It is a great privilege for me
to be here with you this evening, a tremendous privilege. Before
I get started, the pastor has asked me to introduce myself. My name is Paul Washer and I need some help with the microphone. My name is Paul Washer and I
serve with the HeartCry Missionary Society, which we support indigenous
missionaries around the world, in South America, in Europe,
Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East. God has helped
us greatly in doing this work of preaching the gospel among
the nations. I'm also married. I'm married
to a citizen of Spain who lived most of her life in South America.
Her name is Charo. And I have two boys, Ian, who
is nine years old, and Evan, who is seven. And then I have
a daughter who is three years old and also the most beautiful
girl in the world. She takes after her mother. And again, it is a tremendous
privilege for me to be here and to address you and to address
you with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, before we get started,
let me say a few things, a few things that are very important. There are people in this room
right now. who, if they die, will be translated
into heaven and they will bear upon themselves a glory unspeakable. And there are other people in
this room right now who, if they die, will be sent by the judgment
of God straight into hell. where the grace of God is totally
removed and they will be revealed as the monsters that they truly
are. You see, those of us who preach
the gospel, we are not here to entertain you. We are not here
to talk to you about temporal things, about how you can get
the best that you can get out of this present life. No, I am
not concerned tonight about your self-esteem. I am not concerned
about whether or not your billfold and your checkbook balance themselves
out. I'm concerned about one thing.
One day, each and every one of you will stand naked before a
holy God and you will be judged. That is my great concern. This is not a game. This is not
something that has to do with culture, Western or Eastern. This has to do with the word
of the living God, the gospel of Jesus Christ, life and death,
heaven and hell. And it is an amazing burden for
a preacher to stand before a group of people knowing that some of
you will hear my voice and go to heaven when you die and others
of you will hear warning after warning after warning and you
will not listen and you will die under the wrath of God and
spend eternity in hell. That is why it is such a difficult
thing to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, before I take
my text, I want to say one other thing. I am particularly burdened. For the young people who are
here. Many of you who are older. You
know what it's like to follow Christ, you know what it's like
to pay dearly for your faith. You know what it's like to suffer.
You would rather die than deny Jesus Christ. Or live in a way
that contradicts his word. But young people, listen to me.
Many of you were raised here. Many of you were born in the
West, and you need to be very, very careful. This Christianity
is not a cultural thing. This Christianity is is not something
that just should be a small part of your life. It is not something
that you do on Sunday. Christianity is not about you
living in the world six days a week and coming to church.
Christianity is not about you being just like the world all
the time and then coming to church on Sunday. If that is your Christianity,
you have no Christianity. You are not Christian. It is a dangerous thing to be
raised in a Christian family. It is a dangerous thing to be
raised in a Christian community because you may think that somehow
because your parents are Christian, you are Christian. Or because you come from a group
of people who have suffered that you to participate in that glory,
that is not true. Young people, let me ask you
a question, how do you know That you're Christian. How do you
know that you have truly come to know Christ? How do you know
that if you died right now, you would go to heaven and be accepted
by God Almighty before his throne? How do you know? You say, well,
it's all of grace. Yes, it is all of grace. We are
not saved by works. We are saved by grace. We are
saved by believing the promises of the gospel. That is true.
But what you need to understand is grace is a powerful thing. That he who has given you grace
to repent and believe gives you grace to continue repenting and
to continue believing. He who gives you grace to believe
and to justification also will give you grace for your sanctification. that you might grow in holiness.
