Well, let me talk to you for
a little bit about this business of the comforter. I
read to you there in the fourteenth chapter of the book of John,
when the comforters come, He'll teach you all things. He'll make you teachable. We know that that promise is
unto his people, his children. Only his children are teachable. Those that are yet in the gall
of bitterness are unteachable. They don't want
to be taught. Ye will not come to me. Ye cannot
come. the application and the promises
made to the people of God. But the Holy Spirit, who was promised by the Lord
Jesus to teach his people and to be with his people while they
sojourned here on this earth, has been here now for these two
thousand years. But one day is as a thousand
years in God's sight. So we've only been here two days
in the sight of God. So time is short. And soon the Lord will come back
for us. And while we're here, he'll teach
us. He'll teach us who he is in Christ. God the Holy Spirit, the blessed third person of the Trinity.
He too is God, God the Holy Spirit, God the Son, and God the Father. And the Holy Spirit is the one
who gives life. We talked this morning about
our natural state. being dead in trespasses, and
spiritually dead, not physically dead. We're alive physically,
but spiritually we're dead because of our inheritance from our first
father, because of the imputation of Adam's sin to us by one man's
sin. We all are disobedient. while we were in that condition
and state without God and without hope in this world, and no inkling
of who God is, no desire to know God. But there was a time, God's
time, and there was a place, God's place, when we come to
an understanding and a vast importance of spiritual things. And the one who brought that
about is God the Holy Spirit. He's the one who gives life. We're dead spiritually. It comes
from Adam, charged to us, imputed to us. by one man's disobedience. So we're dead, and if we ever
get life, spiritual life, it'll come by the Holy Spirit. That's
His work. That's His office. He's here
for a specific reason, to give the people of God life. Our Lord said, I'm going to go away, but I'll
not leave you without some form of comfort, comfortless. I'll send one, the Holy Spirit,
and He'll teach you and guide you and direct you in all truth.
So it's the Holy Spirit, it's He who gives life by His divine
power. Now let's get this straight here
this evening. It's not the sinner's will or
faith that results in the new birth or quickening or conversion. It is not the sinner's will or
the sinner's faith. It is the Holy Spirit of God
that quickens and gives life. The third person of this specific
office is to give life to the people of God, those that God
has sanctified and set apart, and put them in Christ before
the world began. Chose us, elected us, set us
aside, and put us in Jesus Christ. That's where God put us. And
you hath He quickened. put us in Christ, and I like
to say that He put us in Christ, and where He put us, we stay. He put us in Christ, grace given
to us in Christ before the world began. He put us in Christ, where
He put us, we stay. He preserved us in Christ, and
in time he called us with the Holy Calling, and the Spirit
of God gave us life. We had to have life, and that
life is the life of God. We're the children of God by
faith in Christ Jesus. So it's not the sinner's will.
It's not the sinner's faith that results in the new birth, quickening
and conversion. The sinner, alienated sinner,
unregenerate sinner, the sinner that's outside of Christ, the
sinner that is far off from God, the sinner that is dead in trespasses
and in sin, The sinner does not exercise his will toward God
or he does not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the result
of he's born again. That's not so. That's not so. Let me say it again. The sinner
does not exercise his will towards God. We have a great division
of people in this world alive tonight. Some believe that the
sinner has a free will, and some believe that his will is connected
with his nature, and instead of being free, he's a slave to
his nature. So the sinner now does not exercise
his will towards God, or he does not believe in Jesus Christ as
the result, he is born again. No, the new birth is not the
result or the effect of anything that a sinner does. The Holy
Spirit is the sole agent of the new birth. and we must be born
again. I told you this morning that
this highly respected Jewish religious leader, Pharisee, ruler
of the Jews, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that immorality is
not necessary and highly respected man is not necessary. Evidence
is of salvation. He was a good man, humanly speaking,
As people looked upon Nicodemus, they all liked him and lifted
him up and honored him and all that. But yet, at the same time,
our Lord Jesus Christ looked him over and did not have anything
bad to say about the fellow or didn't have anything good to
say about the fellow. He did not greet him with, I'm
so glad you've come. that you and I could talk about
this. I know you're highly religious.
