If you have your Bible this morning, I want to invite you to the book of Ezekiel, chapter number 36. The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel, chapter number 36. As I look around today, At the landscape of the modern church, I see two major problems as it relates to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it comes in the area of two biblical doctrines, one being the doctrine of justification and the other being the doctrine of regeneration. Now the doctrine of justification is that doctrine that provides an answer for us for the divine dilemma of Scripture. And of course that dilemma is, how could God, who is holy and righteous and just, forgive wicked sinners like you and me without compromising His own holy character? And of course, that dilemma is resolved in the person of Jesus Christ, that God sent a substitute, that God satisfied His justice on the person of Jesus Christ by pouring out a payment for sin so that we could go free, so that God would be just and the justifier of the wicked. And we praise God for this doctrine of Justification, which teaches it's by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. Now the other doctrine is the doctrine of regeneration. Of course, this particular doctrine, which is the one that is neglected the most of the two, is the doctrine that teaches us and explains to us the nature of true conversion. It teaches us what happens to someone who is converted. You see, the problem today is that in the modern church we have made a reduction of the gospel message. We have reduced the gospel down to the point that the modern gospel that is preached today doesn't even resemble what the apostles preached in the infant days of the church. We find today with many gospel presentations that it has been reduced to a few things that God wants a person to know for their life. We've had preachers who have preached messages of easy believism and messages of, don't you want to miss hell and go to heaven? God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Just accept him and you'll have it all. Many have preached the false health, wealth, and happiness gospel. We've had preachers that have made it so easy just by telling people to walk an aisle and pray a prayer and sign a card, raise your hand, I see that hand. We've had preachers today that have preached that acceptance of the Gospel or receiving the Gospel is nothing more than an intellectual agreement to facts about the Gospel. If you will agree to certain facts about the Gospel, then that is sufficient enough to save. You find today in most gospel proclamations that there is no laying down of the standard or the law of God by which men are accountable and by which men are guilty because they have violated that law. You find today that there's no real explanation of man's condition and sin and the need for repentance. No explanation of the nature of genuine conversion and genuine faith. No explanation about the cost that must be counted before a person was to follow after Jesus Christ and become His disciple. And we could go on and on. And the list continues. And it's a massive list in all of the ways that the gospel has been cheapened, that the gospel has been reduced, that the gospel has been presented inadequately. And we look around today and we find that we are reaping the results of that reduction. You look today and you find that the things that Scripture says are coming true in 2 Timothy 3, verse 5. It talks about those who have a form of godliness, but their lives deny its power. In other words, there's a lot of people out there that say that they're Christians, that would affiliate with a church, that go to church maybe even Sunday after Sunday, but during the rest of the week and the rest of their life and the private moments of their life, there's no genuine religion to be found. There's no genuine attachment. I've made the comment that many, many people externally maybe kind of look like a Christian, but they're practical atheists throughout the rest of the week, throughout the rest of the time that they're away from the church. And you can just look around today. Look at those people who are professing Christians, and you'll find with many professing Christians, people who live absolutely ungodly lives to the point that you cannot see the difference between The world, those who would say that they don't belong to Jesus Christ, and those who would say that they do. Yet lives they don't measure up. You even find today that there are many preachers that fill the pulpits week after week after week that are ignorant of the true gospel, that are ignorant of the effects that it has on people when they're truly converted. And so what happens? You find preachers that fail to give their congregations gospel warnings. They fail to exhort people to examine themselves when the biblical evidences of true conversion are absent. You find that many of these preachers, I believe, are unconverted themselves. How often do we hear about some preacher in a pulpit, some scandal? that's happened in his life. Some adulterous affair or some reality that totally undercuts the profession of faith that he adheres to. And so you find these men who don't understand the gospel that stand in the pulpits and they preach moralism. They teach people just to live a good life. They preach to the externals and they create Pharisees. They create legalistic people but not converted people. This is a major problem that we find today. And so we find that many of the people that are sitting in church pews, this country over, that they are not converted. They have a form of godliness, but their lives deny the power. And of course, the Bible warns about this because many, many people are deceived. I was once deceived and fell into this category. And I'm going to tell you more about that in a few minutes. There are many, many people, I believe, in this modern age of the church that fall into the category that Jesus warned about in His Sermon on the Mount when He said, Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father in heaven." Jesus says on that day there's going to be many, many people that say, Lord, Lord, we prophesied in your name. A lot of preachers are going to stand before the Lord and say, I preached. I preached the Bible. I preached the Word of God. Many are going to say that. And many are going to say, we cast out demons in your name and did mighty works in your name. But Jesus is going to look at them and he's going to declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who are a worker of lawlessness. Friends, I want to tell you that is a fearful, fearful truth, the Scripture. For a person to think throughout their whole life that everything is good between them and God, and then to wake up the very first moment in the flames of hell and wonder what they're doing there. But Jesus said there's going to be a lot of people that fall into that category. So today what I want to do is I want to talk to you for a few moments about the second of these two doctrines, and that is the doctrine of regeneration. Let me warn you today by saying first off that I'm going to say some very hard, hard things. I've had people who've been very angry at me in times past for saying some of the things that I'm going to say today. But this is what the Lord has put on me and I hope that you'll listen today with great attention, that you'll put great focus on the things that I'm saying because I want to prove to you that it's coming from the Word of God. It's not just my own musings. It's not just my own thoughts. I seek to prove it to you today from the Holy Scriptures. And I also ask you today to listen with great stamina, because I may be a little longer today than normal. I have a lot that's on my heart, a lot that's on my mind that I want to share with you today. If you get tired, you need to stand up, it's fine. You're not going to bother me. You know, if we were to take a show of hands in this room today, I'm sure that most people would say that they are familiar with the phrase, born again. How many of you heard that phrase? Many, many people have heard, you know, from the famous passage of Scripture in John 3 where Jesus says to Nicodemus, you must be born again. And so when we think about that, the doctrinal term or the technical term that we would give to this reality of a new birth or to being born again is the doctrine of regeneration. And regeneration is the doctrine that teaches the fact that to be a true Christian one must possess the life of God internally. Being a Christian is much more than just agreeing to the facts of the gospel. Being a Christian is about a changed life. It's about having life. It's about going from being dead to having life. You know the great George Whitefield, who was a preacher, one of the preachers of the first great awakening. If you read his conversion story, he was converted after he read a little book by a man named Henry Schugle. And the name of that little book was entitled, The Life of God in the Soul of Man. And that little book was a book that basically describes some of the aspects of regeneration. And George Whitefield, upon reading that, understood that he was a religious man externally, but he did not possess the life of God on the inside that is promised in the gospel if someone is truly converted. And so he reads this little book and he recognizes the fact that he does not have the life of God. And this was the thing that God used in his life to clarify and to crystallize the gospel. And God used that to save him. And of course, he became one of the great preachers of the Great Awakening. And this idea of regeneration, it teaches the fact that the new birth brings about life from God, and listen to me, and that life from God brings about a transformational effect on a person that changes their entire disposition. Everything about them changes when they have an encounter with God. We could say it this way. Regeneration explains to us, again, the nature of true conversion. And here it is in summary, 2 Corinthians 5, 17. The Bible is very clear. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away, behold new things have come. And I want to tell you, that's a promise. That is a gospel truth, a gospel promise that is true for every single genuine Christian, not just some. You hear these doctrines of the carnal Christian, these doctrines of the constant backslider. Listen, I want to tell you, that's an untruth. Can a Christian from time to time act carnally? Can a Christian from time to time backslide? Sure, but it's not a perpetual state of existence. It's impossible. Because of this truth, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away, behold new things have come. And so simply put, if we were to give you a definition today, we could just say that regeneration is the life of God in the soul of man that brings about a transformation and an entirely new disposition at the core of a person's life. Now, as we think about this in our day, this doctrine is severely neglected. It's a doctrine that's hardly ever preached. Very few preachers will dare to speak on it. When they do, they give a real lighthearted approach, thereby failing to explain it as it ought to be explained. And the reason that they shy away from it, the reason that it's not talked about in our modern culture today is because when you really get down to the bottom of regeneration, and what I'm going to show you here in just a little bit, is that it strips a man of his perceived ability to set himself right with God. That's what it is at the very core. And what happens when you come to the true biblical understanding of regeneration, it takes a sinner and it thrusts him completely upon the mercy of God. And I want to tell you today that men have a high estimation of their self and they don't like that kind of teaching. The modern sensibilities of man don't like that. Many, many people won't tolerate a message like that. And so many preachers, because of the pushback, because of these hard doctrines, come to realize that you can't build a quote-unquote successful ministry with that kind of preaching because the people can't endure such hard preaching. They can't endure such hard truths, nor will they tolerate it. And so what do you find? If it's preached accurately and truthfully, it typically begins to reveal that there are few who are being saved. It begins to reveal that the flock is a little flock. And that there are many, many people attached to Christianity who are only there superficially or nominally, but who are truly connected to the vine, which is Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us in John 15 that the vine dresser comes along and prunes. the parts that are not connected to the vine. And they set to the side and they wither and then are bundled together to be burned. Of course, that's the picture of the person who is not connected to the life of God through Jesus Christ. But you know, as you go back a little bit in history, you find that this hasn't always been the case. It hasn't always been the case that men have neglected this doctrine. In fact, the historic understanding of the church was that only regenerate persons were eligible for church membership because only regenerate persons were true Christians. And of course, here we are today as Baptists. We are a Baptist church. And if you wonder, is this also a Baptist distinctive? Yes, it certainly is. If you go back and you begin to look at the distinctives of Baptist, it is. And this is how the preachers of the past used to preach. These are the things that they brought out. In most churches, from days gone by, their doctrinal standard for church membership said something like the doctrinal statement that we have adopted concerning membership here at the Solid Rock Baptist Church. If you have a membership manual, it's found on page 20 of our membership manual, and it reads just like this. Any prospective member, before he or she offers himself for membership, must understand first of all that membership in this church is severely limited to those persons who can produce convincing or credible evidence of a regenerating work of God in their life. In other words, any prospective member desiring membership must first give convincing evidence of a true conversion. Without this evidence, membership will not be granted. This is our position because we believe that by definition a church is made up of only regenerate people, meaning truly converted people. And it is the duty of the church to guard the purity of the church by not bringing into membership unconverted persons. That is a very, very important statement. Very important statement. You see, historically speaking, it wasn't enough for someone to walk an aisle and come to the pastor and simply say that they were a Christian and be entered into the membership of the church. But churches do that every single week today. Many, many people enter into the church and there's no discussion about their conversion experience. There's no discussion about the life that they live. There's no discussion about are there evidences, are there marks of being truly converted. And so back then, churches wanted proof of true conversion. They wanted to know that people truly were regenerated. And churches today would be wise to return to that standard. But you see, without that standard, as what has happened in our day, the church gets in a mess because it gets filled up with unconverted people who do not understand the things of God because they don't know God. And if you don't know God, then you're living a life like a sinner. And if you're part of the membership of the church, it pollutes the holiness of the church, thereby diminishing the witness of Jesus Christ to the world. This is exactly what has happened in our day. But it ought not be this way. This isn't the teaching of the New Testament. This isn't the historic position of the church. Now, since this is the case, I think it's right and I think it's fitting that we ask a question. Why is it like this? What is the reason? What is it that has caused this situation to be as it is? Well, I'll tell you. Over the years there have developed at least five views of regeneration and only one of which is right. It's the biblical view. And the wrong views have crept in because biblical teaching on this subject has not been held to and doctrinal error has taken the place of truth and accuracy. Aren't we warned in the New Testament to be careful of our doctrine so that we're not tossed to and fro by every wind or every wave of doctrine? But see, we haven't listened to that instruction from the Scriptures. And so we've had these erroneous views come into the church that's called massive problems. Now the first four views that I want to share with you, they have a common doctrinal error in all of them. And that is that they do not take into account the true biblical teaching concerning man's true condition in sin. These views, these four views, they do not accept the fact that the Bible teaches that man is absolutely dead in his trespasses and sins, that man is dead spiritually, that man is deaf to the things of God, that man is blind to the things of God, that man by nature is rebellious and he has set himself against God, that he has totally fallen, that he is totally depraved, that he is unable, he is unwilling to come to God because his will is in bondage. You know, we preach a gospel here at this church that says, whosoever will come may come. But the question that's behind that is, who will do that unaided by God? Nobody will, because man's will is in bondage. Man is dead in his trespasses and sins. He's not simply neutral to the things of God. He is in bondage! And these views, they don't teach that. They don't accept the teaching of man in sin, as I've just described. They'll give some adherence to a teaching of man being sinful, but not fully accurately as it's given to us in the Holy Scriptures. Not to the extent of the teaching that the Bible gives us. And so you see, these four views that I'm going to share with you, all of these views assume that man has some power to make himself right with God. And by the way, all of these views are not offensive to the sinner. None of these four views are offensive to the sinner. And so that's why they've been so popular. That's why they've come into the church. That's why they've taken up residence in the church, as it were. Because it doesn't offend man like the biblical teaching of man in sin offends man. Let me take a minute and describe these different views for you. First off, there's what we would call sacramental regeneration. Now when we think of the historic view on sacraments, typically we would call that communion and baptism. But I want to say to you today, as Baptists, we don't adhere to the reality of the sacraments. We don't believe in the sacraments. We believe that those things are called ordinances of the church. You find that these ordinances have been perverted into sacraments that basically become the substance and not the symbol. You follow what I'm saying? There are many, many people who believe that by getting into waters of baptism, that that becomes the substance of salvation. That a person is saved when they're dunked into the water or a person has the grace of God come to them through the bread at the Lord's table. That would be sacramentalism, but we don't adhere to that as Baptists. We see the Lord's Table and we see baptism as nothing more than symbols to the spiritual substance that we already possess in Jesus Christ. So when a person takes of the bread, of the table, and of the cup, it is a remembrance, it is a picture of the death of Jesus Christ. And we're partaking of His body as a symbol, as a picture that we need that sacrifice. And then when we look at the baptismal waters and someone is dumped into the waters of baptism, that is a picture of their union with Jesus Christ, with the death of Jesus Christ, and the burial of Jesus Christ, and then raised to newness of life in Jesus Christ. In essence, it's a symbol to say what is true of Christ is true of me. It's happened on the inside. I have a union with Jesus Christ. So we don't adhere to what we would call the sacraments as Baptists. We see these as ordinances of the church. But if we were to narrow it down, the one of all of those that's taken precedence is what's called baptismal regeneration. It's the one propagated by many, many people. There are some who would baptize infants that would say it doesn't produce any kind of saving grace, but there are others who are perverted that say that it does. And then you have other groups that even take the picture of baptism and the immersion of a person in the water and says, well that's salvific. That regenerates a person in the water of baptism. And so this is the teaching that a person becomes a Christian in the baptismal waters and not until then. This is totally unscriptural. You'll not find this in the Holy Scriptures that it's a perversion of the truth. But, think about it. If you go to a man and say, well, you believe some facts about Jesus Christ and then be baptized, it's not such a big deal to walk into the baptistry and be dunked in the water and say, you're good to go. That's non-offensive because there's no teaching of turning from sin and repenting and embracing the facts of a substitutionary atonement on your behalf. You see, so that's fallacious. Then you have another kind of regeneration though that's fallacious, and it would be called educational regeneration. And this is the teaching that a person becomes a Christian just because they are taught the Christian truths. We could call it maybe heritage regeneration. How many times have I heard someone say, when I ask them about their salvation, well my mom and dad were Christians and I was brought up in a Christian home. And they think, as it were, that they're a Christian just because it's in their heritage. Oh, that's a great blessing if you have a mom and a dad who are Christians and they brought you up in a Christian home. That's a wonderful, wonderful blessing. You understand what I'm saying? But listen, there's no salvation in that. Just because you grew up in a Christian home does not make you a Christian. But this would be called educational regeneration. Sometimes it's also called confirmation. And it's again, it's the teaching that, the right teaching, the adherence to intellectual truths about the Bible makes a person a Christian. Then you also have reformational regeneration. And this is the teaching that a person has a crisis in their life and they decide to turn over a new leaf and then they're regenerate, they become a Christian. You ever seen somebody like this? They go through some terrible life circumstance. They have some terrible sickness or some terrible thing that happens in their life and they say, Oh God, if you would just be merciful to me, I promise you I'll serve you all the days of my life. You see, we could call this circumstantial reforms. My circumstances are so bad that God, I'll make a deal with you. If you'll help me out, I'll serve you all the days of my life. But listen, that's not salvation. A person doesn't come to God just because they have bad circumstances in a temporal realm. People come to God for salvation because they are sinful and because His wrath and the condemnation of God abides upon them because they violated His holy law. So we would call Reformational Regeneration a deal-makers kind of regeneration. God, I'll do this for you if you'll do this for me. Many, many people are caught up in that. Then you have number four. Another one that's fallacious is Decisional Regeneration. Decisional regeneration is the common viewpoint of our day. It kind of goes like this. One hears a sermon and is urged to pray a prayer or make a decision. We could call this time and place regeneration. Make a decision for Christ and you will be regenerated. It's telling dead men to decide when they can't. There was a book out a few years ago that was called How to be Born Again. Do you understand the ridiculous nature of that title? When you think about being born, what did you have to do with being born? You just showed up one day. So, how to be born? It's ridiculous. It's like going to a graveyard and telling men to get up. Can you imagine that? Going to a funeral home, going to the morgue, going to the graveyard, walking over to a grave, standing on the headstone, looking over the fresh dirt and the fresh grave and saying, Can you imagine if you were driving down the road today and you saw a whole group of people that were in a graveyard and they were yelling at the top of their lungs, Get up! Get up, man! Is that not ridiculous? What's a dead person going to be able to do? You see, this position of decisional regeneration, this is something really, I know we all kind of laugh a little bit about this, but it really should be ridiculed out of existence. It should be laughed at. It should be made fun of. Because it's not found scripturally. The whole invitation system that we find today in the modern churches, the sinner's prayer, that evangelists try to tell people to pray so that they'll be right with God, the raising of the hands, all of these different things, all of this is ridiculous. And preachers today, they should be ashamed of many of these methods that they have used, trying as it were, to help God out to bring sinners into the kingdom. You see, we need to see this for what it is. And those who have been engaged in this kind of behavior, they need to repent of this. Because this is not the scriptural teaching. It's not biblical. It's not found in the scripture. It's not found in the early parts of Christian history. Actually, it becomes popular only a few hundred years ago. Do a little study of church history, and this is what you'll find. And so you see, when these views are accepted as legitimate, then you find that there's no emphasis placed on the evidences that the Bible says will be present if a person has had a true conversion. And so what happens is, many, many people, after that, they are led to believe and to base their assurance of salvation on something that they did, rather than what the Bible has to say about it. Many Christians, they base their assurance of their salvation not on the evidences of a transformed life, but rather on a decision, or a baptism, or something along those lines. You hear today the popular teaching, once saved, always saved. That's certainly true. That's certainly true. If someone is genuinely saved, they are always and forever saved. But the problem with that is that it makes people go back to a time and place or to some kind of experience. And I want to tell you, a person can be deceived about an experience. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to that have walked an aisle and have prayed the sinner's prayer multiple times. But yet their life gives absolutely no evidence whatsoever of an encounter with a holy God. And you find that there's no fruit, that there's no evidence, that there's no transformation that's taken place in their life. And so the evidence is not there and they base their salvation on a time and place experience in the past. You see the teaching today to have people base their assurance on a changed life through the person of the power of Jesus Christ, this is foreign to most people because of this bad theology that's been propagated, that's replaced the good. Decisional regeneration. Remembering a time and remembering a place where a person had an experience. This has been the primary teaching for years. How many of you have heard this teaching? This has been the common teaching. All throughout, not just Baptist churches, but Methodist churches and other churches, non-denominational churches. You can pretty much throw any denomination in there and you will find these problems. The Bible though teaches something different. The Bible teaches that genuine salvation will be evident. The genuine salvation again produces a transformation and it's seen. And I believe again I can make a convincing argument for what I'm saying. I'm going to in a minute with the Bible. But also I want to give you a statistic from my own personal study on church membership. I decided to do a little bit of a study. So I went to four Southern Baptist Associations. If you know what that is, an association is basically a group of churches that have banded together, somewhere usually between 20 and 40 churches, maybe in a county or in multiple counties that come together to do missions and things of that nature. So I went to four of these associations and I asked for their published material on their results for the previous year. And so I got four of those annuals of the churches in those associations. And what I found was that there were represented somewhere around 150 or 160 churches. Some 30,000 members across those four associations in those Baptist churches. And this is what I found. Absolutely staggering. When I got to looking at the records, only 30% of the membership of any given church was in attendance on a given Sunday morning. Only 30% of those who are on the church roll came and were part of the Sunday morning service. Now if you've been a churchman for very long, then what does that say about the Sunday night service? Because there's typically far more on Sunday morning than there are Sunday night. Maybe if we were being generous we could say half. And then, what about the prayer meeting on Wednesday night? Again, if we were being generous in most churches, maybe half again of the Sunday night attendance. So I got to look at this and I was staggered by this. And I asked the question, why is it like this? I mean the Bible's clear teaching that those who are in the church are converted people, right? Those who have taken part in the new covenant of Jesus Christ, they are in. They are in the church. The true church is not some mixed congregation of lost people and saved people. The true church are those who are truly converted people. And by the way, truly converted people consistently associate themselves in two local churches in order to grow in their faith. True believers want to be around true believers and they want to be where the Word of God is being truly taught and truly preached so that they can grow, so that they can learn, so that they can develop. So where are these people on these church roles that never ever show up? Why does a church that, let's say, has 500 members only have 100 or 150 of them showing up on a given Sunday? Is this the pattern of the New Testament? Is this what the Bible teaches? Is this the ideal picture? I don't think so. 1 John chapter 2 verse 19, The Bible says, "...they went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they are all not of us." You see, Scripture is very, very clear on this point. A truly converted person continues in the faith and they continue to practice their faith with God's people in the local church. And those persons who fall away from the church are proving about their life that they were never, ever converted in the first place. So if you have all of these church roles, if you have 70% of the people on the church role who violate this basic evidence of true salvation, thereby proving themselves most likely to be lost, we have to ask the question, what kind of theology, or what kind of methods, or what kind of practice created this scenario? Listen to this from Pastor Mark Dever of the Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington. Here's what he says. If there is a sizable discrepancy between the membership of a pastor's church and the attendance, I would naturally wonder about what they understood conversion to be and what kind of evangelism they had practiced in order to create such a large number of people uninvolved in the life of the church, yet certain of their own salvation with the blessing of the church. What does he mean by with the blessing of the church? What he means is the church isn't going after those people. Why aren't the church going after those people? Because the church doesn't believe those people to be lost. Do you understand? Do you see the picture? You see the problem is bad theology. It's bad theology concerning these fundamental truths about the gospel. On the one hand you have justification, which thankfully we still have some semblance of that in our churches today. Some truth about that being taught. But then you have this other doctrine, the doctrine of regeneration that's not understood. And by default there's bad practices and unbiblical methods like altar calls and sinners prayers and all of that stems from the bad theology which then produces the kind of statistics in our churches that should make us When we look on the list and see 70% of those who at one time came down the aisle, shook the pastor's hand, and said, I want to join this church, I'm a Christian. And then they're out the doors. Never to be seen. Say, oh, maybe on Easter? Christmas service. But there's no vibrant Christianity in their life day to day, week to week, month by month, year by year. You know, let me just say today that as a side note, it certainly is true that the devil will sow tares among the weak. Isn't that true? I mean, the devil is busy, he's at work. No matter how hard a church may try to maintain a regenerate church membership, there will always be those persons who enter into the membership of the church who are not converted. But listen, I want to tell you, it's not the majority if a church is doing what they're supposed to be doing and preaching the gospel as it ought to be preached. Most churches today, it's the majority that enter into the church that prove themselves to be unconverted. But this shouldn't be the case. It shouldn't be this way. And the reason that some persons will enter into the membership of the church is because as human beings we cannot truly see the heart of a person. People can be very religious and they can put on a good show of religion and can fool a lot of people. Now we can see evidences, we can inspect the fruit, which we're called to do, we should be discerning, we should do those things. But ultimately and finally, only God sees the heart, only God knows who those people really are who are converted and who are not converted. So because of this reality, the devil is going to do all that he can to get an advantage, to sow tears in among the weak. But listen to me, we shouldn't help the devil's cause by practicing such bad theology like decisional regeneration. And bad methods like alter cults and like sinner's prayers. Because you see in the end, all of those things, all it does is it helps to add a number of unregenerate persons onto the church role. And by the way, one other thing, let me also remind you today of the biblical practice that the Bible teaches about. Church discipline, which this too has been abandoned by just about every single church that you would go into. The Lord though in His grace and in His mercy towards the church has given us the reality of church discipline. Why? To deal with those persons who by their behavior prove themselves to be unconverted. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 18? If your brother offends you, what does he say? Go to him in private. If he keeps on offending you, take somebody else with you. If he keeps on, tell the church. If he won't listen to any of those methods, treat him as a heathen. Why? Because he's proven himself to be an unconverted person. When you band together with a group of church members and you find some person in the church whose life is being eat up with sin outside of the church, don't you understand that it is your responsibility as a church member, as those who are professing faith in Jesus Christ, to love your brothers and sisters in Christ? And if you see them being sifted by sin outside of the church, if you love them, you would go to them and say, brother, you need to examine yourself. You're offending the church. You're putting a mark on our holy witness before the lost. You see, that's biblical. And that's showing deep concern and care for someone's soul. But you see, today we have churches that say, well, we could never do that because that's too judgmental. We couldn't go to these people. That would be way too harsh. And so these people, what happens? We've abandoned church discipline. We have undercut the mechanism that the Lord has given us to maintain the holy witness inside the church. And so by not doing that in most churches, it maintains, to a large degree, persons who are unregenerate. Now with all that said, we have to ask another question. And that is, what is biblical regeneration? Because I told you there were five views of regeneration. Four of them being wrong, which I've already described to you. So what is the biblical view of regeneration? When you look at biblical Christianity and historic Christianity, the view of regeneration is something altogether different than what I've been describing. And the true biblical view is that which is called Spirit Regeneration. Spirit regeneration is the teaching that God must do a work. That God is the one who has to do the work of the new birth. Because dead men, blind men, deaf men, stony heart men, they need an intervention by God. They need God to step in and do the new birth. God must be the one who gives them life and ongoing growth in that life. And if God doesn't do that, men will perish. It's a spirit work. It's the teaching that not only has God provided salvation in the person of Jesus Christ, but God must also apply that salvation to sinners who are in need. God doesn't just send Christ to die on the cross and now look to sinners and say, take it or leave it, because no sinner would ever take