You would open your Bibles and turn to the book of Ephesians, Ephesians chapter number two. And as we come now once again to our study in the book of Ephesians, we have finished chapter one and turned to chapter two this morning. And as we do so, we are seeking to understand the subject of salvation as we've titled this series, Christianity and the Church. And as we've stated, Each week we've tried to explain the fact that the first three chapters are really the summary of Christian doctrine, and then the last three chapters of this book will be focused on how that doctrine is played out so that the church not only should know how God has saved them, but why God has saved them. And that's the purpose of us studying through the book of Ephesians in this particular day, in this context. And so as we now turn to God's Word, Ephesians 2, we will read the first 10 verses together, but our focus will be verses one through six this morning, and then when we come back to the series, we'll pick up in verse seven and go through verse 10, and I'll explain why as we get rolling this morning. So let's begin to read in verse number one, and this is the word of the living God, and it reads. and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace have you been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And this morning I'm preaching on this subject, what is the new birth? Let us pray together. Father, this morning as I come before these people that have been entrusted to my care spiritually, I love these people, I love this church, and I pray that my words would be clear and that the text of Scripture would be explained with precision and absolute clarity. I pray, Lord, that you would grow us, that you would strengthen us, that you would help us to understand the Word of God, that the Spirit of God would be our guide and our teacher. And yet that we would not look for explanations beyond the text of Scripture as having more authority than the Scripture itself. As we turn to comments from theologians and commentators, and as we read other sources, as we often do when we study the Bible. Let us turn to the scripture as divine authority. Let us turn to the scriptures as the word of God, without any mixture of error, the sufficient word of the living God. And let us find therein the word of truth. So Father, would you help us to be a church that has had a long history of being firmly submissive to the inerrant word of the living God, let us continue and let us be steadfast. And Father, of course, we pray that you would grow us up in the faith, that we would no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, but Lord, that we would be steadfast, stable, with deep roots and conviction that comes from the pages of chapter and verse of Holy Scripture. Now, Father, let us rejoice in the great salvation that you've given to us through your Son. And let us be humbled by what extent you've gone to to save rebel sinners. And if there happens to be one person among us today, or someone perhaps listening through technology, through media devices, or through the internet, we pray that today would be the day that you would awaken them to their need for Jesus Christ if they're lost, and bring them to a point of saving faith. And we ask this in Christ's name, amen. Some of the most famous verses in all of the Bible occur in that conversation that happened with Jesus and a Jew named Nicodemus. We find that conversation in John chapter three, and if you'll remember, Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews, a teacher, came to Jesus by night, and when he came to Jesus by night, he was inquiring of what it means to have eternal life. And Jesus responded to Nicodemus and said, you must be born again. Some of the most famous verses in all of scripture are contained in that very conversation when Jesus pointed out this reality that you must be born again. So as we come to this text this morning, we must ask ourselves this very question, what is the new birth? What does it mean to be born again? Certainly Nicodemus, if you remember the conversation, was quite confused. How is a man, when he is old, to enter into his mother's womb a second time and be born? Jesus went on to teach what he meant by the new birth. And then throughout all of the New Testament following Jesus' earthly ministry, we see the apostles, they are really putting on display what Jesus intended by the new birth. Their teaching is rooted in Jesus' own statement and his own teaching. So now Paul comes later than Jesus, but saying the very same thing. And what we must understand is that to be born again requires a radical change that cannot come from the efforts of fallen, sinful humanity. It is a radical change that comes by the work of God. That's why it is that we hear words like this in 2 Corinthians 5, 17. It says, If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things have passed away, and behold, all things have become new. There is a radical transformation. I remember when Jesus changed my life. I remember when God changed me. And I remember when God changed other people in my life as well. I can remember, again, my own dad coming to faith in the Lord Jesus as a young boy in this very sanctuary. God changed his life. And I can remember, even as a young boy, that home life was different. I can remember that there