so so O, the deep, deep love of Jesus,
Fast unmeasured, boundless, free, Holy as a mighty ocean, in its fullest glory. Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus,
love of every, love of every, ? There's an ocean ? ? Vast, a-messing
? ? There's a halo ? ? Sweet of breath ? Underneath me, all around me,
is the current of His love. Leading onward, leading onward,
? My glory evermore ? I want you to turn in your Bibles
this morning to 2 Peter chapter 1. 2 Peter chapter 1. It is a sad thing sad thing that men and women in our day are so gullible, so lazy, so unconcerned for the
truth that they just simply believe
only what preachers say. what their favorite preacher
says, I should say. And sadly, many preachers capitalize on this for their
own gain and for their own glory. And their followers become like
people in the fairy tale. the emperor's new clothes. When the wicked men told the
king and all the people that they had made for the king a
beautiful garment, but only certain people could see it. when the
truth was they hadn't made for him a garment at all. But because of pride and because
of such things as that, everybody said how beautiful it was and
everyone, including the king, spoke of how beautiful it was. But there was a little boy in
the crowd When the king went by, who was just honest like
a child, and he said, he's naked, just plain naked. And that's the way it is oftentimes
with people when they're told things. They just believe them. They just believe that they are
the way they are, and if anybody comes along with the truth, they're locked into a place of
pride and self-will, and they refuse to admit the reality. It's the hardest thing for people
to do to admit they have been wrong. Somebody said, sin is like a
prison cell, but pride is the lock on the door. And so oftentimes, men tell people
how things are, and they show them things that cannot be supported
from the Bible. But after all, so-and-so said
it, so-and-so believed it, so-and-so wrote about it. But you really only believe,
I've said this to you before, you only really believe what
you know to be true from God's Word. You only believe what you
have read and seen for yourself from this book. That is faith. Faith not because a preacher
said it, or because a writer said it, but because God said
it, and it is plain in black and white. And it's true with what you believe
about the nature of man, and especially what you believe about
the nature of a believer. Does a believer have a nature
or natures? Does he have what some have called
an old nature and a new nature? And I would ask you simply, what
does the Bible actually say? Not what does Dr. Gill say, or
even Brother Hawker, or the most respected persons and preachers
that we know. The answer is only to be found
in what God says. And the truth of the matter is,
if we have to run to men to see what we believe, we'll always
be deceived. If I've got to go check with
this book or that commentator or that preacher or this preacher
to see what I believe, then we're really in trouble. Because men are fallible. I'm fallible. I'm subject to
error. And I have seen some things in
recent days that I would not have believed if you had told
me with the most sincere heart. I've never known anybody until
recent days to take what one believes about the nature of
man and make it a point of fellowship. Never. I've never known what
one believes about the nature of believers to be made a point
of orthodoxy or for anybody ever being accused one way or the
other for what they believed about the nature of man as preaching
heresy. Not in 40 years of preaching. I've never seen it. And I've
never known it. But I want to say this morning,
in the very beginning, that I believe that you must be born again." Jesus said, except a man be born
again, he cannot see and he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. You must be born again. There must be a supernatural
work of God's Spirit. in your heart unless, and if
you never receive that, you will never believe, you will never
ever lay hold of eternal life. And I know this is what Paul
says in Romans. But you are not in the flesh,
but in the Spirit. If so be that the Spirit of God
dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit
of Christ, he is none of his. It is absolutely necessary that
the Spirit of God do a work in us. Absolutely, just like Christ
did a work for us, the Holy Spirit must do a work in us. But Christ also said something
else on that occasion when he was speaking about the necessity
of the new birth. He said, The wind bloweth where
it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst
not tell which it cometh, and whither it goeth. So is every
one that is born of the Spirit. That is to say, there is an element
of mystery in the Spirit's unseen work in an individual. Billy
Graham may write a book and tell you how to be born again, but
Jesus never wrote such a book. He said the work of God's Spirit
