Genuine Regeneration — Paul Washer

Let's open up our Bibles to the book of Ezekiel, chapter 36. The book of Ezekiel, chapter 36. Before we read our text, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, I praise you for your kindness, your loving kindness toward us.

Your mercies are new every morning. You have taken all our sins and put them as far from you as the east is from the west. You have done great things in your son who died and rose again from the dead.

Through your spirit who makes the dead alive and causes us to call out, Abba Father, to love you, to have a passion for the things that are important to you. Father, we need you, your strength, your grace, your power, your mercy.

Apart from your son, we can do nothing. Father, I do not have a handle on you to coerce or manipulate you. But I would ask in the name of your son and for his glory and honor that you would work among us.

That you would instruct your people that they might understand your works and see that they are perfect. And in you there is no fault that they would grow. They would be all that you would have them to be.

Father, give us wisdom for it is inherent in you. Any wisdom that we have is derived from you. So with faith and hope we ask for wisdom to know your scriptures. That your truth would be applied to our hearts.

Father, help us and we will be helped. Change us and we will be changed. In Jesus' name, Amen. Before we go to our text, I want to summarize a few of the things that we have gone through so far this week.

Evidence of True Conversion

First, we started out dealing with the evidences of true conversion. We live in a day and age in Christianity where everyone in America believes they are saved. Because one time in their life they prayed a prayer and asked Jesus to come into their heart.

We know that men are saved by repentance and faith. And whoever does call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But salvation is a supernatural work of God that will always produce fruit. And the evidence, not the cause, but the evidence of salvation is a changed life.

A changing life. Jesus made this very clear in Matthew 7 when he said, You shall know them by their fruits. Paul was clear when he said, Test yourselves, examine yourselves to see whether or not you are in the faith.

There is no such thing as a continuously carnal Christian. Do Christians sin? Yes, absolutely. But can Christians live in a state of sin without discipline and without being brought back in obedience to their father?

Absolutely not. Are people saved by making a decision? Yes, we must make a decision of the will. We must repent. We must believe. But how do we do that? We do that by the power of God and the work of the Holy Spirit that regenerates the heart and makes us able to repent and believe.

For even repentance and faith are gifts from God. They are works of His grace. But we have a problem today. For decades in this country we've heard evangelists tell us about the hour of decision and the need to make our decision.

And so most people today are trusting in a decision and the sincerity of their own heart when they made it. For example, if you ask someone, Are you a Christian? Are you going to heaven? Most will say yes.

When you ask them why, they'll say something like, I made my decision. I prayed my prayer. They are hoping in a decision, the sincerity of a decision, instead of looking unto Christ. How are we saved?

Not by simply making a decision or praying a prayer. We are saved by looking unto Christ. We have looked at ourself in the light of God's word and we realize that we cannot save ourselves, nor can we help God save us.

We repent and we mourn because there is nothing in us of virtue and merit that would cause God to accept us before His throne. But we're not left in despair because the same Holy Spirit that convicts us of sin also reveals to us the glory of God in the face of Christ, the salvation of God in Christ.

And so we look to Christ and we believe. We trust in Christ. As the old hymn writer said, Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling. And we come to make this foundational statement that I am saved for one reason and one reason alone, that Jesus Christ shed His blood for my soul.

I hope not in works, I hope not in ethics, I hope not in baptisms or church membership, I hope in Christ alone. And we went on last night and we spoke something of the gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel, Repentance, and Assurance

In America today, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of our blessed God, as Paul said to Timothy, has been reduced down to nothing more than four spiritual laws or five things God wants you to know.

We ask a person if they're a sinner, if they know they're a sinner, if they say yes, we ask them if they want to go to heaven. If they say yes, we ask them if they would want to pray a prayer. They pray the prayer, we ask them of their sincerity, they're not sure, but we assure them they're saved.

But you see, the fact that you need to understand is, you ask a man, do you know you're a sinner? If he says yes, it means absolutely nothing. The devil knows he's a sinner. The question is not, do you know you're a sinner?

