Let's take our Bibles and turn
to Acts 22. Acts 22. Let's pray together. Our Father, how wonderful it
is to be able to come together and to meet in Your name. Lord,
we thank You for your presence and we thank you for your blessing,
allowing us to meet in the assembly of your people and your gospel. We ask you, Lord, to bless the
Word tonight. We pray that you would cause
us to truly rejoice and to enter into the gates of thanksgiving
for what you've done for us. We pray for those in our midst
that are sick. We pray, Lord, that You would
minister according to Your wisdom and Your grace. And we ask these
things for Christ's sake. Amen. Paul the Apostle has been conversing with the
chief captain soldiers. He sets forth his right to a
fair trial. At verse 25, the Apostle Paul asked this soldier
just before he began to beat him, Paul said in the latter
part, of that 25th verse. He said, Is it lawful for you
to scourge a man that is a Roman and uncondemned? Well, verse
27, the chief captain came and he said unto him, Tell me, art
thou a Roman? And he said, Yea. Well, this
chief captain then relates that his freedom of citizenship. He says in that 28th verse, and
we'll look at verses 28 to 30 tonight, the chief captain answered
Paul. He said, with a great sum obtained
I this freedom. And Paul said, but I was free
born. This captain He was a Roman,
and he bought, paid for his citizenship. He said, with a great sum, I
paid to be a Roman. Now here you've got two guys. One of them paid to be a Roman. And the other one was born a
Roman, a free man, free. Now this evening, I'd like to
consider not Paul's citizenship as a Roman. But I want to take
these passages of Scripture here, and I want us to consider these
Scriptures in light of the spiritual nature. of what has been set
forth. Paul, he was a Roman, and he
was born a Roman, but not his citizenship as a Roman am I concerned
about, but his citizenship in the family of God. And I can
tell you this, every believer has got an interest in being
born in the family of God. This Roman captain here, he said,
With a great sum obtained I this freedom. The Roman government
was the ruling government of a major portion of that part
of the world. Free men, rights, honor, dignity. He said, I bought this freedom. I was made a citizen. That's
what it means, citizenship. I paid for the right to be a
Roman citizen. I paid for the right to walk
with my head high and to wear this uniform. I bought this. It's mine. It cost me a lot of
money. It cost me a lot of money to
be a Roman. But I did it. This Roman soldier did concerning
his citizenship to be a Roman what man by nature thinks he
can do to be a member of the family of God. Buy it. Pay for it. Simon the sorcerer
said when he offered the Apostle Peter, some money to receive
the power of the Holy Ghost. He said, Give me also this power,
that on whomsoever I lay hands he may receive the Holy Ghost.
But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because
thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with
money. Man, by nature, has only two
messages that can be preached. It's either salvation by grace
or salvation by the works of man. There's only two messages.
As I've said before, you can hang a shingle on a church building
and you can call it, well, we belong to this denomination or
we're this denomination. Let me ask you this. What do
you say? How do you say salvation is obtained? That's what I want to know. How
do you say? And you can write this down. It's either going
to be works or grace. It's going to be one or the other. It doesn't
matter what you call it, what the name of it is. As I've said
before, everybody's got their little pack of peanuts. What
think ye of Christ? This Roman soldier said, I bought
it. I paid for it. Paul said, I was born free. I was born a Roman. Man is born. the first time. Now listen to me. You did not have anything to
do with your birth. You had nothing to do with your
birth. You were born because of your
mom and dad. And you had no input into it.
You were born because of something that someone else did. Not you. But now, the first time you were
born, you were born in bondage. Romans 6.20 says, For when we
were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. That word free means disengaged. The first time you're born, you're
born disengaged from righteousness. There was nothing about you.
There was none good. You were conceived in sin. You
came forth from your mother's womb speaking lies. You were
dead spiritually. Adam died spiritually, and you
didn't have anything. You didn't have anything to do
with that. You were born dead. You had no use. You had no interest
in God's righteousness. You did not do anything to be
born the first time. I mean, we got that part down.
So for there to be true freedom before God Almighty, for there
to be true freedom before the law of God, for there to be true
freedom from its penalty, there is going to have to be a birth
that is opposite to the birth of bondage is going to have to
be a birth of freedom. And just like you had nothing
to do with the first birth, you don't have anything to do with
the second one either. Man cannot birth himself. He can't birth
himself. You must be the recipient of
something outside of yourself. Think about how you were born
the first time. Now this second birth that we're
talking about is actually what we refer to as regeneration.
