New in Christ Through the Spirit
A Sermon by Dan Absalonson
Introduction
- Introduce self- This is the second in a two part sermon series on Titus 3:5-6.
- this week is titled New in Christ Through the Spirit
- We’ll read the text, briefly recap last week, then get into the rest of Titus 3:5-6
Read the text - Titus 3:5-6
5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,
Pray
Recap:
Last week’s sermon: Salvation is in Christ Alone1. He Saved Us!
- Which means we need a savior
- The prevalent lie is that anyone who is a pretty good person will go to heaven
- But that’s not true
2. Not because of works done by us in righteousness
- Unlike what our society or other religions might claim, we cannot earn righteousness, a right standing before God, by works or anything we do
- We can be in denial that we’re okay and we don’t need a savior
- family was hiking on a trail with a steep drop on the side
- my daughter slipped and fell headlong off the edge
- my friend Andy grabbed her pack and saved her
- as she’s falling she screamed
- “I’m okay!”
- she didn’t grasp the reality of what was going on
- she was not okay
- How often are we in desperate need of God’s help and on our way to trouble we’re screaming, “I’m okay!”
- That’s pride
- We don’t want to admit we need help
- In other words, “I got this God!”
- But we actually need a savior who is merciful to look down on us in our terrible state and save us
1. But according to his own mercy,
- Let’s look at the next part of Titus 3:5
5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy,
- Saved according to his mercy
- What is mercy?
- compassion, sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others
or
- forgiveness shown toward someone you have the power to punish or harm
- You could say mercy is this:
- We don’t get [pause] what we do deserve
- Mercy is God not punishing us, as we deserve, for our sins
- How should this inspire us to live?
- Showing mercy to people who don’t deserve it
- Is that easy?
- No!
- But it should be if we’re remembering how much amazing mercy has been shown to us
- What do we deserve?
- The wages of sin are?
- Death
- We deserve death
- God in his mercy made a way for our sins to be forgiven
- Jesus died on the cross in our place so that all our sins could be forgiven
- Mercy, forgiveness shown toward someone that deserves punishment
- compassion, sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others
- the Bible describes us as being dead in our sins
- When we’re trusting in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins we have new life
Ephesians 2:4–5
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved
- It’s like my daughter on the hiking trail, and as we’re falling God reaches down and saves us
- God is merciful to save us
- If you’re a Christian here tonight:
- You need to remind yourself of this everyday
- Think about his mercy, how he saved you
- May it inspire you to be merciful to others
- Even those who don’t deserve it
- Do you have times during your week where you remind yourself he saved you according to his mercy that lead to being overwhelmed with thankfulness to God?
- Or would you say:
- “Well I’m a Christian but I don’t have times like that during my week”
- You’re missing out on so much joy!
- It’s not enough to be reminded on Sundays and Tuesday nights
- Don’t let the busyness of your lives stop you from making time for God
- What you spend your time on shows what you treasure
- What is your heart fixed on?
- Don’t listen to the lies of Disney that say, “follow your heart.”
- Instead pray for a renewed regenerate heart everyday
- pray for a heart that treasures God
- Jesus said:
Matthew 6:21
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
- Treasure God, for he saved us according to his mercy
- Scripture will remind you that He Saved You, according to his mercy
- That’s when this overwhelming gratitude pours out of my heart, when I’m reading my bible, praying, or singing and being reminded of the great truths of the gospel
- when I pray to him who saved me according to his mercy
- When I fail to make time for God I fail to remember he saved me according to his mercy
- and my heart becomes hardened toward God and seeks after other things
- Don’t miss out on the joy found in treasuring Christ and what he’s done for you
2. By the Washing of Regeneration and Renewal of the Holy Spirit
- Look back at Titus 3:5
5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,
- What is the washing of regeneration?
- Let's start with washing
- It's what you do to get cleaned up
- You wash the dirt and filth off of you
- Paul talks about washing as being made right with God:
1 Corinthians 6:11
And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
- Did you know in the Old Testament people had to be washed clean before coming into the presence of the God?
Exodus 40:12-15
"Then you shall bring Aaron and his sons to the doorway of the tent of meeting and wash them with water. "You shall put the holy garments on Aaron and anoint him and consecrate him, that he may minister as a priest to Me.
Numbers 8:5-7
Again the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Take the Levites from among the sons of Israel and cleanse them. "Thus you shall do to them, for their cleansing: sprinkle purifying water on them, and let them use a razor over their whole body and wash their clothes, and they will be clean.
- There's a lot of "clean" and "unclean" talk in the Old Testament.