The question is this, since you've heard the preaching of the gospel, is God so worked in your heart that the sin you once loved you now hate? And the question is not, do you want to go to heaven? Everyone wants to go to heaven, they just don't want God to be there when they get there.

The question is, the God that you have ignored and lived without and been unconcerned toward, and even the scriptural language is this, the God that you have hated, do you now esteem Him, desire Him, want to seek Him?

Has God so worked in your heart that He has become of great worth to you? And then the question is not, do you want to pray a prayer and ask Jesus Christ to come into your heart? Do you know there's nowhere in the New Testament where that language is used?

Absolutely nowhere. And people say, now wait a minute, what about Revelation 3, verse 20? Well, what about it? He's not knocking on the door of a sinner's heart, he's knocking on the door of a church.

And someone says, well, I told an evangelist that a long time ago, and he said, I know that's not the context, but it works. The thing is, we're not allowed to use Scripture because it works. We're not called to be pragmatists, we're called to be theologians.

We do something not because it works, but because it's true. Men are saved by repenting of their sins and believing the Gospel. Are men saved by calling on the name of the Lord? Sure, but there's a great difference between someone calling on the name of the Lord with repentance and faith and someone simply repeating the prayer of an evangelist.

And although as preachers we have the authority to teach the Gospel, and we have the authority to tell men what the Scriptures say about biblical assurance, we do not have the authority to tell men they are saved.

That is the work of the Holy Spirit. And then we went on to talk a bit about the cross. We began with the great declaration against men that all have sinned. Of course, again, that means nothing in a culture that drinks down iniquity like it was water.

And so one of the tasks of the preacher is not only to say that mankind has sinned, but explain to them the heinous nature of sin so that the Holy Spirit, using the Word of God, will convict them of the heinous nature of sin.

And it will produce in them something that Joel Osteen would never want someone to feel, self-loathing. Part of repentance in the Old Testament and New is I hate myself. O wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death?

It is coming to grips with the reality of the ugliness of sin. And the reality of that ugliness causing us to turn to Christ. You see, sometimes as an illustration, I'll pull out a pair of keys and I'll jingle them in the pulpit.

And I ask people, does that bring you joy? And most say, well, of course not. And I say, well, it doesn't bring you joy because you're not locked away in a prison. If you were locked away in a prison, the sound of keys jingling would bring you at least a spark of joy and hope.

It's the same way. One of the reasons why Christ is not truly precious to men is because preachers are not telling men about their sin. Not telling them that they are condemned in it. Not telling them that God is holy.

God is righteous. In America, God looks more like Santa Claus than Yahweh of the Bible, than the God of Scripture. One of the greatest statements that C .S. Lewis ever wrote down, it's found in the Chronicles of Narnia, and it's this.

He's not a tame lion. He's not a domesticated god. He's God. And He is both glorious and terrifying. And you can't have one without the other. So all men have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

It doesn't mean that God had a wonderful plan for your life and you failed it. It means this. You were created for one glorious purpose, and that is to glorify Him. But the Bible says although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks.

All have sinned. But men are justified. That is, they're declared legally right before God only one way. Through faith in Jesus Christ. But when we say that Jesus Christ saves men, or that men can be justified, we're confronted with a terrible problem.

It's the greatest problem in all the Scripture, and it's this. How can a just God forgive wicked men and still be just? You see, that is the greatest problem in Scripture. If God is just, He cannot forgive you.

In the same way that if one of our judges on the earth simply pardoned and let murderers go in the name of love, we would have him all thrown off the bench. We would say he was a wicked man, that he was not just.

See, the greatest problem in all of Scripture is if God is just and we are truly wicked, as Scripture says, then He cannot forgive us. Unless, of course, a sacrifice is made. And not merely a sacrifice, but a sacrifice of infinite worth.

Penal Substitution and the Wrath of God

In order to be saved, God must become a man. And as a man walk upon this earth, as a perfect man. And then according to the foreordained plan of God, He must go to a tree. And on that tree, He bears the sin of His people.

