Gooding, David: 2 - Regeneration

We pray, praise gracious God now as we meet here to consider what the Bible has to say on regeneration, that thy Holy Spirit will enlighten our understanding. We humbly confess that without him, in spite of all our studying and all our thinking, we should miss the truth of this matter. Therefore, humbly, and in the name of the Lord Jesus, we pray thy present help. Amen. Last evening, I attempted to trace in the Bible what the Bible has to say about the nature of the trouble that afflicts the human heart. We saw how that the Bible lays emphasis not merely on the multitudinous wrongdoings that people do, but rather on the secret cause, the inner cause of those evil deeds. We saw that the Bible's claim is that human nature is inwardly and essentially a fallen nature. Whether it brings forth evil fruits in actual wrong deeds and thoughts, or whether those fruits are for a time not apparent, it is still true that human nature is a fallen nature. Therefore, it is insufficient to deal with the problem by trying to cut off the outward act of sin. And then briefly, at the end of the lecture, we saw that God's method of dealing with this trouble bears a strong similarity to the way the trouble started. The trouble started, we read, in the disobedience of the first parent of the human race. And ever since that disobedience, all who have come from him have been tainted with his fallen nature. Now God's way of putting this right, says the Bible, is to start again with another founder of another race. That person, of course, our Lord Jesus Christ. And the process of being saved, as the Bible would put it, is that process by which this new man, this new beginner of a new race, transmits his life to us, and with his life, the holiness, the power, the abilities and tastes of that life. Our subject this evening flows unnaturally from there, for I wish to discuss with you the question of regeneration. And after all, regeneration is but another name for that wonderful process by which God does implant this new life in men and women. Now, I suppose that regeneration, or to put it in humble Anglo-Saxon language, being born again, is one of the commonest truths of Christianity. All of us, I suppose, without exception, have heard it many times. We surely have heard a sermon in church on this matter, or seen it in a gospel tract, or heard it in Christian conversation, that Christianity preaches the necessity of regeneration, the fact that we must be born again. I do not wish this evening to discuss the whole subject in extenso. I wish to concentrate on the how of the matter, and I wish to consider it from an exceedingly practical point of view. If you will allow me the terms, I want to consider the mechanics, how it actually works, how it actually happens. For while this matter is a very well-known Christian teaching, it surprises many people to find that it is not peculiar to Christianity. Both these ideas that human nature is tainted at its very root, and that it needs to be born again, both these ideas can be found long before Christianity in any another religion in the world. You will find it in the ancient Pythagoreans. You will find it in many religions. Prescott, in his interesting work, The Conquest of Mexico, reminds us with somewhat startling emphasis of what the early explorers found when they reached the land of Mexico, where Christianity, as far as we know, had not previously come. They found the natives worshiping a number of gods and goddesses, and among these gods and goddesses, there was one whom they worshiped, the goddess of water that rejoiced in the name of Kalki Vititmitui. May she forgive me if I mispronounce her name. However, they found the natives worshiping this goddess. Their worship showed that they realized that humanity is tainted with sin, and that a child is born into this world already tainted. Then their religion provided for a way of dealing with this. The old Beldanes would take the children, and they would perform over them a washing ceremony in the name of this goddess of water, and then they would utter this prayer. And I ask you to bear in mind, of course, that these people are- were completely pagan, that is, not Christian. And the prayer they offered ran like this: Oh my child, addressing the infant, "take and receive the water of the Lord of the world. It is to wash and to purify. Whensoever thou comest, thou that art hurtful to this child, leave him and depart from him. For he now liveth anew and is born. Now he is he purified and cleansed afresh, and our mother Kalki Vit Lipchwe bringeth him into the world. That comes perhaps as a startling revelation to many Christian people. That in the pagan religions, there are and were these ceremonies in which they claimed people were born again. Needless to say, we should find ourselves very unsatisfied with the results. It is not unkindness, but sheer realism, when we pass on that our verdict, that it was nothing more than a pathetic superstition. Throughout the whole of that nation, there was very little evidence that their ceremony had achieved what it so loudly claimed. We, of course, as Christians, would reject such a thing. But let us all the more strictly examine what is the process that Christianity preaches. Its criterion by which we must judge it is not whether it sounds well in theory, but whether this matter of being born again actually and practically works. Now, fortunately for us, we have in Holy Scripture one example at least given, and given at length, of this process taking place. There are other parts of Scripture in which the theory is preached to us, but there is that famous occasion, that famous discourse between our Lord and the Jewish rabbi Nicodemus, in which the Bible gives us a close-up description of the process actually occurring in a man. And we may, if we will, play the whole thing back like a slow movie film, and see in slow motion the process going on. The actors, of course, I need not