it unaided by God. It would never ever happen. And so God, He has accomplished salvation in the person of Jesus Christ, but then by His Spirit He comes along and He applies that salvation into the lives of sinners. You see, God has given us the method of His gospel. The gospel is the thing that men need to hear. And listen to me, let's not negate the human responsibility of the whole thing because God does tell men and women to repent and to believe the gospel. Isn't that true? This is the method that God has chosen. Men are commanded. It's not a suggestion. It's a command to repent and to believe the gospel. So you see it's the job of the preacher to preach the gospel. To command men and women to repent and to believe the gospel. And then listen to this. and then leave them to the grace of God. Let God take the seed that has been sown and birth life out of that seed. How foolish and how arrogant it is for us to think that some kind of altar call, some kind of public invitation is going to aid in helping God do His work of calling men and women into the kingdom. You see this situation again, as I've said a minute ago, this practice of doing those things that you find so common in churches today, that is a new practice, not an old one. You only find it within the last couple hundred years of the Christian church. Listen to me. The sermon is the invitation. The preaching of the gospel is the invitation. And the Spirit of God, again, does not need the schemes of man to help Him usher people into the Kingdom of God. And shame on those persons who think that they can help in regards to that. Listen, I think at this fundamental area, most leaders in churches today need to repent. I don't see how revival or an awakening could take place until these bad methods are repented of and then changed. This is the way that it works. This is historic. This is biblical Christianity. Now like I said a little while ago, men don't mind hearing the first four views. You can go to a church of Christ and they tell you to get in the baptismal water as well. If I can get in the water and get dunked and not have to go to hell, that's great. I'll do it. That's not biblical teaching, y'all. These first four views are not offensive because the power is with man to do it. It's all external. It's all self-willed. But they hate the biblical view because, listen to me, it makes salvation a sovereign work of God. Listen, I want to tell you something. If you've said and you begin to think about the fact that a man is at the mercy of the grace of God for salvation, That is a despairing thought. And there's only one thing left for a man to do when he comes to that point. And the only thing to do is to call out to God in the hopes that God will save him. And guess what the wonderful promise of Scripture is? Is that if a man would do it, God will. All that the Father has given to me will come to me, and him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out. But you see, we failed to preach the message that teaches men and women who are in their sins that they are at the mercy of God for salvation. You can't just simply pray a prayer. You can't just decide to walk an aisle. You can't just raise your hand. Am I saying that people have never been converted in those situations? No, there have been people genuinely converted in those situations, but there has been far more harm done than good. And I want to tell you, and some of you in here have experienced the same thing, I can't tell you how many times though that I have talked to people in that very situation, and it is nearly impossible to get the true gospel to them because they think they've already done what's necessary. And they build up a wall. I would almost rather talk to an absolute pagan who's never heard anything at all about Jesus Christ, than to try to talk to some lost church person who sat in the pews for 20 years. Or who hasn't sat in the church pew for 20 years and who's been confirmed that he's saved and out living like the demons of hell. You see, this is a blow to a man's pride to think that he can't do anything about a situation. This strips a man. It pulls away all perceived resources and it reveals lostness. And again, the fact that they are at the mercy of God for salvation. This is the kind of preaching that the great men of the Awakenings preached though. Spirit regeneration. You're at the mercy of God in the person of Jesus Christ for God to apply. And I want to tell you that brings conviction on people. Because they finally come to the point that they realize, I cannot bridge the gap between me and God. And unless God does it for me through the resource and the provision that He's already given in the person of Jesus Christ, I'll never ever make it into His presence and that is despairing. That is a despairing thought. You know, the old timers, again, like Whitefield and all of these men, Jonathan Edwards, all the rest, they so strongly believed these things that they preached it all the time. They saw it as an absolute necessity to bring men and women under conviction. In fact, there's a story about George Whitefield from church history. It says he was out doing a series of meetings somewhere and on the first night he stood before the congregation and he preached the great text from John 3 and he told men, you must be born again. So the second night comes around, they're back for another meeting and he preaches the exact same sermon. And then some leaders of the church or some members of the church came up to him and said, Sir, do you not have another sermon? Why is it that you keep preaching to us that you must be born again? And he pointed his finger in their face and he said, Because you must be born again! And they preached it all the time. Because they understood that men needed this. This is a fundamental necessity. Spirit regeneration, the new birth brought about by God. You see, this is the biblical truth regarding regeneration. It's done by the Spirit of God and it produces lasting results. Let me give you the definition again. Regeneration is the life of God and the soul of man that brings about a transformation and an entirely new disposition at the core of a person's life. Now, I know I've already gone a long time this morning, but I'm only halfway done. If you can't endure, you may stand if you need to. But I'm going to keep on, because I feel that this is what the Lord would have me say today. I'm not just preaching long to preach long. I really have a lot to say today. I want to speak to you now about the doctrine of regeneration, and I want to give you further clarity on it, and let me give you three reasons why. As if I haven't already given you some reasons. But let me give you three more reasons why. Number one, I want to do this, as I've already mentioned, because out of the two doctrines of justification and regeneration, regeneration is the most neglected. And we need to understand both of them. Why? Because it exalts the glory and the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And unless you see God's plan of salvation as nothing but grace, you will not worship God as you ought to. But if you were brought to the point where you understand that the only reason that you are in the kingdom of God is because of the grace of God, you become a worshipper of God. God becomes the center of your life and it changes everything in your life. That never happens to people who think because they made some decision they're right with God. You will not find worshippers among those kind of people. It's all by the grace of God. And truth be told, all of us should fall on our knees here this afternoon, this morning, and we should praise God for what He's given us in Jesus Christ. Because if it wasn't for that, every single one of us would find ourselves in the flames of hell. It's only because of God. It's only because of His grace. It's only because of His mercy. And I want you to understand it so that you will glorify God as you ought to for His great salvation. Those who are professing Christians need to understand this doctrine. Listen to me. Those who are professing Christians need to understand this doctrine so they can examine their own lives so as to make a discernment as to whether or not they have truly been converted. You see, it's this doctrine. It's the teaching of this doctrine and all of its implications and all of its unfolding that answers the questions, what is true conversion? that answers the question, what actually happens to a person when they are saved? What are the effects of genuine conversion? And so, you see, if you're here today as a professing Christian, and if you have the knowledge from Scripture as to how the Bible tells you to examine your life, you will have the tools, the biblical tools, so that you can put your life under the microscope of Scripture and to see if, in fact, you are a Christian. Very important. You see, most pastors today will tell someone who's doubting their salvation, well, do you remember a time and place when you prayed? Do you remember a point in time? If you can remember that, then tell the devil to stop bothering you. Listen, that's the absolute worst advice somebody could give someone struggling with assurance of their salvation. When somebody tells me they're struggling with their assurance, I say, praise God. Because you might be lost. And this could be the season of grace of God in your life to show you that you need to be converted. So, understanding the doctrine gives you the tools by which you may understand how to examine your life to see if you truly are in the faith. And thirdly, I'm passionate about this because of how it relates to my own testimony. And I want to share that with you now. Some of you know my testimony, others you don't, and I want to share it with you. I started playing the guitar when I was 14 years old. And as I started doing that, I progressed in that, and it was clear as I entered into being a man and had to provide and have a living and take care of my family, that that's what I was going to do. I was going to play music and make a living to support my family, and I did that. I had always gone to church. My father was a Baptist preacher. My brother was a Baptist preacher. Grew up in a church home. The scriptures were read. I went to Christian school. All the rest. I had a wonderful Christian heritage in my upbringing. When I was about 30, 30, 31 I guess, I was called into the ministry. I remember sitting in my little cubicle at the music store that I taught in, teaching people guitar, and I would be teaching people music and thinking about preaching. It was really weird. And this was so weird for me because I had a father that was a preacher and a brother that was a preacher and I thought, I'm not a preacher. Not that I had anything wrong with preachers, not that I was against preachers, but I just thought that's not for me. I'm the music guy. Everybody knows me as Kyle the guitar guy. But over the course of about six months, I was losing sleep, I was thinking about preaching. And most of the time I'm a very verbal person and share things with people I didn't share with anybody, not even my wife. Because I didn't want to shock her. I wasn't sure how she'd take it. I didn't sign up for this deal. That's kind of what I was afraid of. But then it became very obvious that the Lord was doing that. And I'll kind of make it short, but there were those in the church that we were at that saw that it was obvious that the call of God was on my life. People who had seen it a couple years even before I began to recognize it. So I told Bethany, I told her family, went before the church, was verified by the church. They put the stamp and said, yes, we agree that you're called. And the great thing was, is that Bethany, she looked at me and she says, well, if you're called, I'm called along with you to support you. And so there was a weight that was taken off my shoulders and a great relief. Immediately after I'd gone to the church and announced it to the church, over the next six months, the Lord put me in His own school. Again, I'd been taught the Bible growing up. I knew the Word of God. I'd studied it with my father. I'd studied it in school. And so, instead of the Lord sending me to seminary and to Bible college, He just put me on a rubber-meets-the-road education and He started putting me in these little country churches all over the place over the next six months preaching. I was preaching somewhere every Sunday and every Wednesday for six months. After that six months, learning how to preach, learning how to develop sermons and study