He carries the curse of them. And on that tree, He dies. And there's two important aspects of that death. He dies abandoned and forsaken of God. You and I should die forsaken of God. Abandoned because of our sin.

His face of displeasure turned against us. That's the way we should die. But in order to be saved from that death, and that eternal death, the Son of God died in our place. As John Gill used to say, died in our law place.

Stood in our law place. Carrying our sin. And died forsaken of His own Father. Never buy into the romantic idea that the Father turned away from His Son on the cross because He simply saw the Son's suffering and couldn't bear to see it.

That's not what Jesus says. Jesus says, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? God is holy. His eyes are too pure to look upon sin. His holy Son at that moment bore our sin. And the Father turned away from Him.

But that's not all. For God's justice to be satisfied, His judgment had to be poured out. His wrath, His holy hatred against evil had to be exhausted. Extinguished. And there was only one way. On that tree, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, drank the cup of God's wrath.

All the furious, holy, righteous, anger, violent wrath of a righteous God that should have fallen upon His people fell upon His Son. As Isaiah says, it pleased the Lord. It pleased Yahweh to crush Him.

To crush His only Son. And in crushing Him, in pouring out His wrath upon Him, the justice of God was satisfied. The wrath of God was appeased. And now God can forgive the wicked and call them righteous because His Son has died for them all.

So many times we'll read the story of Isaac and Abraham going up to the mount. And Abraham is called upon to sacrifice his only son. You all know the story. The man ties his son to a bundle of sticks, makes an altar.

He lays his hand upon the brow of his boy and comes down with the full force of his might with that flint knife to slaughter him. But as the man's will gave way to the will of God, his hand was stayed by God.

And you applaud. What a beautiful ending to the story. But you don't understand. It wasn't the ending of the story. It was the intermission. Hundreds of years later, God's Son is on the altar. And God takes the knife out of Abraham's hand.

And God lays His hand on His only begotten Son and thrusts the knife down and slaughters Him. It pleased the Lord to crush Him. That's why there's so much more meaning than what you think in John 3 .16 when it says, For God so loved the world.

You see, someone had to die under the wrath of God. It was God's Son who did it. It was God's Son who did it. Having died, He made it possible for a just God to declare wicked men righteous and yet still be just.

Now, God calls upon all men. He commands all men, all people of every place to repent and to believe the Gospel. Jesus said it Himself, The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Now repent and believe the Gospel.

But we have taken that repent and believe, as I have said, and we've turned it into a mere intellectual decision, a tiny little ritual that people participate in and if they participate in it, we tell them popishly that they're saved.

And that's wrong. Very wrong. You need to understand, the evangelical community in America is very wrong. Now you say, Brother Paul, how can you say that? I mean, what arrogance is in you that you would stand up there and say it's wrong?

Well again, let me refer back to a principle of hermeneutics, a principle of the science of studying the Bible. We are always to do our theology in the context of the church. That means that when we interpret the Bible, we should take our interpretation and walk through 2 ,000 years of Christian history.

If nobody agrees with us, we're probably wrong. Well, if you take modern American Christianity and compare it to 2 ,000 years of Christian history, you won't find much in agreement between the two. We have developed our own little instantaneous, easy-believe-ism, American form of Christianity.

But Brother Paul, you've said we're saved by faith. Yes, we are saved by faith and not of works no man can boast. But what you need to understand is that the person who is saved by faith is also the person who is born again.

Regeneration and the New Birth

Now herein lies the problem. Born again in America. Everybody's born again. They give polls on, are you born again? 65 of the people in America say they're born again. But explain to me, what is born again?

What does it mean? I'll tell you what it means. It's been reduced down to this. I made a decision. I prayed a prayer. You know, I spent many years of my life in South America where almost everyone in South America believes that they are saved and right with God because when they were infants, they were baptized.

They're saved. They can be a mafioso, a mafia person. They can be a thief. They can be absolutely anything, but they're saved because one time in their life when they were a child, they were baptized.

And so they're saved. The priest says so. Now evangelicals in America mock that and laugh that and say, that is so wrong. That is not right. Just because someone is baptized as an infant doesn't make them saved.

