Regeneration

… In from Titus, chapter 3 Jesus Christ, our Saviour That being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life And two verses in Jude's Epistle, verses 20 and 21 But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life This afternoon, in verse 16 of the portion we were considering in the first chapter of 1 Timothy, we had mercy connected with eternal life It is in order that we might consider two more verses where we get this connection that I have read these portions In Titus 3, I began with verse 3, so that we might remind ourselves of the terrible condition we were in prior to our conversion And see, brought out into greater relief, the tremendous loving disposition of God toward us, in accordance with which He has saved us What a terrible condition the world is in This afternoon, George reminded us that verse 4 of 1 Timothy, chapter 1, speaks of God's dispensation which is in faith The word is explicitly economy In recent years, we have seen the economies of Eastern Europe, then Russia, collapse The economy of the United States is still very shaky This past week, the United Kingdom withdrew from the ERM In its entry into the ERM, Britain was guided by professors of economics The Lord Jesus is beyond all professors of economics, He is the greatest of all, and controls God's economy, which is in faith As we read and consider verse 3 of this chapter in Titus, it truly humbles us When we think of where we were, we can think of some of us, indeed we used to mock at the Lord's people even Then God in His wonderful grace and mercy met us, and we became part of God's people Just like Ruth who could say to Naomi, thy God shall be my God, thy people shall be my people It is a very blessed thing to be among the Lord's people, to be one of the Lord's people As we consider this terrible condition we are in, we are filled with praise and worship when we consider the great but of verse 4 There we learn that the kindness and love to man, as it should read, of our Saviour God has appeared How kind God is, and how kind God has been to us, words fail us to describe His kindness And then to think of His love, it is love to man here, true philanthropy We have philanthropic societies in this world, but man cannot be philanthropic, only God can There is another word for God's love which we do not find in classical Greek It's a special word, a special word had to be indicted to describe God's love God is a Saviour God, brethren, preach Him as a Saviour God Is there a Sunday School teacher here? Bring before your Sunday School children, God is a Saviour God Dear brethren, let us speak to people at work, or as we are travelling, we meet them in shops, our neighbours Let us bring before them that God is a Saviour God, bent on their blessing Think of the words of Isaiah 45, bring before us a just God and a Saviour Look unto me, all ye the ends of the earth, and be ye saved, for I am God, and there is none else The scripture goes on to say that it is not my works of righteousness which we have done, oh how readily we acknowledge and know that But it is according to His mercy that He saved us, He met us in all our need Like Esther of old, the sector of mercy has been extended to us We might think of these words trembling, we had hope for mercy God is rich in mercy, for His great love for us, He has loved us We know this salvation necessitated the death of our Lord Jesus Christ and Calvary's cross, the shedding of His precious blood Here Paul looks at us, goes beyond this, he looks at us as needing to be released, to be cleansed from moral pollution Brings in the washing of regeneration, we are bathed all over, made fit morally for the presence of God We are given a new holy nature, commensurate with God's holiness The word regeneration is not new birth, it is being placed in a new position The renewal is similar to the thought of a new man, something of a new kind is brought in A new kind of condition that we are in, a new kind of state that we are brought into And it is from the Holy Ghost And this renewing goes on, we were initially renewed but it continues And we see this in the 2nd Corinthians 4 where Paul could say, the outward man perish yet the inward man is renewed day by day And God has poured it on us richly, which He has shed on us abundantly God does not deal in half measures, God is rich in mercy, He is rich in grace, rich in glory, rich in goodness And then He's brought out that there in the end of that verse 6 It's through Jesus Christ our Saviour, that's for we have God our Saviour, here we have Jesus Christ our Saviour What a wonderful Saviour is Jesus Then beginning of verse 7 He says, that being justified by His grace Oh isn't that a precious thing that we are justified by His grace There are some that would try and make out that Titus was not written by Paul But here clearly we have this thought of justification, this blessed truth of justification is by God's grace This is something that is unique to Paul James speaks about justification by works, John and