was a change that happened when my father's life was rooted under the submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Why did that happen? Well, it didn't happen because my dad, just on his own desire, up that morning decided, you know what? Today's the day that I will take responsibility for my own wretched sin. and I will put myself under the lordship of Jesus Christ? No. There was something that happened in this very room when God made him come to life. I remember William Harrell, who's with the Lord. I did not know William before his salvation, but after he was saved, soon thereafter, he came into the life of this church. I remember us having conversations and talking about his life before Jesus. He called it oftentimes his BC life, before Christ. And I remember talking to him. about his longings and desires to just live it up, to just drink in the world. But then when there was a transformed heart in life, it was just strange to him. I remember sitting there talking to him. He was trying to talk to me because, you see, I grew up in church. I know all the gospel language. I knew all the salvation talk. Not so with him. And so I remember sitting there at lunch talking to him, and him explaining to me, you know, it was weird, I was saved, and then when I go home the next day, the next weekend, it's like I'm reading my Bible in the same room where I'm throwing massive drunk parties just the weekend before. I mean, things are just radically different. There's blood on my floor from fights in my house where we were just living it up, Because that's what we desired. But then when Christ changed me, now there's this desire to just soak in the Word of God. I remember when my mom was saved. I remember when the Lord changed her life. There was a change that happened. What about you? Have you been born again? Have you been changed by the work of God? Or is your religion a checkbox religion? I prayed that prayer, asked Jesus to come into my heart, didn't want to go to the bad place with a lot of fire, wanted to go to the good place with a lot of gold, where I can eat and never get sick and never die. Sign me up for that one. But your life really is just filled with carnality. Your appetite is for the world today, it's because you've never been born again, if that's you. So we must ask ourselves this question, what is the new birth? And I believe in verses one through 10 of chapter two of Ephesians, we see a very clear definition of the new birth. So we stop at the end of verse six, because today we will look at the what, And then the next time, we will look at the why. If you look at the end of verse number six and transitioning over into verse number seven, you see that we see all about the new birth of what it is in verses one through six. But at verse seven you see this juncture, you see this hinge, so that, here's the purpose for salvation. So today we will look at what salvation is or what the new birth is, and then the next time together we will look at why it is that the Lord saves us. The first thing that we see in verses one through three this morning is this, the misery of a life without Christ. And we see, first of all, Paul goes right to the root issue in verse 1, and he deals with this idea of spiritual death. And you were, past tense, were, just like the scripture reading this morning, homosexuality, swindlers, revilers, sexually immoral, all of that. And such were some of you, but you have been washed, you have been changed, you have been saved. How? By God. Here, the same thing. He's writing to save people, so he's writing here in the past tense. You were dead in the trespasses and sins. Spiritual death is put on display here in verse number one. We see three specific words. We see the word dead. We see the word trespasses. And we see the word sin. The word dead means being in a state of loss of life, being so morally or spiritually deficient as to be, in effect, dead. Now, here's what we must understand right from the beginning, is that this word does not mean spiritually sick. This word does not mean that you need a crutch to limp on and so God just kind of throws you a crutch. This word does not mean that you are spiritually sick and just need a little bit of spiritual NyQuil to get over your sickness, or maybe you're spiritually sick and you need a spiritual surgery to get over your sickness. You do need a spiritual surgery, by the way, the new birth is a heart transplant spiritually. But this is not talking about someone that has a heart defect, and they find out that they need a heart transplant, so they then go and have a new heart placed in. This is talking about someone who is dead. This is talking about a corpse. This is talking about someone without life spiritually that needs to be resurrected. Then we see the word trespasses here. A violation of moral standards. Offense, wrongdoing, or sin. And then we see the word sin here, which oftentimes just has the idea of missing the mark. So let me just try to illustrate. I have been looking for, you know, deer on property where I had permission to hunt. And I have been walking through the woods and then approached a border between the property that I have permission to hunt and the property that I don't have permission to hunt. And there is a sign that says, no trespassing. Why? Because if I go across that line