in us is a mysterious work, an unseen work like the wind, like
the wind. Now let me say that I once believed
that in regeneration a person got a new nature. I once believed
that because that's what I read that so-and-so said, that's what
I heard so-and-so preach, that's what I variously looked and listened
to men say. That everybody that's born again
has a work of the Spirit, they have a new nature. But one day I began to look at
what the Bible said and not man. Because it seemed to me that
what was being said was a whole lot like the black dog, white
dog illustration that people usually use naturally to describe
what we are. We're like a black dog. and one
thing, we're like a white dog, and another thing. But all I
could ever see was the black dog in me, in everybody else,
and in the Word of God. It's kind of like people used
to use the illustration, well, I've got an angel sitting on
one shoulder and a devil sitting on the other shoulder, each one
of them telling me what to do. But I never could see that in
anybody. And I never could feel that and
know that in my own self. And one of the examples, one
of the reasons that people use to speak of this duality of natures
is they say, well, Christ had two natures. He had a human nature
and he had a divine nature. So that two natures can be in
the same person at one time. But the truth is, the nature
of Christ and the nature of God is one and the same. And it's
not a conflicting nature, but it is a holy nature, a perfect
nature, so that in Him it is all the same. So I began to search the scriptures. And I could not find, nor will
you find in your search, one time when I see the phrase, new
nature. Not one time. But then, you don't find the
word sovereignty in Scripture either. So I knew that something
can be a reality and actually not have the word or terminology
that men choose to use. But it made me begin to think
because everybody seemed to stress so much importance on this new
nature. that I began to look. What I did find in investigating
closely, what I did find was that every reference to nature
or to natural had to do with the old Adamic nature except
for two. Every time you find the word
nature in the New Testament, or natural, it says something
like this, the natural man receiveth not the things of God. We were
by nature the children of wrath. Everywhere in the Bible except
two. And in those two places, one
of them, it's used in relationship to the nature of angels. He took not on himself the nature
of angels. And on the other part, the other
verse, it has to do with a reference to God Himself. to God Himself. And when I began to examine the
so-called proof text, I found out, as I often have, that many
of the proof tests are just simply out of context. You better beware
of proof texts. You better read the context that
they're in. And oftentimes, the proof texts
don't prove what a man is saying at all. Often it proves just
the opposite. But turn with me in 2 Corinthians,
chapter 5, and I want you to look at one of those so-called
proof texts. This is one often given here. In II Corinthians 5, in verse 17, Therefore, if any man be in Christ,
he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold,
all things are become new. And that's given as a proof text
that someone has a new nature, a believer has a new nature.
But the truth of the matter is, Paul's subject here in II Corinthians
5 is not regeneration, it's reconciliation. And he's not talking about what
a man is made by Christ, what a man is made in Christ. He's talking about a positional
thing that we are in if we are in Christ. What is that? Reconcile
to God. Therefore, if any man be in Christ,
That's a wonderful thing. That's a wonderful place to be.
And that's the place that he's standing here telling us about
in relationship to our standing before God in Christ. Therefore,
if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature. Or as most translations
give that, he is a new creation. But the giveaway is this. The
thing that makes us know that he cannot be talking about regeneration
is that he says this, old things are passed away. Behold, all
things are become new. Is there any believer here in
this hour that would dare say that in conversion old things
were all passed away? All things that pertaining to
the nature of sin in us are surely not passed away. And they're
not all made new. He can't be talking about regeneration
here. But in reconciliation as to what
we were in Adam and what we are now in Christ, that surely rings
true. We're reconciled to God. All
those old things in Adam are gone and everything is new in
Christ. Adam symbolized the old creation
and Christ is the new creation. And if we are in him, old things
are passed away. every single solitary one of
those old things with regard to how we first stood in our
federal head. Adam, they are all passed away
and we now stand before God reconciled in the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, what about those references?
