Regeneration

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'".

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

What Regeneration Is Not

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. This is WVNE 760. If you'd like to email me your questions, you can at info at BBC, you can do that too, info at BBC Church, info at nocompromiseradio .com, info at nocompromiseradio .com, and I will get those messages.

If you have a Bible question, if you've got an issue, something's going on, please email me. I originally thought I'd take phone calls, but we only have 24 minutes, and by the time we screen and talk and everything else, it's just not my cup of tea.

Actually, I'm a coffee drinker, and so nothing's really my cup of tea unless it's some kind of chai or maybe like Jean-Luc Picard, he had some Earl Grey Black. But today I want to talk about regeneration.

Today's kind of a Bible study, regeneration. Regeneration, what is it? If somebody asked you, they came up to you on the street, what's regeneration? What would you say? That's a very good question. Sometimes people have some misconceptions about regeneration.

They would think along the lines of reincarnation, some kind of Hindu heresy, being born again is really reincarnation regarding Hinduism. Many cults and many false teachers, by the way, use the same Christian lingo, use the same lingo that Christians use.

And just because someone says regeneration, it doesn't mean they have the same biblical definition, the same definition that would come from the Bible. So you have to be very careful. False teachers use the same vocabulary with different meanings.

And we know Hebrews 9, verse 27, says just as man is destined to die once and after that, judgment. When you die, you'll have to face judgment. And so regeneration is not some kind of Dharma initiative.

I can't believe I just said that. Dharma and Greg, wasn't that a show too? All these kind of Hindu things. It's not reincarnation. It's not moral reformation either. We're coming up on New Year's Eve.

As I tape the show, I think this will be played after. You've just celebrated New Year's Eve. It's 2010 now, 2010. And maybe you think you've got some new resolutions. You've gained too much weight. You eat too much sugar.

You don't work out as much. And so it's a good time for people to buy equipment, workout equipment, and they have some kind of resolution. John Owen said, "'A man may beat down the bitter fruit from an evil tree until he is weary, while the root abides in strength and vigor.

The beating down the present fruit will not hinder it from bringing forth more.'". Resolutions can't change you. When we talk about regeneration, it is a necessary work. People are born in sin. They're enslaved to darkness.

Jesus actually said in John 3, that men love the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil. And so we've learned before on this show, and if you've read your Bible, you realize that it does not lie within the power of your will to yield yourself to God.

If you're a Christian, you have yielded yourself to God because of what God has done. God has regenerated you. He has made you born again. We know that Romans 9 .16 is true. So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.

You are born in sin. You need to be saved from sin, your own sin. And someone from the outside has to do that work for you. And that someone on the outside, his name is God. And he needs to change you on the inside.

We could talk about justification and legal declarations, but here we're talking about regeneration. God working on the inside of a sinner, of a person determined and bound to go to hell, enslaved to Satan's will, thinking that they have free will, and God interrupts, God intervenes.

God gives a new internal disposition to the people, and he gives them a new holy disposition, as the Puritans would say. Baptist Philadelphia Confession of Faith, 1742. Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly, that's W-H, wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation.

So as a natural man, being altogether averse from good and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to convert himself or to prepare himself thereunto. Chapter nine. So what's going on? We need a helper.

We need a rescuer. We need someone to come and save us. And so regeneration, or what we would say being born again, by the way, if you say I'm a born again Christian, I call that theological stuttering.

I'm a born again Christian, because if you're not born again, you're not a Christian. I know there are times when we should say it, especially when we're around liberals, or maybe we're around other people, maybe Roman Catholics, and you say to yourself, or you say out loud, I'm a born again Christian.

In other words, I believe the Bible. I believe I'm an evangelical. I am born again. But biblically speaking, technically speaking, you are born again, or you're not a Christian. You are born from above, or you're not saved.

And people are confused about being born again. That's why there's all this talk about reincarnation or moral reformation. Some people think regeneration is even law-keeping. Kurt Daniels has a good list of what regeneration is not, and he says it's not a law-keeping.

