God the Holy Spirit His Regeneration

Okay, we are, believe it or not, we're plugging along. We're down to chapter 16 and we're in this section of God the Holy Spirit. And today we were supposed to cover his regeneration. But as Roger mentioned last week, that as we went through this, Regeneration, or let me just say this, in terms of these next, this week and the next three, with respect to what we're supposed to cover, regeneration has been dwelling and sealing, baptism and filling. that that's just a small, small portion of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in your life and my life. So, there's a lot more. So, we've given the big picture, and we're going to cover these, hopefully, but not in the detail that is in those chapters, because what we want to do is to try to cover the entire extent of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And what Roger did last week is point out with respect to his coming on the day of Pentecost, his departure is going to be at the rapture of the church. and right now he's in dwelling believers and his abode is here on earth and Roger was pointing out the difference between his abode and the fact that he is omnipresent so that even though his abode won't be here on earth anymore, he being omnipresent will. Now you try to figure all that out.

But what we're spending our time on now is the ministry of the Holy Spirit to the Church. What is the ministry of the Holy Spirit to the Church? Well, we've divided it up into two groups, if you will. We're looking at His completed ministries, those that he, when you became a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, there is the Holy Spirit, the moment that you and I believed, completed a whole list of ministries in your life and in my life. And basically, those ministries, in terms of what has completed, is he shared Christ's glory with you. And we'll try to see that this morning. But as we look at his completed ministries, it's a done deal, done once and once for all.

And that is your very position in the Lord Jesus Christ. So we're talking about position and condition. Position is who you are. That will never change. Your condition is your walk. and your moment-by-moment walk here. So what God desires is that our moment-by-moment walk here would be consistent with who we are, with our position. So there we have the whole Christian life in terms of God sharing his glory with us and desiring that we walk in our condition here according to our position in terms of who we are in Christ. Then, there are the continuing ministries of the Holy Spirit. Where He shares His glory with us, He reveals His glory and He glorifies the Father.

Now, I want to ask you a question so you understand just these simple statements here. Tell me something about a person who has amnesia. They can't remember. Okay. What can't they remember? who they are. Okay. Now, with a person with amnesia, maybe you never interacted with a person with amnesia. I had a good friend who was walking with his wife, and we were down in Canyon City, and he got in a car, came by a teenager, drunk, hit him, and he wound up in the hospital, and he had amnesia. So, one of the things What are the things you would do with a person with amnesia?

Try to refresh their memory to tell them about who they are, right? Their identity. They don't have a clue as to who they are. So you would try to share with them who they are. Now, as believers, we don't have amnesia. But the thing is, the moment we became believers, we didn't have a clue as to who we are. So we've got to be told and we've got to be taught as to who we are. And that's what this is all about, in terms of trying to understand who we are and what God is doing in our life to show us as to who we are.

So he shares Christ's glory with us. Now, you had no clue and I had no clue that God did that the moment we believed. And that's our position in Christ. We have the very glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. But we don't know what that is. So what he does then is He reveals that to us. He reveals in terms of who we are. And then as a result of knowing who we are and revealing His glory to us, we glorify the Father. by walking in who we are. And as we walk by faith, in terms of who we are, that glorifies the Father. So, herein is the whole Christian life. Now, we're going to look at some details on this.

We've said, with respect to his completed ministries, and we went through this this chart here, which talks about his completed ministries, the fact that he shared his glory with us, and he shared his glory with us by all of these ministries that you see here, in terms of calling us choosing us, regenerated you, he baptized you, justified you, sanctified you, he co-enlifed you, that's a new word, but he freed you, he indwells you forever, and he sealed you.

Now, what in the world are all of these? So, we're going to spend this hour on looking at these ministries. But let me tell you this, that there's no way that we can cover these in this one hour. It's going to be another class to cover these in detail. But what I'm going to do is just cover, say, the first four. And if we have time, maybe I'll breeze through the rest. But let's talk about the column.