As a matter of fact, listen to me. One of the greatest evidences
that you have truly believed in Christ unto salvation is that
God has begun a good work of sanctification in you. He works
and works and works to make you holy. Now, let me ask you, is
that a reality in your life? Young choir behind me, let me
ask you a question. You sing beautifully. But can
you honestly tell me that your great desire is to be holy? Can
you honestly tell me that your great desire is not to be like
the world, to not be like what you see here in the West and
many other places, but to be like Jesus Christ? Can you tell
me that? Because if you cannot. You should
be afraid. You should be very afraid. Those who love the world. Do
not have the love of the father. Now, we're going to take a passage
tonight in the Old Testament and we're going to look at that
passage. It's a new covenant promise. It's found in the book
of Ezekiel. Let's go there. Ezekiel 36. Let's read the passage, Ezekiel,
chapter 36, verse 22. Therefore, say to the house of
Israel, thus says the Lord God, it is not for your sake, O house
of Israel, that I am about to act, but for my holy name, which
you have profaned among the nations where you went. I will vindicate
the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among
the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations
will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when I
prove myself holy among you in their sight. For I will take
you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring
you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water
on you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your
filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give
you a new heart and put a new spirit within you, and I will
remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart
of flesh. I will put my spirit within you
and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will be careful to observe
my ordinances. Now, we're going to look at this
text. As I said, it's a new covenant
promise. What does that mean? In the Old
Testament, particularly in the prophets, we can see glimpses
of the future where God promises that through the coming of the
Messiah, he is going to do a great work in which he is going to
create a new people. And this new people would be
different than the nation of Israel. Because the law of God
would not be on external tablets, but would be written on their
heart. That they would not just be a nation under the blood of
Abraham, but they would be a nation of the faith of Abraham. They
would truly believe God and they would truly be transformed by
his power, by the work of the spirit. Now, we can look at this
passage and see many characteristics of what it means to truly be
a believer in Jesus Christ. And I want you to look at the
things that are here. And I want you to ask yourself
this question. Are these realities in my life? In this passage, God is going
to tell us what he is going to do in the life of every true
believer. You need to ask yourself, are
these realities in me or am I a false believer? Can I honestly see
God doing these things in me? Well, let's begin in verse 22
and verse 23. We see something very, very important
here. God tells Israel. Israel, I'm
going to save you, but this is what's very interesting. He says,
I'm not going to do it because of you. Now, this is very, very
important. God's motive for saving people
is not found in that people. The Bible says that all of us
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. When a holy
God looks at sinful men, the only thing their sin motivates
God to do is judge them. To condemn them. So if God is
going to save men, it is not because of men. It is in spite
of men. God does not save us because
we deserve to be saved. God saves us because he is a
savior. God does not love us because
we deserve to be loved. We do not deserve the love of
God. We deserve his wrath. God saves us because he himself
is love. Now, another thing that we notice
in these in these two verses, verses 22 and 23, is that God
says two things. I'm going to save you for my
own name. I'm going to save you for my
own glory. Why has God done this great work
of salvation? Is it because man deserves it?
No. Then why has he done it? First of all, God saves men in
order to get glory out of that work. He says, I'm going to go
down and I am going to save men and I am not only going to justify
them, but I am going to change them and transform them and show
my power in them to such a degree that the world is going to look
on and praise me for the power that is demonstrated in my people. And he goes on and he says this,
he says, I'm going to do it in verse 23. To demonstrate my power
so that the nations will know that I am the Lord. Now, this
is very important, very important. In America, in typical American
contemporary evangelicalism, what do we have? I'll tell you
what we have. We have a great majority of the people in America
claiming to be Christian and they live like devils. But because they claim to be
Christian and they identify themselves with Christ and yet live like
devils, God's name is not praised because of them. God's name is
blasphemed because of them. But the question comes down,
does everybody in America who says they're Christian, are they
Christian? Absolutely not. Jesus said you will know them
by their fruits. And herein is the problem. When
a church lowers the standard of the gospel in order to get
more people to come in, when a church does not preach on holiness
and what it means to be truly converted, then Christianity
and the church fills up with a lot of ungodly people. And
because of their actions, the unbelieving world blasphemes
the name of God. But what we need to understand
is that the people who claim to know Christ, and yet live
in a way that contradict the word of Christ and the character
of Christ. They are not Christian. We are saved by faith alone. We are not saved by works. But what you need to understand
is that a person who has been truly saved has been born again. They have become a new creature.
God has done a tremendous work in them to demonstrate his power.
He has made them into new creatures with new affections, new desires
to serve Christ and to be holy. Has he done that to you? Let
me ask you a question. Do you look at the world and
long to be like the world, act like the world, talk like the
world, dress like the world, have the world's respect and
the world's esteem? If you're that way, you ought
to be terrified because that just could be evidence that God
has not done a work in you. If God's power cannot be seen
in your life, leading you to greater and greater holiness,
then maybe there is no power of God in your life, that he
has not regenerated your heart. You are not born again. You are
not a Christian. Because he says, I am going to
save people. Why? To demonstrate to the world
how powerful I am, not only in saving their souls, but in transforming
their lives. Is God transforming your life? Christians are not sinless. Christians
are not perfect. Christians will struggle with
sin and Christians can even fall. But in the midst of that weakness,
it will be evident that God is working. God is teaching. God
is disciplining. And God is bringing them to greater
and greater heights of Christian maturity and holiness. Is that
you? Since you professed faith in
Christ, are your desires for Christ growing? Are your desires
for holiness growing? Is God's power in transforming
your life evident? Are you becoming less and less
like the world and more and more like Christ? Or are you becoming
more and more like the world? Now, he says something very important
here in verses in verse 24. He says, and I will take you
from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring
you into your own land. Now, this is very important.
