Well, I'm thankful for the way the Lord has led in the service already. The songs we've been singing have a lot to do with the message that we're going to be looking at tonight. So I would invite you to turn in your Bibles to Titus chapter 3, and we'll be looking at verses 3 through 8. And our subject is going to be living in light of the gospel. And that last song in particular, I think, has a great deal of applicability to that topic. living in light of the gospel. We will look at this passage in just a moment. But basically what this passage is about is the transformation that takes place as a result of the gospel. And I think there's an example from nature that can be helped to us to picture that. I think many of you know that I lived in Puerto Rico for a couple of years Rachel and I lived there together for a year after we were married and I was actually there a year prior to that while we were engaged. And I was teaching in a small Bible college with some of Pastor Ken's relatives. I don't know if I ever heard any really good juicy stories about him, but I can think about that if you're curious. But I was working with his parents and his sister and brother-in-law and some others. And that was a good experience for me. One of the things that was very interesting about Puerto Rico was a particular city. The capital city is San Juan, Puerto Rico. And there's a section of San Juan called Old San Juan, which is kind of like, I guess, the Puerto Rican equivalent of Charleston. So it's a very interesting place. It's very old, a lot of historic things, a lot of interesting shops. And one of the places that I really enjoyed going was a particular place that had all these displays of butterflies. Butterflies from all over the world. Very beautiful. I suppose you could say it's a little bit morbid because they were all dead and behind glass, but you could purchase these butterflies. Many of them were very expensive. And in fact, if you went to our home, you would see that we have a little picture with a butterfly in it. Very bright blue. I believe it's from Peru. And I think butterflies are very interesting creatures. Beautiful, graceful, But let me ask you something. As I said, I purchased this little gift for Rachel a couple years ago at Christmas. Now do you suppose that we have anything in our apartment that is a caterpillar? The answer to that would be no. We don't own anything with caterpillars. We don't have any framed caterpillars on our wall, only a framed butterfly. And that is because caterpillars generally, they're kind of green. chubby, I suppose maybe you could say they're cute, but I mean they're certainly not beautiful like a butterfly is. And that's because somehow in nature we have this transformation that takes place from this caterpillar that makes its way into a cocoon and over the process of time It transforms into this beautiful butterfly. And I think that that is a helpful picture for us about the Christian life, and what happens throughout the Christian life. Through the power of the Gospel, through what Jesus Christ does for us, He takes us, and at the outset we're not very lovely, are we? Not very beautiful. But over time, and eventually transforms us into the image of Jesus Christ, as Romans 8 and verse 29 tells us. So, as we talk about this transformation process, let's look at Titus chapter 3, verses 3 through 8, and look at this a little bit more in depth. Starting in verse 3, it says, For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others, and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving-kindness of God our Savior appeared, 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, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, being justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people." What Paul is describing for us here, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is this transformation process that takes place as God takes a sinner and saves him and then transforms his life eventually so that he becomes more and more like Jesus Christ. And so what we're talking about is the Christian life. We're talking about this transformation process that we also call sanctification. And I think it's helpful for us, at least it was helpful for me, to connect sanctification with the gospel. Many times now you'll hear about people talking about preaching the gospel and having a gospel-centered ministry, and a lot of times that didn't really make sense to me, it didn't click, until I realized that essentially if we're talking about salvation, we're talking about what sinners need, and then when we're talking about advancing in the Christian life, sanctification, that is just the ongoing aspect of salvation. In other words, it's the ongoing aspect of what the gospel does in our lives. So in other words, really, all of our ministry is gospel ministry. Whether we're talking about presenting the gospel to lost people or even amongst believers, which I assume most of us here are, we need the gospel as well. We need that ongoing transformational aspect of the gospel. But perhaps you're here tonight and you're finding this whole process discouraging. Maybe there's something, a habit, a thought process, an attitude, and you're just saying, you know, I've been working at this and working at this, and it is not changing. It's not getting any better. It's very frustrating. It's very discouraging. Let me encourage you with the fact that this transformation process, this sanctification process, it is not something that takes place overnight. It is gradual. Sometimes it's slow. Sometimes it's kind of like taking three steps forward and two steps back and sometimes there's a lot of progress and sometimes there's not. There's