But we can't see that we do absolutely the same thing. Just because someone prayed a prayer one time for five minutes, we tell them they're saved. And even if afterwards they live like the devil all the days of their life, we still assure them that they are saved because one time they prayed a prayer.

That's not found in Scripture, nor is it found in Christian history. Are we saved by faith? Yes. Does the God who saves us also keep us? Yes. But what does it mean to be born again? Born again also can mean born from above.

And what it is referring to is this, that salvation is more than simply a human decision or an act of the human will. Salvation is a supernatural work of God whereby He regenerates or makes the heart alive.

As we're going to see in a moment, He takes out a cold, dead heart of stone and replaces it with a living heart. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. That is not poetry. That beautiful statement wasn't made just so that we could write it on some Christian trinket hanging at our house.

It's a truth. If any man, not some men, but if any man truly be Christian, he is a new creature because God has radically changed his nature. Being born again or the idea of born again is a supernatural work of the Spirit of God.

You understand that in Genesis 1, we see that in the creation, the Spirit is hovering over. As some would say, I wouldn't much agree, but hovering over chaos. The Spirit is an instrument there in the creation of the world.

The Spirit is also the instrument in the recreation of a man. And I stand in line with many, many old, dead theologians in the next statement I'm going to make. And it's this. The salvation of a man demonstrates more of the power of God than the very creation of the universe.

You see, the universe was created, as the Latin scholars used to say, ex nihilo, which means out of nothing. But when a man is saved, he is recreated out of a corrupt mass. It is easier to create out of nothing than it is to take something corrupt and transform it into something or someone that loves God.

So you see, the lost doctrine in America in the 21st century is this, the doctrine of regeneration, of being born again, of the work of the Spirit of God. Is it not true that if we were to dismiss this little flock here tonight and were to go to every place in this city and talk to everyone in this city, most people in this city, though at the very moment that we speak to them are living as the devil, would tell us that they are thoroughly Christian.

And when we begin to investigate the reason for the hope that is within them, they will tell us that one time in their life, in a church or an evangelistic crusade, they prayed a prayer. Oh, my dear friend, the evidence that you're saved by faith is not that one time in your life you prayed a prayer, but that He who began a good work in you continues it.

You know the term justification. That means the moment a person believes they are declared righteous before God. It's a legal term. But do you understand the term sanctification? It is a work of God making us more and more conformed to the image of His Son.

The evidence of justification that God has declared us right with Him is the continuing work of sanctification that God continues working in us all the days of our life to conform us to the image of Christ.

Ezekiel 36 and God’s Saving Initiative

Now, that was our introduction. Let's go to our text. Verse 22 of chapter 36. 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.

Now, in this first part of our text, we find something very, very important. The reason or the motivation behind God's saving work. Did God save Israel because of some worth or merit that He found in them?

No. He specifically states with all clarity that Israel had profaned His name among the nations. There was no cause that He could find in Israel to save them. But He does say this, for My own name, I will save you for the sake of My own name.

Why does God save men? That's a great question. You say, well, it's because God is love. But then you've just backed up the question. Why does God love men? Because, you see, men are not holy like God is holy.

Men are not righteous as God is righteous. Men contradict God in every aspect of His nature. Why does God demonstrate love toward men? There are two reasons. One, God is love. It's who He is. But secondly, He does so in order to demonstrate His glory.

The world was created as a stage, a theater. And God has arranged everything in this world so that He alone takes center stage and everything that can be known about Him is known through the works He does among men.

And in the saving of men, something magnificent is made known. Mercy. And grace. And loving kindness. Men are saved not because of themselves, but in spite of themselves. You owe your salvation. If you are indeed saved, you owe your salvation to God.

When this comes up in the book of Deuteronomy, why has God loved Israel? He answers with a tauntology, with a taunt. He says, I've loved you because I loved you. And what He is saying is this, Israel, my love for you had nothing to do with you.

