Bible, in spite of humanity’s sin, turning away from God, the Lord is depicted as a faithful groom.
In the New Testament, the church is depicted as the bride and Christ is the groom. That’s part of the reason why our passage said “husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
Jesus has a sacrificial love for the church. In Ephesians 5, the Apostle Paul says: “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:32).”
What Paul is saying is that marriage itself is a picture of the love that Jesus has for his church. The gospel gives a picture of what marriage is supposed to be.
Marriage is about faithfulness. God is faithful to his people. He is faithful to his promises.
Marriage is about forgiving. Because we sin. And the closer a person is to us, the deeper the wounds we can afflict. And nowhere is that truer than in marriage.
Marriage is about grace. You are to love your spouse unconditionally. They don’t earn your love or approval. We can’t earn God’s love. God freely offers the love that we could never earn.
Marriage is about love. Because “God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).
THE BIBLE SAYS THAT “LOVE IS PATIENT AND KIND; LOVE DOES NOT ENVY OR BOAST; IT IS NOT ARROGANT OR RUDE. IT DOES NOT INSIST ON ITS OWN WAY; IT IS NOT IRRITABLE OR RESENTFUL; IT DOES NOT REJOICE AT WRONGDOING, BUT REJOICES WITH THE TRUTH. LOVE BEARS ALL THINGS, BELIEVES ALL THINGS, HOPES ALL THINGS, ENDURES ALL THINGS (1 CORINTHIANS 13:4-7).”
The gospel gives marriage its greater meaning. Jesus is the groom who sacrificed everything for his bride.
Despite all of our imperfections, our mistakes, our times of selfishness, the worst things we’ve ever done, in spite of that, God offers to love freely and unconditionally. God loves us at our worst. God does not love us because of what we have done, or how we make him feel. He loves us because he loves us. And all we have to do to receive that love is to accept it. To know there is grace.
When marriage is done right, there aren’t many things better than that in the whole world. Two people who love each other who have fun with each other, who bring out the best in each other.
Originally published January 4, 2019
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Our era has twisted the meaning of love. The culture acts as though real love is accepting whatever someone wants to do. No matter if it’s sinful. No matter if it’s harmful. We call that love. I call it apathy. Love is a righteous God who would forgive people and give them heaven, and spare them hell, even though they are unrighteous and unholy.
John 3:16 is perhaps the greatest verses in the Bible. It’s the most well-known to our culture. But with a Bible verse that’s so well-known, I think we can sometimes become tone deaf to it.
It’s a great verse because it tells the gospel as succinctly as any verse in the entire Bible.
God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
It points us to the love of God. But because of passages like this one, I think it’s easy for us as Christians to take the love of God for granted. The idea of a loving God is not universal to world religions.
In many religious systems, their gods are not loving, they’re not personal, they’re not perfect, and humanity basically has to do what it can to appease them. In most religions, the pressure is put on man to live up to a certain standard.
I’ve heard people argue that “all religions are basically the same.”
I think that’s something that Americans say who have generally never studied other religions and who are basically making an arrogant assumption that all other religions have a similar worldview to Christianity. Not the case.
Because here in America, no matter if someone is a Christian or the most ardent atheist, we are influenced by Christian teachings and beliefs. It’s at the core of our nation’s founding. It influences our ethics, laws, literature. It influences our understanding of a seven day week, it influences how we see the world. Because it’s so fundamental to America, it’s easy take certain Biblical teachings as self-evident assumptions.
It’s kind of like how when you grow up, there’s often a certain assumption in the normality of how you’re raised. It’s what you know. But you get older, and sometimes you realize that things that were always part of your life and which you always took for granted were actually not what everyone else experienced.
And in America, that happens with Christianity. And it happens with the idea of a loving God. We hear a phrase like “God so loved the world” and are tempted to think “well…yeah.”
Because we think we’re pretty good. Pretty loveable. Why wouldn’t God love us?
Why would God love you?
A perfect and holy God. He can have whatever he wants. He is totally self-sufficient, self-sustained. He doesn’t need any favors. He isn’t bored or lonely. Why would he love you?