Now there's four things I want to say concerning this birth. A picture, a type of what Paul
says, I was born, I was free born a Roman. Well, I want to
talk to you about being free-born, a child of God. Number one, this
birth, it's a birth of necessity. John 3, 7, the Lord speaking
to Nicodemus, He said, Marvel not that I said unto thee, You
must be born again. You must be. Here's the thing. Here's the
reason why you must be born again. Romans 3.10, as it is written,
there's none righteous, no, not one. Now, this is the reason
why we must be born again. There's none righteous. None. And 1 Corinthians 6.9 says, Know
ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?
Well, here's the situation now. We're born the first time through
no effort, no works of our own. We were the recipient. And we
were born dead. We were born unrighteous because
we were conceived in sin, because of Adam's fall. And in Adam,
in the natural generation of human beings, everybody's born
just like Adam. Same nature of sin. So there's
none righteous. But here's the thing. that are
unrighteous shall ever inherit the kingdom of heaven. So here's
the summation of that. Nobody that is born the first
time in Adam without a new birth is going to inherit the kingdom
of God. No unrighteousness. This birth that we must have
It's a birth that does not involve a changed heart. You know, I heard somebody say
this the other day. God has got to change our heart.
Do you know that there's no place in Scripture that talks about
the heart being changed? I looked it up. There's no mention
in all of the Scriptures concerning a heart being changed. The Scripture says that the old
heart is deceitful above all things, and it is desperately
wicked. And let me tell you, the Lord said that which is flesh
is flesh, that which is spirit is spirit. The heart born in
Adam remains unchanged. That is why Paul says, In me,
that is, in my flesh that dwells no good thing. The old heart
is not changed. The new birth is not the removal
of anything from a man. It's the communicating of something
to him that wasn't there before. It's a new nature. It's an impartation. It's the putting in of a new
nature. Ezekiel 36, 26, a new heart,
a new will. Also will I give you, and a new
spirit, a new character will I put within you." So the new
birth is something that we absolutely have to have. You must be born
again. No person that is born in Adam
without the impartation of a new nature is going to inherit the
Kingdom of God. So since I'm born the first time
with a heart that hates God, I must be born again in order
to possess a new heart that loves the one who has everlastingly
loved me. But how does that happen? How? I know I've got to be born again,
and I'm telling you, I don't have any part in it. How does
it happen? Here's the second part. It's
a birth according to God's grace. John 1, 12, and 13, but as many
as received Him. To them, and I'm adding these words, it was
made evident. To them gave He power to become
the sons of God. Now let me tell you something
about that word become right there. If you read that, as many
do and say, as many as received Him, then gave He power to become
the sons of God. That's a wrong interpretation.
The word become in there means to appear in history. It means
to be brought about, to be made evident what God had always purposed. As many as received Him, It was
obvious that God gave He power to become, to appear in history,
the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name, which
were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor
of the will of man, but of God. Paul, it's as if anticipated
under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, causing Paul to
write the latter part of that scripture to clarify so that
men would be stopped when they tried to misinterpret the first
part of it. They were born. They received,
associated by faith, Him because God had given them a new heart.
And that new birth, it was not of blood. It means it wasn't
by heredity. It wasn't because, just because
my mother and dad were believers does not mean that I would be
a believer. Not necessarily so. Not just
because of that. Let me tell you this. Regeneration
does not run in the veins of human beings. Two believers don't
begat another believer. No, no. Two believers begat a
dead sinner. That's what they begat. It takes
God to rebirth. Not by blood, nor by the will
of the flesh. I'll tell you this, Paul says,
in me that in my flesh there dwelleth no good thing. It's
not born by the will of the flesh. People, you hear and I hear and
you know and I know. Men try to tell people. You can receive. You can act. You can take this.
Exercise your free will. Men are not born by the will
of the flesh. The flesh profiteth nothing. Without me, you can
do nothing. Someone says, well, I can believe.
No, you can't. Not by the will of the flesh. Not by the will
of man. I would desire to see my family
saved. I pray God have mercy on my family.
I pray the Lord save my brothers and sisters. I pray that He does.