where we find old man and new man. They're all given for the same reason as Paul was
giving us this passage of scripture, they're all given to remind us
of what we're to depart from and what we're to aspire to because
of our position in Him. Now I want you to look with me
in Ephesians chapter 2, rather Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 4 and look
at verse 22. Here is an admonition by the
apostle wherein he says that you put off concerning the former
conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful
lust and be renewed in the spirit of your mind and that you put
on the new man which is after God is created in righteousness
and true holiness. Who is the new man? Who are we
to aspire to be? Who are we to find as the reason
for all abstaining from sin and all the things that we ought
not to do, all the things that he's been talking about here
that characterize what we are as in the old man. It is in Christ,
the new man. In other words, the Apostle is
saying to us, we are to act, we are to conduct ourselves,
we are to strive to be what we already are. We're new men, we're new women
in Christ. Turn over just a few pages to
the book of Colossians. Colossians chapter 3. Look at verse 8. But now ye also put off all these
anger, and wrath, and malice, and blasphemy, and filthy communication
out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing
that ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and have
put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the
image of him that created him. How do we do that? How do we
put on the new man? We put on the new man by looking
to the Lord Jesus Christ. We put on the new man by faith. We believe what we are in Christ
Jesus the Lord. We don't believe that we are
something new and special in ourselves because of what we
have been made. We look to Christ. We're new people in Christ. And we are to put off, you might
as well say, we're to quit acting like we acted when we were old
men and start acting like we are when we are new people in
Christ. But the real thing that tells
me that this is not old nature and new nature is found in Romans
chapter 6. Romans chapter 6 and verse 6. Now you can go And you can get
a concordance, or you can get a Greek dictionary, or you can
get another translation, and you can do whatever you want. I think the consensus is this,
that when Paul uses is in the King James in Romans 6, the better
translation is was. Alright, this is verse 6 of Romans
6. This knowing that our old man
was crucified with him, that the body of sin may be made useless
for our no longer serving the sin. Now, the important thing
here is that Paul says that our old
man was crucified with Him, with Christ. Now you can't say, I can't say, that I am crucifying. Crucifying is something that
Men do to other men. But Paul says that our old man
was crucified with Him. How long was it ago that Christ
was crucified? Well, now it was over 2,000 years. So, if we believe, we can't say
this is the old man here and different old man there. The
old man was crucified with Him long, long ago. He doesn't exist anymore. He's not what we are anymore. We're new men and women in Christ
Jesus. And with those texts honestly
and in their context being interpreted and being defined as they are,
where do they say or what is left to suggest that we have
a new nature? Well, the one that is often most
often used is right here in 2 Peter. 2 Peter and the 4th verse. Now I can tell you without a
shadow of a doubt, be honest with you, that I have seen a
phrase in this verse made up of just a few words, quoted,
given as proof text over and over and over and over again
in support of our having a new nature. Here it is. Whereby are given to us exceeding
great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers
of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is
in the world through lust." Here it is. Partakers of the divine
nature. We're partakers of the divine
nature. That's given as a quote, a proof
text that we have a new nature. I'm sure of one thing. I may
not be sure of a lot, but I'm sure of this one thing. Anybody
with a divine nature is divine. That's right. The word divine means of, or
like God, or a God, deity. I don't know about you, but I'm
not God. I'm not a little God. I'm not a little Jesus. There has only been one man with
a divine nature, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. You mark that down. He had a
divine nature. He has right now a divine nature. Well then, what does that mean?
when it says or refers to us as partakers of the divine nature. I came to that verse and I used
probably the most faithful, the most tried and tested way of
trying to find out how a word or what a word means in the Bible. I went and looked at everywhere
that word in the Greek was used, and I sought to determine from
those usages, all of them together, what the word partakers means. I went to Strong's Greek dictionary,
and the word partakers is defined as associate, companion, partner, fellowship. And the way it was used the very
most, all those places in scripture, it was used to express things
people have in common. such as this verse. In Acts 2
and verse 44, and all that believed were together and had all things
common. Fellowship. That we might have fellowship
with the divine nature. Turn over and look at 1 John
chapter 1. Because here in 1 John chapter
1, a word that is close akin, close akin to the word partakers
as it's translated here. The word is used in 1 John 1
quite a few times. Verse 3. That which we have seen
and heard, declare we unto you, that ye may also have fellowship
with us. And truly our fellowship is with
God the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. and these things
write we unto you that your joy may be full. This then is the
message which we have heard of him and declare unto you that
God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that
we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie not
and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light,
as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another,
and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all
sin. Now, When Peter writes what he writes, he talks about us being made
partakers of the divine nature. But he
says something before that, doesn't he? And this alone ought to tell
us something about what he means here. Well, I'll back back and read
verse 2. Grace and peace be multiplied
unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord,
according as His divine power hath given unto us all things
that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him
that hath called us to glory and virtue, whereby are given
unto us exceeding great and precious promises. That by these, by these what? Exceeding great and precious
promises. What is that if it is not the
Gospel, if it is not the Word of God. In other words, we hear from
God as He is, and we hear how He is, and we learn about Him,
and we commune with Him, and we know the way that we can have
fellowship with God. I challenge anybody to have fellowship
with God, who you can't see without the Word, without these exceeding
great and precious promises. I can have fellowship with you.
