Speaking on, oh, there it goes. Did you hear that? Should I stay it over again? Sorry about that.
Well, it's always wonderful. When you're with other people that love the Lord. And when I'm going to speak on today's the new nature, therefore anyone who's in Christ, he's a new creation, old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new. Before I start with that, I'd like to just pray.
Father in heaven, thank you Lord for this day. Thank you Lord that we can marvel at who you are, what you've done, what you're doing in us, and just thoughts of heaven that are so dear to us. Lord, we want to lift you in my letter of thoughts and the words that are spoken today, maybe be for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.
OK, so what is this new creation? How does it happen, and why is it necessary? And so I like to tell stories. They're embarrassing.
So I like to make them about someone else usually, but this one's about me. Now, this is why we need one reason why we need a new nature. Now, I was a young man, a young boy, a young boy, very young. I was at a store with my dad.
And I was eyeing one of those little dark guns, but didn't have the little suction end on it. It was a little hard rubber point on it. So either through my pleading or because he just thought, I'd have fun with that. He purchased it for me.
So we took it out of the package when we got home, and he handed it to me, and he said to me, now, don't aim it at your brother. So I said, what a strange thing to think, because I loaded it and just shot my brother right in the forehead with it. That's why we need a new nature. At the time, I don't know if what he said gave me the thought, but I thought, wow, maybe that's a good idea.
But here's the thing. The sin has strengthened through the law. God gave us his wonderful law, the moral law, the damned commandments. He's written them on our hearts.
But the thing about our nature, our old nature, we read them, and we think of ways. This is what the heart is like. The heart is deceitful above all things. It's desperately wicked who can know it.
And it's so true, the things that come out of our heart. Things we say do think. And the new nature is so radical. It's so different.
It's amazing. I'll bring up another slide in a moment. So we do these things, and the strength is through the law. That's what sin does.
It takes advantage of those things, and devises ways to do them. I see as Lewis, I'm going to paraphrase it, but he said, the moment that the law is given, we immediately, in our hearts, look at ways to fulfill that law in a negative way, do the opposite. And it's so true. Another time I was with my dad, it always happens when I'm with him.
I never heard of welding. Some of you maybe know what welding is all about, electricity and flashing of the welding arc or whatever you're touching to it. So he says, whatever you do, don't look at that over there. Those people, they're doing things.
Don't look at it. Never told me why. And I said, OK, then. So I was doing something over in another corner of the shop for a minute, just looking around.
And I heard that noise, but you can hear it, the electricity, as he's striking to go about doing the weld. And of course immediately I looked over at it. Oh, bright, shiny. And I heard my dad yell at me at the top of his lungs.
I'm sure. I've heard it a lot. It was very loud. I go, wow, he's really angry.
What I didn't know, then maybe some of you don't know is if you look at the light that it gives off in your flash, you can get what's called a welder's flash. And it's very painful. And you look at it long enough. It's like someone who looks at the sun.
You look at the sun for five minutes straight. You're going to do some damage, serious damage. Even his love for me, he told me and warned me. But my nature wasn't inclined to do the opposite.
And that's what it's like, the old nature. We can't explain it. I did some things when I was younger. My dad asked me, why did you do those things?
And frankly, I really didn't have an answer other than I wanted to. And I think that's a lot of our case if we look back at the things that we've done in our self-efforts. So Jesus said, he commits sin as a slave of sin and a slave. Does not abide in the house forever.
But a son abides forever. Therefore, if the sun makes you free, you shall be free indeed. When God saves a person, when he grants them, repentance and faith in his son. And he puts the new nature in him.
And I'm going to read this in Ezekiel 36, 25 to 27. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you. And you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of 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 keep my judgments and do them.
That's what happens when God creates you anew internally. It's not a revamping of the old. Another story. I've got to go for it.
I used to drive the Zamboni when I worked for the city of Edmonton. And if you don't know what a Zamboni is, it basically shaves the ice, makes it and puts down water. And then you go and you dump the snow bucket and we just call it. And so one time I was dumping the snow.
I thought, wow, that is so nice and white. That's great. I took a pail of it. And then I thought, I'll put my pop in there and get my lunch cool in there.
And I thought, what a clever boy am I. And then I went off to do my other duties. The office that I put in was warm and didn't wait for a while. I came back.
And a lot of it had melted. And there was my pop and my lunch floating in some really disgusting water. There were all kinds of things in there, band-aid hair, et cetera, and some other things I'd rather not mention. But what looked clean, what looked like, hey, this would be a good thing.
It wasn't a good thing. It was disgusting. And you know when the light and the heat of God's law, the moral law, shines on our self-righteousness. It humbles us.
It lets us see what we really are like inside. And when a person is born again, when a person is a new creation, the wonderful things that happen. I just want to go through a few of those things. There's another scripture Psalm 66, 16 that talks about, drawn your you who forgot and able to clear to you what he has done for my soul.
