Amen. Welcome to Nashville, Tennessee today. Keep my leg from moving up here as I preach. In his book, The Case for Easter, Lee Strobel, an award-winning legal editor at the Chicago Tribune, former skeptic turned believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, wrote the following words in his conclusion. The disciples were in the unique position to know for a fact whether Jesus had returned from the dead. They saw him, they touched him, they were with him. They knew he wasn't a hallucination or it was true. And based on the historical data I had examined, I became convinced they were right. Combined with the other evidence for Jesus that I describe in my book, The Case for Christ, I concluded that he really is the one and only son of God who proved it by rising from the dead. People celebrate Easter, you know, for a variety of reasons. Some people do it because it's the traditional thing to do, it's kind of cultural. Other people do it because it's that time of spring and the colors are coming out and they love the colors of springtime. But others, like Lee Strobel, celebrate Easter because they are convinced that the evidence for Jesus and His bodily resurrection is unshakably true. There's a reason it has lasted for 2,000 years where other legends have fallen away, legends of ancient history that were proclaimed and told no one believes them. This is one rational people with great education believe today. They believe it because the evidence is unshakable. They understand that the resurrection of Jesus is an historical event and it's a statement. It proves he is the son of God. There is no other. He's the unique son of God. And because he's the unique son of God, he is uniquely qualified to tell us what is the way back to God. Who is God? What is he like? What does he expect of me? And what is the way back to God? That's why we listen to Jesus and proclaim what Jesus said and Jesus's apostles in the New Testament wrote. The center of the meaning of Easter is resurrection. Anastasis in Koine Greek, the common Greek of the day, literally is a rising again. Resurrection is the actual renewal of a dead body, a body that was dead, proven to be dead, established as dead, killed by professional executors and witnessed that way and in the tomb. The body of Jesus in the resurrection went through a supernatural renewal. Science cannot explain that, but it was witnessed by hundreds of people. It's established as a fact. As Christians, we know that our souls also are renewed. We call that renewal of what has happened inside of us when we got saved, we call that our new birth, or being born again, or a spiritual birth. That's something that happens invisible. We can't actually see that, we just sense the effects of it after it happens to us. But the resurrection of Jesus is visible, it's not invisible. It was something that was seen. One day, however, we are told our bodies will also be raised from the dead. We don't see that now. Our bodies are quite weak right now, but we're going to see that our bodies are visibly and tangibly raised from the dead and transformed to be like the new body that Jesus had. That will be our resurrection. That has not happened yet. Our new birth has, our resurrection has not. Jesus' resurrection had. There's a lesser known fact that's related to all of this, and that is that at the end of the age, the Earth, I mean the entire planet that we are on, will also be completely renewed. Nature will be brought back into complete harmony The curse that God put on the planet will be lifted, and there will be paradise that returns. Today, this Resurrection Sunday, I want you to see from the Bible the connection between Jesus' bodily resurrection and our new birth, and then even to talk a little bit also about our future bodily resurrection, and we'll push it even all the way to even the renewal, the regeneration of planet Earth. And we're gonna do that from 1 Peter, if you would turn there, 1 Peter 1. verses 3 through 5, it's a short section, we'll spend most of our time in verse 3 because there's a lot there, but I'll read it for you, really the beginning of the letter that Peter wrote to many that were scattered throughout the Roman world in that day. 1st Peter chapter 3, chapter 1 verses 3 through 5, follow along with me. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Peter wrote, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable. and undefiled factor assumed throughout all of the teachings of the New Testament. You find it in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, you find it in Acts and Romans, and you Google right on through to Revelation when Jesus stands in front of his beloved disciple John and says, I am the living one. In Romans chapter 1 and verse 4, Paul said, that Jesus was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, what we just finished reading, verse 21, Paul said this, since by one man, that's Adam, came death, So, by one man, Jesus, came also the resurrection from the dead. God views the entire world this way. Either you're in Adam and descended from Adam, in which case you die because of his sin, not your sin. You are a sinner, but you don't die because of your sin. You die because of his sin, because he is the head of our race, and because he died, we die. If you're in Christ, that is if you've believed Christ and you've been put into Christ, now there's a new head of a second race and now Christ broke the shackles of death and because of that now there's the resurrection from the dead. If you get in Christ, you'll get out of death and you'll get resurrection. That's the way God operates. That's the way God sees humanity. But also here in 1 Peter, the Apostle Peter along with the Apostle Paul recognized that preaching and teaching about the resurrection was at the foundation, was at the base of what Christianity was. And he begins his letter this way. If you look back to verses 1 and 2, you can see that he started with a brief introduction saying who he was and his readers were, but then he immediately launches into this burst of blessing, this burst