remind you, the actors, of course, were Nicodemus on the one part, and our Lord himself, the head of this new race that God is creating, actually implanting in a man this new life and this new nature. And I invite you for a moment to think from this practical angle. We may care to ask ourselves, in fact, for I trust that we are ourselves in practical mood. How far our own experience of Christ has kept pace with the kind of thing that we shall see happening before our eyes. We begin then with Nicodemus, this rabbi, this very learned rabbi. On Christ's own description, he was the teacher of Israel, apparently their leading professor of theology. A man well versed in religion, a man well versed in the religion that God gave the ancient Jews, and yet a necessary candidate for this work of regeneration. He comes to our Lord and makes what apparently he intended as a very large and generous admission. We know, he said, that thou art a teacher come from God, inasmuch as no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him. That for a man well on in middle life, holding the position he did, was in fact a great admission to a young man who at that time was possibly very little more than thirty years old. But our Lord, as you may remember from the text, seemed rudely to brush his compliment and confession aside. As he turned round upon the man and said, except a man be born anew, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. I submit to you that there was important practical reason for our Lord's behaving so brusquely, so sharply to that sensitive man. Instead of making some commonplace remark and saying, well, Nicodemus, I'm delighted to hear that, um, you say so. Just a straightforward, startling statement, except a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. I'm going to submit to you that our Lord did that deliberately to shake that man to his very core and show him the utter inadequacy of his conception of Christ, and his altogether inadequate idea of the work Christ had come to do. I want to make that point strongly. For if ever there is a conception of Christ that needs to be shaken in people's minds, perhaps it is this one. There are multitudes who would gladly confess that Jesus Christ is one of the world's leading teachers. Perhaps they would acknowledge him as the most exalted teacher of humanity. And they proceed from there. And because that is true in its way, by the very truth of its statement, it hides them from what is vastly more important. For this work of implanting new life in people, we must brush aside the concept of Jesus Christ as teacher. He did come and teach. He taught as no other man has ever taught. But many people have the idea that the scheme is this, that Christ has come to teach us what things are good and to teach us to do good things, or at least to strive after doing those good things. And they hope, by the doing of those things, to turn themselves into Christians. They read the Sermon on the Mount that exhorts us to love our enemies, and where there is hatred, to sow loving kindness. And they honestly try to do these things, hoping that by doing Christian acts, they will turn themselves into respectable Christians. There never was a bigger fallacy. It is impossible to turn oneself into a Christian by doing Christian things. I am here putting in positive form what last night we considered from a negative viewpoint. Do you remember last night I made a statement which may have startled you, I do not know, that we do not become sinners by doing sinful things, any more than an apple tree becomes an apple tree by growing apples. It is the other way round. Your apple tree grows apples because it is an apple tree. And we do sinful things because basically we are sinful. That is the way round. Now, when it comes to being a Christian, God's way round is that he first makes people Christians in the fullest sense, and then those people, because they are Christians, do Christian things. It is not the other way round. Yet it is so easy, I repeat, for people to get the idea that Christ came as a teacher to show us what things are good Christian deeds, and to encourage us to try and do those Christian deeds that we might become Christians. I fancy that was the idea that Nicodemus had. He himself had long since been a teacher of the Ten Commandments of Moses and had honestly sought to do them. Here was this new preacher arisen, and he taught the people the Sermon on the Mount, which showed a standard higher even than Moses' standard. And the learned professor at once was convinced that this higher standard was utterly true. And doubtless they had arisen in his heart an intention that if he could, he would strive to reach this higher standard. And had Christ allowed him to go away with that idea, it would have been fatal to his spiritual life. And so he cut right across it. Shock number one for this man. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. How shall it be done? Wistfully, I suppose, Nicodemus replied, but then he said, how can a man be born again when he is old? Cannot enter his mother's womb and be born again, can he? We mustn't suppose that Nicodemus really thought that our Lord was referring to a physical birth. He was not such a fool. But how many a man has felt that wistful urge? Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if we could start the process over again? How many of us have blotted our copy books so well and truly in the past that if it were possible to start again right over de novo, we might welcome the opportunity to do better. But then surely that is impossible. And yet it is not impossible. That is the fact. Though physical birth is impossible for us again, it is possible to start with an absolutely new life that is not an improvement of what we did before, but something utterly new. And Nicodemus' mind is being moved in the right direction here, beginning perhaps to see dimly that his old idea of striving ever greater and more keenly to improve his life is completely misguided. And the real scheme is a complete new start with a new life of a different kind. And our Lord began to explain, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, Nicodemus, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Born of water. Nicodemus would have understood that much. In the religion in which he br- was brought up, they had water enough. It was their habit to recognize their sorrow for sin and their repentance for its dirtiness and filthiness and its wrongness by getting themselves washed and baptized in one way or another. As their word of God that they had, the Old Testament Bible, searched their consciences, and that was what it was meant to do anyway, and brought them to a sense of their wrongness and sin. I say it was the habit of Jews to confess this before God and before their fellows, that they were in fact sinners and needed to be cleansed by being washed or baptized in one way or another. That was, of course, what lay behind the great demands of John the Baptist, the prophet that was the forerunner of our Lord Jesus. He came preaching the washing, the baptism of repentance, and he found a surprisingly large number of people that owned the truth of his preaching. You know, there are many people, however hard their exterior, underneath, are prepared to admit what is in fact true. Life has taught them that they are sinners and that they need cleansing. And they are repentant about sin and would like to be quit of it. But then our Lord's demand was this, except a man be born of water and... And that word and is exceedingly important. You see, it is not enough to repent. It's not enough to be sorry for sin, even to agree with God that sin is wrong, even to admit that our lives need cleansing, that is not enough. Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. You see, it is not enough to be sorry, genuinely repentant as intelligent men and women before God, that our old life is a sinful thing, we must take the next positive step of receiving the new life that Christ has to offer, and be born of his Holy Spirit. I may confess ruefully that my old car is no good, that two wheels are in process of falling off, and the clutch plates are worn, and the petrol tank has holes in. I may honestly express my opinion that unless something's done to this old car, it'll fall to pieces completely. And all that genuine sorrow is of very little use, unless I take the next step. And abandoning this wreck that is now impossible of repair, I get me to the car dealer and do that transaction by which I get a new car. So is it with spiritual things. How many women, men and women confess constantly before God and genuinely mean it that they are miserable sinners, who have not yet gone that stage further. How many women, men and women confess constantly before God and genuinely mean it that they are miserable sinners, who have not yet gone that stage further, and received from Christ this spiritual life, this new life. At this point in the discussion, can you imagine it going on? Nicodemus professed his growing bewilderment, and he said, I don't know about this, how can these things be? This all sounds rather complicated. I don't understand. It is surprising how many people feel exactly as he feel- felt. Had Christ come and told him, yes, Nicodemus, um, I am a teacher come from God indeed, and you will observe that my standards are higher than Moses' standards, and if ever you would enter God's kingdom, you must now make an honest attempt to keep my standards. Nicodemus would have found that concept quite easy and may well have prayed to God to give him the strength to keep these new laws. But now here was something so completely foreign to his whole outlook that he found it exceedingly mystifying. And if you were to say to me after this lecture that you found tonight's lecture impossibly complicated, and you didn't quite understand whatever I was getting at, I should not be all that much surprised. How can these things be, said the learned professor. I don't understand. I'll tell you the secret of his misunderstanding. And it is the next step in this slow motion picture. It might even be the next step in someone's spiritual experience here this evening. That feeling of bewilderment that we get, when it all begins to seem so complicated, that step can be passed too. We shall find, as Nicodemus found, that it is not complicated, but exceedingly simple. The answer is not so much that he didn't understand, but he did not honestly believe. If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, our Lord said, with deliberate choosing of his words. Not if I have told you earthly things and you do not understand, but if I have told you earthly things and you do not believe. The matter is exceedingly simple if you believe, we hear our Lord say that all our own efforts to improve ourselves are misguided, and we accept that, that is so. We hear him draw the deduction that in ourselves we are utterly helpless to improve the old wreck, and we say, well, that's a drastic statement. It wounds my pride somewhat, but, um, he says it, then it is so. That's exceedingly simple. And then presently we hear him say that God himself has done something for us. And is waiting for us to allow him to proceed with his scheme. And to do something for us that he alone can do, and he undertakes to do it all. And, uh, if we believe, it is exceedingly simple. I don't mean to suggest that we are irreverent, but put bluntly, it just means that we honestly turn to God and say, carry on, God. I want this new thing. And it is simple. The difficulty is not in the realm of understanding at all. And it should help us to notice that because many of us play truant and hide ourselves behind this. A quite average, intelligent woman said this to me just the other day, and so did her husband. I don't know what kind of a job he holds down in life, I didn't inquire. But certainly it would involve him in using average