the Bible, to do that, a pastorate opened up for me. And I went to the first church. It was called the Bethel Baptist Church. As a matter of fact, it's not far from here. So in that time, you can imagine the great switch. Here I am, a 31-year-old man, going from one life of playing music and being a musician, now to being a full-time pastor, and the Lord was teaching me, and the Lord was showing me things, and here I am, I'm sitting in my office at the church, and I'm studying to preach on Sunday morning and Sunday night, and Wednesday night, and a Sunday school class to boot. So you talk about just being thrust into the thing. You're talking about a major dose of studying the Word of God over that time. And the Lord was teaching me things during that time. I was learning deeper truths about the doctrine of justification, which I had already understood, but was beginning to learn more and more and more. But this doctrine of regeneration that began to pour out on the pages of Holy Scripture, nobody had ever explained it to me. To the depth that I was learning it and that the Lord was teaching me. And the Lord led me to different teachers and pastors and folks that could help and show me what this was all about. I spent Saturday after Saturday with a dear brother who taught me the Bible more and more, explaining these things. And all of this was something new to me. And I began, a little at a time, to preach these doctrines to the church that I was pastoring. And every now and again, someone would come knocking on my church door of my office, crying, weeping, I'm not converted. They didn't come parading down an aisle during some invitation. They came weeping like a whooped puppy dog over in the corner. They didn't want to parade all that in front of everybody because the Lord was really dealing with them. And the Lord was gracious and some people were saved and the Lord blessed that ministry there. And the Lord was giving me this new understanding of what it truly meant to be converted. Well, you can't help but study the Bible that much and take the Word of God and apply it to your own life. How could I come before you and preach any truth of Scripture without running my own life through those truths? So as I began to learn about this doctrine of regeneration, I started asking questions about my own situation. And the question was not if I was converted, because I knew that I was. There were evidences there, there were things in my life that proved not just because I was a preacher, you can be a preacher and be lost as a goose. But there were things in my life that measured up to the biblical tests of salvation that gave me the assurance that I was a Christian. But the dilemma that I had that began to gnaw on my conscience was, when was I converted? Not if I was converted, but when was I converted. And the reason that that was a problem was because I had had two experiences in my life that needed discernment. One of them when I was 10 years old, and one of them when I was 29 years old. Again, growing up in a Christian home. We were always at church. We were always at revival meetings. We were there every time the doors were open. I was there one night at 10 years old. I remember the man he was preaching. His name was Joe Mobley. He was preaching a sermon on hell and I was terrified. And so I went forward. My dad being a Baptist preacher said, Dad, I need to be saved. I'm lost. So my dad takes me to his office. It wasn't paraded in front of everyone. And my dad, as a diligent father, did what he should have done. And he led me through the scriptures. We talked about it. He didn't lead me in a prayer. I just prayed my own prayer. And that was it. A week or two later I was baptized. And there it was. Fast forward to 29 years old. I'm sitting at the Trace Creek Baptist Church listening to Brother Ronnie Stinson Sr. preach. And I don't even remember what his sermon was about, but he made a cross-reference over to Romans chapter number 1. And I'd never studied the book of Romans, and Romans chapter 1 is a fascinating passage. And whatever happened in that moment, this desire to study more about the Bible was born. I was 29 years old. I was going to be 30 pretty soon and I realized that I had never read the Bible through cover to cover. So I go home and at that time I'm a musician and most of my work was done in the evenings. I taught lessons and so I had to wait until kids were out of school and what not. So typically I had the mornings free to myself. My wife was a marketer. and a scoreboard manufacturer. So she was gone in the morning and I had the morning kind of to myself. So every morning I decided I would sit at my bay window and in the few months that I had before I was 30 years old, I decided that I was going to read the Bible cover to cover. I was about two days into reading. I come to Genesis chapter number 15 verse 6. This is God's dealing with Abraham. And Abraham, you know the text says, believed the Lord and it was accounted to him for righteousness. In that moment, I fell on my knees, not even knowing what I was doing. I fell on my knees with my Bible laid out before me, tears falling from my face, and all I said was, Lord, make me righteous. I didn't even know that I was doing anything. I had no idea what was going on. I just knew that I had met with the Lord that moment, in my bay window, at my home. Well, here I am now at the first pastorate and I'm studying the Bible and I'm shining the light of these truths on my two experiences. And I'm beginning to ask the question, when was I converted? The Bible tells me that I'm converted when there's changes in my life, when there's new internal affections, when things begin to be different. And so I look at the life from 10 years old all the way up to 29. And it began to be clear that there was no real affection for God. No true love for the Lord Jesus Christ. I was a good church boy. I went to church every time the doors were open. I was a decent kid. I was about to say a good kid, but truth be told that would be a lie. I got into a fair amount of trouble. My life, as I began to examine it with scripture, didn't really give any evidence of truly being converted. And then I began to look at the 29-year-old experience, and I had now a couple years to go off of, because I'm 31 now, or 32 in this pastorate where I'm at. I was there for three years, and this went on for a little while, wrestling with this. And I began to look at that experience from 29 to that point, and I thought, man, that is when my life changed. Things are different for me now. The Lord has changed my life. I can't even remember, my brother was in the military and he came home. And he was done with all of that. And I remember, he might not even remember this, but we had been together for a few days, talking, catching up. And he said to me, he said, you're different than when I left. Well, As I began to weigh out those two things with this glorious doctrine of regeneration, my experience at age 29 and what proceeded after that began to rise to the top as the moment that I was truly converted. And with that came another dilemma. Because I'm a pastor of a church and the Bible tells me that when a man is saved, he's to be baptized. Confessor's baptism. Believer's baptism. Here I am, I'm a pastor of a church. I'm about 32, 33 years old at this time. No, maybe older than that. I don't remember all the time exactly, but here I am and I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, I'm teaching all of these people the truths about the gospel. There's a lot of new Christians that are being saved and are learning. I'm their spiritual leader, I'm their pastor. And if I announce to the congregation that I need to be baptized, this is going to provide much confusion. And so I thought, the Lord is not the author of confusion. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong. So I kind of put it on the back burner, but it was all brewing. A little bit more time passed, and my time at that church was coming to an end. And the church, my home church that I came from, that ordained me and sent me out into the ministry, the senior pastor was leaving, and I got a call from the new pastor that was going to be coming on as the pastor, his son, Ronnie Jr., and he asked me to come on board. He asked me to come as the Director of Evangelism and Missions. And I truly felt that the Lord was leading me to go back there, even though I loved the church that I was at. There were no issues. There were no problems. Things were going great. It was a joyful time in that church. Left on good conditions. But I felt like the Lord was leading me to this other church. So I go. And of course me and Bethany were there and we moved from the house that we were living in Murray to Mayfield. It's busy, crazy. I'm directing mission projects. I'm preaching every Sunday night. Things are just busy for the first little while until we get settled. So I kind of put all of this to the back burner. Then after we got settled and things began to calm down for us, guess what happened? This truth comes to the front of my mind again. Was I saved at 10 or was I saved at 29? And the 29-year-old experience continues to come forward and kind of rules the day and seems to be the time that I truly was converted. But here I am again with this other dilemma. Here I am back at my home church. And if I announce to these people as one of their spiritual leaders that I need to be baptized because I was truly saved at 29 and not 10, this is going to produce a lot of confusion. And I thought, the Lord is not the author of confusion. Maybe I'm wrong. Time would go on, I'd continue to preach even some of these truths that hadn't been preached much in that church. And with a little time passing, although I love to this day the pastor of that church and his father and all of those leaders in that church, I love them very much. They have deposited into my life. It became very clear though that we were on two different grounds theologically. We thought different theologically and the way that we saw practice and methods was different. And so that led to a parting of ways. I preach my final sermon. It was a Sunday night. I preach from Isaiah chapter number 53. I go home, go to bed. About five in the morning I'm waking out of a deep sleep. I wake up. And it was almost like the heavens parted and the light shone down. And it was like the Lord was telling me, guess what, Kyle? You're not a spiritual leader of people anymore. The opportunity for confusion is gone. You were saved at 29, not 10, and you need to be baptized. Now, the Lord didn't audibly tell me this, but this was the prompting. This was the experience that I had at the time. I knew that it was clear. I knew that I was saved at 29. I knew that it wasn't at 10. And all along that time, while I'm pastoring both of these churches, or serving in both these churches, pastoring the one and serving as an associate as another, I had another dear friend who's a pastor of another church. who were very close, all of you know him, Brother Michael Durham, Oak Grove Baptist Church. And so it was natural that after we left Trace Creek that we would go and join Oak Grove because me and him were so close. And I shared with him my situation and I was baptized at Oak Grove and he graciously allowed my father to come and baptize me. He was a Baptist minister. So, after that experience, the Lord led us to, with you people, to plant this church, the Solid Rock Baptist Church. Of course, there are some here today who came from Bethel Baptist Church, and some who came from Trace Creek Baptist Church, and others who have come along who are part of neither, and we praise the Lord for all of that. Now, you say, Brother Kyle, why this whole story about your conversion? Why this testimony this morning? Let me give you two reasons. Number one, The Bible says in Psalm 107 verse 2, let the redeemed of the Lord say so. I tell you that story today because all of that is nothing but the grace of God in my life, directing all of those events, directing all of those circumstances, and I praise the Lord for that because it's my story, but it's a wonderful story because it's what He directed. And every person in here today, if you're a Christian, your story is different. The Lord found you wallowing in the mud puddles of sin. The Lord gave you the gospel through some means. The Lord saved you and changed your life and things are different for you now if you're truly a Christian. But I share my story with you for that reason, number one, to give glory and praise to God for what He's done in