of praise toward God the Father. Why? For raising Jesus Christ from the dead and for giving us new life, that is salvation. These Christians that Peter was writing to were faced with rising persecution against their faith. They could see it coming, even more so than we can. We look at our society and we see that people are turning against Christianity and the Bible and we wonder where is that leading bow? They were already there. They were already experiencing physical persecution. And so Peter was reminding them about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and reminding them about how great their salvation was. Why? Because he wanted those truths to be their focus and their foundation so they would live a strong, powerful, joyful, energetic, courageous Christian life. Please glance down at verse 13 for a moment, and you'll see where he gets into the exhortations about how he wants them to live. In verses 13 and following, you see that he's telling them, you can live holy lives, you can live obedient lives to God the Father, and you can live with great hope for the future. Why? Because of all of the salvation that he talks about in the previous verses. That's based upon the resurrection of Jesus. You have new life and God has given you salvation based upon that. As obedient children, be holy in all of your behavior, you see. In other words, understanding our new birth in the risen Jesus Christ leads all of us into better Christian living. If you want to be more consistent and more powerful in your Christian life, think about what God has done to change you and give you the new birth and think about how that is based upon the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. That really is what my purpose is today, and that is to see you live for Christ with more energy, more joy, more confidence, because you understand your new birth better and because you understand how that's connected to the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I'm going to give you five truths about the new birth today. That's your outline if you're looking for one. five truths about our new birth. We talk about being born again, we talk about our new birth all the time, I'm in Christ and I have life, but here are five truths that are important for us to get, and they're all there in verses three through five. The first truth is the meaning of our new birth. I wanna start there, we can't really talk about what the implications are of the new birth until we actually figure out what it is, what is the meaning of the new birth. And that's really in verse three, and I'm gonna read it again, just to keep it clear in our mind. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope. I'll kind of pause there. Another term for the new birth in the New Testament is the term regeneration. Big term, but it means something important. The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology defines regeneration this way, it says, regeneration or new birth is an inner recreating of fallen human nature by the gracious sovereign action of the Holy Spirit. And then he references John chapter 3, which is another passage that talks about the new birth. Dr. Wayne Grudem, in his systematic theology, puts it even more succinctly. He says, regeneration is a secret act of God in which he imparts new spiritual life to us. By us, he means believers. So regeneration is that which brings you out of the realm of spiritual death and into receiving God's eternal life. Not the life you were born with, a new life. Jesus put it this way in the Gospel of John chapter 5 and verse 24, and he underscored it this way. He said, truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes in God who sent me has eternal life. Not just life, has eternal life. Doesn't just hope to have it one day, but has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. In other words, if you don't have regeneration, you don't have God's life inside of you. If you want God's life inside of you, you must be, as Jesus put it to a religious man named Nicodemus, you must be, what? Born again, right? You want the life, then you must have a new birth, or you won't get the life. So, get this, regeneration is your second birth. That's pretty important, I think. The noun regeneration, palangensia, means a beginning again or to be generated again. Thayer's Greek lexicon defines it as new birth, renewal, recreation. The New Testament uses this great noun two times. In Matthew chapter 19 and verse 28, It does not refer merely to the regeneration of the human being, but actually it refers to the regeneration, it says there, of all things. And it's talking about the planet, planet Earth, the remaking of the entire world. That's going to happen in the end times. It obviously hasn't happened yet. Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 19, he said, you who have followed me in the regeneration, notice how he talks about it, when we get there to that regeneration, in the regeneration, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, that's a throne on earth, you, you disciples also, will sit upon 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. So there's gonna be a regeneration. People are really into recycling and renewal and things like that these days, right? Well, planet Earth, God has promised that planet Earth will not be recycled, because that's not as good as the first time. When you recycle material, it's not quite as good, right? Well, we're gonna do better than recycling. We're going to have complete regeneration of the planet. The whole planet will be made fresh. The whole planet will be made perfect. It'll be turned back into paradise once again. Planet Earth will be reborn. We Christians will be walking in the new earth. We'll be walking there together. We'll be seeing each other and we'll be saying, you remember the old earth? And we won't remember as much about it because we'll be so excited about the new earth. The second time that this term regeneration is used in the Bible, in the New Testament, is in the letter of Titus, Titus chapter three and verse