Who’s your dream person to meet? That’s a frequent ice breaker question to ask. If you could meet any person and I’ll say it can’t be a relative. And it can’t be someone from the Bible. Who’s your dream person to meet? Maybe it’s a famous pastor, or an athlete, a movie star, a writer, a musician, a president. Whoever it is. Imagine you actually got to meet that person. That would be a pretty big deal. Right? Just to meet them. Because it’s someone famous, someone influential, someone people know, someone the world loves.
You wouldn’t expect them to know you. You certainly wouldn’t expect them to love you. And those are just people. We have such a habit of putting our celebrities up on a pedestal. Finite, fallible, fallen people. But then you compare that to the infinite and almighty God. A God who spoke the universe into being by the power of his word. The God who sustains all of creation. And he knows you.
Little ole you.
He’s righteous. Meanwhile, you don’t even live up to your own standards. You don’t even live as good a life as you know you could. And you certainly don’t live up to God’s standards.
We sin so much that become numb to it and often don’t realize it. The times where we act selfishly or manipulate someone. We have a justification for it. The times we lie. The bad things we think about others. The times we disregard God. The times where we know what we should do, and actively decide not to.
But that God knows you. And he loves you. God created humanity and he knew would sin. He made us anyway.
God made a covenant with Abraham and made a promise that he knew we would not deserve. He gave it anyway. God sent his son into the world. Jesus was perfect, without sin, came to spread light in a dark world, and God knew the world would kill him. He sent him anyway. God knew that you would be a sinner. But God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. He forgave you anyway.
Through Jesus and what he did on the cross. Nothing about this passage lifts up the goodness of man. This is entirely the goodness and love of God.
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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 the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. 23 And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. 24 I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
Prayer
Almighty and eternal God,
You are the beginning and the end. You take our sins away as far as the east is from the west. A thousand years to you is like a day.
We once again come to you in a time of worship. And may we rejoice in the freedom that we have to praise you and to celebrate the good news of the gospel is that though we were dead in sin, you show your love in the gift of everlasting life through your Son who has taken on the weight of our sin.
Lord, it’s grieving this week to learn of the suffering and persecution which people are facing in many parts of the world: Christians suffering in Nigeria. Churches being cracked down on in China.
Lord, may we remember those people in our prayers. May they be light in spite of the terrible darkness which surrounds them. May your gospel go forward and overcome the best efforts of men to quell your truth.
Lord, we pray for our community and nation as well. There is one hope and that is the gospel. It’s not economics, or politics, or laws, or courts, where our ultimate hope lies but in Christ crucified. The Son of God, the Word made flesh, the firstborn of all creation who came into our world.
Lord, we pray for our virtual Vacation Bible School this week. We pray both for kids who do the activities and watch the videos, but we also pray for parents or babysitters or grandparents who might watch along and we pray that gospel and Biblical truths can impact them as well. Lord, we pray that you would use this.
Lord, we continue to pray for this church. We thank you for the people that we have. We thank you that in spite of this virus, you have preserved us. And we continue to ask for your protection. We also pray for your wisdom and guidance – not just with this situation – but with everything that we do as a church, O Lord.
We pray for our time in your world. May we be enlightened, encouraged, and edified. To the glory of God. In Jesus’ name, amen.
We’re continuing this morning in our summer series The Forensics of Faith.
Last week, we talked about justification. And just as a reminder, justification is right legal standing before God.
Today, we talk about the Doctrine of Regeneration. Regeneration refers to new spiritual life which God gives a person. The new regenerative life is what brings a person from spiritual death to spiritual life.
While justification is a matter of faith in what Christ has done.
Regeneration is a work of the Spirit.
And if you recall from earlier in our time in John’s Gospel, another term for regeneration is found in John 3. Born again.
In much of Christendom, it’s easy to overlook the Holy Spirit.
J.I. Packer, who was one of the great theologians of the last 50 years. Packer passed into glory at the age of 93 last week and so I’ve been going through his classic book Knowing God. One of the things that he says in that book that’s sadly all too true in much of modern Christianity is that we overlook the Holy Spirit.
We consider God and we focus on the relationship with Jesus. But as Packer says, the Holy Spirit is the Cinderella of Christian doctrines. Just off in the corner, forgotten about.
But the Holy Spirit is immensely important in the work of the salvation of souls and in the work of God’s church. In Ezekiel 36, the prophet points to a future time of washing and renewal.