my life. But secondly, listen to me closely. I feel that today there are those, maybe here and some who will listen to this recording, who probably like me, need clarity on their own conversion. People maybe who struggle with the same situation that I struggle with because I bumped into those kind of people. And I think it's far more than maybe what we might realize. And the fear that I have is that there are other people who are in the situation that I was in from 10 years old to 29, totally deceived! Remember, all of that time, from then on, I had made a profession of faith. I had been baptized. I was a religious hypocrite. And if I had died in that time, the Lord would have sent me straight to hell and I would have deserved it. Praise God for His grace and praise God for His mercy to preserve me until the appointed time. But you see, there must be other people who are in the same situation, who are deceived in their life, and other people who truly need a true conversion, and their conversion, and what the nature of true conversion is all about. They need it defined for them. If they've made a profession, they need it defined for them from the Scriptures so that they can discern their own profession and their own situation to see if they really be in the faith and not be damned. So you see, this is our task. This is what I'm doing today to consider this doctrine of regeneration and the nature of true conversion. Now, as we consider the doctrine of regeneration today, I mentioned to you when we started almost, I guess about an hour ago, I wanted us to look at Ezekiel chapter number 36. And if you still have your Bible, I want you to turn there. And I want to show you today from this passage of Scripture, this great Old Testament text that teaches us some great truths about new covenant salvation that would come in the person of Jesus Christ and we see it as God is dealing with the nation of Israel. Now you remember the nation of Israel. They were a chosen people. They were blessed by God. God called out Abraham, and then Isaac, and then Jacob, and then from Jacob became the 12 tribes of Israel, which became the nation of Israel. And a little time goes on, and the Lord with this nation, they have a wonderful relationship. He delivers them out of Egypt, and takes them out into the wilderness, and He has promises for them. But you find that they grow code towards God and they rebel and they turn to idolatry. And so what does God do? God comes along and He disciplines them and He sends them off into captivity. And so while they're in captivity though, God doesn't leave them where they stand because they are His chosen people. And God makes certain promises to them and talks to them about their restoration to their own land and promises concerning salvation. And of course now that we have the fullness of the New Testament, we know that all of those promises are realized in the person of Jesus Christ. Isn't that true? Paul talks about the mystery has been revealed now in the person of Jesus Christ. But we find that Jesus Christ came and what did the Jews, what did the nation of Israel do concerning Jesus? They rejected Him. And ultimately they would see Him standing there and would yell out, crucify Him, crucify Him. They would totally reject the Messiah, the one who was promised to them. And so the Bible goes on to tell us that in the meantime as the Jews have rejected Jesus Christ, it was all in the plan of God because the initial promise to Abraham and the covenant was that God was going to bless Abraham and through him all the families of the earth would be blessed. Not just the Jews but also the Gentiles. And so the reality is that the Jews have been set aside right now with a partial hardening, although some, a small group, have believed in the Messiah, in Jesus Christ. But they have been set to the side for a little while so that the grafting of the Gentiles may come in. By the way, if you sit here today and you're not a Jew, you're Gentile. And if you're a Christian, then you're part of that grafting into the plans and into the purposes of God. And so again, only a small remnant of the Jews have embraced Jesus Christ, but the Bible teaches us that one day Israel as a nation, they will look upon him whom they have pierced and they will embrace him and they will weep for him as one weeps for an only son. In other words, one day they're going to look at Christ and they're going to say, We can't believe we rejected the one that God sent to us as our Messiah, and now we receive Him. By the way, that's what Isaiah 53 is all about. It's about their confession in that day. What they're going to say when they see Jesus Christ. And when all of that happens, they're going to begin to enjoy the promises of the new covenant salvation that God has promised in Jesus Christ. And as we look at our text, that's what this whole thing is all about. And it's a very important text, because it gives us an explanation of God's promise of salvation for the Jews in the New Covenant. Again, that would be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. So we could say that this is an Old Testament New Covenant text. It's a prophecy text. It's a text that's going to describe what's going to happen in the future. And the reason that this passage is so relevant for us is because God explains what happens. Listen to me now. what happens to any person, not just a Jew, but Gentiles as well. He explains what happens to any person who experiences His salvation. That's what this is all about. And so, since we are in the time of the Gentiles then being grafted into the promises of God and His plan of salvation, and even though the Jews are temporarily set to the side, we learn great truths about salvation that then we can apply to ourselves because, again, we are Gentiles. In other words, we could say it like this. That this text explains to us what happens to any person who becomes a part of new covenant salvation in Jesus Christ. And the focus of the text is on the doctrine of regeneration. Or simply put, the nature of true conversion. This text shows us what happens to a person who is genuinely converted. So it becomes a passage by which a person who claims they are a Christian can test their life and can examine their profession of faith to discern whether or not they have truly been converted. Notice with me in chapter 36 verse 16. The word of the Lord came to me, son of man. When the house of Israel lived in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their deeds. Their ways before me were like the uncleanness of a woman in her menstrual impurity. So I poured out my wrath upon them for the blood that they had shed in the land, for the idols with which they had defiled it. I scattered them among the nations, and they were dispersed through the countries. In accordance with their ways and their deeds, I judged them. But when they came to the nations, wherever they came, they profaned my holy name, in that people said of them, These are the people of the Lord. And yet they had to go out of his land. But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations to which they came. 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 the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols. I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit. I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and be careful to obey My rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be My people, and I will be your God." There's three things from the text here. Number one, we're going to learn about the cause of our salvation. Secondly, the motivation of God that causes our salvation. And thirdly, the change that happens to us in our salvation. Number one, the cause of our salvation. Again, in the text that I just read, if you were to come down to verse 24 and read through verse 28, you find something here that we have been talking about, and that is that regeneration is done by a work of the Spirit of God. I want you to look in the text and notice, and underline it good and strong in your Bible, the number of times that the phrase, I will, is used. It's somewhere in the neighborhood of eight or nine times. God says, I will do this, I will do this, I will do this, I will do this, I will do this. You find that the people, the nation, they are passive in the whole thing. God is the one who is acting. God is the one who is at work. God is the one who brings about salvation. It's not of man. It's not of anything that we can scheme up. It is all about God. And as I've already mentioned, God makes the provision for our salvation, but then God doesn't leave it up to the sinner to take it by His own power. He comes along and He also applies His grace because dead sinners cannot do it on their own. Please understand that today. John 3, verse 5 to 8, Jesus answered Nicodemus, truly, truly, I say to you, listen to this, unless one is born of the water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Listen to this, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. You see that? Fallen sinful flesh produces what? Fallen sinful flesh. God has to intervene and cause His Spirit to birth life. The wind blows where it will. Don't marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So is it with everyone who is born of the Spirit. You said in your pew today, if you're a Christian, you want to know why you're a Christian if you're a Christian? Because God's spirit blew. His spirit blew. 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 5 to 7. What is Apollos and what is Paul? But servants whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each. Listen to this. I planted, Apollos watered, but who gave the growth? God. It was God who gave the growth. So neither he who plants or he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. Preachers aren't really that important. All the one hand. 2 Corinthians 4, 3-6, And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. Listen to this, For it was God who said, Let light shine out of darkness. He has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. You see your conversion, if you sit here converted today, Paul compares it to a work of creation. God spoke on the day of creation, let there be light. And when He came to you with the gospel and you were saved, He said, guess what? Let there be light. And He turned the lights on, Ephesians 2.10. We are His, God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. So you see, it's only the power and the work of Almighty God that allows a dead sinner to be regenerated and come to have spiritual life. So, number one, the cause of our salvation is by the power and by the work of God. But before we move on to the change that takes place in our salvation, I also want you to see, secondly, the motivation of God that causes our salvation. You know, in verses 16 to 23, you get a little bit of a recounting of the nation of Israel. And we have to ask the question, what is the motivation for God? I mean, why is it that God does anything for sinners? Why is it that God would care about the nation of Israel? Why would He care about them? Why does God care about you and me? Why does God save anybody? What's the motivation behind it? I mean, is man so lovable and so great and so worthy and so precious and so intrinsically valuable that God would have pity and mercy upon him? No. That's not it at all. God saves sinners for the vindication of His own good name and for the praise of the glory of His grace. You see God, we don't add anything to God. There's nothing we can teach God. There's nothing we can do to help God out. We are not as important as we think. Now we are important from the standpoint that we are created in God's image. Every single soul is valuable because God created them. But in terms of what we offer God, in terms of what we do for God, we don't do anything for God. We don't offer anything to God. So you have to ask the question, what's the motivation why God would have pity on a worm like me? Why would God care about those people who've transgressed His law and gone against Him and shook their fist in His face? Why? It's simply because God wants to have praise and glory for His grace. You see this in the text. We see this represented with the nation of Israel as the example. In verses 16 to 20, He outlines for us their wickedness. He talks about them defiling their own land by their ways and by their deeds. He says that their ways before Him, before God, look like what? Like the uncleanness of a woman in her menstrual impurity. Really? Wow! Do you realize there's such graphic language