A Child of God's New Nature

Well, I'm really enjoying being with you folks here at Beacon. I'm sorry that I called your church Beacon Hill.

It's just Beacon. I really like your pastors. First time I've ever met, the only pastor I knew was Pastor Carnes. And so, first time I've met Greg Barkman and his wife. I really like him except for the fact that he smirks when he says that I'm pastor at Bullet Lick.

I know that he's just trying to hide the pain. The Bullet Lick, as I told you yesterday, Bullet is a man's name. And the lick refers to the fact that there was a salt lick there. So, salt production, very, very important in colonial America.

And the salt lick there at Bullet Lick Baptist Church, I believe was the first industry west of the Alleghenies. And so, it's a very august name and I'm sorry that I'm sorry that you don't see that. Do open your Bibles now to the book of 2 Peter chapter 1. I'm going to quote a couple of stanzas, one from one hymn, another from another hymn. They're both very favorite hymns of mine.

I love them both. One of them I'm sure that you'll recognize right away. But the hymn writer in each of these stanzas refers to himself by a very unflattering term. And so, let's see if you pick up on what that is. I love both of those hymns. And so, not only do they share in common the fact that the hymn writer refers to himself as a worm, but there's something else that those hymns share in common. And it would require my quoting the entire text for you to pick up on it.

And even then, you may not. But so, I'll tell you what both of those hymns are about. Both of those hymns are about someone recognizing his need to be able to speak.

His need for Christ and coming to Christ. So, neither one of those hymns is a hymn that is describing the experience of a mature believer. But instead, at the conclusion of alas and did my savior bleed, the drops of grief can ne'er repay the debt of love I owe. Here, Lord, I give myself away.

Tis all that I can do. And if you're familiar with the hymn that concludes a guilty, weak, and helpless worm, then you'd also see that that is a hymn about conversion. I do think that it is appropriate for us to think of ourselves before conversion in very ignominious terms, despicable even. To look upon ourselves with wonder at the horridness of our sinfulness and the audacity of our rebellion against God so that we search for appropriate terms to describe how bad we feel about ourselves while we have been in rebellion against God.

That is entirely appropriate. After a person is converted, the Bible never refers to that person as a worm. And if you heard me preach yesterday morning or if you have read my book when I explained about total depravity, then you know I believe in it. I believe that we are dead in trespasses and in sins. I believe that our will is bound by sinfulness. I believe that our mind is darkened.

I believe that our affections are perverted. I firmly believe that left to ourselves, we would never come to God. And Jesus said, unless the Father draws him, no one will come to Jesus.

Unless no one can come to me, unless the Father who sent me draws him. So I'm a firm believer in what the Bible teaches about the depravity of man. My fear is that sometimes we hide behind the depravity of man and use it as an excuse for our mediocre living. We will shrug our shoulders and say, well, after all, I'm just the depraved sinner. What should anyone expect from someone like me?

I'm going to tell you a story about your potential. Hear what the Word of God says when it says, behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us that we should be called the sons of God. And that is what we are.

So there is a time when it is appropriate for you to be amazed that you could be so vile and that you might even refer to yourself as a worm. But there is a time when you are to look up into the face of God and say, thank you, thank you for making me your child and for not just changing my eternal address, but for changing my nature. Remember that eternal life is not merely a matter of how long you live.

It is a matter of where you live. Eternal life is a matter of your nature being changed so that you now live in harmony with the God of eternal life. You live in harmony with him and that commences even on earth.

Even now our natures have been changed. And as I said yesterday, the greatest evidence that you're on your way to heaven is that you are now being made into a person who can enjoy living there. I remember when I was a little boy, I asked my parents what heaven would be like. And they said, oh, there'll be singing there. I wouldn't be surprised if there was preaching there. We are going to worship God and worship Jesus throughout eternity. And I thought to myself, church? Heaven is eternal church? That doesn't sound very appealing to me. And honestly, I've been in a whole lot of church services that couldn't be over soon enough for me to suit me. But the prospect of worshiping the Lord forever without interruption is still something that I cannot quite conceive of doing.

But I look forward to being the kind of person who can do that. And the process has commenced. Around the throne there are four living creatures who day and night, and these are creatures that are full of eyes. They know things.

They're full of eyes. And day and night they never cease to say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Can we conceive of such endless enthrallment with beauty that we are filled to saying day and night without ceasing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty? I have to come at it backwards. I have to think, I can conceive of never ending misery.