So in our passage from Ezekiel, we’re going to look at three stages of Spiritual regeneration which the Lord brings.
First, the Spirit brings renewal
Ezekiel 36:25: I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
Ezekiel is in the Old Testament and he’s looking forward to a future time of cleansing that God would bring by means of the Holy Spirit.
We live in that time now. When we are regenerated, it is a Spiritual cleansing which the Lord brings.
With the water, it’s easy to draw parallels to baptism. And in fact, the filling of the Holy Spirit is referred to as a baptism.
John 1:33. John the Baptist is speaking about Jesus and says: He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
It is a privilege which all Christians share, as we see in 1 Corinthians 12:13: For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body
All believers in the gospel of Christ are filled with the Spirit. There’s no such thing as a Christian who does not have the Spirit.
Romans 8:9-10 is a great passage which communicates this idea: 9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
So we are baptized into the Holy Spirit.
Water baptism then is a symbol of the regeneration and cleansing which comes through the Holy Spirit.
Baptism does not bring salvation in itself. It’s an important and powerful outward symbol of an inward work which the Lord has done.
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
What a powerful picture of God’s grace and renewal.
In Shakespear’s great play, MacBeth, there’s a scene where Lady MacBeth is overcome with grief and guilt for her murderous greed and ambition and she desperately tries to wash a blood stain off of her hands.
There’s no actual blood stain. It’s in her mind.
But that’s the brilliance of the scene.
Because we all have a stain of sin upon our hearts and lives that we cannot wash away on our own. It is God who brings the cleansing and renewal.
In Psalm 51, David too is ravaged by guilt and grief over a terrible sin he’s committed. His affair with Bathsheeba and him sending her husband Uriah to the frontlines in battle where he was killed.
David pleads with God: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!
And I return to John 3. A passage we preached from last fall.
After Jesus has said in John 3:3: Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God
He will then talk of the cleansing which accompanies regeneration.
John 3:5-6: 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Water and Spirit.
To have faith is to have the Spirit and to have the Spirit is to be cleansed.
You have all sorts of rituals in the Old Testament. Washing is a powerful symbol of purity throughout various cultures and religions.
The washing that God gives through the Spirit is a cleansing of the human soul.
We see the language of this renewal again in Titus 3:
Titus 3:4-5: when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit
It is because of the mercy of God that we are made morally clean through the work of the Holy Spirit.
So through regeneration, God cleanses us.
Through being born again, God cleanses us.
When Jesus says, “you must be born again,” that’s another fantastic metaphor for regeneration.
Because it is a new birth. You’re a new person in Christ.
Also, the metaphors matters because we are regenerated as a one time event.
Jesus said that we must be born again. He did not say that we must be born again…and again and again.
It’s not that we are saved today, then we lose that, then we do better and we’re saved tomorrow. Many Christians believe that. It’s not a Biblical idea.
And this is why systematic theology is important in considering the connection between various Bible teachings and how they work together.
I’ll again call to mind justification which was our topic last week. Justification, simply put, is right legal standing before God. You cannot be justified without being regenerated. And to be regenerated is to be justified.
So when we’re regenerated and given the Holy Spirit, and we’re justified in Christ and forgiven our sins, it’s something that only needs to happen once. You can only be born again once and the good news is that true salvation cannot be lost.
We’re sealed with the Holy Spirit as a guarantor of our salvation.
Ephesians 1:13-14: In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
Second, the Spirit gives us a new heart
Returning to our passage in Ezekiel: I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
Once again, what an incredible metaphor that the Bible uses. I assume it’s because of the Bible that the heart has become such a powerful symbol in our culture. Think about it for just a moment.
Someone who’s very kind if referred to as tender-hearted.
Someone who’s unkind and unfeeling is called cold-hearted. When we’re really sincere, we say something is from the bottom of our heart. When we see an impressive athletic display, we say they played their heart out. Really difficult situations are seen as heartbreaking.
And there are lots more little phrases like that. It’s a powerful symbol in our culture that we see as being the seat of our emotions. Because of regeneration, God gives us a new heart. Thousands of Americans wait on donor lists in need of heart transplants.
Heart disease is annually the leading cause of death in America with more than 1 in 5 deaths coming from heart disease.
Our hearts don’t last forever. And certainly, the heart is important in the Bible. Love the Lord your God with all your…What comes first? Heart.