certain theologies out there sometimes that will talk about this second work of grace or something like that or a prayer that you can pray or a dedication or a surrender that all of a sudden just changes everything and makes everything different. And what I want to emphasize is there's this ongoing nature, gradual process of sanctification. It's not something that's just going to happen overnight or instant. And in our culture, in our time, we have so many things that are instant, don't we? There's instant rice. There's instant coffee. I'm sure there's a bunch of other instant things. But you know what? Unfortunately, and it'd be kind of nice if there was, but there's no such thing as instant sanctification. There's not just some magic thing that happens or a certain prayer you pray, and all of a sudden, boom. You know, there we go. Just dealt with the sin problem once and for all. No more problem, no more struggle. Why the Lord set it up that way? Maybe He could have set it up the other way, but this is the way the Lord has ordained it to be so. So as we look tonight at this transformation process, we need to realize this is an ongoing thing. It's not necessarily something that's going to come about overnight, but it will be gradual and it will be heading in the right direction. In other words, it'd be kind of like a graph that's kind of, you know, it might be back and forth, but it is starting down here and going up. You know, it is progressing and that progression is towards becoming more and more like Jesus Christ. Now before we get into the passage a little bit more, let me just give you a little bit of background to Titus. Titus is considered one of the pastoral epistles along with 1st and 2nd Timothy, so these are some of the last books that Paul wrote in his earthly ministry. 2nd Timothy is usually considered the very last book that he wrote, but these are towards the tail end of his ministry as he's getting older, and one of Paul's burdens was to pass on the ministry that he had had to his successors so that they would perpetuate this gospel ministry. And you can see that with Timothy, and you can see it here with Titus. So he was basically appointing Titus to go around to these various churches on this island of Crete and to ordain elders, and that was Titus' mission. And he was encouraging these people, the elders in particular, but also the people in these churches, that they needed to commit themselves to a life of good works that would be a good testimony to those that are outside the faith. Paul in his letter to Titus does not really paint a particularly good picture of the Cretans. In fact, Cretan itself is not a particularly positive word in the English language. But these were not necessarily naturally good people. So Titus was putting the churches in order. He was appointing elders in these churches. And he didn't have an easy task. But what he needed to remember, what Paul is telling us in this passage, the Holy Spirit through Paul, is that the gospel should motivate each of us to live a life of good works. The gospel should motivate us to live a life of good works. And we're going to look at three different aspects of this. We're going to start in verse 3. with the past, this past aspect, and that is that the sinner's past was bleak. The sinner's past was bleak. Let's look at verse 3. It says, For we ourselves were once, and we've got this whole litany of things, foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others, and hating one another. If you look back at chapter 1 in verse 12, We will see something similar, and that is that one of the Cretan's own poets said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. So in other words, this is not a particularly positive picture of the unsaved Cretan people, but I think it's also a good picture of unsaved people in general. And it's not just talking about those bad people out there, right? I feel so sorry for these bad people out there. But how does he start? He says, we ourselves were once And then he goes on with the list, with this list of vices that was very common in ancient times. So he's saying it's not just a matter of, oh those poor people, those poor backward people out there, but he's saying this is the way we were too. And not even just this is the way you were, but this is the way we were. So Paul is really even including himself in that. And the fact that he's saying this is the way we were, the way we were once, it's demonstrating the fact that this is something in the past. In other words, at the point of their salvation, they had a clean break with their past. And that does not necessarily mean that all of these sins cannot still creep back into the life of believers, but that their life is no longer characterized by these sins. Well, what kind of sins? He says that they were Foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, etc, etc. Well, foolish is talking about the fact that, what is foolishness? It's a lack of wisdom. It's a lack of discernment. It's talking about someone that is not relating correctly to God and to his law. That's the idea of foolishness. It's also the fact that they were disobedient. It's talking about the fact that they were not regarding the law of God. They knew what it was and they were being disobedient to it. Not only were they disobedient to God as the supreme authority, but they were also disobedient to lesser authorities. So this is kind of talking about their vertical orientation, their orientation towards God. They were foolish. They were disobedient. The next word there is led astray. In other words, they were deceived. Okay, they were led astray by wrong guys. They were being led around by someone that didn't know where they