When a person is granted a new nature, we want to tell other people about Jesus. We may not know exactly how to do it. I know that when that happened to me and it's the experience of others, you want to tell people about Jesus. You don't even know exactly how to tell them, because this thing has happened to you.
And it's, you're different. You're changed. You're not the same person. You're brand new.
There's so much packed into this. Old things have passed away. A desire for sin. You hate it.
You just test it. You don't have anything to do with it. Our flesh is weak. That's why we succumb to it.
Christian isn't sinless, but they sin less, because God is working in them. There's a big difference between someone who continues to sin, which we do as believers, less and less as we grow in the Lord, and someone who continually sins. There's a massive difference. And I think it was in first John that talks about that.
Excuse me. OK, so I can't find it. Forgive you guys. Oh, I can't find it.
Sorry. It talks about the fact that we don't continue in sin, that we're new. We're granted this ability now to resist sin, even though the flesh wars against what we do. We're now by the grace of God, given the ability to say no and to walk in righteousness.
I was talking to a person on the street and he said, I just can't stop doing what they were doing. I said, of course you can't. You don't have the power to do it. Power comes from above.
If you could do it on your own, first of all, you'd think that you were very righteous, self-righteous. If you could do it on your own, you don't understand the cross. You wouldn't see your great need for that. If you look at the world today, right, if you look at the headline, they almost make you cringe, the very things that we see.
And yet there's laws in the world. There's authorities in the world. There's all these things that keep violence in check, morality in check to a degree. But it can't touch the inner man.
That's why there's no way for mankind to change itself. How many years have people been on the earth? And yet it's always a bleak look, right? We see what happened to, you know, during the flood, the ancient world destroyed, Sodom and Gomorrah, all these things.
It's a continual cycle of sin, sin, sin. When a person is born again, a new creation in Christ, we start to love the things of God, the Bible, become so precious. You love other believers, you want to be around them? Why?
Because they talk about Jesus and they love Jesus too. When I was saying I had no understanding of that, other than the fact that when I read the Bible after, which is so wonderful, because we know it's the truth, a lot of people I talk to on the street, they go, how do you know? We just know because the Holy Spirit is inside us now, causing us to walk in righteousness. We know the Bible is the Word of God.
We still may doubt about things when we're young, you know, a lot of us, we think we've committed the unpardonable sin and sitting like to jump on all these things that we do and take advantage of the things. That's why you need to be around other believers and they can strengthen that of believers. Some people came alongside me and basically read the Word of God to me and there's assurance to the Word of God and it resonates with the Holy Spirit. In Ephesians 2, 3, it says, and you, he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins in which he once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the Spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we're by nature, children of wrath just as the others.
That's why it's necessary, because we're born, children of wrath, we're born with the sin nature and we can't enter it, having Jesus said, unless you're born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God, unless you're born of water in the Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. Having been born again in first gear, I think we read that in the first in the morning there, but having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible through the word of God, which lives and abides forever. So if God were to just forgive our sins and leave us the way we are with that old nature, we would just continually just keep racking up more and more sin because of our old carnal self. And Jesus said, he has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me.
And he who loves me will be loved by my father and I will love him. And he says this wonderful verse, and I will manifest myself to him in ways that someone who has not experienced that can't understand. It's not about being baptized. It isn't about performing a bunch of good deeds.
It's from a heart that's changed, that's grateful to God for what he's done. You know, there was someone that went around saying, I was on the street preaching, they said, make America great again. I said make America grateful again. There's only one way, it's through the cross, it's through Jesus Christ.
As many as received him to them, he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man but of God. And that's a great relief. Somebody thinking, oh, I have to do this, I've got to try to become born again. It's all of God.
The wonderful, comforting thing to know is that, if you're desiring to know him, if you're desiring to be with him, it originates with God. And that's just wonderful. A lot of people want the evidence. They're not sure.
They think that, oh, no, I'm not saved. A lot of people, the doubts, myself included, want reassurance, reassurance comes from God's word, then the Holy Spirit who lives in you. First Peter 4, 3, and 4, 4, we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles. When we walked in lewdness, lust, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries.
And to regard to these things, they think it's a range that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. It's a peculiar thing. When I was working for the city, all of a sudden, you know what? I wasn't participating in the things they were at during the day, some of the things that were very lewd and crude.
Oh, and nothing to do with those things. They said, what's with him? What's up with him? It was a very peculiar thing.
And people, they may mock it at first. But when they see that something has happened, and it's not anything that you can conjure up on your own, it's a wonderful thing to see. It's a beautiful thing. It's a miracle, really.
We can't change ourselves. God does a work in the person. They repent and trust in his son. They're born again.
They walk in holiness and righteousness. You know what? The common things a lot of the songs are they talk about heaven. We so look forward to being in heaven.
I hope that people that are here today that have wondered what it takes to get to heaven. You know, that because we are broken, because of the fact that we are made after the first Adam, so to speak, just as Sir One Man's Sin entered the world in Death, through Sin. And thus, death spread to all men because all have sinned. So we need a new nature because our old nature is corrupted.