in the Bible? The Bible says that our righteousness and the sight of God are as filthy rags. When God looks down at sinners and He sees their attempts to do anything right, to set themselves right with God, God looks at it as if it is the dirty rags of a woman's monthly cycle. Is that too graphic for you today? It's right here in the book. Your ways were before me like the uncleanness of a woman in her menstrual impurity. So what did I do? What did God do? God poured out His wrath on them. I poured out my wrath because of the blood they had shed and for the idols that they had worshipped, which they had defiled in the land. So what do you do? I scattered them among the nations. They were dispersed through the countries in accordance with their ways, in accordance with their deeds. I judged them. Wow, man. God poured out His wrath by scattering them from the land that He had promised them. He put them in bondage. They were taken in captivity. You know, we also find that in verse 20 that the nation of Israel were supposed to be a people who represented God accurately. Verse 20 says, But when they came to the nations wherever they came, they profaned My holy name, and the people said of them, These are the people of the Lord. And yet they had to go out of His land. Isn't that something? Here's the special nation of God that He's given them land. They're supposed to represent Him accurately. They rebel and disobey against God. They're sent off into captivity, and they go among the pagan, heathen nations of the world, and they laugh at God, and they laugh at the people, and they say, you're supposed to be the people of God, and your own God kicked you out of His land? And so the name of God and the holiness of God was profaned because of their actions. And even in the land where they went, they turned to idolatry and all the rest. Then you find in verse 21, you see this motivation of God come more to light. What does it say, verse 21? But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations to which they came. 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 the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. So here's God speaking to His people that He's put in judgment there in these foreign lands. And God says, I am going to do something to you that's going to show the world, that's going to show the people, Who I truly am. In other words, God says, through you, you are going to represent me accurately. I'm going to do something in your life that's going to vindicate my holy name, because right now you are misrepresenting me. I am the one true and holy God, the Father of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. and all of their offspring through you. You have profaned my name. You've worshipped idols. You've done all of these horrible deeds. And so God comes along and He says, I'm going to do something to vindicate my holy name. And what I'm going to do, it's going to be a great blessing, but it's not primarily for you. It's primarily for me. It's primarily so that I would be glorified. And so we learn the lesson here that God does what He does in salvation. Because what He's about to do in this text is to teach us the reality of salvation in Jesus Christ. And so God is concerned about His holy name. God is concerned about being represented properly in the world. God saves sinners and does what He does. The motivation behind that is so that people would truly represent God as He ought to be represented. Well, how does that happen? It happens through the third thing that I want you to see, which is the change that happens to us in our salvation. And you come to these glorious verses in verse 24 to 28. So God says, I'm about to act. Verse 24 to 28 shows you exactly how He's going to act. Look at it again. Here's what I'm going to do. This is what I'm going to do. God speaking, I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit and I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and be careful to obey My rules. And you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be My people, and I will be your God." You see, this is the picture of regeneration. This is the picture of God intervening in the lives of these sinful people and changing their life so that they represent Him properly in the world for the sake of His great name among the heathen. You see, God's motivation, again, it's for His own glory. It's for His name. It's so that the world would see the glory, the true glory of Almighty God. So how does God go about doing this? Well, God has to change people. He has to change the core disposition of their life so that they can represent God properly. And so here in the context, in this passage of the nation of Israel, we find that the nation of Israel has not been doing this. They haven't been representing God properly. So God says, I'm going to break into your life and I'm going to change you because that's the only way that you will represent me as I ought to be represented. You see, here's the issue with fallen mankind. We are created in the image of God, but because of our sin, if we are going to represent God accurately, We have to be changed. The core disposition of our life, the operating principle of our life has to be changed. Now when you think about this passage, this prophecy passage, you have to understand today that this hasn't happened for the nation of Israel as a whole yet. You see, they're in a season, again, of rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ. Now there's a small remnant that has. There are some that God has had mercy on that have embraced the Lord Jesus Christ. And again, one day they're going to do it in full. And the whole world will look upon that nation who are converted and changed and they will represent God as God says they will in this passage right here. This hasn't happened yet, but it will. The people will once again look at the nation of Israel and those who are converted out of that nation will say, wow, there are some of God's people right there. You see, this is the purpose of the New Covenant promises that we find in our text, so that men and women would be changed so they can represent God properly. You see, God does the exact same thing to people now who are being grafted into the New Covenant, Gentiles. You see, before Jesus Christ came and found you, think of what your life was before that. A heathen, a sinful person who did not represent God properly. And so what God had to do in your life, He had to come and He had to regenerate you. And He had to change you, He had to convert you, He had to change your life so that now you operate in a way that represents God who He is. And by the way, if you are a Christian here today and you're living in such a way that God is not being represented accurately, understand that God will discipline you. Lovingly. Patiently. But the Bible teaches us in Hebrews 12 that the Lord disciplines those that He loves. And He chastises every son that He receives. Isn't that true? Doesn't a loving father or a loving mother discipline their child? If they love them, they do. If you don't love your child, you just let them do whatever they want to do and they'll grow up to be a monster of wickedness. But see, God has love for those who He calls to Himself, and so He disciplines. As a matter of fact, the text goes on to say, if a person is a professing Christian and they live their life without any kind of discipline at all, then you are an illegitimate child and not a true son. The King James says you're a bastard and not a son. So if you are here today and you say that you've been saved, and you've been changed in your life, but there's no evidence of that change, and you can continue on in sin, and you can do all of those things and bring reproach upon the God that you claim has saved you, and there's no intervening discipline from Him, then you're a deceived liar and are still in your sin. God doesn't let His children run wild. A basic truth from scripture but unheard of in the modern pulpits today. Don't you fear today as you sit in the pew that this is the exact situation for so many professing Christians. So many people, maybe that 70% that are on the church roll that we talked about earlier, and maybe even many that are in the doors of the church. You see, it's impossible to be a Christian and not have these changes demonstrated in your life that the Bible says will be there if you're truly converted. Because 2 Corinthians 5.17 says, if any man's in Christ, he's what? He's a new creature. You know, I use this example a lot with people and it seems to be helpful. You know, if me and you had a dinner appointment at Cracker Barrel, it's at 12 o'clock. And I don't show up. It's 12.15, it's 12.30, it's 12.45 and finally I come. Here I am 10 minutes to 1 and I show up. And you say, Kyle, we were supposed to meet at 12 and you're late. What happened? But I show up and I'm in my suit and I kind of look like I do today. You know, like I look halfway decent. And I say to you, and I say, well listen, let me tell you why I'm late. I was out driving in my car, and I pulled out in front of a log truck. And the log truck hammered me on the side of my car, flipped four times. I ended up in the ditch upside down. The jaws of life came and they pulled me out, but I was able to get out of the car and make it here by now. But I'm sorry I'm 45 minutes late. If I pitched that story to you, what would you say to me? You're a liar. How could you have an encounter with a log truck and not have any scratches or marks or cuts in your clothing? My friend, in the same way, how can a person claim to have an encounter with the living God and not have marks on their life to prove it? So you see, if God causes a person to be saved, He doesn't merely save them from hell to heaven. Salvation isn't just a ticket punch out of hell and then on back to what I want to do with salvation comes a change in a man's life in the here and now. Evidence. You can see it. It's there. A new disposition to sin and a new disposition to godliness is seen in a person's life. So how does God change people then? If God does change people, which hopefully you're convinced of now, already from this passage, how does God do that? What does regeneration look like? Look in our text again in verse 24 and 25. The first mark is that there will be separation and cleansing from the world and all of its filth. He says, I will take you from the nations, and that's a picture of being a part of the pagan world, and I will gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all of your idols I will cleanse you. You see what he's saying? When God pulls somebody out of an old life of sin, He comes and He cleans up their life, He gives them full forgiveness, begins to clean up all of the mess in their life. Galatians chapter 1 verse 4, the Bible says, Jesus who gave Himself for our sins, listen to this, to deliver us from this present evil age according to the will of God and our Father. You see, God saves us from unholiness to holiness. James 1.27, he says that religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, listen to this, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. You see, a true Christian comes out of all of those different things. This is the case for every true believer. There's separation, there's cleansing, and then that becomes a test for us to examine our life to see if we're in the faith. 1 John chapter 2 verse 15 and 16, what does he say? Do not love the world or the things of the world. Haven't you heard this? If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. You see, God pulls people out of this worldly system that they were engaged in before. So there will be, number one, separation and cleansing from the world and all of its filth. But then secondly, you see as you look in verse 26 that God, while He's doing the separation as He pulls us out of all of that mess, we learn from the Scriptures that He does the internal work of giving a man a new heart with new righteous and holy affections. Look at verse 26. I'll give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Now we're back to what? George Whitfield read from that book, The Life of God and the Soul of Man. You see, God comes to work in a person's life and He changes the internal disposition of a person. It's as if I had a stone statue up here of a man. And I came up here and I kicked the statue and punched the statue and yelled at the statue and said, do something. All of my efforts would fail, but God comes along and He snaps His finger through the blowing of the power of the Spirit. And now all of a sudden, that man of stone is turned into a man of heart and flesh. Life of God now has been given into the soul of the man. This is what God does on the inside of a person. He literally reaches inside of their life and He takes out the old stony heart and He puts in a heart of flesh, a heart that's alive and that responds to God, a heart that tunes in to the spiritual station. of God. It tunes into heaven. Being dead in one's trespasses and sins is no more because now they've been given life. The life of God in the soul of man. Oh my friends, examine yourself today to see. Look on the inside and check your internal disposition. Check your internal affections today. Have they been changed? Do you sit here today? Do you love God? Do you love the things of God? Or are you bored with the things of God? Are you bored? Or are you in tune with the things of God? Listen, is your religion today out of dreadful duty? Or do you love God for who God is and for what He's done in Jesus Christ? 