I can think about how terrible that would be. I'm starting to see it, and I hope that the Lord helps us to see even more of it, of what kind of persons we are going to be to be able to enjoy in ecstatic pleasure the beauty and the intensity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. I do believe that our natures have been changed, and I think that there is enormous potential for motivation to sanctification for us to realize the great honor that has been bestowed upon us. As I quoted from 1 John, behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us.

How amazing this is that we have been called the sons and daughters of God. I remember when I was in junior high school. The school was a little bit old. The school was a little bit dumpy, maybe more than a little bit dumpy. People would write on the bathroom walls.

Boys were always smoking in the boys' restroom and never went in the women's restroom, but I wouldn't be surprised if they smoked in there as well. There's just kind of a sense of, this is kind of a dumpy building, and we're crazy eighth and ninth graders, and everybody expects us to act like animals, so we will. And then, so in the 10th grade, we went to the high school, and it was a fairly new building, spotless clean, no writing on the bathroom walls. There was a designated smoking area outside this school, so nobody smoked in the restrooms, and the principal was someone who was just unbelievably optimistic about how much potential we had. And in the ninth grade, people were getting paddled all the time. There were just, it was the days when teachers would administer corporal punishment, but when we went to the high school, nobody ever got paddled.

And I've thought back on that, and what's the difference? And I think that at least part of the difference is that there was an expectation that we were going to behave like young adults, and there was an administration in place and a faculty in place and a facility, all of which said, we're expecting great things of you. We're expecting great things of you.

And so many of us tried to live up to those expectations. That's the kind of motivation that I think is potential in our realizing that God has adopted us into his family, and he has changed our natures, and he really is causing us to participate in the divine nature. And that seems almost too good to be true, but it's right here in the Bible, 2 Peter chapter 1 verse 3. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, or you may have a translation that says by his own glory and excellence.

When I get to that, I'll try to point out to you that the preposition doesn't matter. Who called us to or by his own glory and excellence or virtue, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises. So that through them, note this, you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire, because of sinful desire. There, I'm going to group all of the thoughts that are in here around three major ideas, and the first one is the provision that God has made. And then secondly, the means by which this provision is communicated to us. And then thirdly, the goal of this provision. So there's provision, means and goal. First of all, let's take a look at what this text says about the provision that has been made for us. It is an ample provision.

It is an abundant provision. His divine power has granted to us all things. So however we may fall short in the expectations that are set before us in this text, it's not for lack of resources.

It must be some other reason, but it's not for lack of resources because he has abundantly and amply provided for us all things. It says all things that are necessary that pertain to life and godliness. Now, the Bible uses the word death to refer to our state of spiritual separation from God. We are separated from God like dead people are separated from living people. Bible uses the word death to refer to our inability to resurrect ourselves. Similarly, the Bible uses the word life to talk about the reunion or the reconciliation of the dead with the living. We've been brought from death to life. It uses the word life to refer to the powers that have now been conveyed upon us by the work of the Holy Spirit. And we are not we are not saved because of this infusion of power in us. We are saved because of something that has happened outside of us already. So let me be very clear about this, lest there be any misunderstanding.

We are saved because of the righteous things that someone else has done. Years ago, I was teaching English as a second language in a in a classroom, and there were students from all around the world who were in there. And after the class one day, a couple of Muslim boys and a girl who was from Romania came up to me and one of the Muslim boys said to me, Why are you a Christian? Have you ever read the Koran?

He asked me. I said, Well, I've read bits of the Koran, but there's something about Christianity that sets it apart from every other religion in the world. And it was at the end of class.

I turned around and I drew on the board one of those old world scales that has a fulcrum in the middle, a beam on top and two plates hanging down. And I said, every religion in the world has a conception of how to get right with God that goes like this. God will put all of your good things on one of these plates and he'll put all of your bad things on the other plate. And when you die, if you have more good things than bad things, then you get to go to a good place.

But if you have more bad things than good things, then you have to go to a bad place. The Muslims nodded their head in agreement that that was what they believed. And the girl from Romania said, Yes, that's exactly what my religion teaches. And I said, But with Christianity, it's not that way. With Christianity, we get to go to a good place when we die. Not because of the good things that we have done, but because of the good things that someone else has done and that someone else is Jesus Christ.

And he lived a perfect life. And in his death, he not only bore the penalty for the sins of his people, but he also laid the foundation to bequeath a perfect righteousness to those who trust in him. So we are saved because of what someone else has done. But when you are saved by faith, you are united to Christ. And when you are united to Christ, his qualities, his nature, to use the word of my text, his nature begins to flow into you so that you are transformed. And if that transformation doesn't take place, then the connection has not been made. There is a transformation that takes place in everyone who receives the imputed righteousness of Christ. Everyone whose sins are borne by Christ and who is united to Christ, the savior. So but everyone who is saved receives a package that says, Here are all things that pertain to life.