five. Titus chapter 3 verse 5 speaks of our personal regeneration. Matthew talks about the regeneration of the planet. Titus talks about our personal regeneration or new birth. the new birth of an individual believer. One must be born again, going back to his conversation with Nicodemus, or else a person will not get to see the kingdom of God. If you want to see it, if you want to enter it, if you want to be a part of it, you have to have a regeneration so you can be in the planet that is regeneration. Your personal regeneration qualifies you to be in the regenerated planet. You must have that. You must go through that. Personal regeneration qualifies you to participate in planet regeneration. Obviously, then, this is very important, right? You can get it. This is very important. It's an important qualification. We're to take note of it. We're to understand that. If you want to enjoy the new creation, you have to become a new creation. If you want to be in there in the new planet with God in all of his glory, you got to let him do the work that he's going to do inside of you and change your life. That is why the Bible speaks an awful lot about this doctrine, this teaching of regeneration. Not just those two times, but it talks about it with a number of other like phrases or synonyms, just to make sure we really understand what this new birth is so we understand the importance of it. One of the terms we've already used, the new birth is sometimes being called born again. That's used here in the letter of Peter. Look down at verse 23. And you'll see down in verse 23 it says, for you, believers, have been born again, not of seed which is perishable, but imperishable, that is, through the living and the enduring word of God. Born again. Another synonym is born of God. Born of God. In 1 John chapter 5 in verse 1 it says, whoever believes that Jesus is the King, the Christ, the Messiah, is born of God. Not born of a woman, not born of a man, but born of God. Here's another synonym. Made alive. In Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 5 it says, even when we were dead in our sins, our transgressions, God made us alive. That's the new birth. That's regeneration. God made us alive. That's Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 5. Jesus also calls it being born not only of God, but being born of the Holy Spirit. In John chapter 3, which I already referenced, He said to Nicodemus, the wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from and where it is going, so is everyone who is born of the Spirit. So you have all these terms, born again, born of God, born of the Spirit. Here's another one. In Titus chapter 3 and verse 5, it calls it the washing of regeneration. Even the Old Testament spoke of regeneration. It used a different term, a different phrase. It called God imparting to people a new heart, giving them a new heart. That's not the physical heart, you know, replacement. That is not a surgery, but a different kind, a spiritual surgery where God places in you an entirely new heart. Ezekiel chapter 36 and verse 26, promise to the nation of Israel, moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. That's regeneration. That's the meaning of regeneration. That is what we get when we believe in Christ. Now, second, second. I want to talk to you about the attributes of our new birth because I really want you to understand this really well. I want you to really picture in your mind what this new birth is all about, the attributes of our new birth. And we're still in verse 3, kind of looking at what it says there. First attribute, I want you to notice that the new birth for a believer is already accomplished. It's already happened. It's something that happened to you as a believer. Whether you felt something or not, whether you know the exact day or not, doesn't matter. Just as surely as you were born out of a woman, and that's why you're here sitting right now, if you are a believer in Jesus, it is because you already had an accomplished new birth. Verse three says that. It says, God has caused us, notice that's past tense, God has caused us to be born again. The new birth is not something we hope for in the future. It is something that we possess in the present. That is a fundamental truth you must understand. 1 John chapter 5 and verse 1, going back to that, says, whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. It's happened. Every true believer in Jesus, no matter where they are in the world, is already born again. In fact, there's no such thing as a Christian who's not born again. You ever hear people say things like, I'm a born-again Christian? I say to myself, there is no other kind. The only other kind, then, would be one that's not really a Christian, but he's just a Christian in name. He's a cultural Christian. There are many people like that. In Western civilization and other parts of the world, there are many people that carry the name Jesus, but they're not true Christians. They've never had the new birth. Maybe that's you. Maybe some of you children say, you look at this whole thing that we do on church, you never get excited about it. You never get excited about it because you haven't had a new birth. You're still dead in your trespasses and sins. You haven't had the new birth. You're not truly a Christian. Outwardly, you say you're a Christian, but inwardly, there's no new life in you. There's only one kind of a Christian. It's where God has already accomplished this miracle of granting new life. And when that happens to you, your heart attitude and your desires will change. They don't change, you were never born again. Anyone who has not experienced the new birth, no matter their church attendance, no matter their profession of faith in the Lord Jesus, even if they were water baptized, it doesn't matter. Their Christianity is in name, not in reality. 