Quoting again from David in Psalm 51:10, he asks God: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me
Jeremiah 17:9-10 says: 9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? 10 “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind,
We cannot make our hearts pure. But the good news is that through regeneration, God does a heart transplant in us.
He gives us a new heart and a new Spirit. So the Spirit brings renewal through cleansing, it is through the Spirit that we are given a new heart.
Third, the Spirit enables us to follow God’s law
The gospel changes lives.
When we’re born again, that doesn’t mean that we never struggle, it doesn’t mean we’ll never sin. But we are forgiven.
We aren’t perfect but we’re declared righteous because of the righteousness of Christ. But true recognition of sin, true faith in Christ, that changes a person. And it’s often especially noticed when an adult comes to faith.
If you have a child who’s grown up in the church and always had faith as part of their life, that’s an incredible blessing. And there certainly is a moment when faith becomes more real to a person, where their trust truly is in the gospel.
But when you have someone who’s an adult and gone years of living their own way, pursuing their own interests and desires, and Jesus comes into their life, there should be fruit of that.
Not all at once. It’s not saying a person suddenly never has any areas where they struggle. It’s a process. We’ll talk more about that next week. But when the light of the gospel truly takes root in a person’s heart, it causes a change.
It’s like you suddenly see the world through a different set of eyes. It’s like in the Wizard of Oz where the story goes from sepia to color. And the reason why there are changes and sudden changes is again due to the Holy Spirit and the process of conversion.
The Spirit enables us to follow God.
We certainly see that idea in our primary passage today. Consider Ezekiel 36:27: And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules
It is theSpirit of God working in us which enables us to follow the will of God.
When God works in a person’s life, and transforms a person to love him and love him and enables a person to follow his commands, that is miraculous.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2)
That same Spirit who was in the beginning, part of creation, and who hovered over the waters dwells every single person who is a Christian and who believes in the Good News of Jesus Christ.
How amazing is that!
And it’s not because of us. It’s because our God is a good God.
Consider Ezekiel 36:22: Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.
God’s works of grace are not because we were deserving. God ultimately makes grace available because of his character, because of his goodness, because of his faithfulness to the promises he had made, and for the sake of displaying his own divine glory and greatness.
Yes, God loves us.
But it’s not because we’re lovable but because God is loving.
And so through the gospel, through the work of Christ on the cross, we are forgiven and justified.
But what separates real faith, what separates the believers from the pretenders is regeneration.
In his systematic theology, Louis Berkhoff says:
Regeneration consists in the implanting of the principle of the new spiritual life in man, in a radical change of the governing disposition of the soul, which, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, gives birth to a life that moves in a Godward direction.
Numerous passages in the New Testament talk about the work that God does in the life of a believer.
1 Corinthians 2:14-16: The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
Consider Ezekiel again: I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules
God works through us. We don’t regenerate ourselves. We don’t cause our own Spiritual growth. We participate in the work which God is doing in us but we don’t cause it. I hope that makes sense.
I realize that’s a somewhat complicated idea.
Think of the metaphor of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. I know some of us are farmers, some of us garden.
You’re working to help provide the conditions for the crops or for the fruit to grow. You have a role in that. But you’re not the one who’s actually causing the growth.
Yes, it’s important to walk with God, to pursue God, to pray to God, to spend time in his word, to serve his people, to serve his church.
And God can and does use that for our Spiritual growth and enrichment and sanctification. But it is God who produces the fruit through the mediation of the Holy Spirit.
We don’t produce our own fruit.
We don’t make ourselves joyful. God does through the Spirit. We don’t make ourselves peaceful and at peace, we can’t just will that in our own lives. God does that through the Spirit.
But the Spirit transforms.
The Spirit causes Spiritual growth and because of that true faith results in a life that is changed by the gospel.
In Philippians 2:13, Paul puts says: it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
God works in us. New birth, being born again changes a person.
While it is through Christ that we are forgiven, justified, and given eternal life; we see that the Spirit is involved in bringing new life – specifically through cleansing us, through indwelling us, through causing a change in our heart, and by enabling us to live for God.
We have a good God who has made a way for sinful people to be forgiven. We must believe in his Son, Jesus Christ as Lord and savior.