intelligence. He said, you know, I'm not a Christian. I said, oh, I see. I don't believe it's true, he said. I- I don't think you have any evidence for Christianity. Oh, I said, that's interesting. What evidence have you read? Oh, but I haven't read any, because I don't like reading. Well, I didn't know quite what to say just there. And then his wife, um, joined in, you say, I'd never become a Christian, you know, if it means a lot of reading. I don't, I, I don't read. I don't like it. There are many people that hide behind that tree. Though becoming a Christian was such an involved thing and involved such masses of reading of difficult philosophical stuff, that the average person might be excused. Will you observe that this learned professor made virtually the same excuse? I don't understand, he says. We ought to be thankful that the Lord brushed that difficulty aside. It's not a difficulty of understanding at all. It's a moral difficulty of whether we are willing to believe. Believe what? Now, first of all, it's a question, as the slow moving picture next tells us, it's a question of whether we are willing to believe a person. Nicodemus said, our Lord, if I may paraphrase his words, when it comes to the truth on these spiritual matters, I have the monopoly. No man has ever ascended up to heaven, save he that came down from heaven, that is myself, Nicodemus. When it comes to saying how this new work, this work of regeneration happens, and what needs to be done and what men have to do, then I, Nicodemus, have the utter monopoly. And before you hear what I say, you will have to make your choice. Are you willing to believe me when I say it. Oh, but somebody says, well, I, I, I, I would fall out with that. I'm not going to believe anybody blindly like that. I'm going to reserve my opinion. Well, now then, that is an exceedingly important matter from this practical viewpoint. You see, we are not theorizing here about religion, and certainly we are not philosophizing. We are reading from the Bible, the Bible's own description of the process that takes place when God implants his life in somebody. And this is an exceedingly important crisis in the matter. Whether a person prefaced with our Lord is prepared implicitly to believe him, whatever he says. So I think that's unreasonable. I would like to see the results first. I would like to see the thing acted first, and then I might believe. But then it's not so unreasonable as it sounds. Suppose we brought here to our ma tonight a hott and top from the wilds of Africa, if some such could now be obtained, who had never seen electricity, I mean electric light, and had no knowledge of the process. We brought him into this hall in the dark, and we said to him, now you feel these little knobs here on the wall. Now you press that little knob, and the whole room will be flooded with light. And our hottentop shakes his head. That's a very tall story to believe. How could it possibly be? Or you say to the hot and tot, um, it's electricity, you know. He says, and what is electricity? Well, you say, it's a... well, what is electricity? Yes, it's... well, it's the funny stuff that goes through wires. Well, has anybody seen this electricity? Well, no, nobody's ever seen this electricity, no. Well, how do you know it acts? Well, it does act, my man. Um, we could prove it to you. You put your hand on those two live wires. Oldie says, you're asking me to believe now that I should feel something queer, and I put my hand on these wires, and just because I believe it would happen, I feel this. That's only psychological, old fellow. Can you prove to me that electricity exists? You prove it, and then I'll believe. You say, look here, old chap, there's a simpler way, uh, about this matter than that. I personally couldn't prove, I'm not a scientist. I- I- I don't know really what electricity is. I don't think the scientists know. He says, this sounds very fanciful. Oh, but you say there is a way of finding out. Well, just make the experiment, old boy. Put that switch down and you'll see. He says, no. No, you make the light come on without pushing down the switch, and then... You see, he says, I'm afraid that if I were to believe your word like that, I should so get it into my mind that it is so that when I put the switch on, you know, I should believe I saw a light. This is auto suggestion. Wouldn't it all be stupid? If only the man would at least give us credit for this, that we weren't deliberately trying to deceive him, and that we did know at least this much, and was prepared to take our word in faith and go and put that switch down, he would have evidence enough. And our Lord stood before Nicodemus, as he has stood before many people since. Men and women that are sensible enough to see that they have been born with a fallen nature, the end of which is evidently going to spell disaster. Men and women, perhaps, that are beginning to realize that in spite of all their efforts over many years now, the improvement has been minimal. Unless something different happens, they will die as they were born. And he says, look, I am God's own son come down from heaven. I'm now going to suggest to you a something that will bring to you new life. Are you prepared to take my word for that and act accordingly? And see whether it happens. And if in the spirit of that other man we said, Lord, well, Lord, I do believe at least I want to believe, help thou my unbelief. Then our Lord would be prepared and be able to go ahead with the process. What does it mean to believe? To help the rabbi, our Lord quoted that famous incident from the historical book of Numbers. When the Israelites had sinned and were being poisoned by serpents and were quickly dying of snake bite, they had no serums. Death was certain. And death was rapid. They were miles out in the desert. There were no physicians. The helplessness of the case scarce needed emphasizing. God did a curious thing, told Moses to make a serpent of copper and put