It's the same. God did not set His love upon you because of some inherent worth He found in you or some virtue. He loved you because He loved you. Not because of you, but in spite of you. Now do you see why the true gospel of Jesus Christ is so offensive to a humanistic culture?

We are a culture that has sought to tear down every altar to the one true God to set man on top of his own altar. In America today, and in most of its Christianity or so-called Christianity, man is the center of all things.

God does everything for man. We're humanistic. Considering ourselves to be wise, we became fools and changed. The glory of the incorruptible God began to worship that which is corruptible. Men and beasts and reptiles.

We're humanistic and therefore we hate it when someone starts talking about man as fallen, man as corrupt, man as sinful, man as having no worth, man as needing a Savior, man, those who are saved are saved not because of them, but in spite of them.

We hate it because it tears down man and we'll have no part of it. He says, why have I saved you? He saved you for His own name. I like what R .C. Sproul says. God saves us from Himself, for Himself, and by Himself.

You say, what do you mean, Brother Paul? Just listen for a moment. When someone says, I've been saved, I always ask them, from what? From what? Well, from sin. No, sin is an inanimate thing. From what are you saved?

Do you know what the proper theological answer is? If you have been saved, you have been saved from God. Because God was the one coming after you. God was the one who had a problem with you. God was the one judging you.

God was the one, according to Jesus Christ in chapter 3 of the book of John, God was the one who was pouring wrath down upon your head. So when we're saved, we're saved from God. And why are we saved?

For God. Not for 40 days of purpose. Not for a purpose driven life. Not for your best life now were you saved. You were saved for Him. And if He wants to exalt you or tear you down, you were saved for Him.

If He wants to put you in a life of ease and comfort, it is for Him. If He wants to send you to the most vile place in the world, to die there as a martyr, it's for Him. We don't like that. What about me?

It's for Him. He saved you for Himself. And He saved you by Himself. It's not 1 you and 99 God. It's 100 God. And if it had been any other thing, you would not be saved. You and Jesus don't have your own thing going.

Now, He says that He saves this nation. But now, we've got to come to grips with some things. Some things that are extremely important. Verse 24. What happens? What happens when someone is truly saved?

Holiness, Discipline, and the Evidence of Adoption

Throughout Ezekiel, we have something magnificent. In different parts of Ezekiel, we have these wonderful illustrations of the doctrine of regeneration. What happens when the Spirit of God hovers over a bunch of dry, dead bones and lifts them to life?

The doctrine of regeneration. Regenerate. Reanimate. Give life to. And that's what we have here in Ezekiel 36. What happens when someone has truly been made alive? Truly been saved? Truly been born again?

What is the evidence? Well, first, in verse 24, I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands. Now, here's something you don't hear of very often. When God saves a man, or a woman, or a child, or a youth, you will begin to see a work of separation in their life.

God will begin to separate them from this world. Now, when I mean this world, I'm talking about everything, everything in our culture, everything in our society that contradicts the nature and will of God, that stands in opposition to who God is, and stands in opposition to His purposes.

God begins to separate His newborn child from them. He guards over that child zealously. One of the greatest honors in my life is to be a father. One of the greatest hardships in my life is having to leave my children at times.

Oh, I guard over my children. I'm careful to discipline them. I will protect them with my life. I will lay it down. How is it that we think such mean and simple thoughts about God? What would you think about me if I let my children, from the moment they were born until they left the house at 18, I let them run wild and do absolutely anything they wanted to do?

What would you say about me? That I was a derelict father? Yes, you would. That I was wrong? Yes. That I was not just? Yes. That I did not love even? If you're biblical, that's what you would say about me.

Yet how is it that you say that God has a whole bunch of children in the United States of America and yet He lets them run wild and live in sin and follow the devil all the days of their life until He brings them home?

The very things you demand from an earthly father, you don't even believe your heavenly Father accomplishes. My dear friend, God zealously guards His children. That's why it says in Hebrews chapter 12 that if you claim to be a child of God and yet you are without discipline, there is no reality of God disciplining you and training you and teaching you and leading you and guarding over you zealously, then you're an illegitimate child.