The word in the Greek to call is kaleo, and it simply means, and it has several different meanings, depending upon the context it's used. In one case, it's used to call or to invite somebody. So if you call someone on the phone and you invite them over for dinner, they may accept the invitation, or they may not, but it's an invitation. So that's one form of the word to call. Another use of the word to call is that when somebody does accept the invitation, then Scripture utilizes it as they are the called ones. They are called. They are called to something specific.

I want you to turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. We're looking at this calling. Let me ask you a question. In terms of God's call for people to come to Christ, for people to have eternal life, and we know that in 1 Peter, God says that He's not willing that one person should ever perish, but that they should come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. If that's God's will, let me ask you about His call. Is His call to certain individuals? or is this call to all?

What would you say? I mean, just knowing that one verse of scripture, that God is not willing that any, not one single person should perish. But you have to be called. Because in and of ourselves, we would not come unless we were invited. So tell me what you think about that call. Would it go to everyone, or just a few called? Harry?

I think it would definitely go to everyone, but people have a free choice to decide. Okay. It would go to everyone, but people have a free choice. Okay. Think of – well, let's just – Let's just, you know, part of that call, as you think of, say, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever, would you think that that's everyone, whosoever would believe in him has eternal life? Okay, so the call, so then there's a, if you will, there's a general call. There's a general call to every single person in the universe to come. General call.

Then there's a specific call. But look at 1 Corinthians chapter 1, and I won't go through all these passages, but in verse 18, It says this, for the preaching of the cross is to them who are perishing foolishness, but unto us who have saved it is the power of God. Or the message of the cross is to them who are perishing, who go into hell, foolishness. It's dumb. In fact, the word that's used in the Greek is moria, which we get our word moronic, so that you present the cross to somebody, you tell somebody about the cross, and often people will say, that's dumb, that's moronic.

I mean, I'm working with two guys right now who are not believers, and they're engineers, and they've both said this, that if it was up to me, I wouldn't system engineer it like this. I said, that's exactly right. You're exactly right. That wouldn't be the way you would system engineer it. But that's the way God system engineered it. But to the natural mind, it's foolishness. Why would God send his son and put him on the cross to die? Why would he do that? And so, from man's wisdom, man's wisdom wouldn't system engineer it that way. But in God's wisdom, the cross is His wisdom. The cross is not only His wisdom, but it's His power.

So then you get down to verse 24, and it says this, but unto them who are called, so there was a general call up above in terms of the message of the cross, there was a general call, but then here's So this is including both a general call and a specific call, but unto them who are called, both Jews and Greeks, does that include everyone? That's the entire world, Jews and Greeks, Jews and Gentiles. Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For you see your calling, brethren, how that many not wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called." Can we say all are called? See, up above, all are called.

There's a general call. But now there's the specific call. There's a specific call. And the specific call, as we look at it, and so here's how I summarize it. The general call or the general invitation to every single person, every unbeliever. It's an invitation to eternal life. Then there's the specific call. And the specific call are only to those who respond by faith. called ones, and you'll see in Scripture those who are called, called ones, they are called. They are the ones who responded by faith to the gospel, and they are now the called ones.

And it has this second meaning here with respect to called, because it has several meanings. It has a couple more meanings than we have listed here, but the two general meanings are to invite, the general call, to appoint the appointment or the specific call.

And the specific call or the specific appointment is to share in His glory. Now, last week or the week before, we went through 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 13, and we saw that we're called to share the very glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. We're called to fellowship with Him. We're called to live a life of holiness. Okay. That's called.

The second word is choose. The word there, a little different word in the Greek, means to select, to pick out, or to elect. So we get our word, as you go through scripture, you see the word election. That's this word here in terms of chosen. What are some of the theological teachings today with respect to choosing or the elect?