1 John 5, verses 11 and 12, God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. If you want life from God, if you want to be born again, if you want the new birth, you have to appeal that God would do that through His Son in your life. Now the second attribute I want you to understand is that the birth is a second birth. The new birth that we're talking about, being born again, even as it says in its title there, is a second birth. And therefore it's distinct from your new birth, your first birth, I mean. The word born again really means that in verse 3. It's made up of two parts, actually. There's the preposition ana, which means to do that again. It has to do with repetition, do it again. And ganao is to give birth. So it literally means to give another birth, to give a second birth. The first birth, we know what that is. That's when we are born of our mother, right? Born into this world, that's our first birth. That's what it means. We celebrate that, by the way. We say, this is my birthday. I have my birthday in March, or I have my birthday in December, and we think it's a big deal, and rightly so. How much more important is the second birth? The first birth only lasts for a while, and then we die. The second birth goes on and on, right? It has greater implications beyond this life. We should probably celebrate that more. Another synonym for the new birth, going back to that theme, is in John chapter 3 and verses 3 and 7, and it's being called born from above. I love that. Genethane anothen, to be given birth from above. In other words, the first birth, the first birth that we have is from below. You know, God took Adam, and He took Adam from the ground. He fashioned Adam's body, and then Eve was made from Adam. That means that our bodies are from the earth. We were taken from below, and He scooped it up. He breathed life into us, and our body, our subsistence was from the ground. Even the name Adam means of the earth. So we are creatures of the earth, we come from this planet. But the second birth is not from below, it is from above. It is the life that comes down from above. It's a greater kind of life and it takes us and it takes the body and transforms it into a different kind of a body that is from above, that transcends the elements of planet earth. And so it's a greater kind of life. The Lord Jesus, I think, hinted at this in John 6 when he said, I am the bread of life that came down out of heaven to give life. He came down out of heaven to give us life. He's not from the earth as Adam was. He's from above. He would constantly say, I came down out of heaven to grant life. It's a superior kind of life, a superior kind of birth. So it's a second birth. A third attribute that we read about here is that spiritual birth is a drastic new beginning. It's a drastic new beginning. That truth we glean from the symbolism of birth itself. Why on earth would he even relate it to birth if it wasn't a drastic new beginning of some kind? Birth is a beginning event. Everything that you've done in this world, you've done because of your birth. Birth launched you into this life, right? And everything that you did, you learned to crawl and you learned to talk and then you learned to walk. You did all these things. You went to school and you accomplished things. Everything about what you accomplished in this life is because of your birth. Birth was the beginning event. The same is true in the spiritual realm. You can't begin a life with God. You can't really do anything for God at all until you have that second birth. Does that make sense? A whole new life in Christ is needed and then it's drastic. It's a drastic new beginning. It's radical. The new birth is not a reformation of our old life. You know, some people hear Christians talk about, hey, I got born again. And you know what they think? They think, oh, this guy, he made some kind of a resolution to be a little more religious, right? He made some kind of a commitment on New Year's Day or something like that to quit cussing. He doesn't want to look at those bad pictures anymore. Or he wants to stop smoking or something like that. And they think, oh, that's what they mean by being born again. Not at all. Anybody could do those things, right? You don't need a dramatic miracle, a new birth, to be able to stop sinning in some of those ways. No, the new birth is much more radical. The new birth is not patching up the old life. Regeneration is not a human work at all. It doesn't even come from the human will. It is God acting. It is God's radical life change inside of us. We are not being remodeled in stages. There are no degrees to regeneration. There are not some of us who are more born again than others of us. We do not slowly change ourselves and then say, hey, I've been born again. One either is made alive instantaneously and radically by God, or he's still dead to God. They walk around, but they're the walking dead. There is no in-between state. There is no partially alive. There are no zombies for Christ. We are radically made new. Isn't that what 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 17 says? We read that and we act like it's not true. We read that verse and we act like it's some ideal to attain to. It's not. Listen to it again. Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a what? A new creation, a new creature. The old things passed away, behold new things have come. That's talking not about your body but about your soul. And that's an important attribute of this new birth. And then one more attribute, the fourth attribute, is that this new birth is irreversible. Irreversible. You know, you can't be unborn, right? You can't go back into a mother's womb. Even Nicodemus was asking about that. How can I have a second birth? Go back. You can't undo a birth. Once you're born, you're born. It's not reversible. In fact, it's not only not reversible, it's a life that can't be killed. Why not? Because the life that you get isn't just like the life you got the first time. It's a different quality of life. As I said, it comes down out of heaven, and therefore he calls it eternal life. Eternal life because it's from the place of eternity, and when He brings that down to us, it is right for us to call it everlasting life. I'll give you a hard question. Here's a quiz question. How long