God, when he saves a people, he says, I am going to take them
out of their land, I am going to take them out of the nations
and I am going to bring them into a land that I have prepared
for them. Now, that is a wonderful illustration
of true holiness. When God truly saves a person,
what does he do? He begins to work in them. With
what purpose? To pull them out of the world,
to pull them out of worldliness, to pull them out of sin and to
bring them to himself. Now, let me ask you a question.
Is that obvious in your life? Do you see God working in your
life? to get more and more of the world
out of you. And is God drawing you more and
more to himself and conformity to his image? Now, let's talk
for a moment about holiness. This is very important. The Bible
says in the book of Hebrews, without sanctification, without
holiness, no one will see the Lord. And what that means is
this, if you have truly believed in Christ unto salvation, then
God will be working in you to make you holy. If there is no
evidence that God is working in you to make you holy, there
is a good chance that you have not truly been converted. Holiness, what is it? The word
comes from a Hebrew word which at its root means to cut, to
cut. Now, my wife, she loves to cook
and she has this large cooking table and she'll put carrots
on that table and celery and other things, and she'll take
a sharp knife and she'll begin to cut very quickly. And as she
cuts the carrots or cuts the celery and a big pile of pieces
of carrots and celery grow up here, she takes the knife and
she not only cuts the celery or the carrot, but she also pushes
it away and separates it from the rest of the bunch. And she
keeps cutting and separating, cutting and separating. That's
what God means when he's talking about holiness. When God saves
a person, he is cutting them off from what? From the world. What is the world? Everything
on this planet, every idea, every thought, every word, every action
that contradicts God's will and God's nature. Everything on this
earth that opposes God, when God truly saves a person, he
cuts them off from that and he begins to separate them little
by little, changing their life, getting the worldliness out of
their life and drawing them unto himself. Now, there's two aspects
of holiness that's very, very important. One of them, holiness,
means to be separated from the world. Christian. One of the purposes of the scriptures
is to teach us what God hates. So that we will run away from
it. Make no mistake. There can be
no friendship with God and the world and between the believer.
There can be no friendship between the believer and the world. If
God is truly working in you, he is going to use his word and
the power of his spirit to do what? To reveal to you what is
wrong in this world and to draw you away from it. But holiness
is not only ceasing to do what is evil, but holiness is primarily
Running to God, to be devoted to God, to grow each day, year
after year in a greater and greater devotion. To God. Now, you can't have both things. You cannot. When I teach my little
children, each of them, when I taught them how to walk. I
can remember all of them, they would pull themselves up on their
two feet, holding on to a chair, and then they would reach out
for their dad. And as they reached out for me, I would take a step
back and they would strain holding on to the chair and trying to
grab me at the same time, but I wouldn't let them do it. I
wanted them to see that if they're going to have me, they're going
to have to let go of the chair. That's a good illustration of
holiness. If you want God, you're going to have to let go of the
world. And if you do not want to let
go of the world because you love the world, then know this, the
love of the father is not in you. Young people. I know how deadly my culture
is. I know what it's done to my own
people. I've seen the West. Go into Eastern Europe and destroy
churches. You are in a very deadly place. You live in a land full of all
kinds of things that glitter, but they're not gold. You live
in a land full of all kinds of promises that are lies. You live
in a land that will do everything in its power to turn you away
from Christ. But you live in a land that tells
you you can have God and the world, too. You live in a land
that tells you you can love the world and love Christ. And I
want you to know it is a lie. It is a lie. Do not think I'm trying to be
angry. Do not think I'm trying to have
a mean spirit. I am saying this to save you. From the monster that has killed
more people than any political tyrant that has ever ruled this
land. And this planet. If you love the world, be afraid. Because that could just be an
evidence God has never worked in you. You have never believed
under salvation. You have never truly been converted,
because if he truly saves you, he who began a good work and
you will finish it. And why do we know that this
is a very important truth, because his reputation is on the line. Remember, God saves people to
demonstrate how powerful he is. And so if he begins a work in
you, he will finish it to demonstrate his power. Let me give you an
illustration. When Israel was coming out of Egypt, they committed
many sins against God and God tested Moses. He said this, Moses,
get out of the way. I'm going to destroy this people
and I will make a people out of you. And this is Moses's intercession. He said this. No, Lord, if you
destroy this people. Then your enemies will say that
although you were strong enough, powerful enough to bring them
out of the land of Egypt, you were not powerful enough to bring
them into the land you promised them. You see what Moses is doing,
he's concerned about God's reputation. I'm concerned about God's reputation
here today. I want you to know. That if God