You're a false professor. You've never come to know Him. He's never come to know you. You see, God will begin to separate us from the things He hates, from the things that are wrong. He will begin... He doesn't drag us, but He so works in our heart to change us that He begins to cause a separation between us and that which is evil inwardly.

The true Christian has a changed heart so they begin to hate the things that God hates and to love the things that God loves. A work of separation. Now, but notice here something very important. For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land.

Now, a relationship with God is not simply defined by the statement, thou shalt not. God does not separate us from the evil in this world in order just to separate us from the evil that is in this world.

That's a pretty pitiful existence. You're caught out there in limbo with nothing. You've been separated from this world, but that is all. That's not what God does. God begins to work in our heart to separate us from sin, to separate us from that which defiles in order to gather us to Him and to bring us into the land of His will.

He brings us out of the world in order to bring us to Him. Someone who simply separates themselves from the world is basically a legalist. Taking pride in their moral purity and their separation. Let me put it this way.

As I said earlier, I think this week, when I married my wife, my relationship with my wife changed. But also my relationship with every other woman on the face of the earth changed. The moment I said I do to her, I said I don't to every other woman on the face of the earth.

It's the same way with separation. We say I don't to the world in order to say I do to God. You see? Very important. Very important. Now, so when God saves a man or a woman or a child or a youth, one of the things that you're going to begin to see is that their life changes with regard to their relationship to the world.

Now let me ask you a question. Is that a reality in your life? I'm not talking about perfection. But since you have claimed to come to know Christ, can you see God working in your life, in the attitudes of your heart, exposing sin, leading you farther and farther away from the things that displease Him, bringing you to Himself, to love Him, to cherish Him, to have a relationship with Him?

Can you see that in your life? Because, my dear friend, if you claim to know Christ and that Christ knows you, and you're still a lover of the world, and there's no work of separation, no growth in godliness, or, as the author of Hebrews says, no holiness without which no one will see the Lord, you've got a problem.

Is there a reality of God working in your life? Sometimes I'll ask people this. Do you feel sometimes like you're a prisoner? That everybody else is just running free and can do almost anything they want to do, and the moment you step out of the box, just God comes.

I mean, it's like you're a prisoner. But you recognize it's good. That's because you're a child. You're a child of God. And He zealously watches over His children. Let me share with you something. It says, Jacob I loved, and Esau I hated.

Now, in Hebrew, hated there means hated. If it meant something else, they'd have wrote something else in English. It does. It means, Jacob I loved, Esau, my wrath, my displeasure, my anger, abided upon him.

That's exactly what it means. Now, if you sit under preaching that tries to take that term and make it say something other than hatred, you're sitting under a perfect example of watered down American preaching.

But it says, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. But when you study both of their lives, you find something absolutely amazing. God blessed Jacob. God blessed Esau. He fulfilled every promise He ever made to Esau and to Abraham about Esau.

He did. As a matter of fact, when Jacob came back into the promised land, Esau was so blessed, he didn't need anything that Jacob offered him. So how is it that God demonstrated His love toward Jacob and His hatred toward Esau?

Well, there's only one difference between the two men. God let Esau do absolutely anything He wanted to do and God beat the living daylights out of Jacob. Look at it. Do we see one time where God is disciplining Esau?

But we see in Jacob's life that God is literally every day putting the rod upon him so that when he comes back into the land, he is limping. But he's God's man. He's God's child. Do you see God coming to you to keep you, to discipline you, to train you?

Now, when I say discipline, realize this, that discipline in the believer's life is never punitive. Once a person is in Christ, God never again comes to them as a judge. Even when He judges them, He does not come to them as a judge, but as a father.

When He disciplines them, He comes to them as a father. A human illustration would be this. At the moment I'm disciplining one of my boys, at that very moment, I still love them so much I would die a thousand deaths for them.

I do not discipline them as a judge, but as a father. Now, so He says, what's going to be one of the evidences when a person is truly born again? It's going to be this. God's going to do a work of separation in their life and a work of gathering them unto Him.