Somehow you keep the Ten Commandments, or you watch over the golden rule in your life, and somehow you are then right with God. Galatians 3 .21. Is the law therefore opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not, for if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.

If there was a law that says do this and you get eternal life, well, then righteousness would have come through the law. Then it would have happened, but it cannot happen. And so I remember talking to one of my children, and I said to them, do you ever sin?

Yes, Daddy. Do you ever tell lies? Yes. Are you ever selfish? Yes. Do you ever disobey Mom and Dad? Yes. Do you ever complain? Yes. So what does that tell me about your heart? And the kid kind of looks at me, and I say, is it a white, pure, clean heart, or do you have a black, corrupt heart, dark heart?

And my child said, I have a black heart, Dad. And I said, so what are you going to do about it? Well, they gave me a look like there's nothing I really need to do about it. It's a sad truth. It's true, but there's not much I need to do.

I said, you can't go to heaven, a pure, white, holy, perfect heaven with a black, impure, sinful heart. So what are you going to do about it? And this particular child of mine said, I'll never forget it, I just won't do those things anymore.

I just won't sin like that anymore, Dad. I said, well, that would be good, but it's impossible. But furthermore, you've already sinned, and now you have the black heart. And so even if you could stop sinning from here until you went to heaven, that's not going to do you any good from here until you die.

So what do we need to do? How are we going to clean that black heart? How are you going to get in there and clean that heart when we can't, even if we could go to a surgeon in Worcester Medical Center, that's still not going to help you.

And so they said, my child said, pray? Is that the right answer, Dad? Pray? It's like the kid who comes back from the Sunday school, and you say, what'd you learn in Sunday school? God? Yeah, pray? Well, yes, that's true, pray.

What else? I said, you need to have your heart forgiven. You need to have a new heart, a brand new heart, and you should ask God to do that. And I said, you know, you could do that right now. You could just say, God, please forgive me and help me to believe in you, cleanse my heart.

And my particular child at that time said, well, I'll do that another time. I said, well, one day you're going to die, and there's going to be no time left to do that. Well, I know, Dad. And I said, you don't have to say it even out loud, but you should say to yourself, Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

God, I know what you did through your son at Calvary, and I know he was a sin bearer and he was raised from the dead, and I need forgiveness. I need a clean heart. Please forgive me. If I could give you a law, listeners out there, to keep so you'd go to heaven, I'd be glad to give it, but it can't work that way because of your heart.

Did you know some people think regeneration is deification? Kenneth Copeland says, dogs beget dogs, cats beget cats, and God begets little gods. And so basically to be born again, it's some kind of really, you're a little deity now.

And so that would be wrong. Satan lied to Adam with the promise of becoming deity as well. Genesis 3, 5, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Regeneration is not reincarnation. It's not moral reformation. It's not law-keeping. It's not deification, and it's not just dying. The worldwide church of God used to teach that you were only born again when you died, when your body died.

You were then born again. That's foolishness. The Bible teaches something completely different. And lastly, regeneration is not when you're born the first time, some kind of physical birth. In reply, Jesus declared to Nicodemus, I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.

How can a man be born when he is old, Nicodemus asked? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born. Jesus said, I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and spirit.

Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the spirit gives birth to spirit. You must be born again. Not only Nicodemus, but you. George Whitefield used to preach hundreds of times, if not thousands of times, the sermon, you must be born again.

And when Whitefield was asked the question in America, why do you preach on being born again so much? His answer was, because you must be born again. It is a vital topic. We need to have God through regeneration, or what we call the new birth, creating in us something new.

We are fallen and sinful, and so the spirit of God must change us on the inside, must give us some new disposition, some new bent, some new ambitions, a new will. From our previous state of lawlessness and godlessness and righteousness, we need to be one who is now seeking God, repenting, believing, no longer rebelling, but wanting to live underneath God's holy word.

And so we need to be regenerated. You need to be regenerated. You say, well, maybe later, but you must be born again. I tell you the truth. No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again, or literally born from above.