has brought you, brought you from the condemnation of sin,
if he has truly saved you, if he has truly justified you, then
the evidence of that is he will continue working in you to transform
you. Why? Because every Christian
is a demonstration of God's power. He is going to finish the work
he has begun because his reputation depends upon it. That's why Paul
warned in the book of Romans. He said that the name of God
was blasphemed among the Gentiles because of the Jews who identified
themselves with God and yet did not live according to God's commands
in the same way. Many nations of this world. mock
this nation that we are in at this moment, the United States
of America. And one of the reasons why they
mock it is because they say America claims to be a Christian nation. And yet almost every abomination
that contaminates the world comes out of the United States. Every
moral filth almost has its beginning here. So you see, the name of
God is blasphemed among the nations because so many people in America
believe themselves Christians when they live like devils. But that in itself is evidence
that they have not come to know God. But you see, we're not talking,
though, about a multitude of people, we're talking about you. Can you say? Can you prove? That since the moment of your
conversion. There is evidence that God is
working in your life to make you holy. Can you see that? Can you tell me that you are
truly a Christian, because when you look at the world and it
maybe deceives you and draws you to it, that God comes and
disciplines you? That when you participate in
sin, you can't stand it because the Holy Spirit is so convicting
you. Or can you simply call yourself
Christian and yet look like the world, act like the world, talk
like the world, dress like the world, do everything the world
does? Now, I want you to look at something
here that's very important about your salvation. Our salvation
is the work of God. Although there is a human element
in it and there is a great mystery regarding the will of man and
the will of God, we do know this salvation is primarily a work
of God and he who begins the good work will finish it. Now,
look at our text in verse 24. I want to accentuate. I want
to emphasize the personal pronoun I that refers to God. Listen
to what it says. For I. God speaking, I will take
them from the nations. I will gather you into your own
lands. I will bring you into your own
land. I will sprinkle clean water on
you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your
filthiness. I will cleanse you from all your
your idols. I will. Put a new heart within
you. I will put a new spirit within
you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh. I will
give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you
and I will cause you to walk in my statutes. Do you see what
God is saying? He's saying I'm going to do a
work of salvation. I am going to create a new people
called the church and I am going to do it. And it is going to
succeed. And through its succeeding, it
is going to prove to the nations how powerful I am. So if God
saves a person, he's going to do these things in the life of
that person. Is he doing these things in your
life? And what are these things? First
of all, he's going to work to make you holy. He's going to
little by little remove from you. Your desire and your fellowship
with the world. And he's going to replace that
with a desire and a fellowship with Christ. Is he doing that
since your supposed conversion? Are you growing in your devotion
to God and your love for Christ? Are you growing in holiness?
Or are you the same person that you were when you began? Do you still love the world?
Do you still want to be like the world? Now, let's go to verse
25. He says, Then I will sprinkle
clean water on you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you
from all your filthiness and from all your idols. One of the
things that the Lord will do when he has truly saved a person
is, again, he will begin to do a work of cleansing them. The
moment we believe in Jesus Christ, we are justified and we are right
with God through faith. But if we have truly believed
God is going to begin to do a lifetime work of sanctification in us,
of changing us, of cleansing us from all our filthiness and
from all our idols. And I want you to know something.
He can do it. He can do it. He is sovereign over the believer
and he can work in that believer's life to make that believer clean. To cause that believer to grow
in holiness. Let me give you an example. When
I was a little boy, I was raised on a farm and I don't know if
any of you living here in California has ever been raised on a farm.
But the one thing about boys who are raised on a farm is that
they are always dirty, always. And I was the dirtiest of all
of them. Everywhere I had a crack or a crease or a crevice, there
was dirt. Because I was always playing
in the fields, working in the fields with my father, just a
farm boy, always dirty. One time when I was about nine
or 10 years old, I came into the house late at night. Having
been in the fields all day, I was very tired. And my mother said,
Paul, you need to take a bath. And of course, I was nine or
10 years old, I was becoming a man. And I told my mom, Mom,
I don't think I'm going to take a bath tonight. All of a sudden,
the entire face of my mother changed and my mother looked
at me and I still can see the picture of her face and it still
terrifies me. She looked at me and she said,
you will take a bath. So I said, OK. I'll take a bath. So I go in there, I open up the
water a little bit, just a few drops, because boys who live
on farms, they love to swim in the river and everything, but
they're afraid of water that's in a bathtub. I don't know why.