were going. I don't know if you've ever been to a foreign country. Actually, I suppose even those of you that just went to New York. What if you were in New York and you were looking around for something, for someone, or for some place in particular, and you had a guide that was leading you the wrong way, right? You'd be in trouble. Or if you were in a foreign country. Well, this is the idea. They were being led astray. They were being deceived. It also talks about the fact that they were slaves to various passions and pleasures. In other words, they just followed their own desires. Whatever felt good, they did it. Isn't that how unsafe people live? Whatever makes them feel good, even if it comes at the expense of others, whether that's food or drink or some sort of immoral activity or whatever, they're just led astray. They were slaves. And I don't think it's a mistake that Paul uses this word slaves. Back in New Testament times, it said that up to half the Roman population were slaves. Now obviously this is somewhat different. We don't want to be thinking in terms of say, the pre-Civil War South conditions. But still, a lot of people were slaves. They were not free to make their own decisions. They had to report to someone else. And what were they slaves to? I mean, in the New Testament, oftentimes we refer to ourselves as slaves of Jesus Christ, and that's not a bad thing. Depending on who your master is, it's not necessarily a bad thing to be a slave. But these people aren't slaves of anything good. They're slaves to various passions and pleasures. And whatever they desired to do, whatever made them feel good, they did it. So that's kind of their orientation towards themselves. Their orientation towards God is not good. Their orientation towards themselves is not good. They're just going in destructive patterns. And then, as well, it says that we were passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others, and hating one another. In other words, what was their orientation towards other people, towards people around them? They were filled with bitterness, with envy, malice, and they were hated by others, and they were hating others themselves. So in other words, we have all of these relational sins as well. So we can see kind of their social sins and their sins towards God. We can see their sins towards themselves, their sins towards others. And it's really a very bleak picture, isn't it? This is kind of the bad part of the message. This is kind of the depressing part. This isn't the making you feel good part. Although we will see there's good news coming up very shortly. because our next word in the passage is but, but when the goodness and loving kindness of God appeared. But for now, let's not pass over this or gloss over this too quickly. This is a very bleak picture. And I'd like to take just a moment and think about these things, emphasize the wording that Paul uses, we were once this way. In other words, there's something wholesome, I think, for us to reflect on what we were like before we were Christians. I don't know when you came to know the Lord, if perhaps you were a child or a teen, or perhaps as a young adult or middle-aged adult. I'm not sure when that point came for you. But I think we can all look back and realize that the Lord saved me from a lot of sin. And things could certainly be a whole lot worse if the Lord would not have intervened in my life. And at the same time, we need to look at those things and realize, that's the way I was. That's the way I used to be. I don't need to live that way any longer. In other words, I am under new ownership. I have a new master now. I'm no longer the slave of passions and hatred and disobedience and so forth. But now I have a new master, Jesus Christ, and I don't need to live the way that I used to. Even so, we don't want to speak so much in terms of the past that we get the idea, well, if I've ever committed these sins, well then obviously I'm not a believer. Even as we've been going through our study in Genesis, and as we'll see some more with Isaac and Jacob, we realize that even the great men of the faith of the Old Testament, David, committed many awful sins. So it's possible for a Christian, on occasion, to still commit sins like it's talking about in verse 3. The key difference is that an unsaved person's life is characterized by these sorts of sins. In other words, an unsaved person will continue to commit these sins and will not change. A believer may occasionally do these things, but what's going to happen to a believer? Can he stay in that condition? No, he's going to want to repent. He's going to want to turn. He's going to want to come back and flee to Jesus Christ. Now, there's a couple of animals that are often mentioned in the Bible. One is somewhat positive. One, I can't think of anything positive about it. But if we were to take two examples, a sheep and a pig. I would say a sheep is probably at least generally positive throughout scripture. If you can think of a passage that's positive about pigs, then you can tell me afterwards. I can't really think of any. But if you had a sheep and a pig and you had, say, this big pit full of mud, could a sheep stumble into that pit of mud? Is a sheep going to want to stay in that pit of mud? I don't think so. A sheep is going to want to get out of the mud. Could a pig get in the mud? Is a pig going to want to stay in the mud? If you got the pig out of the mud, and say this is your pet pig, and you decide, ladies, that you're going to put your best dress, your best Sunday dress on this pig, and you're going to put jewelry on this pig, and you're going to clean this pig up, Is the pig still going to want to run for the mud? Dress and all, jewelry