- All of us were unclean, unworthy to come into the presence of God until Jesus shed his blood on the cross
- We can’t make ourselves clean
- We need Jesus who reconciled us back to God
- One last really great verse on this from the Old Testament comes from Ezekiel.
- Let's read our text and then Ezekiel
Titus 3:5-6
5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,
Ezekiel 36:25–27
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 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. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
- what is a heart of stone?
- one that is unmovable, hardened toward God
- He gives us a new heart of flesh
- what is a heart of flesh?
- a heart that is soft toward God
- a new heart and spirit to cause us to obey him
- we couldn’t obey God until he washed us and made us new with his spirit living in us
- we were dead in our sins and he made us alive in Christ
- When you wash, you go from smelling like something old and rotting to something clean and fresh
- You know I’m right, you teenage boys have entered the age of stench
- But when you wash, you’re clean and fresh
- Like something that is made new, which sounds a lot like the next part of the verse and renewal of the holy spirit
- That’s why I think these two things go together as one experience
- When you repent, turn from your sin to Jesus and trust in him as your savior, your sins are washed away and you are made new
- The bible says “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” in 2 Corinthians 5:17
- Washing of Regeneration
- OK so washing was easier, but what about regeneration?
- Regeneration isn’t a word we use often
- the word generation can mean something is being made or produced
- something is being generated
- like when you generate electricity
- So we could say regeneration is when something is getting remade, or made to be like new
- My son bought an Amazon Echo Dot
- A little speaker you can talk to and it plays music
- It was a refurbished one
- Amazon took a used echo Dot, maybe even one that was broken, and fixed it
- Making it like new again
A great quote I read:
- “Regeneration is a work of the Holy Spirit, by which the heart is renewed, so that it turns from the love of sin to the love of holiness, and from enmity and disobedience to the love and service of God”
- there is nothing we can do to earn righteousness
- but Jesus made a way for our sins to be washed away
- You don’t get cleaned up before getting in the shower
- Come to God just as you are and he will wash you and renew you
- Remember it’s him who does the work
Romans 9:16
So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.
- What else could washing of regeneration mean?
- It’s been argued that Paul was writing of baptism here
- Many Bible Commentaries take that stance
- While that may be true, it almost seems to suggest Paul is saying baptism is part of what saves you
- Baptism does not save you
- This verse has argued all along that He Saved Us, not because of works done by us in righteousness
- We can’t do any work, including baptism, for salvation
I found this commentary very helpful:
Regeneration refers to the transformation of the corrupt human nature by the Holy Spirit. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, believers experience a rebirth from a state of spiritual death. The presence of the Spirit enables them to live in a manner that pleases God. The washing here denotes an inner, spiritual cleansing; - Faithlife Bible Study
To heavily paraphrase a quote from John Stott:
Baptism is ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace’, namely of the washing away of sins, and of new birth by the Holy Spirit. We don’t confuse the sign (baptism) with the thing signified (salvation).
Titus 3:5
...by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,
- Renewal of the Holy Spirit?
- Let’s back up a bit
- When you become a Christian the spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, comes to live in you
- In the Old Testament the spirit of God lived in the temple Solomon built, before that a tabernacle, before that Moses’s tent of meeting.
- Always just one place ever since the fall of man when Adam and Eve sinned
- When Jesus died something happened with that whole sin separates us from God thing
- The curtain separating the world from the place in the temple where God’s spirit dwelled, the holy of holies, that curtain was torn from top to bottom when Jesus died
- before that only a priest who was ceremonially washed and made a sacrifice with an animal, could go into the Holy of Holies, the place in the temple where the presence of God dwelt, and only once a year
- Jesus is our great high priest and he was also the final sacrifice needed for the forgiveness of sins
- his blood has washed away our sins, his death on the cross was a the final sacrifice needed to forgive and pay for all our sins
- Because of his sacrifice we have peace with God and his spirit comes to live in us rather than only being in a temple in Jerusalem
- If you’re a Christian, your body is God’s temple where his spirit lives
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
- What does the Holy Spirit living in you do?
- He renews you
- renewal of the Holy Spirit,
- He makes you new by giving you new desires to live for God and follow his commands and love him and love others
- He convicts you of your sins so that the bad things you once found pleasure in, you now hate
- He gives you a desire to live a holy life
- He helps you understand the Bible
- A great prayer to ask before reading your bible is for his help
Jesus said this to his disciples:
John 14:16-17
16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
- Until the Holy Spirit is in you, you can’t please God
- You can’t live for him
- You need the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit
- Hang with me here for this next verse.
- It’s a little long but it’s so good
Romans 8:7–11
7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
- Some of the language here can seem confusing when we are thinking about who God is
- it said in vs. 9 “if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him”
- Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ, why does Paul keep using God and Christ interchangeably?