does everlasting life last? Don't you wish all quizzes were that easy? Why do we laugh at that and then think that God can give me this life and then I can somehow lose it? It can somehow be killed. It can somehow be taken away from me. It's everlasting life. It's eternal life. In fact, in John 3.36, it says, Jesus said, he who believes in the Son of God has aeonios zoe, life unto the ages, eternal life. And so regeneration imparts that everlasting life. And by definition, that never ends. It's not reversible. So that's the meaning of our new birth and those are some of the attributes of our new birth. How does all of this connect to the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ? Well that brings us third, still in verse 3, to the basis of our new birth, the ground or the basis of our new birth. What is it? Our new birth comes to us through It's right there in verse 3. Our new birth comes to us through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. We are born again, Peter writes in verse 3, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Do you see that? That's very important. So listen to this, the life that you and I receive when we're born again that makes us Christians is not some life that God just kind of picked somewhere and said, oh, here's some life and I'm going to grant it to them. It's not like that. It's not some life that's floating around somewhere. The new life that we get, that we got in the new birth is the life that Jesus triumphantly won when he broke the shackles of death and he walked out of that tomb and he declared, I am alive forevermore. It's an everlasting life. It cannot be destroyed. It is that life of Jesus that Jesus won when he defeated death. He then takes that life and he imparts it to you and to me in our soul. That's the life that we get. Sometimes we talk about the new birth, and we talk about the resurrection, and we know they're both true, but we don't understand they're both connected. You don't get new life unless someone won the new life for you, and the guy who won the new life for you was Jesus Christ. Hallelujah for that. The resurrection of Jesus brought me life. When I look at the resurrection of Jesus, it's not just an apologetic to tell other people, you know, our Savior lives and your religious leader is dead. It's more than that. It's that because my Savior lives, I live also. It's connected. My life is connected to his resurrection. Without his resurrection, I get no life. I have no life, I can produce no life, and nobody else can give me life. God would not even give me life if it were not for the resurrection of Jesus. Do you see why he had to go to the cross, he had to go into death, and he had to come out of death victorious to win a new kind of life? He identified with Adam and he died and he came and he brought a whole new race. We are connected to the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't know how that works. I don't know how he takes us and he connects us to the Lord Jesus Christ. There are things that are mysterious. There are ways God operates that are invisible and cannot be seen. He puts it in scripture and he says, you must believe it. And God must be believed. There's never a good reason not to believe God. When he says this happened, it happened. We read things like in Ephesians 2 verses 5 and 6, it says, even when we were dead in our transgressions, God made us alive, and the part that I didn't read to you earlier was, He made us alive with Christ. Somehow Him coming out, now I get that life. I don't know how that works. But He raised us up with Christ also, it says in verse 6 in Ephesians 2. Brothers and sisters, without the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, there's no victory over death for anybody. There's no new life that's secured. There's no new birth. There's no regeneration. Beloved, without the resurrection of Jesus, all of humanity would die and stay dead. They would never know the eternal life of God. We'd never have a church. We'd never have a gospel to preach to anybody. We would only be looking forward to death and more death, eternal death. Paul made that so clear in 1 Corinthians 15, 7. Basically, I almost want to read the way he's writing this. He must have gotten that report from the Corinthian church, and he must have thought, what are they, nuts? They're saying there's no resurrection. Do they have any idea of the implications of that? If Christ has not been raised, verse 17 of that chapter, your faith is worthless. You're still in your sins. You're going to die and die forever. There's nothing to look forward to, there's no hope in that. But because of the resurrection of Jesus, there is a powerful new birth available to anybody who will call on the name of Jesus Christ. Call on him, save me, and he will impart that life to you. Our new birth is not just great for today. I mean, I'm so glad I'm born again. But I still have this body, And it's got problems. You noticed? You talk to old people and never make fun of old people. You know why? You're gonna be old one day yourself. That's you in the mirror. That's you. One day you'll be standing there looking in the mirror and said, why did I ever make fun of old people? But the old people understand. I need a new body. This is not working out. See, we talk about the curse that God put on the world and we forget That's on the planet, I'm part of the planet. Why do bad things happen down here? Very simple, the planet's cursed by God. He cursed the whole planet. We suffer and we have death and we have pain and disappointment because God cursed us because we didn't listen to his word. And he's right to do that. He's not evil, he's holy, we're evil. That's what people will never admit because they're blind and stubborn and foolish. The evidence for them being evil and sinful is abundant. They just won't do a careful analysis of it. So I get a new resurrection too. I don't just get a new birth, but in the future, I get the resurrection from the dead. My body gets transformed, right? That's 1 Corinthians 6.14. God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through