and all, whatever you did to it, you can clean it up on the outside, but the bottom line is a pig is a pig, and a pig is going to want to go to the mud. Whereas a sheep, perhaps, could get into the mud for a time, but it's not going to want to stay there. And it's the difference between a sheep and a pig. A pig's going to want to be there, a sheep is not. And what I'm trying to illustrate for us is the fact that can a Christian fall into all sorts of sins? Yes. Is a Christian going to want to continue to stay in sin like that? Is a Christian going to just live his life or her life in that sin and will never come out? No, a Christian can't live that way. An unsaved person can. An unsaved person even that makes a profession of faith and gets all cleaned up on the outside can still do that. So really the question for us, for each of us, what about us? What about you? Are you a sheep or are you a pig? What is your life like? What is your relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ? So first, we've seen that the sinner's past was bleak. It's not a very pretty picture. Verses 4-6 now. We'll also see that the Savior's intervention is complete. The Savior's intervention is complete. Let's read verses 4-6. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 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, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. We're talking about the Savior's intervention. That very first word marks a very strong contrast for us. It's a very strong, adversative conjunction here. It's saying, but when the goodness and loving kindness of God appeared. In other words, this is the way you were, but God intervenes. In other words, we did not stay in that condition. God intervened and did something about it. And to use our analogy, was it because, to go back to the butterfly analogy, was it because there was something beautiful about us? Something lovely? Well, I hope you don't think that because of where we just came from in verse 3. It wasn't anything because of us. Notice the sort of words it's using. Goodness. loving kindness, mercy, grace. This is not because there is anything good about us. Because of our sin, we were, to use some other words from other parts of scripture, we were dead. We were blind. We were bankrupt. This is who we were as sinners. So it's not a matter of God being in love with us because there was something good about us. In fact, it's because of God's character. When you talk about goodness, we're talking about kindness towards people who are undeserving. The love, the loving kindness it's talking about. This is the Greek word behind the English word philanthropy or philanthropist, which is someone that typically donates a lot of money out of love for mankind. This is talking about the fact that God has this general love for people and as well it gets even more specific than that. As we go on to verse 5, when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, and when did it appear? When did it appear? Concretely, it appeared at the point of the Incarnation. When Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, came into this world, lived among us, that was the point at which it appeared. And then moving on to verse 5, one of the things that's interesting is that throughout this passage, you'll see that all three members of the Trinity are involved in salvation. And verse 4 talks about God our Savior. At the end of verse 5, it talks about the work that the Holy Spirit does. In verse 6, it talks about Jesus Christ, our Savior. And one interesting thing about the pastoral epistles, Timothy and Titus, is that it's one of the, if I'm remembering correctly, it's one of the few places, if not the only place in the New Testament, that talks about God as the Savior. Normally we refer to Jesus Christ as our Savior, but actually in this verse we just looked at, it talks about the fact that God is our Savior as well. And He saved us. God saved us. Not because of works done by us in righteousness. Not on the basis of anything good that we could do. Not on the basis of our righteous deeds. Isaiah 64 tells us that our righteousness is like filthy rags. It's nothing that we could do. However, it's on the basis of what? It's on the basis of his mercy, according to his own mercy. In other words, and mercy is the basic idea of not giving to us what we deserved. Not giving to us what we deserved. I worked at a camp several years ago, and the camp director would frequently say, anything better than hell is more than I deserve. And that always stuck with me. Many times we think about, well, what do I really deserve? I better get what's coming to me. Well, we need to think about that when we say things like that. What would we really get if we got what was coming to us? If we got what we deserved, we would get judgment and eternal damnation, condemnation. That's what we deserve. But what did we receive? Is that what we received? No, in fact, in verse 5 it tells us He saved us. He gave us salvation. He gave us deliverance. Those are the things that we received. In Eternal Home in Heaven, verse 7 talks about becoming heirs according to the hope of eternal life, and we'll look at that concept just a little bit later. So this is what God did for us in his mercy. And then at the end he talks about the role of the Holy Spirit in all this by the washing of regeneration and renewal or renewing of the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is active in our salvation as well. He's playing a part. It's talking about washing of regeneration. And many think that this is an allusion to baptism. I see it more likely as just talking about describing the regeneration process as a washing that takes place, not that