But I'm going to tell you something. Men are not born by the will
of man. Regeneration is not brought about
by well-meaning efforts. And I cannot talk you into it. I can talk to you about Scriptures
that in my mind are so plain, I don't see how you don't see
them. But I'm telling you, unless God gives a man a new heart,
I don't care how much you try to talk to him and reason with
him. Men don't hear. God must give them a hearing
ear. How are they born? They're born of God. The new
birth is a divine work accomplished by the sovereign grace of God.
Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. Thirdly, this is a birth that
is accomplished by God's means. Number one, this is a birth that
I must have. Number two, this is a birth that
is by the grace of God. And number three, this is a birth
that is accomplished only by the means that God has set forth."
John 3, 5, "...Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee,
Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot
enter into the kingdom of God." Now, being born of water, let me tell you what it doesn't
mean. It doesn't mean baptismal regeneration. It doesn't mean
that just because someone goes into the water and is baptized
that they're regenerated. That does not mean what the Scripture
says for it. It cannot, because if that was
the case, if it took baptism in order for a man to be converted,
then I'll tell you this, the thief on the cross would have
been excluded from entering into the kingdom of God. And the Lord
Jesus Christ told him, he said today, you'll be with me in paradise. If baptism was salvation, then
Simon the sorcerer would have been included because he said
he believed and was baptized. And Peter later told him, he
said, your money's going to perish with you because your heart's
not right with God. He was baptized. One of them
wasn't baptized and the Lord Jesus Christ said, you'll be
with me today. And the other one was baptized, and Peter says,
your heart is not right before God, and you're going to perish
with your money. So what does it mean to be born of water?
Water refers to the Word of God. Ephesians 5.26 says that he might
sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word. The Word of God is what water
means. Unless a man is born of water,
The Word of God and Spirit, James 1.18, of His own will begat,
generated or brought us forth with the Word of Truth that we
should be a kind of first fruits of His creature. David said in
Psalms 119.50, this is my comfort in my affliction. He says, Thy
Word has quickened me. The Word of God. The gospel of
God's grace. This is the means by which God
quickens His people. Paul said, I'm not ashamed of
the gospel. I'm not ashamed of this. I'm
telling you, if you or anyone you know, anyone, has got any
hope. This is why I say, what's the
best thing to tell somebody? They're asking some questions.
Tell them to come sing it. It pleased the Lord by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. Preaching. Preaching the gospel. This is
the means by which God calls out His people. That Word is
the Word of God Almighty. And they must be born by water,
by the Word, and by the Spirit. That Word must be powerfully
sent to us. John 6.63, he said, it is the
Spirit that quickeneth. The flesh profiteth. It doesn't
say profiteth little. It says it profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you,
they're Spirit and they're life. The Lord told Nicodemus, he said,
the wind bloweth where it listeth. Now hearest the sound thereof,
but canst not tell whence it cometh. Whether it goeth, so
is every one that's born of the Spirit. How is a man born again? He's born again by God's means.
God has been pleased to send the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And as I've said before, the
gospel is the declaration of what God has done. I've told
you this, and I mean that. I'm not trying to convince anybody
that I have an offer for you. This is not an offer. This is
a declaration of truth. God Almighty is going to save
His people. I would declare, God Almighty
has chosen a people before the foundation of the world. God
Almighty has purposed, I will have mercy on whom I will have
mercy. In the declaration of that truth, in time, when it pleases God,
who has providentially brought those that He's everlastingly
loved under that sound. They hear it. If God gives them
a heart for it, they believe it. And they love it. And for
the first time in their life, they think, I want to have something to do
with that. That's real to me. That's not just dead religious
jargon to me. And there's belief there because
there's faith there that God has imparted in a freeborn. I must have it. It's something that Almighty
God must do. And thirdly, it is something
that God's going to do by one means, by the gospel. Gospel. And then fourthly, This
is a birth that's unknown and it's hidden to the carnal mind. John 3, 9, 10, Nicodemus answered
and said unto him, when the Lord told him, he said, you must be
born again. Nicodemus says, how can these things be? And Jesus
answered and said unto him, art thou a master of Israel? And
no, it's not these things. You don't perceive. You don't
understand what I'm talking about. 1 Corinthians 2.14, "...the natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, their foolishness
unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned." This is a hidden. There is something going on in
this world right now that this world doesn't know anything about.