So I turned on the water and a few drops came out and I did
like this. And then I grabbed my mother's
white towel and I dried myself off and now the towel was black.
And everything was going along just fine until my mom walked
in the door. And my mother looked at me and
she turned that water on and she grabbed me by the back of
the neck. They were allowed to do that back then. She grabbed
me by the back of the neck and she stuck me down in that water,
thought I was going to drown. And my mother was a woman who
worked most of her life on the farm. Her hands were like metal
files. And she grabbed me and started
scrubbing and scrubbing. And when I came out of that bathtub,
I was glowing with the Shekinah glory of God. I had lost at least
three layers of skin, but I was clean. Now, I want you to think
about something. Is my mother more powerful than
God? Some preachers, I think, would
say yes, but the Bible says no. God says I will sprinkle clean
water on you. And notice what he says. You
will be clean. You will be clean. One of the
problems in the West is we have no concept anymore of a father's
authority. I see fathers begging their children.
We have no concept of parental authority, and therefore we cannot
understand the work of God in the heart of a man. God looks
at his children and he says you will be clean. Furthermore, he
says this now we can do this the easy way or we can do this
the easy way, because for me, both ways are easy, he says.
God will clean his people. And one of the greatest evidences
that you have become a part of his people is that you cannot
escape him. He will work in you to cleanse
you. Now, I want us to look, he says,
I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your
idols. If I were to describe. My Christian
life. I would have to say this is one
of the best verses to describe my life. I have been walking
with the Lord for around 28 years. And in those 28 years, I have
seen God's loving hand of discipline. Teaching me. Putting me through
trials, chastising me. When I had gone the wrong way,
I could see from almost the moment of my conversion that I had entered
into a relationship with God that I could not escape. He had
become my father and he is a very diligent father. He makes sure
that his children do not run wild. Let me give you an example. Let's say that I was your pastor.
And I came home one night with my wife at, let's say, 12 at
night. I was preaching somewhere very
late. And I as I was driving home, I went by a street corner
and I saw your daughter that was 14 years old standing on
that street corner with a whole bunch of very bad young people
as the pastor. And since my wife is in the car,
I would pull up to the street corner and I'd say, girl, get
in the car. I'm taking you home. But here's
what you need to understand, I wouldn't be angry as a pastor
with the little girl. But I would be angry with her
father if he was a member of the church. I would go to him
and I would say, what kind of derelict father are you? How
could you so neglect your children that you would allow them to
be out on the streets running wild without your care and your
discipline? Do you honestly think that God
is a derelict father? That God has all these children
in America. He allows them to live in heresy.
He allows them to follow every sort of lie. He allows them to
live in sin and in every manner, every sort of way that contradicts
his nature. Do you think God is that neglectful
of his children? Absolutely not. One of the evidences,
young people, that you truly belong to God. that he truly
is your father, is that he is involved in your life to make
you clean. I use another illustration from
my life as a boy. My mother told me it was the
first day of school and she told me this. She had bought new clothes
for me to wear to school. And she told me, she said, after
school, don't get in a fight and tear your clothes up. And
don't go down to that that river where you always play and get
muddy where those were my two favorite things to do at school. Well, I did exactly what she
told me not to do, and I knew that I was going to be in trouble,
a lot of trouble. So I always had kind of the mind
of a lawyer. So I told two of my friends,
John and Rance, I said, will you guys go home with me? And
they said, sure, because they were just as dirty and their
clothes were just as tore up as mine. So we're getting near
my home and my mother looks out the window. Fire coming out of
her eyes. And my mother, I knew I knew
that my life was over at that point. And quickly, I thought,
now, mom, before you get mad, let me just tell you this. Rance
and John, they also got dirty and tore their clothes up. And
then she said something that really taught me some good theology. This is what she said. Rance
and John are not my children. You are my child, I have nothing
to do with them. But I have everything to do with