You've been reunited with the father. You have been given the equipment that you need to to live a life of fellowship with God and godliness. Now, have you ever thought about what must have been the etymology of godliness? Where did that word come from? Well, I bet if you think about it for 20 seconds that you'll think it's probably a contraction of the phrase God-likeness.

And you would be correct. So godliness is God-likeness. And so we all know that the Bible teaches that we humans have been created in the image of God. There was an original likeness with God. Maybe we'll explore a little bit more what that means, but that that God-likeness, while not totally obliterated, was badly mangled in the fall. So that we still retain kind of like a broken mirror will still reflect the image of whoever is standing in front of it. But it's all been distorted.

And so that has what that's what has happened to us in the fall. We still retain vestiges of the image of God so that I think it's fair to say that every human being is created in the image of God. But in persons who have been born again, that that mirror is being glued together in such a way that it reflects the image more perfectly. And so it's not done all at once. But bit by bit through through the days and through the years as we walk with the Lord, as we behold, as in a mirror, the image of the Lord, we are changed from one degree of glory into another. As we look at the Lord Jesus Christ, we are changed into his image and his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and God-likeness. There's an ample provision and it is powered by an infinite power. Because it says that his divine power has provided these things for us. But let's imagine that all of these, these wonderful things that have been provided for us in life and godliness are all stored up in a warehouse that is locked tight. And there is an ample supply.

They're never going to run out any time any of those provisions are taken out. There is a fresh supply that is put in there. As I think about that, I'm reminded of a place where I was asked to speak at a men's retreat a couple of years ago. And beside the men's retreat flowed a stream.

I'm just trying to see how I can compare. It's almost as wide as this middle section of pews. It was a fairly wide stream, flowing strong about knee deep. And that stream was in fact a spring. It just came gushing out of the ground. So I walked to the source of it and just out of the ground gushing thousands and thousands of this crystal clear water that you could just get down on your knees and drink right out of the creek. And what if you just took a gallon bucket and dipped up that?

You're not even going to notice it. There's such an abundant supply of water. That's the way it is with all of these things that are provided for us so that we might have life and godliness.

His divine power is the source of all of these things. But in my illustration, just imagine that they're all locked up in a warehouse. What good are they going to do us locked up in that warehouse? Well, the next part of this text tells us the means by which these benefits are conveyed to us. So let's look at what it says.

We looked at the provision and it's an abundant provision from an illimitable source. Now, how do we get it? Through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence. Now that's talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is through knowing him that these benefits that are in the storehouse of God's mercies are conveyed to us. Many of these benefits that are in the storehouse are benefits that Christ himself has purchased, the forgiveness of sins, the imputation of righteousness.

Oh, so much grace that is stored up in this warehouse. How do we get it all? It is through knowing about Jesus.

I said the wrong thing, didn't I? It's not through knowing about Jesus. It's through knowing Jesus. It's through the knowledge of him. John 17 three. This is eternal life that they may know you.

The only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I highly value doctrine. But, you know, you can be you can be really wrong about some important doctrines and still go to heaven. One of my favorite books, Pilgrim's Progress. I told you yesterday that the life of God and the soul of man is one of 10 books that you ought to read before you die. If you've never read Pilgrim's Progress, that's the second one that you should read that right away.

And in Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan writes about a man first time we meet him is called Christian, even though he's still living in the city of destruction. He he's very distressed about his sin and that distress about his sin is represented as a great burden that's on his back. And he meets a man named evangelist who points him to the wicket gate. And Christian goes to the wicket gate. He goes through the wicket gate. He still has the burden on his back after he goes through the wicket gate. And after some adventures, he goes to he sees the cross and at the cross, his burden falls off his back and rolls into a sepulcher that is there. And so I have studied that book many times with thoughtful students and I asked them, where in this story does Christian become a Christian?

Where does it happen? And the students almost always will say, well, it's at the cross because that's where he lost his burden. I said, well, you misunderstand what the burden is. The burden is not sin in itself. The burden is the consciousness and shame of sin.