I can see you. I can see how you are. I can
talk to you. I can listen to what you say.
I can see how you act. I can't do that with God. But more than that, more than
that, how can I, how can you have fellowship with God? Be a partaker, a companion, an
associate. Have fellowship with the thrice
holy God. If you know anything about Him,
and if you know anything about yourselves, it is an impossible
thing naturally. But John said it, if we walk
in the light, as he is in the light. We have fellowship one
with another. We have fellowship with God.
If we walk in the light, and sadly, Most people take that
to believe if we conduct ourselves in a proper way, or if we don't
tell any lies for a week, or if we don't do anything bad for
a week, and if we kind of clean ourselves up, we're walking in
the light, we can have fellowship with God. It ain't so. It ain't so. The only way we
can have fellowship with God and the only way we walk in light
is to walk in the light of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. He is the light. We can only
have fellowship with God on the basis of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one and the only one
that we can both agree on. Zechariah, he says, a Waco sword against my shepherd
and against the man that is my fellow. God says, He's my fellow. You know what I say? He's my
fellow too. In the strictest sense, we can
have fellowship with God, we can agree with God, we can be
accepted by God in only one way, we can partake of the divine
nature in only one way, and that is in Christ. I agree with God on Christ. He
agrees with me on Christ. And that is that He is all. I don't claim any new nature. I've
only got one nature. And it's a bad one. It's amazing to me that some
of those who claim a new nature, they sure have a funny way of
showing it. I only have one sinful nature. In other words, there's only
one nature that's natural to me, and that's the natural body,
the nature of sin. That's the only thing that's
natural to me. Anything I believe about Christ is supernatural. Supernatural. You see in the light, in the
truth, by these exceeding great and precious promises that we
have in the gospel, that tell of Christ, that tell of His blood-shedding,
that tell of His righteousness, that tell of everything being
in Him, I can have fellowship with God. I sat down this week and I read
Psalm 71 that I just read to you a bit earlier. And it was
just like he was talking to me. And it's just like the psalmist
was saying the things that I wanted to say. All these exceedingly great and
precious promises that he says are yea and amen in Christ. Well, what happens when we're
born again? We don't get a new nature. What
happens when we're born again? We are indwelt by the spirit
of God. We don't get a new nature, we
got a new resident. The third person of the Godhead. The Father is active in saving
us. The Son was active in saving
us. And the Holy Spirit is active
in saving us. He indwells every person that
is born of God. God is said to be our God, our
Savior. And God, the Holy Spirit, is
not an influence, it's not a feeling, it's a person. And that's why I say it's dangerous
to attribute a work that is done in us as being the cause of some
things when it is actually the Holy Spirit in us. Listen to
this. Romans 8, But you are not in
the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God
dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit
of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the
body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit, capital letters,
is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him that
raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised
up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies
by His Spirit that dwelleth in you. That's Romans 8, verses
9 through 11. And all that is said there The
two things that are spoken of there is the flesh and the Holy
Spirit. Well, they say, what brings about
the change? What brings about the fact that
we one day don't believe and the next day we do? Or one day
we hate God, the next day we love God? All these other things. I suggest to you it's not a new
nature. It's the Holy Spirit. It's the Holy Spirit. Turn over
to Galatians chapter 5. Galatians chapter 5. Now, if
you notice in these verses, the only spirit that's mentioned
is in capital letters. Somebody said, well, Paul is
talking about the conflict between the old nature and the new nature
in Romans 7. I don't think so, not if he writes
this. Verse 16, this I say then, walk
in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against
the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary
to one another, so that you cannot do the things that you would.