it on a pole and send messengers running throughout the camp, telling everybody bitten with the snakes that they were to look to this pole. Look to it. And the promise was that as many as looked would live. That was the most curious message. It didn't even say that they were to go and touch the serpent, or kiss the serpent, or bow down at the serpent, or say a few prayers to this serpent, or say a few prayers to God. It was simply that they looked. I wanted once to tell you what you already see, that there was no magical power in that serpent. There wasn't any power of any sort whatsoever in the serpent. But God requires in the human heart a certain attitude before he can work. A looking away utterly from oneself, an admission of one's utter helplessness, the fastening of one's eyes on somebody else altogether, that trust that lets go all else and commits everything to God's word, to God's savior. We are told that as many as did just that simple, over simple, impossibly simple thing, as many as did that received new life. Now, Lord drew the analogy. Just as Moses lifted that serpent in the wilderness, he said, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever, and now he did not use the word look, but the word believe, whosoever believeth on him, for believing is a kind of looking. Now, indeed, as we are presently, we shall see in our Savior's being lifted up on the cross, there is much more power. But first, I want to drive home this point in the process, this willingness to own our helplessness, our utter ruin because we are born of tainted stock, the impossibility of our improving ourselves. Then this willingness to do what God says, to do what Christ says, and to turn our eyes utterly away from ourselves and anything that we can possibly do ourselves, utterly to another outside of ourselves, and that one is Christ. Simple as that act is, some people find it almost impossibly hard. They cannot bring themselves to think that God is willing to save them by a process which they themselves cannot contribute to at all. But until God brings us there, there is nothing that can be done. As long as we are desperately trying to improve ourselves, we shall not be born again. But when, maybe in utter desperation, we're prepared to listen to God, even though he appears to preach the impossible, and we look in with implicit faith away from ourselves to our Lord Jesus Christ, and stake our everything on him that he is prepared to do what he says he can do. Then when we do that, God is free to act. That incident that Moses was required to make a serpent of copper and put it on a pole is full of instructive meaning. It was, of course, one of those many Old Testament parables by which God has set the watermark of his inspiration in holy writ. The cause of the trouble was the serpents that bit the people. They injected the poison, the poison was spelling death. Then says God, make a per- make a serpent, but make it of copper, hold it on a pole that men shall see that very serpent, so to speak, that was the cause of their trouble, now rendered harmless. Oh, what a parable that was. And it is a wonderful thing when, for the first time, maybe, the significance of Christ's death on the cross dawns on a person. He struggled long and many years, maybe, to improve himself, and at last has come to God's own viewpoint that he cannot be improved. Brought to the point when he gives up struggling, even to improve himself. And then he looks away and observes that at that cross, God himself has done the something that is necessary to deal with this problem of sin. What a tremendous awakening in the soul that is. It brings about a release impossible to describe. When we see that what we could not possibly do, God has done. We did not personally introduce sin into God's world. We saw that last night. Our own lives, they started as sinful natures before we had done any act whatsoever. It surely would follow, wouldn't it, in any reasonable viewpoint, that the putting of it right will not be our business either. Else were God horribly unfair to bring me into his world and let me be born into his world, a sinner, and give me the impossible task of eradicating sin from my life, that were desperately unfair of God. It is not so. God himself has moved into our world to grapple and to grapple successfully with this cosmic problem. That was why Christ was lifted up. Sin and sins, they are the trouble. Sin the root and sins the fruit. And the Bible informs us that when Christ died on the cross, his death was aimed at both those things. The fruit? Writing to his converts, the Apostle Paul informed them, Christ died for our sins. They are the fruit. Thereby their guilt is removed for everyone that dares trust this Savior. He also said that Christ died to sin. And that is the root. This great mysterious force which has come into God's universe that the Bible calls sin. That basic rebellious force that is behind as human ill doing as the root is beneath the tree. That mysterious thing Christ has grappled with at the cross. We read he died to sin, now passed forever beyond its assault. And that double thing, in all its mighty worth and value and power, is transmitted in the life that Christ gives to all who trust him. It will be the purpose of our, many of our lectures in coming evenings to describe that in more detail. What really did happen when Christ died. But we do not have to understand it in minute detail before we may be born again. We need only turn our eyes there this evening to that thing. He died for our sins. He died to sin. And listen to God's word. Whosoever believes in him, looks to him, abandons faith in everything else, and just pins the whole to him. That person will not perish, God says. Will never perish. The moment he looks like that, Christ will implant in him that new life that the Bible calls eternal life. Shall we now, as we conclude this lecture, in our prayer, ask God that our experience may keep pace with what we have studied?