The first time you were born, you were born from your mother. The second time, you must be born from God and his will. You must be born again. That's why it was Whitefield's favorite text, born of the water and of spirit.

We're not talking about some literal water here, some kind of foolish, nonsensical, baptismal regeneration works. Water, when you looked at it in the Old Testament, would be this figurative and spiritual cleansing, especially when you see water and spirit.

You have to be cleansed on the inside, and this has to be from a supernatural state, supernatural work of God. I think of Isaac Newton with the first law of motion. Everything continues in a state of rest unless it is compelled to change by forces impressed upon it.

That is a good definition of a sinner, of an unbeliever, of a fallen creature. Everything will continue in that fallen creature in a state of sin unless it is compelled to change by forces impressed inside of it, and that would be called regeneration.

Sinners are depraved and dead in their sins. They need a heart transplant, not just a bypass. I worked in surgery a lot as a sales rep, selling different kind of lasers and cautery machines, and I would watch sometimes the bypass surgeries, and you go into someone in the operating room in the cardiovascular suite, and you have two different operating teams.

One team is going to open up the sternum and get access to the heart. The other team begins to go after the veins in the legs, and there's one particular vein they go after a lot of times, and that is all the time in the leg.

They go after other arteries, but in the leg, they look at the saphenous vein, and they begin to harvest the saphenous vein so they can do a bypass surgery. They'll take that vein, make sure it's in good shape, and they'll put that in to where, in the heart, so they can kind of do an end-around of past these blocked arteries, and so you don't just need a bypass.

You need a brand-new heart. You don't need some kind of recitation. You need a resurrection is what you need. Human beings need to have a radical change. You need a radical change. You just don't eat a wafer on Sunday or you have some water put on your forehead, and everything's good to go.

The problem is you. We've met the enemy, and it's us from the inside. The interesting thing about regeneration, and most people don't like this, they balk at this, they cringe at this, is if regeneration is something that God does to you on the inside, if the Holy Spirit does to you on the inside.

We know that's true from the Bible. Number two, not everybody gets regenerated. Some go to hell. Some stay in their sins. They never deserve to be regenerated, and God has left them there in their sins.

Like the angels that fell, none of the angels that fell were deserved of some kind of plan of salvation. They got what they deserved, justice, punishment. But here now with regeneration, the third truth is, the implication of the truth is, if you aren't regenerated, God doesn't owe you regeneration.

But if you are regenerated, it is the sovereign free will and purpose of God to do that. God sovereignly chooses who he will regenerate. It's not some kind of accident. It's not based on work. It's not based on foreknown actions that you would do or wouldn't do.

It's not a necessity. It's not anything except sovereign grace of God. And that is basically as plain as it could be in James 1 .18. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created.

He chose us to give us birth. You say, well, every time I turn on the radio, you start talking about some kind of Calvinistic sovereignty of God in salvation. Well, every time I turn my Bible open, I see the same thing.

God is sovereign. Show me two kids playing out in the backyard in their sandbox, if they still play in sandboxes, and I'll show you kids that are little sovereigns. This team wins, that team loses. These green army guys win.

These gray army guys lose. The Yankees win, the Confederates lose. They're little sovereigns. You're a little sovereign. And you're made in God's likeness and image. That's why you do that. And you like to choose, and you like to pick, and you like to say who's gonna be on your team, and you like to choose your own wife, but God is not allowed to do any of the choosing.

So we have to be consistent. We don't wanna be hypocritical. The text says he chose to give us birth. Literally, he purposed. Having purposed, God chose. And it's emphatic. It's emphatic in the Greek.

It's front-loaded. It is prominent. God's sovereign, decretive, creative will, his decision, his decree, his purpose, and no one else's. No one else's purpose, no one else's choice, no one else's decision.

The text says wholly rooted in God is the choice. He chose to give us birth. Reminds me of Jesus's discussion with the disciples. You did not choose me, but I chose you. Wouldn't it be bad if it was the other way around?