his power. Philippians 3 verses 20 and 21, our citizenship is in heaven from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state, that's putting it mildly, humble state, into conformity with the body of His glory. He's going to take this and change it to be like that. Good deal, very good deal. How's he gonna do it? It says in Philippians chapter three, by the exertion of the power that he has even to subject all things to himself. You're like, is Jesus really gonna have the power to take all of our bodies and change them instantaneously so that our bodies will be renewed forevermore and they'll be glorious and all the rest of that? And the answer of course is yes, because he has all authority to subject everything to himself. and He will use that power to raise our bodies. Beloved, isn't that wonderful? Isn't that glorious? Does that sound too good to be true? For some people, that sounds too good to be true. You're like a salesman up there selling something. It's too good to be true. I'll tell you why it's not too good to be true, and that is our fourth point, still in verse three. How did it start? Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his, and here's what people don't believe, his great mercy, has caused us to be born again. What was the original moving cause that there was a Savior that was put into the world to die for our sins and to suffer in our place and then to be raised with power from the dead and then for that then to cause us to be born again? Answer? And there it is, and it's hard to comprehend. God's great mercy. This is where salvation begins. This is where the story begins. This is what you're gonna have to believe and have to accept, that God in heaven has a heart of great mercy. You and I don't, and maybe that's why we have trouble hearing that. We don't want to be merciful to people who have done us wrong. When they come and they say, I'm sorry, we don't want to grant them mercy, because our heart is not rich in mercy. God's heart is if you want to understand God through Christ You'll understand this God in the heavens is rich in mercy. He has great mercy God's mercy is not small. He looks at blind and stubborn people and he waits patiently for them because his mercy is great. And it's God's mercy that causes all this that we've been talking about. It's God's mercy that caused Jesus to come. It's God's mercy that caused him to be raised from the dead. It's God's mercy that causes that new life then to be applied to us so we can be born again and receive our resurrection as well. Some people think it's faith that causes our new life. Faith does not cause our new life. Faith humbly receives life from a merciful God. God is the one who causes our new life. God is the one who caused us to be born again. God is the one who's doing this. Do you read that yourself, right? He caused us to be born again by His great mercy. He should not really have done that, if you think about it. He should have just let us be dead in our trespasses and sins. He should have just said, you're getting what you deserve. He should have just said, justice has been served. But He didn't. He looked upon us in our plight and it says God has great mercy and His great mercy caused us to be born again. There isn't anybody that's been born again that hasn't been born again except that God has had mercy on their poor and pathetic soul. In Ephesians 2, 1 again, it states this so clearly. We were dead in our trespasses and sins. Do you know what state death brings to mind? A helpless, lifeless, immovable, it sees nothing, knows nothing, tastes nothing, can do nothing. That's what death is. That was our state before God. We were dead in our trespasses and sins, but God, but God, but God made us alive together with Christ. It's His mercy that did it. It then goes on to say in Ephesians 2, for by grace you've been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It, what's that? The faith and the salvation. It is a gift of God so that nobody would boast. If our faith brought us life, we could boast. We can't even believe when we're dead in trespasses and sin. We can't believe if God didn't have mercy on us. You can't even come to confess Jesus as Savior if God doesn't have mercy on you. Dead corpses, you punch them and stimulate them and prick them and kick them and they don't budge. They're dead, and we were dead in sin. They can't see the beauty of Jesus and say, I want to believe in him. They can't see the wonders of God's plans and say, that makes sense to me. They're dead. God has to grant the life. God has to do the miracle of imparting life so they can even understand, have their eyes open, and believe. We were raised up with Christ, and that is an act of pure, sovereign mercy, and that, beloved, is why we believe. James 1 and 18 affirms this. It says, in the exercise of God's will, in other words, His sovereign will, in the exercise of His own will, His own decision, He, God, brought us forth. That's regeneration. Brought us forth by the word of truth. That's the thought. that gets Peter so excited in writing this letter at the beginning. Going back to the beginning of verse 3, that's what gets him so excited. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be Him who according to His great mercy has done this, you see. If he were here in front of us, I think he would be just talking so much about the mercy of God. when our minds can capture how God has been so kind and so patient and so merciful to us in the most pitiable position, and that He granted life to us when we didn't deserve it, we couldn't even move towards Him. When we get that sense, when we understand that is true of our salvation and our new birth, boy, that just makes us erupt in praise. Would you agree? In John, the gospel of John chapter 1 and verse 13, it says people who receive Jesus as the Son of God and believe in Jesus, it says they were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man. You can't even have your will cause you to be born, but they are born of God. Our new birth is the exercise of only one person's will, and that is God. We didn't have a will that could cooperate with God in the first place. It took the exercise of His own will so that we're not born of the will of man, but we're born of the will of God. That is sovereign mercy. Why was I saved? Because I believed in Jesus? No, because God had mercy on me. Did you choose to be born in your first birth? Did you strike a deal inside of there with some Morse code that only your mommy understood, tapping it out with a foot? This is how it's gonna go down when on the day of my birthday, we're gonna wait three more weeks and then I'm gonna come out? You had nothing to do with that. In fact, you probably made it hard. You were birthed by somebody else. You didn't do 1% of that. It was mommy who was told what? Push! God birthed you in the new birth. He birthed you. He granted your poor, pathetic, sinful, headed to hell life. He granted you life. Don't you want to live it for Him? You've been given life. Don't you want to live it for Him? Don't you want to do something for Him? You've been given life other people haven't been given. You've been given something. Do something with it. It's like you sit on it year after year some of you. You haven't done anything with your life. Do something with it. John Piper in his book, Finally Alive, writes, God is the great doer in this miracle of regeneration. And He has not been silent about it. This means that He does not want us to be ignorant of what He does in the new birth. Only God regenerates human beings. And Peter says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Boy, we should be singing about that. All right, I wish I could stay on that one, but I've got to get to number five. The privileges of our new birth. That's in verses 4 and 5. The privileges of our new birth. We forgot about verses 4 and 5. Let's read it again. To obtain, born again, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you. who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. I need a whole nother sermon for this. Are you joyful you are born again? Do you wonder what benefit there is to being born again? Look at these incredible privileges only to you. The first privilege is you have a living hope. You are born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus. Yes, that's back to verse three again. You are born again to a living hope. Why do we have a living hope? Why is it described as a living hope? Listen, because the person you hope in is what? Alive. People in the world have many hopes. Their hopes are dead and dying. In the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible, I'm glad that book is in the Bible because it looks at the perspective of the person in the world and he philosophizes about life and he says all that he did, getting riches and having all these women and all of this stuff that he did, he said it's vain, it's vanity, it's vanity, it's empty, it's empty. There's no hope in it. Many people go through life and they think they have hope. They look left. They look right. They say, well, other people are, you know, doing this stuff. There must be something to it. They don't really know. They don't really have any secure hope. You ask people, are you going to heaven? And they say, I hope so. They don't know. Some people think they're going to live on through their children and live on through their grandchildren. Guess what? Your children are going to die. Your grandchildren are going to die. And nobody's going to remember you. There's no hope in that. Who is your great-great-great-grandfather? You don't know. Well, maybe a couple of you do. Others hope to be recycled back into this planet. My question has always been, why? As a cow? A lizard? When they die, they will find out that was a lie. After death, the Bible says, comes what? not a recycling of life, but the judgment from God. Others hope in education, but what education does is give us smarter sinners. It doesn't change their heart. Some people hope in democracy. Listen, people are going to fail. Okay? People are going to fail. We, beloved, have the only hope that will not disappoint for the future. Romans 10, 11, the scripture says, whoever believes in Jesus will not be disappointed. I like that because I don't like to be disappointed. We Christians, of all people, should be the ones most talking about our future hope. We even have hope in the name of our church. It is a living hope. And it is a living hope because it is connected to Jesus Christ who's risen from the dead, who again, I will say, stood in that vision in the Revelation chapter 1, and he told John, I am the living one. Nobody else can say that. The hymn says, I can face tomorrow because he lives. The hymn says, all fear is gone because he lives. The hymn says, I know he holds the future because he lives. You don't know what the future is, but he holds the future, he knows it. What is our future? Verse four, very quickly, it's an inheritance. I'm here to let you know that you are some of the most rich people ever in the entire universe. You know, forget about Bill Gates, you're richer. He will take none of it with you. You will have your riches for all eternity. This, I think, is what true prosperity preaching should be. Suffer with Christ now and He'll give you the riches then. That's true prosperity. What is so great about this inheritance? It is imperishable. What does that mean? It's not corruptible. It's not destructible. It's undefiled, the inheritance. What does that mean? Did you ever think about it? Every single thing you go to the store and buy, brand new or not, every single gift anybody ever gives to you, every single thing you inherit in this world eventually gets spoiled and corrupted. God's inheritance does not. It is an inheritance also that will not fade away. Do you have anything that's beautiful at home and now it's beginning to fade away? We will be given an inheritance that has a luster that will never lose its shine. No fading glory to our inheritance. If you put these three descriptions Peter has here together, you really get the picture of what the Christian