onto that property, I have been guilty of trespassing. God has a line, and he has many of them, and he says, do not do this, or do this, and if you do what God says don't do, that's a sin. Or if you don't do what God says to do, That's a sin. You have crossed the line and you've been guilty of trespassing against God. God put Adam and Eve in a garden of paradise and you can eat of all of the trees of this wonderful paradise, but there's this one tree and you're not to eat of it. And what did they do? They trespassed. They took God's tree. They ate of a tree that they did not have permission to eat from. That's a trespass. And then there's sin to miss the mark. I was shooting this past week a gun. I had a target set up at 100 yards. I was trying to hit the bullseye. I came very close to hitting the bullseye after several shots, but I never really hit the bullseye. In fact, I have the pictures on my phone afterwards, and I can show you how close I came. In fact, I can put my thumb where the bullseye is and cover up my shot, but it's not the bullseye. I was extremely close. In fact, I was proud of myself. My son, John Mark, was up at the table where I was shooting. When I finished, I walked down, I looked at it, I took a picture of it, I turned around, and I did like this. In other words, I hit the bullseye. But when I got back up there, I had to confess, well, it wasn't exactly the bullseye. I mean, I can put my finger over the bullseye and cover up my hole from the shot, but it's not the bullseye. You see, you can get really close to obedience and still be in disobedience. And so that's the point that Paul is saying here, that we've all been guilty of trespassing against God. Now, what does this look like in the deadness of our sin? James Montgomery Boyce says, he is dead towards God, but he is alive to all wickedness. The point is this, when you hear that you're dead or were dead in your trespasses and sins, it doesn't mean that you're not functioning. It means that you are functioning, you're making real decisions. Chose what car you wanted to buy, what clothes you wanted to wear, what person you wanted to marry, what house you wanted to purchase, what occupation you wanted to pursue. All of those are real decisions. They're real decisions. But the point is, spiritually, you have no appetite for God. No desire to be under the lordship of Christ. You, in your heart, want to be a rebel. You want to do it your way. You want to do your own thing. You want to satisfy your flesh. We live in a culture that's just overrun with an affection for zombies, for some reason. I mean, you can drive down to the middle of town here, and you can sit at a red light and see grown men sitting in trucks. They've gone to great, great care and great expense, mind you, to transform their truck into a zombie hunting vehicle. Zombie hunters are out on the road in our community. And we have shows like The Walking Dead and we have other shows. Our culture just has an affection for this. I don't really understand it to be quite honest, but here's what I do know. I know that as it pertains to our spiritual condition before Jesus saves us, we were the walking dead. We were zombie walkers, putrefying smells and all coming from our own works. It doesn't even matter if you, in your flesh, as a lost person, donated clothes to the homeless shelter. You can do good deeds, but those good deeds, even those attempts, are still wretched, putrefying, horrific in the nostrils of a sovereign God. Because without faith it is impossible to please God. So this is where Paul goes in his explanation. By the way, what's the whole purpose of this letter? The whole purpose of this letter is not to stir up a debate about human responsibility and the sovereignty of God. This was written to Christians in a church in a vile, wretched city to bring them to the point of elevating their joy and to focus them in the right perspective against an evil world in the backdrop and fix their focus on a sovereign, good, omnibenevolent, loving God. So in our natural state, we were born dead. We lived in a state of spiritual death, unable to please God, without a desire to please God. Even if we had religion like I did as a lost church member, it was just a state of utter confusion. And it was not pleasing to God. Listen to what the psalmist says. Psalm 51 5. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. We were born dead. Not born in a state of. Good moral standing and uprightness and innocence to where when we reach an age called the age of accountability, then we can then choose right or wrong. That's nowhere in the Bible. I mean, I've searched for it. I've turned the pages until my fingers are just worn, slapped out with calluses looking for this. It's not in the Bible. The Bible says that we were born sinners. Psalm 58 verse 3 says, the wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray from birth, speaking lies. In other words, you don't have to teach your children to just be evil. You have to teach them not to be evil. They will desire to be evil from birth. So, the condition here, the spiritual death in verse 1 is clear. Paul makes it clear, but here's the problem. I've sat in conferences and heard preachers stand up there and say, at the end of a sermon, say, now, this is the way we were without Jesus. It's like we were out on