you. Now go upstairs, say your prayers
and prepare to die. Now, do you see what's going
on here? My mother had a claim on me. My father had a claim
on me. I belong to them. I was their
child. In the same way, if you have
truly been converted, God has a claim on you. You belong to
him. He is going to change you for
his own glory and he is going to change you because he loves
you. He is not going to let you stay the way that you were. And
he has the power to change you. He is a sovereign father. I want
us to hold our place in Ezekiel and just go to Hebrews for a
moment. Chapter 12. Look at verse five of chapter
12 of the book of Hebrews. He says, And you have forgotten
the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons. My son, do not
regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you
are reproved by him. For those whom the Lord loves,
he disciplines and he scourges every son whom he receives. And
then he says it is for discipline that you endure. God deals with
you as with sons for what son is there whom his father does
not discipline. Now, listen to verse eight. Here's
the warning. But if you are without discipline
of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children
and not sons. If you can live in sin, live
in the world with all your worldly friends doing all your worldly
things and you can get away with it and there's no conviction
of the spirit, there's no discipline from God. It is evidence that
you are an illegitimate child. You are not truly a child of
God. If you love the sensuality of the world and you love all
its boasting, its pride of the eyes and its its boasting in
the flesh and all the things that glitters in this world and
you can participate in it without the discipline of the father,
it is because the father is not your father. Now, back to Ezekiel. I want
you to think about this. There is a passage in the scriptures
that says this. Jacob, I loved. Esau, I hated. Now, we have to ask ourselves
a question, how did God manifest his love toward Jacob and how
did he manifest his hatred or wrath toward Esau? This is very,
very helpful. To understand this will help
you understand something about God being your father. If you
look at Esau's life, God fulfilled every promise he made regarding
Esau. He blessed Esau with wealth,
with power. He became a great leader, a great
nation. God blessed Esau. So how is it
that God's hatred was manifested toward Esau? God never disciplined
Esau. He let Esau be Esau. He never intervened in Esau's
life. He never worked to make Esau
holy. He just cut the rope and let
Esau go and live exactly like Esau wanted to live. Now, how
did God manifest his love toward Jacob? He beat Jacob every day
of his life. Look at Jacob. He would not allow
Jacob to continue on as Jacob. Jacob was the deceiver. But when
Jacob become a son, God said, Jacob, it's going to take a while,
but I'm going to change you from a deceiver into a prince. And
you look at the life of Jacob, the trials he suffered, the things
that he went through so that when he entered into the promised
land, once again, he entered in limping. He entered in limping. Why? Because here's what you
need to understand, especially in America, the goal of God and
your life is not prosperity. It's not health, it's not wealth,
and it's most certainly not your best life now. God's goal, if
you belong to him as a child, is to make you holy, to conform
you to the image of Christ. He will cleanse you from your
filthiness. He will cleanse you from your
idols. And he will be very zealous in
doing that. He will do anything that is necessary
to make you conform to the image of his son. Is he doing that
in your life? Is he? Let's go on. How is God going to change us?
It is not merely by external discipline. How else does he
change us? Look in verse 26. This is one
of the most. If not the greatest illustration,
an example of what it means to be born again, this is a phenomenal
illustration. Now, before we go to it, let's
step back and look at something in America being born again or
the doctrine of regeneration has been totally and completely
lost. Regeneration is the supernatural
work of God, whereby by the spirit of God, he recreates a man. If anyone be in Christ, he is
a new creature. Do you see that? The Bible says
that God created the world ex nihilo, are out of nothing. I
believe that there is more power of God manifested in the conversion
of a man than in the very creation of the universe, because as I
said, he created the universe ex nihilo out of nothing. But
when he recreates a man and makes him a Christian, he takes a mass
of radically depraved corruption and turns it into a new creature
who will love him. So many people today, I've been
born again, they say. And you ask them, what do you
mean by that? Well, I made my decision. I prayed that prayer.