So that's how he can go through the wicket gate, which wicket means small, like a wicket in croquet. So he can go through this small gate and he still has his burden because he still has not understood how he can legitimately be rid of his burden, even though he's on the straight and narrow way. So since he doesn't know, he still retains the consciousness of his sin. And but at the cross, he understands some things. He understands substitutionary penal atonement and he understands imputed righteousness. And students will want to argue with me that, no, he's not saved until he gets to the cross because you can't be saved without the cross. I agree, you cannot be saved without the cross.

But then I ask my students and I'm not asking you to show your hands, I'm just asking you to answer this question in your own head. When you were converted, did you understand substitutionary penal atonement? When you were converted, did you understand imputed righteousness? You say, well, I'm not exactly sure what those things are now.

Well, that's OK. I don't have to explain them right now to make the point of the illustration when I ask you, well, what makes you think that you were saved when you did not yet understand imputed righteousness? What makes you think that you were saved? You say, well, I believed in Jesus.

Good answer. Because the Bible nowhere says, if you come to understand the principles of substitutionary penal atonement and imputed righteousness, you will be saved. Doesn't say that. In fact, there is no doctrinal system per se that the Bible says, if you embrace this doctrinal system, then you will be a Christian. But what does the Bible say? The Bible says he came to his own, but his own did not receive him.

But to as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God. What does the Bible say? God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.

What does the Bible say? What must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

Here's the point that I'm making. Salvation is not granted to you because you receive the right doctrines. Salvation is granted to you because you receive the right person. You receive the right savior. Now, it is true that in order to receive the right savior, you must know something about him. I can't just walk up to someone who's never heard of Jesus and say, you believe in Jesus, you'll be saved. You've got to know something about Jesus in order to receive him.

You must know something like this. You must know that he is a prophet who will teach you the will of God. Let me just ask you as I go through this. Have you received Jesus as a prophet to teach you the will of God?

Are you willing to say whatever you say is true? I'm receiving you as my teacher, my prophet. You must know that Jesus is a priest who has offered a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God. Are you willing to receive Jesus as your priest to offer this sacrifice on your behalf?

It means you've got to give up any ideas of doing it on your own. And that's a hard part for many of us proud humans. Are you willing to receive Jesus as your priest and even now to receive him as a priest who makes intercession for you? That's what a priest does.

Are you willing? You must know something like this, that Jesus is a king, that he doesn't offer you the benefits of going to heaven. He doesn't offer that to you unless you submit to his lordship. You wouldn't be happy in heaven. You wouldn't be happy in heaven unless you do.

Even if you have eternal life that is living forever and you get to live in heaven, you would be miserable in heaven. In order to be happy in heaven, you have got to receive Jesus as your king because he's the king of heaven. Have you received Jesus as your king? Have you received Jesus as your prophet and your priest and your king? Then you have received Christ as he is offered to you as a savior.

And I just want to ask you and I want you to ask your guilty accusing conscience. How else can you receive Jesus? Well, there are many other things that you can learn about him. But when you receive Jesus as the Christ, the anointed one, the anointed prophet, the anointed priest, the anointed king. Then you have received Jesus. You have begun to know him. And through this knowledge of him, through this, it's not just a mental assent to the things that I have said, but it is a it is a submission of yourself and your will. It is a giving of yourself away to him to be your prophet and your priest and your king. And through your knowledge of him. Then there is a change that comes about. You are born again.

You have a new nature that is communicated to you. And it's through the knowledge of him who calls us. Some translations will say by his own glory and virtue. The translation that I'm reading says who calls us to his own glory and excellence. I told you that the preposition doesn't matter.

And here's why. What's being taught there is that Jesus as the God man, Jesus as the son of God, clothed in flesh, lived a life that was full of glory and full of excellence. He was excellent in the way that he pursued God. He was excellent in the way that he obeyed God. He was excellent in the way that he loved God and loved others. He pursued a life of excellence and he attained it. He lived a glorious life. A thing, a created thing is glorious when it fulfills the purpose for which for which God created it. Christ as the God man was glorious when he fulfilled the purpose for which he was sent. He fulfilled it perfectly. He obeyed the father perfectly.

He lived a life that was characterized by glory and by excellence. And now here is what I want you to get in your mind. We're on the racetrack. We're at the starting line getting ready to hear the gun go off. And at the end of the line is Jesus having finished the race in his glory and his excellence. And he says, come on now. This is what I'm calling you to.

You're to be like me. Come, come on. So Jesus is not standing at the finish at the starting line saying, go that way. Instead, he's finished the race.

He's standing at the finish line. He says, come on now. His divine power has given to you all things that pertain to life and godliness. You've come to know me. I've lived a life of glory and virtue. Now I'm calling you to a life of glory and excellence. You know, one of the one of the deep, deep problems with us as Christians is that we never really pursue after excellence. We're too content with mediocrity. The great danger that faces most people in this room is not that you're going to plunge headfirst into some sea of scandalous sin.