But if you are led of the Spirit, you are not under the law. for the works, that the works
of the flesh are manifest, which are these, adultery, fornication,
uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred,
variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresy, envies,
murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like, of the which I
tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they
which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God, but
the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,
goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such there is no law,
and they that are of Christ have crucified the flesh with the
affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let
us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain
glory, provoking one another, envying one another." Now, when he's talking about this
struggle, he's talking about these two contrary things, there's
not a third person in there. He doesn't say that there's a
struggle between The old nature, which is here called the flesh,
and the new nature, and the Spirit. He says there's a struggle between
two. The flesh and the Spirit. Capital letters HOLY SPIRIT. Not three. It always boils down to this,
what I am by nature, what God has made me by grace. If I chew
you out, if I say something bad to you, treat you bad, get angry
with you, you don't have to worry about where that's coming from.
That's all me. That's my nature. But if I happen to treat you
kind, if I happen to quote a verse of Scripture to you, if I happen
to put my arms around you or help you with something, that's
God. That's the Spirit of God. The fruit of the Spirit. Think about that. The fruit grows
on a tree. Which tree is it? The Spirit's
tree. The fruit of the Spirit is love
and peace, joy, long-suffering, gentleness, all these things. Not the fruit of the flesh, not
the fruit of a new nature. You see, the work of God's Spirit
is one of revelation and one of preservation. He keeps us. And all that we're
unable to believe, all that we're unable to do that's right, all
that we're able to do of good works, whatever it is, it's Him
working in us. And I do not doubt that if the
Holy Spirit did not indwell us, did not continue to save us,
we would show ourselves for the nature that we have. If you say we have a new nature,
would you like for the Holy Spirit to just withdraw from you and
let your new nature take control? I'm sorry. I wouldn't. If you've got any
sense, you wouldn't. David cried out. He said, Lord, He said, don't take your Holy
Spirit from me, or I'll be a devil. You've relaxed
your hand on me enough to let me know just exactly what I'd
be. Take not your Holy Spirit from
me. No, we have no confidence in
the flesh. And what men call a new nature, I believe. You don't have to
believe this. I won't break fellowship with
you if you don't. I certainly won't call you a
heretic and accuse you of preaching heresy. But I believe that rather
than a new nature, we have the third person of the
Godhead, the Holy Spirit, indwelling us. And any good that comes is
His work. And besides, the real question
is not what we believe about the nature of man. The real question is what think
you of Christ. I hate to preach a message like
this so bad. Because it makes us to delve
into things that I'm afraid take our eyes off Christ. Why would
somebody make an issue of that? To speak of the glories and the
wonders of Christ is my delight. You who hear me weekly, you know
I don't dwell on the nature of man, except the fact that it's
a sinful nature. We dwell on Christ. But that's what I believe. And
I'll tell you something. If you can show me different
from the Word of God, I'll stand corrected and I'll believe you." But until then, saying that a believer has a
new nature is just like the men that told the king that
they had made for him a new garment. Sounds good. But it's not true. Not true in the Word of God. I don't feel threatened if you
don't believe it. I don't feel threatened one bit. But I'm going to believe it until
God shows me different. I want to believe what God says,
not what men say. Let God be true and every man
a liar. And if I don't say what God says,
then let me be a liar, a counted liar. Leave me alone. Don't hear
me. Our Father, we thank you for
your goodness to us. that you never leave us, that
your spirit indwells us to keep us to produce whatever fruit
might be produced until such a time as we be glorified. We don't
know what that will be. We know it will be better than
we are. But we thank you. We pray in our Lord's name. Amen. Amen.