the raging sea, and we just were about to go under, and we were bobbing up and down, had no more energy to keep ourselves afloat, about to drown in the sea of sin. And then along comes a ship. And the good captain of the ship stands at the front and throws this life preserver. And it lands right before your hand. And then you have to make a choice of whether you want to accept it or not. Then you reach up and you grab that life preserver. And you're pulled to safety. And then the preacher goes on to explain that that's how we were. And we had to make the choice. And we had to, in essence, help God save us. Folks, this is the picture of the Bible regarding salvation if we have to use the same story. It's that the good captain of the ship was sailing out across the sea of sin, and it would be completely impossible to find the location of this individual in the depths of the deepest part of the sea, but he stops the ship. and he dives off of the front of the ship, the good captain does, and swims to the bottom, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of feet, and finds a dead corpse, covered with sand and stuff growing on his dead body, grabs him and physically brings him to the surface of the sea, brings him up onto the boat, breathes life into his body, and then he lives. That is the right picture of salvation, if we have to use that analogy. You're not running out of energy without Jesus, about to drown. You have already drowned. You are already dead, and you're helpless and hopeless. That's why John 6, 44 says it this way, no one can come to me. unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day." The word draw there in the Greek literally means to drag, to drag away. It means to use force, to pull in. That's why Spurgeon said it this way. Charles Spurgeon, the English Baptist preacher, said it this way, quote, I might preach to you forever. I might borrow the eloquence of a Demosthenes or a Cicero, but you will not come unto Christ. I might. beg of you on my knees with tears in my eyes, and show you the horrors of hell and the joys of heaven, the sufficiency of Christ, and your own lost condition. But you would none of you come unto Christ of yourselves, unless the Spirit that rested on Christ should draw you. It is true of all men in their spiritual condition that they will not come unto Christ." If you don't learn anything else this morning, nail this one thing down. The word dead here, don't let someone come along and teach you it doesn't mean dead. It means what it says. Second of all, we see spiritual rebellion. Because we're dead, look at verses 2 and 3, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is at now work in the sons of disobedience. among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath like the rest of mankind." William Hendrickson points out in verse number three that the minions of Satan are engaged in their destructive missions. Many of you know Judson, he's having some trouble speaking. Just turned three, knows a few words. He's in speech therapy. There's one movie that he really likes and I think he speaks the language for some reason and it's the Minions. We turn on the Minions and he just gets so happy and sits there and when it comes on and they're singing, you know, and all that, he starts just singing right with them. I'm like, I have no idea what he's saying. Apparently he speaks Minion language. The minions, if you've watched the little movie, what's the entire purpose of the movie? So that these little bitty yellow creatures can find the most despicable master. And that's the way that all of the evil fallen spirits are with the devil. They followed him. and the minions of Satan are engaged in their destructive missions. And you know what? Without Jesus Christ and before Jesus Christ, we were all following and walking and obeying and loving it. That's why James 4, verse 4 says, you adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Notice the rebellion that's spoken of here in verse three. Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh. The passions of our flesh. Think about what that means. The passions, what you love, what you enjoy. Proverbs 21 10 says the soul of the wicked desires evil. His neighbor finds no mercy in his eyes. Jeremiah 17, 9, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? John 3, 20, for everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his work should be exposed. The passions of our flesh, we desire to go after these ungodly things. But notice this rebellion is further. is further explained by using the phrase, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind. Carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and you can just think about all of the graphical things that that would involve or include, Colossians 121. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds. 1 Corinthians 2.14, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, you wanted sin. It tasted good, felt good, seemed good. 2 Corinthians 4, 4, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. Paul goes on and explains, explains this rebellion by using this phrase, by nature, children of wrath like the rest of mankind. The end of verse 3. By nature, what does the natural person or by nature refer to? It refers to what we read from the Psalms a moment ago. It refers to the way that we are born. We are born sinful. We are born as the enemy of God. We are born set against God. Romans 3, 10 through 12, as it is written, none is righteous, no, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Not even one. Not even the best. Not even the best among us. Not even the best of human history. Not even the best. in all of the world seeks after God. The reformer Martin Luther from church history wrote a book called The Bondage of the Will. If you're interested in reading more about what we're talking about today, I encourage you just to purchase it. You can oftentimes find it online if you have an e-reader for a dollar and a half or two dollars. It's very cheap. It's worth your time. I want to just let you hear what he has to say as he talks about the bondage of the human will. Luther said, free will without God's grace is not free at all, but is the permanent prisoner and bond slave of evil, since it cannot turn itself to good. Now, I agree. He's not Jesus. So we need to make sure that Luther's telling us the truth. So, what do we do? We turn back to Paul. Paul was writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And in Ephesians chapter 2, verse number 1, he said that we were dead in our trespasses and sins. So it seems that Luther is taking this truth from what Paul was teaching. Martin Luther in his book goes on to say this, quote, man does not do evil against his will. under pressure as though he were taken by the scruff of the neck and dragged into it like a thief being dragged off against his will to punishment. But he does it spontaneously and voluntarily. And this willingness or volition is something which he cannot in his own strength eliminate, restrain, or alter. I've made a few statements about free will in the first chapter of Ephesians, and I want to make clear what I'm trying to say. It's not that we don't have a will to choose anything. We are making choices even right now. We're making choices in our mind. Are we going to Moe's? Are we going to Golden Corral? Golden Corral, no, the preacher, he doesn't preach too short here, so line will be long at Golden Corral, so we better go to Moe's. So you're making choices. You're making choices on what you wore today. You're making choices on whether or not you wanna buy that new truck next week and transform it into a zombie hunting vehicle. You're making choices about everything, right? Yes. But your will, free as it may seem, is in bondage to sin and you will never, ever, ever, ever in a million years ever choose God unless God would transform your wicked, dead soul to make you hate the things that God hates. and love the things that God loves and have a submission to his lordship and see that the church is the special place on earth and love the church like Jesus loves the church in the sense of if Jesus loves the church then we should love the church and all those things seem just backwards to us in our own flesh until God changes us. Second of all, not our miserable state before Jesus. But in verses four through six, the miracle of salvation. The miracle of salvation. Notice first the motive of salvation in verse four. In verse number four we see, but God. All of that was our life before salvation. But God, but God, but God, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us. You will hear this more than once in the rest of your spiritual life, and you need to reject it. God did not. I wanna underline and I wanna capitalize. They say capitals in text is yelling, so I wanna emphasize, I wanna bold type it, I wanna make sure that everybody sees it. God did not look through a tunnel of time to see what Ron Mooney would do, and then on the basis of what Ron Mooney would do in choosing God, then God says, well then, I'm going to choose Ron, and I'm going to choose to save him. There's several big problems with that. First of all, that would mean that at some point the God that's looking through a tunnel of time has to gain some knowledge because there was at least one millisecond where God did not have all the knowledge. That's bad trouble when we're talking about God. Second of all, God does what He does in saving sinners. Verse 4, how? But God being rich in mercy. The motive of God's saving grace upon wicked sinners is because God is acting not out of knowledge of Ron's choice in the future. God is acting out of sheer mercy to save sinners. That's what He's doing. He's acting out of mercy. Every one of us lost. Every one of us undone. Every one of us incapable of coming to God on our own. And God has mercy. You say, back it up, Titus 3, 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. Looking through the tunnel of time and seeing what Ron would do is saving us based on Ron's good choice of God. That's a violation of Titus 3.5. Romans 9, 10 through 13, again, we have stated this over and over and over again, God chose to love Jacob and to hate Esau not based on what they would do because they had not been born and they had not done either good or bad. He did so based on his own desire to save Jacob who did not deserve it. God's ultimate motive in salvation is His glory, not man's glory. It is God's praise, not man's comfort. It is God's will to be done, not the will or the condition of man. That's why we can celebrate, by the way, salvation. We were lost in our sin, but God We were guilty in our transgressions and trespasses, but God. We were helpless in our sins, but God. We were slaves to sin, but God. We were in the shackles of sin, but God. We were alienated from God, but God. We were at enmity with God, but God. We were the enemies of God, but God. We were the children of wrath, but God. We were walking according to the passions of our flesh, but God. We were enjoying our own depravity, but God's sin was good to us. It tasted good, felt good, seemed good, but God. That's why Charles Wesley wrote in that famous hymn, And Can It Be, years ago, Long my imprisoned spirit lay. By the way, you want a really good illustration besides the one that we talked about, about the man drowning in the sea? Here's one from a hymn. Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke, the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed Thee. The miracle of salvation is mercy. But we also see the motive of salvation is mercy, but the miracle of salvation is spiritual resurrection. The miracle is this, verse 5, what does it say? Even when we were dead and our trespasses made us alive together with Christ. Even again, he goes back and emphasizes even when we were dead. Who was it that made us alive? It was God who brought us to life God who brought about a spiritual resurrection All right It is God who does this? What if I were to cross the street stand in the middle of the cemetery and just start Screaming for people to rise from the dead you think anything would happen? besides maybe law enforcement agencies pulling up to maybe take a weird person away and put them in a padded room someplace? What do you think would happen? Nothing. What if I got really specific and stood at one specific grave and looked at John Smith, come forth? Same results. Nothing's gonna happen. And that's exactly the way it is in my preaching. I stand and preach, point to the goodness of Jesus Christ, the good news of saving grace that comes in Christ alone, and then trust God to be the one to bring about the resurrection because I can tell you to repent and believe the gospel and come to faith in Christ, but unless God were to move on you, if you're lost, same results as me going out into the cemetery Same results. Listen to the hymns we sing. Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God, he to rescue me from danger interposed his precious blood. Dead and trespasses and sins, wandering from the fold of God, Not understanding, not seeking God, wondering from the fold of God. And it was Jesus who was the seeker that came to find us. Victory in Jesus. Oh, victory in Jesus, my savior forever. He sought me and bought me with his redeeming blood. He loved me ere I knew him. and all my love is due him. He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood. He sought me. Consider the words of Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see. The end of verse five gives us this statement. By grace you have been saved. By grace you have been saved. How? He's done this in Christ. In Christ. Salvation by works is a massive building built on sand that crumbles. Salvation that comes by faith alone in Christ alone is built on a sturdy foundation. Something that we must get away from is this idea that we're helping God save us. And then last of all, verse six, God's promise in Christ. Notice the way that we end this morning. And raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Seated us with him in the heavenly places. in Christ Jesus. I don't know about you, but I have a reservation. I have a reservation and I intend to keep it. But I'm not gonna keep it on my own accord, on my own goodness, on my own intelligence, on my own will. I have a reservation because I know this, because God has saved me, because God has loved me, because God has brought me to saving faith in his son Jesus Christ, that it's as if I'm already there, seated with Christ in the heavenly places. I am leaving here one day. I'm just an alien passing through. I'm not home yet, so I don't intend to unpack my bags at the hotel room. I'm passing through. I'm longing for a better place. The city whose maker and builder is God. And my salvation is secure in the one who brought me to life. The one who called me from the spiritual grave, keeps me saved, and has already reserved my place in the heavenlies with His Son, Jesus Christ. So my question is this. Have you been born again? Have you been saved through Jesus Christ? Do you still love the things that God hates? Do you still hate the things that God loves? That's because you've never been born again. And here's what Jesus said to a man named Nicodemus. Nicodemus, you must be born again. The only way that you will ever live with the Lord for all of eternity in a blissful relationship of eternal life is that you come to the end of yourself and give up, confess and own your sin. Once and for all today may be the very day that God has intended for you to come to grips with the fact that you have trespassed a holy God, missed the mark, and deserve wrath. And may it be that today God would extend to you the good favor of forgiveness that comes in his son. And the Bible says, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And I ask you this question, why not you? Why would you not, right now, call upon Christ to save you? You answer that question. Let's stand and let's pray.