Okay. So there is a teaching out there, Calvinism, that teaches that you're pre-elected. Well, is that scriptural? Go to Ephesians chapter 1. See, this is going to be a trick question. You have to watch out. You have to listen. And look at verse 3, Ephesians chapter 1.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all, or with every, and it's every single one, every spiritual blessing, where? In heavenly places or in heavenlies. Here's what I mean. We are always searching for some blessing from God, right? And the thing is, believers, we don't know that He's blessed us with every one. He's left not one out. There is no blessing that we have to search for. We have them all. That's who we are in Christ. He's given us every single blessing there is. No more to add. Not one. So He's blessed us with every spiritual blessing. Look at verse 4.

According as He has chosen us in Him. So we are chosen in Him. When? When were we chosen in Him? As it goes on to say, before the foundation of the world. that we should be holy without blame before Him in love. So when were we chosen? Before the foundation of the world.

By the way, Lisa is my daughter, if you don't know her. Lisa said Calvinists believe that God picked us out, chose us before the foundation of the world. Well, is that correct or not? How would you change verse 4? Very good. Do you notice that we were chosen before the foundation of the world. Let me go back. Let me read it again. According as He has chosen us, key words, in Him, in Him, before the foundation of the world.

So the choosing is not like this. That before the foundation of the world, God sat back and said, well, let's see, This class that's going to be here today, they're the chosen ones. And those guys out there who are driving down the street, they're not the chosen ones. They're not the elect. Here we are, this select group, we are the elect. Is that what he did? No. It says, in him.

And as you look at this whole thing on predestination or election, you'll always find that everyone who's predestined or elected is those who are in Christ. And it's not that he, in eternity past, made the determination that, well, these are going to be unbelievers and these are going to go to hell. and these are going to be believers and they're going to spend eternity with the Father. So the choosing or the election is always those who are in Christ. So what God is saying is that those who come to a saving knowledge of Lord Jesus Christ, who answer the general call and believe, they are chosen. They are the chosen ones. And because they were chosen before the foundation of the world in Christ, and here's my plan for the chosen ones.

All right. We're going to move on to regeneration. When you think of the word regeneration, what do you think of? Born again. OK, good. And and and what's interesting about about that word is. Is this the. The Greek word, palingenisa, it consists of two words, palin, which means again, and then the end of the word, you can see we got our word genesis from, which means birth or creation.

So it means to be, as Marilyn said, to be born again, a new birth or a new creation. And it's talking about spiritually. Because you remember the story about Nicodemus, right? Nicodemus came to Christ, and Christ says that you must be born again. And what was Nicodemus' response?

How can that be? How can it be? And can I enter my mother's womb the second time? So what was he thinking of? He was thinking about a physical birth. And Christ says, no, you must be born of the water and the spirit. And Christ was talking about a spiritual birth. So then what's the reason? Why does man have to be regenerated? Why did Nicodemus and why did you and me have to be regenerated. We are born with that one nature and how do we know that?

Just turn back from Ephesians over to Romans chapter 5. And look at verse 12, and it says this, Wherefore by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. So death passed upon all men, for all have sinned. And then, as you read down through Romans 5, it talks about because of this, man is condemned. As you go through this passage of scripture, for by one man, sin entered into the world. Who's the one man? Adam. Because of one man, Adam, sin entered into the world.

Now if I tell you that the word sin there is preceded by a definite article, for by one man, the sin, and notice that sin is singular, the sin entered into the world, and so death, definite article, the death, passed upon all men, for all have sinned. What would you think about in terms of why would it say, for by one man, the sin, singular, entered into the world, and then death by sin, or death by the sin? Why the definite article? It doesn't say, for by one man, sins enter into the world. It's not plural. It's singular. Why would it be singular?

If I look out the window and I say, hey, there's a tree. Which tree am I speaking about? You don't have a clue, right? But if I look out the window and I say, hey, there's the tree, what have I done? I've made it specific. I'm specifying the tree, a particular tree, and the tree that I'm focused on now is where the leaves are turning, as opposed to all of the other ones, okay? So I'm talking about a specific tree.