inheritance is because of the new birth and the resurrection of Jesus. We Christians are hoping in Jesus and so we have an inheritance. It's untouched by death, it's unstained by evil, and it's unaffected by time. Our inheritance then is death-proof, it's sin-proof, and it's time-proof. Man, oh man, that's going to be good. I'm going to meet you there one day and we're going to talk about it. because it's reserved in heaven for you. It's stored up. It's under lock and key. It's guarded. Who is it guarded by? It's guarded by God. When God guards something, nobody can touch it, guys. Nobody. That is what true prosperity preaching is. I have riches. I have treasures. They're just not down here. And that's okay. I'm going to live forever. I've been told I'm going to have a glorified, shining body. I think it's going to have good hair. I really do. I think we're going to fly. I really do. I think we're going to fly. That's what Christ did when he took off from the Mount of Olives. I don't know. That's just me. There's going to be no disease, we're told. There's going to be no death. There's going to be no pain. There's not even going to be a tear that comes out of our eyes because of pain or sorrow or regret. Revelation chapter 21 and verse 4, that's a great inheritance. There's going to be a millennial kingdom. The animals are going to live at peace with one another. Everything's going to be green. There are going to be no lousy mosquitoes to bite me in my backyard. It's going to be a wonderful place to be, and I'm going to get that 1,000 years, and then it molds right into the new heaven and the new earth and the glorified kingdom that comes down, the new Jerusalem that's 1,500 miles long for a city. That's like from here to Denver, and it's 1,000 miles wide. It's a cube. This is the part that gets you. 1,500 miles high the city is. Mount Everest is what? Six miles high. What an incredible thought this is. And all of that will pale in comparison to then our eyes will see the Lord Jesus Christ and all of his brilliant divine glory shining with his eyes aflame with fire and his face like the sun shining its strength and his feet like bronze that is glowing in a furnace and his voice will sound like the voice of many waters and we will see the Lord Jesus Christ face to face and that beloved will be all the treasure that we ever need when we see him, amen? I have an inheritance. I can face the future. I can live for Christ because I, even my faith it says in here, is protected by the power of God. Even that faith by which he protects us, he sustains my believing so I don't walk away and I don't doubt and I don't fall into apostasy. Because he gave me that new life, he protects me and to protect me, he protects my faith. He protects my understanding so I can keep believing all the way through life. He does that for me. He does that for you. You are protected by the power of God for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the end times. In the book of Colossians chapter 3, it says, when Christ who is our life, listen to that, when Christ who is our life is revealed, we also will be revealed with Him in glory because He is our life. There's a future beautiful, beautiful, shining glory for us now. Now we can accept some humility. Now we can accept that things do not go our way. Now we can accept that if we preach Christ and Him crucified and the world thinks that's a foolish message, that's okay. Now we can accept that we don't have a job the way we want to have a job and we don't have all the friends the way we want to have friends and we don't have all of the money and we don't have the house or the car. We can accept it all and we can live for Christ and preach Christ because we're going to get the whole world anyways. We're going to get the whole entire shining, redone, regenerated planet along with our new body. We can accept that. We are born again, and we are born again because Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, and we have all of this to look forward to. New life, new body, new world, all of it is mine because we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. If you do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, I don't know what you're waiting for. Tell him you're a sinner. Tell him you're lost. Agree with him, what he said about you, that you are a sinner. It doesn't matter if you say you're not a sinner, he says you are. And he's got a lot of proof for it. Your attitude and your heart, you haven't been living for God anyways and that's a sin. Even that itself, that he made you and you don't live for him, that is a sin. That's a great sin. You're a sinner, you're lost, you're headed to judgment, you don't know how many more days you have. Come to him, he will give you everything because he has a heart of gold. He has a heart of glory, a heart of mercy, a heart of kindness, and he grants life to anyone who comes. Comes lowly and says, I don't deserve it. I want that life that Jesus won when he was raised from the dead. Father in heaven, help us to believe. Help us to receive. that new life. Help us with that new life, to do something with it. Help us to live boldly amidst people that don't understand and don't have the life and are without hope and without you in this world. Help us, Father, to remember that Easter is not about one day, it is about an entire way in which we think based upon a historical reality. that we are the ones that you have opened our eyes to understand truly what is happening in this world. This is the true education. This is reality. Whatever comes out of your mouth is true. All of science and everything that has to do with empirical site will conform with what your word says eventually, because we will see it. But now is the time where you demand to be trusted. And we pray, Father, our faith in you would grow because of our message. And we bless you for raising Jesus Christ from the dead. Indeed, we bless you, Lord Jesus Christ, that you are the one that lives and constantly lives, that we might live with you. In Christ's blessed and glorious name, we pray, amen.