1 John again in chapter 5 verse 3 says, this is the love of God that we keep His commandments. Listen to this. And His commandments are not burdensome. You know how many people think of the commandments of God and what they would call the rules of Christianity. Being too strict and being too hard and too narrow and too rigid. But you see the true Christian comes along and because they had such a terror and a fear of sin, they see the laws of God and the statutes of God and the truths of God and they love those things. Because the internal disposition of their heart has been changed. But someone who's faking it, somebody who's only got the profession but doesn't have the substance, They might confate it on the outside, but the inside is full of rottenness. It's full of dead men's bones. There's no affections. There's no desire for the thing of God. And the things of God are burdensome to them. Do we have to go to church? Do I have to put money in the offering plate? Do I have to do this? Do I have to read my Bible? Do I have to pray? Where the true Christian comes along and says, Thank God I get to go to church. Thank God I get to put money in the offering prayer I play. Thank God I can commune with the Father through prayer. Thank God I have the Word. Thank God I have Christ as a treasure. Do you see the difference? Amen is right. Come to verse 27 and 28, you see a third thing. And that is that the internal change that I've just described reveals itself in an external change. This internal power of the life of God in a converted man will bring about changes in external behavior, listen to me, from a sinful lifestyle to a practical righteous one. And it becomes a pattern of life that always continues. You hear that? There's real change on the inside that produces this change on the outside. Look at verse 27. I'll put my spirit within you. He already said that. But here's what he does. Look at it. And cause you to walk in my statutes. And be careful to obey my rules. Isn't that something? God says, I will cause you to walk in my ways. There will be a new guiding position, a new something in your life that will cause you, that will change your behavior. Something that shows up on the outside. You know, if we were looking at the double doors back there, and there was a pig behind the doors, and we opened up the doors, and over on this side I have a gourmet plate of food, and on this side I have a bucket of slop, and we let the pig come through the door, where's he going to go? He's going to go to the bucket of slop, because he's a pig, and that's what a pig does. But the glory of the Gospel, snap the fingers and the man becomes, or the pig becomes a man. Now what does he do? The bucket of slop that he's had his head down in, now he lifts it up and he's a man. And a man doesn't eat slop. What does he do? He comes over to the gourmet plate of food. Why? Because things have been changed. He's been changed at the core. And so externally he no longer goes to those things that he wallered in before he became a man. You see, I just described Christianity. God comes along and He changes us from sinners to saints. He changes the core disposition of our life. Titus 2, 11 and 12, the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us, listen, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly in the present age. We say no to the things that we used to love and we say yes to the things we used to hate. That's true Christianity. Again, notice the words in verse 27, walk and obey. Also in verse 28, you will dwell. You see, this is the picture of ongoing. Something that happens continually. It's a persevering kind of a relationship. That's the idea. It's a new lifestyle. There's new things that are going on here. It's a new change in behavior. But it goes to a deeper level in a person's life that that behavior has a continual element to it. I like this phrase, when someone becomes a Christian, it's not that they enter into perfection, but they enter into a lifestyle pattern of righteousness leading them to a new direction. Christians aren't perfect. We still sin, we still fall. The difference is that we get up and we continue going in the direction of holiness because of the work of grace of Christ to keep us on the narrow path. You know, it's kind of like, I love this illustration as well. Imagine somebody in our congregation was re-roofing their home. You know, I'm standing out there and I've got my camera and I catch them right in the moment where they're putting down a shingle and they hit their thumb with their hammer. And so they take their hammer, they throw it down on the ground, they grab their thumb and they start yelling out some things maybe that they shouldn't say. And I take my camera and I start taking pictures real quick. I get them developed and I come back and I hold them up and say, look at this, you're not a Christian. Look at this. Look at all that you did. But if I was standing out there with a video camera, and if I was filming, and I was watching for hours at a time, that wouldn't be the norm. You see, the normal reality for a true Christian is that they continue in the things of God. They persevere. Colossians chapter 1, verse 21 to 23, And you who are once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, He is now reconciled in the body of His flesh by His death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him, if indeed you continue in the faith stable, steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you have heard. Can it be any more clear than that? Again, this is another one of those things, as I told you earlier, to give you the tools to examine your life by. This should be a test of the faith, to look at the external behaviors of your life and see the direction and see the patterns of your life. Are they towards godliness? Are they towards holiness? It's a test of genuine faith. 1 John 3, 6-9. No one who abides in Him keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God." Wow! You see, there's a new operating principle on the inside that God keeps us on the path. That God causes us to walk in His ways. You know, a lot of people at this point would pop up and say, Brother Kyle, it sounds like you're preaching a work salvation. That, you know, you're telling people that they have to live up to some kind of standard, that they have to do this. And in case that's what you think, let me remind you of this passage. Who does it say does this? God says, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will. This is not the effort of some sinner. Sure, we cooperate, we participate in our sanctification as God moves and we obey, but who is the prime mover of the whole deal? Philippians 1.6, He who began a work in you will bring it to completion. It's God who causes us to persevere. And He does this in the lives of those people who have been changed. And the evidence that He has done this work of conversion shows up with you cooperating with His purposes in a continual pattern of righteous behavior all the days of your life. Fourth change in verse 28. You'll dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers. Underline this last phrase. You shall be my people and I will be your God. You see, the picture here now is a relationship with God. A living, vibrant, active relationship with Almighty God. In other words, we could say that when God truly does this work of regeneration in a person's life, God becomes the focus of all of life. You probably thought I'd never say it, but as we close, let me ask you. I know that today this has been a serious sermon. It's been a lot of things to think about, a lot of deep truths of the Scripture. We've covered a lot of ground today, but I want to ask you, as you look at this passage, as you look at the Scripture, have you been regenerated? Have you been born again? Have you experienced the changing power of God in your life? Listen to me. Or do you have an empty shell of religion with no evidences to prove your conversion? Are the evidences that we find in the text, are they given in your life? Or do you only have a form of godliness that denies the power? Is your Christianity just nominal Christianity, cultural Christianity? Or do you have the real thing? Are you deceived like I was from age 10 to 29? Would you be the kind of person that if you died and you stood before Jesus Christ, He would say, I do not know you. You're standing before Him and you say, Lord, Lord, all of these things that we have done. And He declares to you, I never knew you. Depart from Me. Your life has proven to be a life of nothing but iniquity. Do you see the seriousness of that? Do you see the fear of that? Have you experienced these changes that are mentioned in the text because of a regenerating work of Almighty God? Have you undergone this salvation? Have you experienced this separation and this cleansing from the world to a loving, favorable relationship with Almighty God? Has God done this internal work of washing you clean and giving you a new spirit that walks in His ways and keeps His statutes and all the rest? Or are you bored with the things of God? Has the internal power of God's Spirit in this life that He's given you, has it brought about this external change in behavior? Is it there? Are the sinful lifestyle patterns beginning to fall to the wayside because of this conversion? My friend, if these realities are not in your life today, then you are unconverted. And you need the new birth. You're at the mercy of God. And you need to call out to Him. You need to call out and you need to ask Him. Jesus Himself said that a man who's not born again will not enter into the Kingdom of God. There is no way to get in. You're barred out if you haven't been born again, if you haven't been regenerated. See, Jesus upheld this doctrine of regeneration so much so that He said a man would not be in the Kingdom of God if he didn't experience it. He didn't say if you haven't prayed a prayer or walked an aisle. He said if you haven't been born again. You see, this doctrine is important. It's the difference between life and death, salvation or damnation. It's that important. Have you had it? Have you been there? Will you examine yourself today? Will you shine the light of gospel truth upon the activities of your life and of your mind and the internal workings of your affections and say, are my affections godly? Are they holy? Are they there? revealed to you that they are not. The great promise of the Gospel says, Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Romans chapter 10, verse 13. For everyone, for whosoever, shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. All that the Father has given to me shall come to me. And him that comes to me, I will in no wise cast out. My friend, if you've been exposed today, call out to the Lord and he will save you. Let's pray. Dear Father, Lord, we thank you today for your word. God, I pray that you would take this attempt today to preach these truths and that you would magnify them in our hearts and minds. Father, I pray that you would do a work. Lord, I pray that you would give Christians discernment so that they can understand the lay of the land that we face. And Lord, for those who may be professing Christians that don't actually know you, Father, I pray that you turn on the lights. Father, I pray that they would come to see the truths of scripture and would call out to you for salvation. Lord, thank you for saving me. Thank you for your grace. Give you praise and glory for that. Lord, go with us now. Help us to think on you all the day long. And we ask all these things in Christ's name. Amen.