So when God says, the sin into the world, He's talking about something specific. What could that be? The sin. The sin nature. Okay. Alright. So for by one man, very good, the sin nature into the world and death by sin. So that every single person born was born, is born, with a sin nature. Okay?

Now, somebody said, Avani said, because we're born with a sin nature, here it is, Romans 5.12, that we can't have fellowship with God. Right? And so, what's God's attitude towards the sin nature in terms of So man has this sin nature. What has God done with the sin nature?

Turn over just a couple more chapters to Romans chapter 8. Look at verse 1. There is therefore now wonderful passage of scripture. There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. Period. If you have a King James translation in front of you, just put a period there because the rest of the verse is in the older Greek manuscripts.

Verse 2, for the law or the principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law or the principle of sin and death. Now, in verse 2, there's a definite article in front of the word sin. Has made me free from the sin nature and the death.

Spiritual death. Verse 3. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin." Definite article, condemned the sin in the flesh. Okay? He condemned it. Condemnation is the whole process, the whole law process, that you evaluate the evidence, here's the sin nature, and it's rotten, and it's sinful. And then you pass judgment on it, guilty. And then there's the sentence. Sentence is death. Separation. Separation from God for all eternity.

So each of us has been born with a sin nature. We were born in union with that sin nature. And so here we are with a sin nature and we're intrinsically locked to the sin nature. And God condemns the sin nature. So what happens to the person? If they are intrinsically locked together, what happens to the person? But if he condemns the sin nature, what happens to that person who is intrinsically locked with the sin nature? So, sin nature is condemned, the person is condemned, right? They go together.

So, in order not to be condemned, something has to happen. We've got to be separated from that sin nature. Okay? Somehow we have to be separated from the sin nature. How does that happen? We're hurrying through regeneration, but we need to be regenerated when we are regenerated. But just keep in mind about the sin nature. When we are regenerated, there's a spiritual birth. We're born with that sin nature, we're separated from God, and the new birth is obtained.

But if you read through John chapter 1, it's a beautiful passage of scripture because it says that we're born again, we're born from above, not Not by physical birth and not by your will. You are not born again by your will. You don't make, you don't decide that, yeah, I think I'm going to be born again. It's not of the will. It's not of the will of man. Because the will of man is independent from faith. And we won't go through that discussion this morning. But willing is different than faith. And faith is a resting. Willing is a determination in your own mind. But we won't go through this.

So the results of the new birth in just believing what God has provided, that God has provided His Son, who paid the penalty for your sins and my sins, and just believing that, We are no longer a child of Satan, because scripture says that we are children of Satan. But we've become a child of God. And so, when somebody comes up to you and says, well, we're all God's children.

Really? Scripture does not teach that. Because Christ himself told the Pharisees, you know, God's not your father. Satan is your father. So, you've become a new creation in Christ, because that's what born again means, a new creation. God imparts His very life, Christ's very life, to you. And you have His life, which is eternal. It's eternal life. Okay.

But now, let's get back to here you are and here I was and you were and I was an unbeliever and we were intrinsically locked to our sin nature and we believed and we trusted Christ and God had to then separate us from that sin nature. Because that sin nature is condemned, and we just read in Romans 8.1, there is now, therefore, no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. So how did we get unlocked from that which we were intrinsically locked with, and that is the sin nature? How did that happen?

Sim? Substitutionary death. Substitutionary death. Okay. By faith. And certainly by faith. Well, by the cross. All right. By the cross. And the thing is, what happened on the cross? He paid the penalty for it. Why did he pay the penalty for it? Certainly true. Could you say when Jesus became sin that he became united with that? Okay. All right. Very good. That when he became sin, he became united with that sin nature. And so, in listening to the responses, we We tend to think this, that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world, for the sins of the world, right? Did he? Certainly did.

First John 2.2, for he is the propitiation or the satisfaction for our sins, and not for our sins only, but the sins of the entire world. So he paid for the sins of the world. But now we're talking about, that's sins. But we have the sin nature, and the sin nature is the factory that produces the sins. Now what did he do about the factory? That's the thing. What did he do about the factory that produces the sins?