it's necessarily related to baptism. And of course, thinking that somehow we're saved by our baptism goes against the tenor of the New Testament. But it's talking about that the Holy Spirit washes us when He regenerates us, and the Holy Spirit renews us. And the washing is kind of like taking a really dirty garment and washing it in a washing machine and it comes out clean. That's what the Holy Spirit does. He washes, He removes the guilt and the stain and the dirt and the crud of sin and washes it away. And as well, He renews us. Another word that might help us to think through this clearly is, we can think of it in terms of renovation. I know many of us have been moving. We're actually going to be moving here, Lord willing, in a couple of weeks. We do not have a fixer-upper, thankfully, because I don't really know how to do those sorts of things. But have you ever seen pictures of a really out-of-sorts house that's just really bad and you have to gut the inside of it? And what do they typically do? They take before pictures and after pictures. And we can think of that as kind of renovating something, renovating a building. something that was old and needed to be replaced and updated and redone, and that's what's done. And that's what the Holy Spirit does for us. He's renewing us. This is something that took place in part at salvation, and it's also an ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in our lives now. Again, as I said, Romans 8.29 says that we're to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. None of us are there yet, but that is where we are going. That is what the Holy Spirit is doing in our lives, this renovating work. So that sometimes you hear the expression, be patient with me, God isn't finished with me yet. Well, we're all kind of under construction, if you will, under renovation. The Holy Spirit is doing this work in our hearts. And at the end of verse six, or verse six says that the Holy Spirit was poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our Savior. at the point of salvation, but historically we can also see that this is what happened on the day of Pentecost. That Jesus Christ actually poured out the Holy Spirit upon his disciples, upon the church, and that was something that took place. And as well, this takes place at the time of salvation. So it's really just an amazing thought to just step back and keep these two things in mind. We think about the past and how bleak it was for sinners generally, and for us as being formerly a part of that category of sinners. And then to see just this intervening work that God has done, that God the Father has done, that God the Son has done, that God the Holy Spirit has done. They were all integrally involved in our salvation. They all have a part in it. So that really we can be thankful, we can praise the Lord for it, and as well that gives us impetus to share with others that motivates us to, as we'll see shortly in a couple more verses, to live a life of good works, to have this sort of testimony that draws other people into desiring to have a relationship with the Lord. So we saw the bleak aspect of sinners, their past. We talked about the ongoing nature, the Savior's intervention presently, that it is complete. And thirdly, as we look at verses 7 and then also briefly talk about verse 8, we'll see that the saint's future is bright. The future for the believer is bright. Let's look at verse 7 first of all. So that, being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. We have a little Greek particle that particle word that is a purpose clause. What's the purpose in all this? So that being justified by His grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. So this is what has transpired. This is what has happened as a result of the salvation which we have received. That now we have this hope of eternal life. And it talks about as well that we were justified by His grace. Justified is a legal term. It's the idea of being guilty and now having the Lord put someone else's credit to our accounts. And this is exactly what happens at salvation. This is an accounting term. Justification is an accounting term. It's saying I was bankrupt and God has put the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which he earned, through the fact that he always perfectly submitted to God so that he had this overflowing credit, if you will, of righteousness. And God actually places that on our account. He took our sin and placed it on Jesus Christ. He took Jesus Christ's righteousness and placed that on us. And I don't fully understand that. But it's an amazing thought to think that we were guilty, that we had no way to pay our debt, and that God in fact did everything that was necessary through the work of His Son, Jesus Christ. And on top of that, not only are we justified by faith, but it says we are heirs according to the hope of eternal life. And I think perhaps by walking through this slowly, we can get a greater sense of what a privilege this is, of how amazing this is, because think back to verse 3. That's who we were, that's where we were, and because of the salvation, now not only are we saved, this isn't just some sort of fire insurance, but it's saying we actually are heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This isn't merely something in the future, it is as well something that is going on presently, but especially we have this hope of eternal life. We need to think of hope not in terms of how we usually use it in our modern vernacular in English, you know, I hope I get a million dollars, something like that. This is something that is assured. This is something that is sure, but it is not yet. So we could talk of it as a present reality, but at