Transformative Power of Regeneration and the Holy Spirit

My dear friend, the gospel of Christ isn't merely an announcement of forgiveness. It tells you that you will have a new life, you'll be a new man. It talks about being born again, a new start, absolutely new, quite incredible. But it's a effect, a new beginning, a new nature, a new relationship to God. You see, everything new. Your outlook is new, the world is new, life is new, death is new, everything is new. [00:20:14]

The Holy Spirit of God, in this secret, mystic manner which we can't understand but which we know to be true, works even upon my conscience. The trouble with us left to ourselves is, isn't it, that we manipulate our consciences. We can twist it and reason, we can argue with it and make it say something that it really isn't saying. [00:21:56]

But you see, once the Holy Spirit comes into you, he works upon your conscience. He's got a way of making it more sensitive. As any man grows and develops in the Christian life, he becomes conscious inevitably of the fact that his conscience is becoming more sensitive. There were things we used to pass; we can no longer pass them. [00:22:56]

The Holy Spirit enables it today. The Spirit worketh within us, but it not only makes our conscience sensitive, it operates upon our wills in exactly the same way. It is God that worketh in you both to will. Now, where is the most extraordinary faculty? It is the kind of executive faculty in us all. We will things, and it's because we will them that we do them. [00:24:33]

But you see, when the Holy Spirit comes into a man, his will is obviously going to be affected. We saw that in the doctrine of regeneration last Sunday night. His desires are different, his aims are different, the things he wants to do, the man he wants to be is something different. And it all happens in this amazing way that the man is not aware of it. [00:25:19]

The astounding thing is that you become aware of the fact that you're now able to do things that you were not able to do before. You're able to resist temptations that you could never resist in the past. You can meet certain people and not fall as the result of it in a way you couldn't before. [00:27:09]

He is your guide and your companion. He's your friend, he's your advocate. He puts thoughts and ideas into your mind. He tells you what to do. He's there leading you, oh, not carrying you, not in a passive state, but he's there as your friend and as your companion, and you're walking with him. [00:28:47]

The Holy Spirit by working in us and working upon our minds and all our faculties enables us to understand his word in a way that we've never done before. And this word begins to speak to us. I said last Sunday night, a man begins to enjoy it, yes, but even beyond that, it begins to speak to him. [00:29:36]

The Holy Spirit also, by working within us and by being resident within us, gives us strength and power to resist temptations and to resist the devil. Oh, this is a glorious truth again, isn't it? How I thank God that the gospel is just not merely a message telling me that my past sins are forgiven. [00:30:59]

The Holy Spirit does is to make real to us the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. The real business of the Holy Spirit is to mediate Christ to us, to make him real to us. Haven't you felt that? You've said, oh, if only I'd been alive when he was here in this world and could walk with him. [00:35:37]

The Holy Spirit makes me see that this is but a kind of interlude. I'm not detracting from or depreciating life in this world. It's no part of the preaching of the gospel to do that. Hinduism and those Eastern religions do that. Christianity doesn't do that, and I don't want to do that. [00:43:44]

The Holy Spirit emancipates us by giving us a knowledge of heaven and something of a foretaste of heaven. John puts it in these words, doesn't he? Their glowing words, we know not yet what we shall be, he says, but we know this, that when he shall appear, we shall be like him. [00:45:21]