So you're still in Romans. Turn over to chapter 6, and maybe you're there already. And actually look up at... Look at verse 20 in chapter 5. Chapter 5, verse 20. It says, Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded, definite article, where the sin nature abounded, grace did much more abound. Now look down at verse 1 in chapter 6 and look at the question. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, definite article, in the sin nature, that grace may abound? Isn't that a logical question?

In verse 20, chapter 5, it says, were the sin nature abounded, grace did much more abound. And the word for much more abound means overflowed. The sin nature was a little stream. grace was a waterfall. It overflowed. Grace overflowed sin. So the question is, well, if grace overflows sin and sin nature, well, let's continue in it so that grace overflows. And look at the response in verse 2. God forbid. And in the construction of the Greek, it says, That's an impossibility. It's an impossibility that that could happen. And it tells you why.

It says, how shall we that are dead to sin, definite article, to the sin nature, live any longer in it? So that as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, it says that you are dead to the sin nature, How can we live in it any longer? Death means what? It says we're dead to this separation. Anytime you see the word death in scripture, always just think of that one word, separation.

How shall we who are dead, separated from the sin, the sin nature, live any longer in it. So there's the separation. How did that separation occur? So we read the next few verses, and Paul says, I'm going to tell you how that happened, how you were separated from your sin nature, which you were intrinsically locked with. So he says this, Know ye not that as many of us as we're baptized into Christ Jesus, we're baptized into his death.

If we read this whole chapter, which we're not going to do, what's the first thing you think about baptism? What's the first thing that comes to your mind? water. You won't find a drop of water in chapter 6 in Romans. You don't find any water there. So it's not talking about water baptism or ritual baptism. And it's talking about spiritual baptism.

So it says that as many of us that were baptized And now the question is, what does baptized mean? Immersion. Okay. And that's exactly what it means. This word in the Greek, baptizo, there's several words in the Greek. One is bapto, which kind of means to dip, to put in, take out, to dip, like they wash their pots and pans. English translation is wash, but actually you look into Scripture and it says bapto, they dipped in, put out. Baptizo has the idea that you immerse something into something else so as to identify the object that you're immersing with what you're immersing it into. So, it has the idea that if you take some dye, and you take a cloth, and you want to identify or baptize that cloth with this dye, you want to so identify this cloth, which is a different color, with the color of the dye. So you baptize it, you immerse it. And what happens? It comes out and it's identified with the dye. It's the same color. That's the meaning of baptism.

It says that we were baptized into Christ's death. We were immersed into Christ's death. And what's really interesting about this word, this word immersion, kind of means to immerse, to put in, and never take out. We were baptized into, first it says Christ, we were baptized into the person of Christ. We were immersed into the person of Christ.

And then it goes on to say, into his death, we were immersed baptized into his death, never taken out. And then it goes on to say that we were baptized into his burial, immersed into his burial, in verse 4. Therefore, we were buried with him, how? By baptism, by being immersed into death.

And as you go in verse 4, that As Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life. And as you go through scripture, like in Colossians, it says that we were baptized into not only his death, into the person of Christ, into the death of Christ, into his burial, and also into his resurrection. We were immersed into his resurrection so that when he arose from the dead, we arose from the dead. We were made spiritually alive where we were spiritually dead.

Now, look at verse 6. It says, Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin." Definite article there, we should not serve the sin nature. So when we believed, all of this happened to us. The moment we believed, we were regenerated, we were baptized, we were placed in this living union. So we were in a living union with the sin nature. But we died, because he died unto the sin nature, we died, and then a new nature... How can I do this? So, here we are over here now. So, there's a separation between the sin nature and us, right? We were dead. We became separated. But we were joined to another. and we were placed into Christ in this intrinsic union with Him.