You did not, I did not choose you, but you chose me. There's nothing wonderful about that. There's nothing extraordinary about that. This has to be God's choice. That's why we call it grace. Some of you today listening say you believe in grace, but you don't believe grace is sovereign.

By definition, something that is not owed someone else but is given as a gift is not anything except sovereign grace and it's no longer of works. If it were, grace would no longer be grace. This is the song, by the way, that you'll be singing in heaven.

I do believe Arminians go to heaven. In spite of their bad theology, they go. You don't have to have perfect theology to get to heaven, but if you're an Arminian and you're listening and you think you chose God and then he chose you in response to that, then I wonder what you'll do when you're in heaven with the angels and all the creatures singing this song.

Revelation 4 .11, you are worthy, O Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power. Now listen to, here it is. If I had a drum roll, I'd begin to roll right now. For you created all things and by your will, they were created and have their being.

God didn't have to create anything. And whatever you see as in the creation, it was his own will to create. He is the one. We did not initially choose anything. God is the one who has chosen. It is not therefore dependent on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy.

When did God choose? God chose before the creation of the world, Ephesians 1. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world. When did God choose us and decide that he was going to send the spirit to regenerate us in time?

He did that according to his own purpose and grace, 2 Timothy 1 .9, which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity. Why did he choose? Because he was pleased to choose. He predestined us in love.

God gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. That is John 5 .21. And so this new birth regeneration is a gift. God chooses to give us new birth. God brings forth life out of death. 1 Peter 1 .3, praise be to God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In his great mercy, he has given us new birth. And so God says you must be born again, but the whole time he, Jesus, knows that it has to be the spirit of God who comes along and applies that. Something needs to be done in an unbeliever.

Something needs to be done to an unbeliever. And it's not a cooperative program. God alone is the author of regeneration. God and man are not co-authors, co-partners, synergistically working together.

Man does not regenerate himself either. We realize that God alone has to be the author of regeneration. And this is called monergism, mono, alone, only. And then erg, God alone working. And it's a sovereign work.

The wind blows wherever it pleases. Jesus said in John 3 .8, you hear it sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the spirit. We need God to open our hearts if we're an unbeliever like he opened Lydia's.

The Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. Did you notice the order there? Just like with Lazarus, that's who we are spiritually, Lazarus physically, Jesus has to call forth life out of death.

One man said socialism can put a new coat on a man, but Jesus Christ can put a new man in the coat. And man can't do it. That's why we love grace. That's why I love grace. That's why we say hallelujah, praise the Lord.

An Ethiopian cannot change his skin, our leopard it spots, can it? No, neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil. It's impossible for man to save himself. Who can be saved? God says with him, the impossible is possible.

One man said the unsaved person might create the universe rather than save himself. If you could create the universe, you still even can save yourself. And so you say, what if somebody says no? Well, God will make them willing.

Well, why should I pray? Why should you pray? This would be a perfect opportunity for you to pray. Pray because it's commanded for you to pray. Pray because God ordains all the ends because he's ordained the means, that is prayer.

But pray that God says, that you say to God, God, please open that other person's heart. By the way, when you pray, you believe in regeneration, that's monergistic, don't you? God, save them. Not God, could you please cooperate with their wills?

Make sure you don't make them some puppet or make sure you don't make them some kind of robots or something like that. No, you say, God, change them. God, open their hearts. We have to be careful when we think about things theologically.

If you really believe that regeneration is a cooperation, then you ought to pray according to your own theology. I'd rather pick Charles Wesley's songs. Even he had to write some good Calvinistic songs, Arminian though he may be.

Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night. Thine eyes diffused a quickening ray. I woke, the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose, went forth and followed thee.

That quickening ray is salvation. That quickening ray is salvation. Pray for your unbelieving friends and pray that God would open their heart. My name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry.

Write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com and tell me your story. Send me a book that you've burned. Whatever, salvation is of the Lord. Regeneration is an act of God. If you're saved, you can thank God.

If you know somebody who's not saved, you can ask God to save them and God is pleased to save sinners. God bless you.

Ministry Sign-Off and Station Disclaimer

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.