I asked Jesus to come into my heart. Yes, but has your heart
changed? Has your life changed? Is it changing? Are you a new
creature or someone who just repeated a creed and passed through
a ritual? The evidence that you are truly
converted is not that one time in your life you prayed a prayer
and asked Jesus to come in. The evidence that you are converted
is that one time in your life you repented of your sins and
you continue repenting today. The evidence that you're saved
is one time you believed on the salvation and you continue believing
today. The evidence that you're converted
is that one time God began a good work in you and he continues
working in you today, changing your life, transforming you by
his power. Look what he says here. He says,
I will. Give you a new heart and put
a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone
from your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh. Now, let's say that I take the
biggest man in this building right now and I bring him up
here and I make a stone statue out of him. And here he is just
a statue of stone, I can punch him. I can pinch him. I can kick him. I can insult
him. I can do all kinds of things
to him. And what is he going to do? Absolutely nothing. He's stone. He's dead. He's inanimate. He is unable
to respond to stimuli. But what if I can snap my fingers
and change that stone statue back into a man, a man of flesh? If I pinch him, he's probably
going to react and then punch me. If I kick him, he's going
to kick me back. Do you see? I don't care how
big you are, how strong you are here tonight. If I reach up behind
you and get you under the arm like this and pinch you with
all my might, you are going to react. You are going to respond
to that stimuli. And that is what God is saying
in the supernatural work of salvation. This is what God does when a
man is born again. He takes out his heart of stone,
a heart that is dead, a heart that cannot hear God, cannot
respond to God. And what it knows about God it
hates. And by the power of the Holy Spirit hovering over that
man, just like on the day of creation, God changes that man's
heart from a heart of stone that is dead and cannot respond to
a heart of flesh that is living and alive and can respond to
divine stimuli. Now, let me ask you a question.
Has God done that to your heart? Has God done that to your heart?
Can you remember a time in your life where you were just dead
to God? You didn't care about God. You
didn't care about his word. You didn't care about sin. You
didn't care about his voice, hearing him, obeying him, following
him, nothing. But then one day everything changed.
God took out that heart of stone and he put in its place a heart
that would respond to him. My dear friend, when the Apostle
Paul says, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creature. He's not
just reciting beautiful poetry. He's teaching us something that
is actually true. Have you become a new creature? Have you? Do you now respond
to the voice of God? You may be sitting here right
now, young person. All mesmerized by the world,
looking like the world, loving the world, acting like the world.
And you're sitting there going, I don't have a clue what he's
talking about. Well, then you ought to be afraid. And you ought
to seek God and you ought to cry out to him, oh, God, search
my heart. Oh, God, if I if I do not know
you, if all I have is religion, but no salvation, Lord, I cry
out to you. Save me. Change my heart. Grant
me grace. Help me, Lord. Dear brothers. From Slavic lands, listen to
me. It'll only take one generation.
To lose everything. That's how difficult, how worldly
the place is where you live. Pray. Pray for your children,
children. Do not believe the lies. Do not. They are deadly. If you are saved, he says, I
will take out your heart of stone and I will put in its place a
heart of flesh. Moreover, look at verse 27. I
will put my spirit within you. My dear friend, think about this
conversion is not just a human decision. What happens when you're
converted? Not only does God transform your
heart, what else does he do? He indwells you. He puts his
spirit within you. And look what it says. I will
put my spirit within you. And cause you to walk in my statutes
and you will be careful to observe my ordinances, he says, when
I change your heart. And I put my spirit in you. You will live a different way. It will happen. It will. And then he says. Verse 28, and
you will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers, so
you will be my people and I will be your God. Young person. Teenager, college
student. Even those of you are older,
but my burden here is for the young. Listen to me, can you
honestly look at me and say he is my God? He is my God. I long to know
his will, I long to obey his commands, I long to follow him
and be what he wants me to be. I am learning and he is teaching
me to love what he loves and to hate what he hates. Can someone look at your life,
young person, not while you're here at church, no, while you're
there in the streets and no one sees you? Can they look at your
life and say that person? Belongs to God. That person is
different, that person is not like the world, that person is
changing. Young person, do you desire to
meet with God in the morning? Do you desire to meet with him
in the evening? Do you desire his word? Do you
want to be changed by a young person when you fall into sin,
does it break your heart and afflict you? Or do you love it,
do you relish it? Let me share with you this. To
close. It's an illustration from Charles
Spurgeon. It's very powerful. I want you
to imagine that I have right here. Absolutely the best food you
could possibly could possibly prepare, just a gorgeous plate
of the most wonderful food imaginable. And then over here, I have a
bucket of garbage slop. Now, I know many of you are from
California and are not from the farm. But let's say that there
was a pig in the back of the church and I told someone, let
the pig go. Where's the pig going to go?
Is it going to go to this wonderful plate of food? Absolutely not.
Where's it going to go? It's going to go to the garbage.
Why is it going to go to the garbage? Because it's a pig.
Pigs love garbage. It's going to go to the garbage.