A union that can never, ever be broken. The only way it can be broken, there's one way it can be broken, and that is by death. Just like this one was broken by death, we were separated, this one also can be broken by death, if Christ should die. but He's eternal. He can never die. If you read down in Romans 6, it tells us exactly that, that He can never die. So our union with Christ is intrinsic, it's forever, never die.

To illustrate this, I've got some white dye in here. If I take my handkerchief. So here we are. Here we are over here in Adam. As scripture says, we lived in darkness and we're sinful. We have his very nature. So now, carefully. very carefully, if I put this, I'm baptizing this handkerchief, right? I'm immersing it into the dye, right? I should have been on Broadway. So you have to understand time has gone by now and it got all dry, right?

And so I'm going to take us out of the die. Now here we are. And the white die was the person of Christ. His death, his burial, his resurrection. So here we are. So here we are now in Christ, and you can see that you can't separate us from Christ. There's no way. We're intrinsically We're intrinsically in Christ, in the person of Christ, in his death, in his burial, in his resurrection. Not only that, in his ascension and his seeding. And not only that, we are baptized into his body.

If we had time, we'd go over to 1 Corinthians 12.13, where it says that the Spirit of God has baptized us into one body. into his body, the body of Christ. What's the body of Christ? The church. So there's seven things there. We're immersed into his death, into the person of Christ, his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension, his seeding, and the body of Christ. Those seven things.

In order for us to grow, we have to understand those truths. Those are critical truths, our identification with Christ. If we don't understand those truths, the growing process is very difficult. I've got to end, and so let me leave you with one last thought. And that's this. As we talk about these completed ministries and that whole list that we went through, okay, and so here's some vital truths that we need to remember about all of these ministries.

Number one, His completed ministries to you are not repeatable. You'll never be called again. You'll never be chosen again. You'll never be regenerated again. You'll never be baptized again. It's a done deal. It's happened once and once for all. They'll never be repeated. Number two, they'll never be retracted. You'll never be unregenerated. You can never become unborn.

So, people usually ask the question, well, hold it. I know people who have made a commitment to Christ and then later in life they have rejected Christ and they're just living a life of sin. So what about them? I mean, hold it, what do you mean that they'll never be retracted? If you have eternal life that God won't take back eternal life?

Well, the thing is this, only God knows if that person really made a decision for Christ. He only knows. You don't know, and I don't know. So somebody may make a profession for Christ, whether it's real or not, I don't know. And even if a person does make a decision for Christ, he or she may apostatize, may fall away from the faith. and just live like any other unbeliever, but that person is still a believer. So we just don't know where that person is.

Fact number three, that all of the truths that we talked about are eternal. They're forever and ever and ever. They are eternal truths. Number four, they are immutable. They will never change. you'll never be anything other than who you are in Christ. Those truths will never change.

And by the way, truth number five, these truths don't depend upon you, whether you're married or you're faithfulness. It's independent of anything that you do. It's independent of how faithful you are to the Lord. Those are true about you, independent of everything.

Now, we tend to think we've always got to do something, right? So we always want to put ourselves back under the law. But this is grace. This is real grace. Truth number six. These truths depend upon the efficacy or the value of Christ's finished work for you. And that's it. His work on the cross. Number seven. And that's the key. They are your permanent position in the risen Lord. This is your position and this is my position. The position will never ever change.

Any short questions? You can see that Roger and I were talking about the ministries of the Holy Spirit. We could take one whole quarter, 13 weeks. That wouldn't even be enough. We could take a half a year to go through these truths. They are wonderful truths. What we decided to do is just give you kind of an overview of these truths, and maybe, who knows, maybe sometime in the future we will do them in more detail. Let's close.

Our Father, again, we are just so thankful. Father, we stand in awe as we see as to who we are in Christ and what He has done for us. And Father, apart from Your Word, we wouldn't have a clue as to who we are. But we thank You for your word, and we thank you for the Spirit of God that reveals these truths about us. And Father, our prayer is that as we find out who we are and who Christ is, that this would lead us to the person of Christ, that our intimacy with him may grow. And we just give you thanks now, in Christ's name. Amen.