That'll happen to some of us. But the great danger that's going to face most of us in this room is that we're just going to slowly dissolve in puddles of mediocrity. When we might have been excellent, we might have walked with God. And instead, we're just content to get to a certain level of a video game. We might have had the pearl of great price. And instead, we are just clinging to our bank accounts and trying to make money. We we might have had the treasure in the field. And instead, we just wanted to grow flowers on another piece of property. In the state of Kentucky, you're only allowed to shoot one buck.

I've discovered a principle. If you're going to shoot a big buck, don't shoot little bucks. And I tell my girls that the girls that are not yet married, I said, don't shoot a little buck. Wait for a big buck. Don't even let those little bucks hang around your tree stand because it gets late in the season and you're getting desperate. And you think, I'm going to shoot one of those little bucks. You'll stop waiting for Mr. Right and settle for Mr.

Right now. And so just don't shoot little bucks. And the principle here is the thing that you do crowds out the thing that you might have done. For better or for worse, that is true.

You might have done something really excellent if you just weren't so caught up in doing stuff that's just OK. But Jesus sets us the example by his life. He calls us by his glory and excellence. He calls us to his glory and excellence. We see him as our great example. So fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him finished the race. He endured the cross, countered the shame of the cross to be a relatively insignificant thing in comparison to the joy that was set before him. And so set before your eyes the glorious goal of this text, which is what we get to now.

So so far we have this great provision. His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Here's its means of conveyance to us through the knowledge of him who called us to or by his own glory and excellence because he lived a life of glorious excellence. He has given to us, look at it there in the text, his very precious and great promises.

He's given us precious and very great promises. Now, what would you do if you knew there was no possibility that you could fail? What would you undertake if you knew there was no possibility that you could fail? Would you try to be an Olympic athlete? Do you try to?

I don't know. What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? Well, because of his glory and virtue, Jesus has secured for us very great and precious promises that say, if you pursue this, you will succeed. If you pursue this, you will get it. You will seek me and you will find me when you search with all your heart. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me. Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find.

Knock and the door will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your child asks you for a piece of bread, is going to give him a scorpion? Or if he asks for a fish, will you give him a snake? If you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him?

Do any of you lack wisdom? Let him ask of God who gives to all freely without upbraiding. Ask that your joy may be full. Up to this point, you've asked for nothing in my name.

Ask and you will receive. The Lord has secured for us these very great and precious promises so that through these, these promises, these truths, these things that reveal Jesus to us and enable us to communicate with him and have faith in him. Through these, you may become partakers of the divine nature. Now, you know what the divine nature is.

It means that you will become like God. Not like God in the way that Satan lied to Eve. Not like God in the foolish aspirations of the people who built the Tower of Babel. But like God in the way that he intended that we should live a life of reason informed by faith. We believe what he says and we build our lives upon these truths. God is truth.

He is light. And in him there is no darkness at all. When you become a participant in the divine nature, then your mind will be filled with light. When you become a partaker of the divine nature, then your will will be renewed so that you are longing for good things. You're desiring good things and you're being weaned away from and sickened by the things that are displeasing to God because you see those things to be the nauseating garbage that they are.

And in fact, it's not just bad things that appear to be nauseating garbage. You begin to say, I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection becoming like him in his death and so somehow to attain to the resurrection of the dead. Not that I've already obtained all this or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. I want I want the righteousness that comes from God through Christ Jesus. Every bit of righteousness that I ever had in comparison to that is just filthy garbage.

It's not to be spoken in the same sentence to be valuable with anything that Christ gives me. Your will's been renewed. You start to think like that. You have begun to partake of the divine nature. You see, you've you've escaped the corruption that is in the world because of evil desires.

There's all kinds of wicked stuff that is going on in the world because people want to do bad things that are contrary to who God is and God's character. But you've escaped from that. And you have begun to participate in the divine nature. You are a son of God. If you have received Jesus Christ, you are a daughter of God. And now look up into the face of God. And say, Father, from now on, you and I are of one mind. If you make me sick, then I will try to show the world how a son of God behaves when he's sick.

If you make me poor, then I'll try to show the world how a daughter of God lives when she's poor. From now on, you and I are of one mind. For whom have I in heaven but you?

And being with you, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. So rise up, O men of God. Have done with lesser things. Give heart and soul and mind and strength to serve the King of Kings. Amen.