- Like they’re the same thing?
- God is three persons in one
- He is one God made up of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
- That is not easy to wrap our minds around, but think of this
- He is the creator, everything else is his creation which we cannot compare him to
- but he is Holy, set apart, different from all of his creation
- Nothing compares to him
- There’s no good analogy for the trinity because we have nothing in creation to explain the creator
- I’m going to try anyway in the hopes it’s helpful
- Let’s say we all live on a two dimensional plane
- like a sheet of paper
- everything we know and see is flat and in two dimensions
- just flat lines and shapes
- almost no depth whatsoever
- what would God look like to us if he intersected our world?
- let’s just imagine that God lives in a different reality than our finite limited reality
- he’s outside of time
- he’s outside of our space
- how else could he listen to all of our prayers at the same time if he existing inside of our time constraints?
- he created time and is not limited by it as we are
- let’s say to us he looked something like this Torus Knot shape
- it would be impossible for us to describe though with only our two dimensions that we exist in
- and if we did see him interact with our two dimensions we wouldn’t be able to make sense of it
- he doesn’t look like our static shapes, but is a constantly moving shape
- it looks like three separate shapes, then one
- we just don’t have the ability to comprehend him
- I think that’s awesome
- we don’t worship a God made from stone by the hands of men
- God is beyond our understanding
- that tells of his greatness
- If you go one verse back from ours you can see the trinity in our passage
- Even how God is one, but he is also Father, Son, and Spirit
Titus 3:4–6
4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,
- (1)God poured out the (2)spirit through (3)Jesus
- Also note Paul says “whom he poured out on us”
- The Holy Spirit is a person, not just a force or power
- Also did you catch how it says God our Savior in vs 4,
- and Jesus Christ our savior in vs 6?
- So is it God or Jesus who is our savior?
- both
Jesus said:
John 14:9–11
9 ...Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me...
- And the Holy Spirit of God in us?
John 14:20
In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
- Jesus, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit are one
- One God and yet three distinct persons
- Doesn’t make sense to us does it?
- Not when all we can imagine is something that is like the creation around us
- But we can’t think of the creator by comparing him to his creation
3. Whom He Poured Out on Us Richly through Jesus Christ our Savior
- Let’s look at the last part of our passage in vs. 6
Titus 3:6
whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,
- God didn’t give us just a little splash of the spirit
- He poured out the Holy Spirit on us richly
- Have you ever seen someone pour something out richly on someone?
- ice bucket challenge
- football coaches get water poured out on them
- And what does someone look like when they’ve been poured on richly?
- Like they took a bath or took a dunk in a lake!
- Soaking wet
- We are immersed in him, drenched!
- The Spirit poured out on you richly - renews you
- conversion should shock us, like a huge jug full of ice water getting poured on us richly
- When you accepted Jesus did it stop you in your tracks? [LONG PAUSE]
- what’s it like when you get gallons of ice water poured on you richly?
- you don’t just keep walking as if nothing significant has happened
- in fact you turn, away from the path you were going and you run to the one who poured it on you richly
- that’s where this analogy dies because you’re chasing after them for vengeance rather than in humble thanksgiving and joy that you have been made new!
- but think about it
- true conversion means turning from your own way, and running in the opposite way toward the one who has poured out a washing on you richly
- you don’t just pray a prayer and then get on with your life
- you repent and turn from your sin to God
Titus 3:6
6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,
Without Jesus we don’t have the Holy Spirit living in us. Jesus said to his disciples:
John 14:26
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
- The Holy Spirit is our helper
- He convicts us of sin, because of the Holy Spirit you are renewed to hate sin in a new way you couldn’t before
- He helps us to love God
- He helps us understand the Bible
- He gives us words to say when we are in need of them
- Have you ever had an experience where you prayed for someone or shared the gospel with someone,
- and afterwards it’s like, what did I just say?
- That’ was not me talking
- That’s totally the Holy Spirit at work in you!
Luke 12:11–12
11 And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, 12 for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”
- Let me summarize what we’ve studied together:
- God saved us
- We can’t save us
- It was according to God’s own mercy
- By washing and remaking us
- And renewing us with the Holy Spirit
- Who is a person God poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ
- Without God the Father, his son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, we would be dead in our sin
- Unable to please God and obey him
- If God hadn’t looked down on us, his sinful enemies, and had mercy on us to send Jesus, and if Jesus hadn’t paid the price for our sin against God with his sacrificial death, then we never would have the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit and we would all be hopelessly lost and dead in our sins.
- But thanks be to God our Savior who, according to his mercy, poured out his Holy Spirit on us richly, through Jesus Christ our Savior.
Let’s Pray
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