Peter never mention justification It's alone, Paul alone brings out this blessed truth And then it says that we should be made heirs Isn't that precious, we've got a title to it, a right and a title We're going to come into our wonderful full blessing It's a hope, it's hope of eternal life here Something that is a hope as we all know in the Bible is a sure and certain thing It's not a vain matter, it's a sure and certain hope And it's a hope of eternal life Well we have eternal life now as John tells us But Paul always brings it before us as something that we're going on to There's no question that we have it John 5 verse 24 Verily I say unto you, he that heareth my word and believeth in him that sent me hath everlasting life And shall not come into condemnation but is passed out of death into life And then think again of that precious word in John 10 I give unto my sheep eternal life and they shall never perish Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand My Father who gave them me is greater than all And no man can pluck them out of my Father's hand But there is an extensiveness in this eternal life And we will enter into this extensiveness in all its blessed fullness in the coming day What a blessed enjoyment for our souls May we enjoy it more and more Let us now turn to Jude's epistle And verses 20 and 21 We have four things in here I've often likened them to the four anchors in Acts 27 that refer to the stern He has four anchors to stabilize and keep our souls in these last days Because Jude is written for the last days We see the terrible catalog The very sorry catalog of the wickedness of man Right through the earlier verses from verse 4 onwards Then we come to another very wonderful and blessed but But ye beloved, Jude addresses them as beloved Very precious He goes on to say building up yourselves in your most holy faith Oh how precious that is We need to be built up in this don't we today All the wonderful truths of scripture We need to get them into our souls By knee drill By reading God's word, fellowshiping with him, studying the word of God We can look around and we see young men and people who go into gymnasium To build up their bodies, body building But we have got to be built up in a spiritual way In our most holy faith And then he says praying in the Holy Ghost And all the power that comes from the Holy Ghost And there would be a fervency associated with it A fervency associated with this blessed praying There is a reality in it, not a ritual Of course in this matter of prayer, you know when we get together to pray We don't tell God what he knows already And we don't lecture the saints or parade our knowledge of scripture There has got to be a sense of urgency, real definite requests James speaks about praying with prayer And then we have this wonderful thought of keep yourselves in the love of God We have various references to keeping ourselves in the scripture We have got to keep ourselves pure in 1st Timothy 5 And keep ourselves unspotted from the world in James 1 Here there is something that we have got to keep ourselves in it We have got to keep ourselves in the love of God In all that wonderful ocean of the love of God You remember the explorer Speak I think it was he traced the Nile to its source He started at the massive delta, the great delta And when he got to the source in Lake Victoria he said There is more at the source than at the end Dear Beloved, we have got to get right into the love of God There is a vast ocean there As they used to say up here when I was a young man Get into it Now for the sake of you dear brethren from south of the border I better say it means get into things It is a well known saying among us by earlier brethren You get what you are going for Dear brethren, particularly young ones Go in for the things of God Get immersed in the love of God That it may flow out and move us And then we come to this 4th anchor Mr. Hall referred to it as the crowning act of the mercy of God I am grateful to Jim for reminding me this afternoon, earlier today That the last mention of the mercy of God is here in Jude And just to think of it The Lord Jesus will come again And come into the air to call us away He is going to visit this scene Or really come into the air and take us out of this scene Terrible wicked scene You know some old, dear old saints Find it difficult getting to the meetings The way they are jostled and pushed around and things like that But a sad world as we read about it We are going to be taken out of it The wonderful crowning act of the mercy of God Dear beloved, are we looking for him? Not only waiting for him Are we looking for him? Looking for the mercy of our Lord I am always reminded I expect it used to be done here in earlier days Here in Conducte Certainly was done in Cookenzie when I was a boy down at Swan's End All the fisher wives would get down there Looking out for the boats for the husbands coming in They were looking Dear beloved, are we looking for the Saviour to come? May we do so For his name's sake …