I'm telling you, this whole world is being held. It consists. That's what it says. And Almighty
God is bringing honor to Himself, and He's calling out His people.
That's why this world is here right now. No other reason. God
has a people, and he's calling them out. And this world is just
going on its merry way. No knowledge. No knowledge of
what's going on. Luke 10, 21, in that hour, Jesus
rejoiced in spirit and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord
of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the
wise and prudent and has revealed them unto babes, even so, Father,
for it seemed good in Thy sight." The Lord thanked His Father.
Thank You. Thank You for bringing honor
to Yourself by hiding these things from the wise and the prudent.
Wise in their own estimation. Prudent in their own estimation.
And You revealed it unto babes. Thank You. Because it seemed
good in Your sight. That Roman soldier asked Paul,
he said, you a Roman? He said, yes, I am. The chief
captain told him, probably boasting, great son, I obtained this freedom. Paul says, I was free born. Boy, a believer will come and
be talking. You ever notice how people want
to impress you with what they know and what they've done? Last year, ask a believer, unbeliever,
ask a believer. So you're a Christian? Believer
says, yes, I am. An unbeliever began to boast.
Well, I gave my heart to Jesus all by now, 30 something years
ago now. I'm a Sunday school teacher.
I, you know, I tend so and so over here. I've been a faithful
deacon, you know, I was, you know, what he said is I obtained
my freedom with a great son. I gave, I, I, I, you know. And that believer in his heart
will think this, but for the grace of God, I wouldn't have
anything to do with him. But for the grace, I was free
born. I was born by the grace of God and I know it. And I'm
telling you, I'm kept by the grace of God and I know that
and I know this. If He didn't birth me, if He
didn't birth me, I won't stay. I'll give it up. I'll walk away. Those that are born of God are
truly free-born, born by grace, born by God's Spirit into the
glorious freedom wrought by the Lord Jesus Christ. Then straightway,
verse 29 and 30, they departed from Him which should have examined
Him which had tortured Him. And the chief captain also was
afraid after he knew that he was a Roman, because he had bound
him on the morrow, because he would have known the certainty
wherefore he was accused of the Jews. He loosed him from his
bands and commanded the chief priest and all their council
to appear and brought Paul down and set him before him." You
see, that chief captain knew. Having heard that Paul was a
Roman, he knew that he had broken the law of Rome. He knew he had.
He was scared because it's not lawful to be a Roman citizen
without being condemned. He was afraid because he knew
what the consequences would be. Paul's citizenship and that Roman soldier's
ignorance of it was no excuse for the crime. He was ignorant
of Paul's citizenship. But I'm telling you, he was still
guilty. Though he was ignorant, he was still guilty, man. Man's
guilty before God. Then say, well, Roman soldiers
say, yeah, but I didn't know. Man will stand before God and say,
yeah, but I didn't know I was guilty. No excuse. I must be born again. But I didn't
know how. You must be born again. Ignorance of the law does not
excuse a man from its penalty. Spiritually, we're all guilty
before God. We've broken God's law, born
in Adam. We're sinners by practice. Though
dead spiritually in sin and ignorance before God, Almighty God revealed
to us His mercy, His grace, and His kindness, and He's done it
through the gospel. And through the preaching of
the gospel, the Spirit of God has borne witness to that new
heart that God has imparted, that we're the sons of God. Thereby, we have peace. Romans 3.19, Now we know that
whatsoever things the law saith, it saith to them that are under
the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world
may become guilty before God. Almighty God has been pleased
to birth into the knowledge of His kingdom a people that He
has everlastingly loved. And you know they don't make
any claim whatsoever to anything that they've done. It's the most
foolish thought to a believer to brag on something that he's
done. I'll tell you what you do. Every
time it crosses your mind, you thank the Lord that He called
you by His grace. Lord, thank You that You everlastingly
loved me That You set Your affection on me. That You looked upon me
in mercy and compassion. That You sent the Lord Jesus
Christ in this world to live and to die for me. And that in
time, You called me out of darkness. I was free-born. I was born freely. Born by the grace of God. Born
not because of anything in me. It's Him. Born of God. Freeborn. That's the cry, that's
the hope, that's the peace of those before Almighty God who
stand in the Lord Jesus Christ. Freeborn. Amen. Gary Cummings.