And it displays itself. And right from when our children are little, we realize that something's wrong. Something's wrong with this world. And we can't fix it.
Only God can fix it. OK. And this is a great illustration. I heard another brother speak on this, and I want to share it with you.
A pig loves to wallow in the mud. A sheep hates the mud. You can clean up a pig. You can wash it all up and let it out in the pen.
It goes right back to it. Just like the scripture that says a dog returns to its vomit, a pig returns to the filth. People in their fallen state, we run to the trough of iniquity. We want to feed upon that, which will satisfy every carnal desire, because the carnal mind is enmity against God.
It's in a state of hostility. And we don't even realize it until you're born again, until you're given that new nature. And your eyes are opened, it seems. Maybe it's kind of like when Adam and Eve sinned and they realized that they were naked.
And when you're born again, it's almost the opposite in a way. Because now you want to walk in righteousness. They saw that they were naked. And we realize when you're born again, that we were naked in our sin, so to speak.
So the sheep don't like the mud. When a pig falls in the mud, it loves to stay there. If a sheep falls in, it wants nothing to do with it. It wants to get up.
That's like a Christian. It's a good analogy. I like it. Because we'll all interwalk with the Lord when we want to walk in holiness and in righteousness.
We'll fall. But we get right back up because we have the grace of God living within us. We have the Holy Spirit. A friend of mine, a firefighter for many years, told me about a story where he was in a building and it was coming down.
And they're inside and they're looking for a way out. And this big being fell across the eggs that they couldn't get in. They were scrambling around, trying to get out of this place. And they found a way.
And they got out. There's only one way. There's only one way for him to get out of that burning building. And there's only one way for all of us to get out of the predicament we're in.
God has to do a work in us. And he will. He promises to do that. Jesus said, unless I wash you, you have no part with me.
And then Peter realized, oh, then wash everything. He didn't want to be away from Jesus. When you see that you need Jesus Christ. When you look at yourself through the law, when you're confronted with who you are of the old nature.
My prayer to God is giving you the desire to get out of that state if you're not in it. Because he wants to build his kingdom. That's why he's tearing so long. He's waiting.
He's not willing to do any shaparish. And he's so good to us. You're right. Matt said, you're going to point it the wrong way.
Can you go to the next? What it is not? Yeah. Can you move it for me?
Next one. Okay. See, I need help. Let's go get help.
Let me read that one. Can we go to the next one? There it is. It's the wrong one, but it's something.
There's a caterpillar. I'm not sure I have them out of order. The caterpillar, as you know, in a monoclonal fly, is that one's an example because it's kind of a spectacular looking butterfly. Beautifully engineered.
There it is. But if you go back to the, if you can find it, is there one more of the caterpillar? That's it? Can you pull it up off of the internet?
No. Okay. That's okay. So the caterpillar needs to leave.
When it goes to the stage, the chrysalis, metamorphosis takes place. It's transformed from the inside out. It's a whole new creation. I think it's a wonderful subtle look at what the new nature, what to be born again, is.
God is a miracle in our lives. He gives us the ability to sing to him, to praise him. Everything that we do is a caterpillar, so to speak. You know, it's a caterpillar when it eats a leaf, it's destroying it.
It's a destructive thing. It's a beautiful little creature. But the thing is on the outside, you know, it's a caterpillar. It's not a butterfly.
And then God does a wonderful thing in our lives. Now go to the mat, go to the butterfly. There it is. So you can see what a difference.
It's got a whole different set of appetites. Does that make sense? I mean, it wants to read the word of God. We desire to be around other believers.
We love to look into his word and see that it's amazing. We can appreciate it so much more. I used to do a lot of landscaping when I was younger. And I wasn't saved then at the time.
And I knew about photosynthesis. I knew about zilemon flow and trees. And that's the sap that runs up in the canyon, the different layers. The point I'm trying to make is it was very academic.
There was no glory to God for it. When I was saved, I could say, that's amazing. Father in heaven, genius. Because he is a genius.
Everything he makes is amazing. And you know, we're the pinnacle of his creation. We reflect the image of God. And when you have a new nature, it's like a taste of heaven.
In many ways. We want it to be there. We act like we're so generous here in this world. We're passing through.
How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? Friends, don't miss out. God wants to do something in you that you can't do on your own. He's the only way out of the predicament all people are in.
There's only one way in God graciously is given his only begotten son to see you through. The just judgment, the just judgment that awaits all who try to enter in another way. God has been so very kind. And he wants to save you from hell.
You will not buy your own efforts. Block God's holiness. You've got to come only through that blessed door, Jesus Christ. That's great.
Father in heaven, thank you Lord for sending your son into the world. Thank you Father in heaven that you went to the cross. You went to the cross. You suffered and died on that cross.
And then he rose again. And he will grant everlasting life to all those who would come to him. Thank you and praise you in Jesus name. Thank you.