the same time it's something we're waiting for in the future. But it's something that we have, at least in small part, presently. Now I think we all know who Bill Gates is, and it's been a little while since I've looked this up, but I believe I looked this up on the internet maybe about a year ago, and it said that Bill Gates had a net worth of about $50 billion. That's a lot of money. That's more money than I can even fathom. But he has a net worth of $50 billion. And what if tomorrow when you received your mail, you got an official letter from the executor of Bill Gates' will and it said that Bill Gates has decided to make you the heir of all of his money. would you be thinking to yourself, wow, this is a really good day. Would that excite you? Would that shed some different light on maybe the difficult circumstances that you might be facing or any financial difficulties that you are undergoing? And you're saying to yourself, wow, I have this extraordinary, this massive inheritance from one of the richest men in the world. Now, unfortunately, I seriously doubt that that will happen, but I have better news than that for you. You are, if you know Jesus Christ, you are actually, you are inheriting a greater inheritance even than Bill Gates can give you. You are inheriting something from the King of Kings, from the Lord of the Universe, the Sovereign God of the Universe. And in fact, every believing child of His is an heir according to the hope of eternal life. And in the Book of Romans, I believe, it talks about the fact that we are joint heirs with Christ. And I don't know that I can even explain to you or that I completely understand what all that means. I mean, that just kind of blows my mind to think about it. But as I said, especially when we kind of take a step back, look at what we've been looking at tonight, that is an amazing thought. From where we were and how degraded and disgusting, and ugly we were, and our position was, and what we deserve, to seeing the salvation that we have in Christ, and then this future, and this inheritance that we have. It's just an amazing thought, and I trust just fills your heart with hope and with joy to think about what God has done for you. And then in verse 8, We wrap up this discussion, this passage, it says, the saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, and Paul is addressing Titus again, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people. Now again, we know that this is not the means of our salvation. This is not how we are saved. Just look back a couple of verses. He saved us not because of works done in righteousness. This is not somehow how we're earning our salvation. No, this is a result. This is something that takes place because we have been saved. Now, we are to live that out through our good works so that those who believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. And in the context of this chapter, the purpose of that is so that unbelieving people, people outside the faith, perhaps neighbors, perhaps coworkers, perhaps family members, can look at your life and see what you are doing, see the things that God is producing through you, and see the transformation that God is doing in your life, and be drawn to that. And be drawn to that. You know, many times, unfortunately, I'm not sure why this is. It seems like. Christians kind of have this reputation for being down in the mouth and depressed and, you know, kind of always gloomy. And we really need to think about these things we've been talking about. I mean, really to get hold of these realities and think, this is where I came from, and this is what God has done for me, and this is what God is doing in me now, and this is what God has for me in the future. And that should really just transform our outlook, the way we the way we go through things when we face trials and so forth, to view them from a higher point of reality. Now, as we've been talking about this transformation that takes place, this transformation that takes place through the gospel, I trust that this is something that just encourages your heart, that perhaps if anyone does not know Christ that you will realize the dangerous state you're in. You'll realize exactly what Jesus Christ has done for you and what you can have through him if you will turn from your sins and turn to Christ and for believers. This is an incredibly encouraging thing to think about, to remember where we've come from, to think about what God has done, what God is continuing to do, and as well to give us hope for the future. This life is not all that there is. There is something beyond. There is something that God is doing. And I don't know where you are in your stage of the transformation process. Perhaps you're a recent believer and you're at the beginning of this, or perhaps you're in the middle of the process, or perhaps you're getting towards the end of the process. I don't know. where you are, but I do know that the Lord is in the process of transforming us, of taking us from where we were, and of transforming us into the image of Jesus Christ. And wherever we are in that process, we can take great hope in what God is doing, and encouragement, and really to have joy in the midst of whatever circumstances we might find ourselves in. Let's go ahead and pray, and then we will close our service this evening. Father, we want to pause to praise you. You are our Savior. We thank you for planning out our salvation. We thank you, Lord Jesus, for accomplishing it, for living perfectly in our place, for dying the death that we deserved so that we would not have to die. We thank you as well, Holy Spirit, for the work that you have done, for regenerating us, for renewing us, for giving us new life