He didn't have no small talk with Nicodemus. He point-blank
told Nicodemus, ye must be born again. And if Nicodemus is, was,
or will be ever born again, it'll come as a direct result of he
whom the Lord Jesus Christ He said, I'll send one, the Spirit
of truth. And his specific office is to
quicken men in their dead state and to give them the life of
God. So the new birth is not the result
of anything a sinner does or any condition that the sinner
meets. That is, if you do this and if
you do that, the effect of your doing this will result in you
being born again. Oh, I believe in Christ. Believing
in Christ will not bring about the new birth. You believe in
Christ because you have experienced the new birth. The believing
in Christ is the result of the Spirit's work in you, quickening
you and giving you life. Conditions, that seems to me,
that is the area where men are so far off from this Salvation
by the grace of God, if I do this and if I do something else,
if I change, if I don't do this anymore and if I do this and
so forth, if meet certain conditions. But there are no conditions,
no conditions whatsoever. Faith, you see, does not come
before spiritual life. You've got to have spiritual
life before you have faith. Faith is a gift of God, and faith
is the result of spiritual life. It's the result of the sovereign,
specific work of the sovereign spirit. He gives you life, and
the result of life, you have faith. until the outcast, until the
sinner is made alive spiritually, until he is made alive spiritually,
he will continue in unbelief. If he is spiritually dead all
of his life, for seventy-eight years, spiritually dead, he will
remain all of that time in unbelief. He's got to be made spiritually
alive. Now look, there's lots of religionists
that you would think, they talk about believing in Jesus and
they go to church and those things, For the most part, the majority
of them go because they're meeting a condition. And they think if
they meet a condition, the effect and result of what they do will
bring about this experience. But that's not so. The Holy Spirit is the agent
of this sovereign work. He does the quickening. Now, the sinner cannot come to
Christ. Why? Because he will not. He will not come to Christ in
himself. He's got to have spiritual life.
He's got to be quickened before he comes. And I'll tell you why it won't
come, because for the most part, the average sinner, like you
and I, we're saved sinners, by the way. We're saved by the grace
of God. We didn't strike a bargain with
God and say, you do this and I'll do that. It was a sovereign
act of the Holy Spirit that quickened us here in time. Give us life! give us the life of God, made
us to live. We cried out, Abba, Father! We
desire now to exercise this faith that God gives us to serve and
to honor and to obey God in Christ because we've been quickened,
got a new life, new creatures in Christ Jesus. All things passed
away and all things come new, new creatures in Christ Jesus.
And the sinner that's alienated from God, alienated from the
love of God, far off from the Lord Jesus Christ, he will not
come to Christ. Why? Because he insists on salvation
some other way than Christ and his blood and his righteousness. That's the reason he won't come.
He got another way figured out. My way is as good as your way.
That's what he said. My way. Oh, if I do this and
if I do that, I'll be all right. No, you won't. You can quit your
habits and you can quit this and quit that and take on other
virtues and all of that and you still will come to Christ. You won't come. You can't come. You got another way. You won't
submit yourself. to the blood and righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the only, that's the only
ground of salvation. You won't do it. You've got to
have life. If God gives you life, you'll
submit yourself. If you don't, you'll continue
on in your way, insisting that your way of salvation is as good
as anybody else's. And it won't get the job done.
That's the reason the gospel is said to be offensive. It offends
human pride. It tells human pride, you can't
do anything to save yourself. Oh, you can't talk to me that
way. I can do something. I can read my Bible. I can quit
cussing. I can quit this and quit that. I can decorate myself up, have
a made-up, stick-on, paste-on righteousness, It won't help
you a bit. It won't help you a bit. So the new birth, then, is the
result of Christ's blood and righteousness imputed to the
sinner, charged to the sinner's account. And it is the result of the work
of the Blessed Spirit. It's the result of his power,
the Holy Spirit's power and work in the sinner. And God, the Holy
Spirit, is the sovereign agent in the new birth, but he never
does his work in the new birth without the preaching of the
gospel. over here in this same book, Romans, this is what it says. Old Paul was wanting to go to
Rome, Rome, the capital city of the world. All roads lead
to Rome. Paul wanted to go to Rome. He
had been there before. He wanted to go back to impart
some spiritual gift to those that the Spirit had quickened,
to those that had come to know the God of the Bible. And he said in verse 13, Now
I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed
to come unto you, but was let hitherto, that I might have some
fruit among you also, even as among the Gentiles." They said,
I'm a debtor both to the greats and the barbarians, both to the
wise and the unwise, so as much as in me is. I'm ready to preach the gospel
to you that are at Rome. He said, For I'm not ashamed
of the gospel of Christ, for it's the power, it's the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believe it.