It's going to stick its head down in that garbage. It's going
to be unashamed. And it is going to eat and eat
and eat. And it is going to love what
it's eating. Now, let's say that I have the
power with a snap of my fingers to in one second change that
pig into a man. What's going to happen? He's
going to pull his head out of that bucket. He's going to throw
up what he was eating. Why? Because a man cannot eat
what a pig eats. It's going to make him sick to
himself. He's going to turn around. He's
going to see you and he's going to be ashamed. Now, don't be
offended, but if you're a Christian, I just described your conversion. All of our conversions. We were
born and by nature we were sinners. We did not want the good food
of God. We would rather have the sin
and the disgrace and the debauchery of this world. We ran to it. We fed on it. We ate it. We loved
it. We desired it. But when a person
is converted, what does God do? He changes them into a new creation,
a new heart recreated in the image of God and true righteousness
and true holiness. And with that new heart, they
have new desires and they can no longer stomach. The sin of
this world, and they're ashamed that they ever participated in
it, and they begin to walk no longer. As a sinner. But begin to learn to walk as
a saint. Now, can a Christian be deceived
and put his head back in the bucket? Yes, he can. But the
moment he takes a bite, he knows it's wrong. The moment he takes
a bite, it makes him sick and it will not take long for him
to repent of his foolishness and to be ashamed for returning.
To what he had left. Is this you? Has God changed
your heart? Does he continue changing your
heart? Do you long to be free from the
filth of this world? Do you long to be like Christ? If you can say yes, that is a
great evidence that you have been born again. To close. Young person, listen to me. The things that are presented
to you in this culture are more deadly than venom. The sensuality. The lack of discretion,
the lack of decency. The rebellion, the love for money
and vice and sex and all the things that this culture throws
at you. It will kill you. The way this
culture acts, the way this culture talks, the way this culture dresses. Everything about it is wrong. Don't do this. But also understand
this. If you recognize the culture
is wrong and you turn away from it and you think that just by
turning away from it, you're going to be saved, you're wrong.
Turning away from this culture won't save you, but turning to
Christ. Turn to Christ, and how will
you know that you have come to Christ? Because he will change
your heart. He will change your heart. Imagine that I came into town
and I was the new pastor and you told me that there's a man
who hasn't been in church for five years. And that he was over
there living in a neighborhood and I needed to go visit him
because he was a member of the church and full of sin. So I
go over and knock on his door and he invites me in. And I say,
brother or sir, you haven't been in church for five years. And
this is what he says. He says, you're right, pastor.
I just love to play soccer, play football, do other things on
Sunday, but but you're right, I need to go back to church.
You're right. I need to do that. And then I say to him and I hear
you've been getting drunk. and running around in different
taverns. And he says, you know, Pastor,
you're right. I love to get drunk and I love taverns, but you're
right. I need to stop doing that and I need to come to church.
And then I say to him, and I understand that you have not been faithful
to your wife. He goes, you know what, Pastor, I mean, I just
can't help myself. I love other women, but you're
right. I need to stop it. I need to do the right thing
and I need to come back to church. And so on Sunday he comes back
to church and all of you say, oh, praise the Lord, a sheep
has come home. No, he hasn't. A goat just entered
the building. Because you know what he's saying,
this is what he's saying, he's saying, and young person, listen
to me, this may be you. What he is saying is this, I
need to stop doing all the sinful things that I love with all my
heart and start doing all the righteous, godly things that
I hate and that bore me in order to save my soul. That's not Christianity. He is not a new creature. All
we've done is put a wolf in the cage so we can't continue to
act like a wolf, but he's still a wolf. Let me ask you honestly,
young person, do you really love this? Just admit it. Do you love
this world more than Christ? You say, well, don't judge me,
you don't know what's in my heart. I don't have to know what's in
your heart. I can just look at your life. Is your life given to the things
of this world? to its so-called beauty and sensuality
and entertainment and all these things so that the scriptures
mean nothing to you. Fellowship with Christ and prayer
mean nothing to you. Seeking out other believers in
the local church to grow in godliness means nothing to you. You just
come to church on Sunday. If that is you, be afraid. Repent
of your sins. Turn to Christ. Call out to him
until you know he has saved you and you know he has changed you.
And that he continues changing you. Now, I know that I have said
a lot of things and I know that I have been very hard. But I know my culture. I know
what it does. And I know human nature. And
I know what the Bible teaches about salvation and everything
that I've said, I've said because I love you. Remember how I began this message,
there are people in this room. Who will be glorified saints
in heaven. And there are people in this
room. Who will be monsters in hell. What will you do? Will you repent? Will you believe in Christ? Let's pray.