No man can believe until he's born again. He can't believe
in the Christ of God to the salvation of his soul and believe the witness
of God concerning who Jesus Christ is and what Jesus Christ has
done until the Spirit hath done his work, that hath given us
life, quickened us. It's the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believeth. There's multiplied billions of
people. I said billions, that's a whole
lot, isn't it? But I believe there's billions
of people on this earth at any given time that are unbelievers. Why are they unbelievers? Because
the Spirit hath not quickened them. Every one that believeth to the
Jew first, other sheep I have, that are not in this fold, they
must come. That's what our Lord said. The
Jews thought that the Savior was to come to save Jews only. And that's one reason why these
Pakistanians and Arabs and Jews now hate the Gentiles, because
they've always believed that God is with their visible people
as a nation, that they're the apple of God's eye. But when
Paul came on the scene, God sent him to the Gentiles. And so now
he says, to the Jew first, preach to the Jew first, and also to
the Greek, also to the Gentiles. Preach what? The gospel that
he's not ashamed of. Why does he preach the gospel?
He says, for therein, the gospel is the righteousness of God. Is not that what God requires
out of us? This whole shoot match is about
the keeping of God's law perfect. That's righteousness. Righteousness is that which the
Lord Jesus Christ brought about or established from the time
He came until the time He left. He established a righteousness. He came when the law was in the
dirt. Our Lord Jesus Christ honored,
exalted that law that was cast down and brought it up and magnified
that holy law by keeping every jot and every tittle of it. That's
the righteousness that God requires. That's the righteousness that
we need. That's the righteousness that's
our ticket to heaven. righteousness of God revealed
in the gospel. So what I'm saying here is that
he never works in his specific office of applying salvation
to God's people without the gospel. They hear the gospel. Who Christ
is, the Son of God and Son of Man in one person. What did Christ
do? He worked out a righteousness
that he freely imputes to the believer. That's what he did.
That righteousness, the person and the work of the Lord Jesus
Christ, the shedding of his blood, and the righteousness that he
established, that is the gospel. That's all we need is the gospel,
and the gospel is the blood. the soul that sinneth shall surely
die, Jesus in my flesh." Jesus incarnate in my flesh did not
sin, but as my substitute, he died in the flesh to pay my penalty,
because the wages of sin is death. He paid that penalty. And the
law said, This do and live. Our Lord Jesus Christ said, I
do. And he done everything that the
law required, fulfilling all righteousness. So the ground,
the basis of the forgiveness of sin, the clothing, the wedding gown,
It's all based on the blood, the shedding of the blood. Without
the shedding of the blood, there's no remission, no forgiveness.
He shed His blood. When He shed His blood, you know
where I was? I was in Him. God, every believer
now, not just me, every believer was chosen in Christ before the
foundation of the world. God put every believer in Christ,
kept him and preserved him in Christ, and when Christ died,
the believer died with him. And when Christ rose again, the
believer rose with him. And when Christ is seated on
that throne, we're seated in him. Now, that's the truth. I said that he never works in
his specific office, the Holy Spirit, without the gospel, or
outside the context of the gospel. In salvation, both legal and
moral death are taken care of, and we come from condemnation
to justification based on the person and the work of the Lord
Jesus Christ, imputed to our account or imputed to our charge. This righteousness that I'm talking
about is the merit of all His work in the redemption of His
people. That's what His righteousness
is. Language that you and I can understand. His righteousness amounts to
sinless perfection. Sinless perfection. If someone
ever asks you if you're without sin, sinlessly perfect, you'll
say, well, not in myself, but I am in Him. Everything I am
or hope to be is all in Him. Every blessing is in Him. Not
in me, it's in Him. I stand in Him. God put me there. He chose me and put me in Christ.
Preserved me there. Kept me there. And I'll be there
throughout the eternity. And that's salvation by grace.
I never earned it. I don't deserve it. He did it
because He would. The only reason. No particular
reason that He could find in you or I. Well, it's the righteousness
of God as revealed in the gospel that I just read. And that's
the only ground of our salvation. It's the righteousness of God
revealed in the gospel. Well, I'm going to quit there. I've said enough. And I'm tired
and you're tired. But I want you to remember that.
The Holy Spirit of God is the specific and appointed agent
to bring about the new birth. It is His work and His work alone,
God the Spirit. He quickens us and gives us the
life of God. And when the life of God comes,
He gives us faith. And faith worketh by love. And
the love of God is shared abroad in our heart when we hear the
gospel that God so loved us. So loved us specifically that
he put us in Christ, loved us, and the Lord Jesus Christ died
for us, suffered our penalty, kept the precepts of the law
perfectly, gave it to us freely. So we come from condemnation
to justification. Oh, my soul, he's to be blessed
and to be thanked. All that he done, all that the
Lord has accomplished on our behalf, he did to the honor and the glory
of God. God can only be glorified in
the accomplishment and the achievement that our Lord and the Holy Spirit
worked out in this great salvation. All the attributes of God joined
together and blessed God and praised God. that righteousness
has been established, the law has been lifted up and honored
and magnified, Jesus Christ is Lord.