Today, everything you're doing for the Lord Jesus Christ is the real history of this world. It's a thing that will matter forever. And we get to be a part of something that lasts forever by being here, by praying, by singing, by attending, by other people knowing we're here. Your neighbors know you're here. Okay? Your friends know you're here. And after a little while, when you come to church, and you do think they know, oh, I know where they're at, it's Sunday morning. I know right where they're at. If they had an emergency, they could find us, amen. So I said all that to say that what goes on every single day for a Christian is God's history for eternity. What goes on in your life goes on in my life. Today, we're going to look at the Gospel of John, chapter 3. Before we start, I want to say a couple of things there. And I hope that I'm communicating enough that it's good for you to understand. But when I read my Bible and I teach Bible Institute, I teach that there's three things, three words to remember reading your Bible. The first word is clear teaching. Things that are clear. What we're going to look at today is very clear. And it only becomes unclear if someone wants to make you doubt. And the only one who is behind the doubt is the devil himself. He had the ridiculous craziness to face Jesus Christ and say, if you are the son of God, well, that takes a lot of foolishness. Amen. So the first one's clear teaching. The second one is consideration. That's it. The Bible might say that, but we won't know till we get to heaven. And the third one is conjecture, where you're just really guessing a lot at what it says. The Bible is full of clear teaching. And when you get saved and God begins to give people in your life to teach you the Bible, that's a special blessing. There are thousands and thousands of people who do not have someone to teach them the Word of God. I'm so thankful I did not grow up going to church like these little children. My dad was a racetrack, racehorse trainer in America. We moved a lot, we traveled a lot. We didn't even pray over our food, we were just heathen. And then one day a guy got me to go to church, got me to go several times and I heard the gospel. And I was already graduated from high school and stuff and deciding what to do and I got saved. And I went to my dad and told him, and he laughed. He said, I had to wear off. And then God played a trick on him, and he came to Christ, got born again about a year later. And then my mother did, and my two younger brothers. And they're all four in heaven tonight. My little baby brother was killed in front of the church my dad ended up pastoring there in Los Angeles, California. And my closest brother was getting ready to teach Bible on a Wednesday night in 2019, May the 1st. Didn't come out of the office. They went in there and he was in heaven, the little scoundrel. He'd already checked out and gone home. Amen. Kind of like the guy that gets to go at halftime when you're getting really beat at some game. And I have so many things on the other side in heaven that it's real, very real. This passage of scripture, we're going to take a few minutes to look at, will make heaven very real to you if it's not already. And if you know the Lord, it makes it more real. Because the only real thing in life is God. Now I know we have to do our chores, and we do our duties, and we work, and you earn some money, or you clean, or you do whatever. But the only real thing is God. Because everything else is going to be gone someday. When I grew up, every day we had to clean up horse stalls, all the horse stuff, every day, 365 days a year. It never quit happening. And then I got saved and realized, well, I don't care, because in heaven, I'm not cleaning horse stalls out. In heaven, it's streets of gold and walls of jasper, no pain, no bad doctor appointments. No watching somebody suffer like my mother did. She went home with Laura on my birthday in 1986 and she suffered for about a year. She's only 54. You know where she's at? She's in the best place she could ever be. She's as happy as she could ever be. John 3 is about that. So I want to walk through the chapter a little bit. And then I want to say a few things about this idea. Now, I know in your mind, if you know a little bit of Bible, you know, one of the main parts of this chapter is about what Jesus said to be born again. And I know if you know something about the sign on the church here and everything, then you know that this is, he calls it firstborn. And we're going to talk about that at the end of the verses. I'm sure you're well aware of it. That's the name of the church. But it's a really special thing, and there's a lot of different people today who teach different things, and they try sometimes to confuse a believer about whether or not they are a Christian. And they try to confuse you about whether or not you did enough when you got saved, or you did enough after you got saved, or you believed enough. This passage, this passage of Scripture is so strong to help us. We'll begin reading in verse 1 where it says, there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. The same came to Jesus by night and saith unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him. And Jesus answered and said unto him, well, thank you very much. No, he didn't. What did he say? It was almost as if he didn't even hear Nicodemus, OK? Whatever, Nicodemus, I got a message for you. Here's what he said. Look, verily, verily. Verily, verily is the idea that listen up. I'm going to tell you something you can't miss. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. So Nicodemus comes and he wants to talk about the Lord Jesus. And he wants to talk about his credentials, we might say, his authority. And the Lord Jesus said, you got to be born again. Well, when you think about this, the first thing I want to say is about a seeker. And you may not be writing stuff down if you happen to be. It's just the idea. I've got it in order for you to think. The first thing we see is someone seeking God, but he doesn't know what he's seeking. One of the great things that I was taught early in my Christian life as a as in the idea of soul winning was learned to help people where they're at. So if someone says they're of some religion, whether they say they're Anglican or Catholic or Jehovah's Witness, whatever, instead of thinking you know where they're at, talk to them, find out where they're at. Find out what their real question is. When he came, when Nicodemus came and he said, we know you're of God, that's where the Lord Jesus Christ started and said, okay, you know I'm of God, so now I'm gonna talk to you straight from God. And his first message to him was, you must be born again. This thing was a straightforward surprise. So this seeker comes and he has this surprise answer. He's shocked. He says in verse four, Nicodemus saith unto him, how can a man be born when he's old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born? You know what it's like? It's as if you said, how do I get to heaven? That's a good question, isn't it? You know, it's important to know how to get to heaven. And a lot of people would make it really difficult to get to heaven. I heard a missionary going to part of South America, into Costa Rica. And there's over a half a million people every year that go across half of the country, make a pilgrimage and they start off walking. Then they start off walking with no shoes on. And then they start off kneeling. And on their knees they go. Before they're finished, by the time they get to where they're going on this pilgrimage, they're on their stomachs crawling. You know why they're doing it? They want to get to heaven. Somebody told them, you can get to heaven if you'll do that. But there's a problem with that. That isn't how to get to heaven. Because we're looking at the words of Jesus Christ here. Okay. It's not an opinion, not a theology book. Even we're looking at the words of Jesus Christ. So Nicodemus is surprised. He says, no, what is that? How am I going to get born again? Because you got to admit, if someone said you got to get born again, you'd scratch your head and say, now, how on earth am I going to do that? So the Lord Jesus Christ shows mercy on him. And Jesus answered, look at verse five, please. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. He's about to paint a simple picture. This seeker comes, the Lord Jesus Christ gives him a straightforward answer, but he's surprised by it. And he asked this question and now he's going to give him a simple picture and notice these three things he gives us He says verse six that which is born of the flesh is flesh that which born of the spirit capital s is spirit He's saying you got to have two different births. Okay? Now I don't know about you But I had never heard that before I heard preaching I had never heard people sit around the table having coffee after we trained the horses in the morning talking about getting born again or having a new birth. I've heard, you'd hear about people having a new career or a new start in life, but never a new birth. So the Lord Jesus is showing him something that is, it's pretty wild, but it's not if you'll take Jesus at his word. So he says to him, he says, verse seven, marvel not that I said unto thee, you must be born again. What is the simple picture? The simple picture is kind of like we said yesterday, there is only one you on this planet. Now they have out there somewhere called, they call them doppelgangers. A doppelganger is supposed to be somebody that looks just like you. God have pity on the person who looks just like me. Amen. The only amen I got was from somebody who really means it for himself. But anyway, it doesn't matter if they're a doppelganger. If they take your fingerprint, it's not the same. Someone says, well, you've got people who are called identical twins. And so they have matching DNA and stuff. Yeah, but they do the fingerprint. It's different. There is only one you. Okay. The reason I say that is Jesus said that which is born of the flesh is flesh. So you have a body, but you're not your body. You live in your body. Okay. So much so that even though brother Joe took a bat and broke my leg, he didn't, uh, even though my body don't feel too good right now, sometimes the pain, The Paul said, though the outward man perished, the inward man is renewed day by day. So you're not your body. When you're young, if you're young, you're teenagers, it feels like you are your body. It feels like how someone feels about your appearance, your looks, your status. And it feels like it, but you're not your body. Okay. And that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do what's right and be healthy, but you're not your body. That which is flesh is flesh. What happens to flesh in the end? It dies, right? If you talk to somebody about their soul and they want to argue about whether they're a sinner, this really works. Ask them one question, just one. Don't ask them, have you lied? Have you stolen? Have you done? Ask them one question. Will you die? OK. And unless they're just going to really give you a hard time, they're going to say yes. And then you ask them the second question. Why? Why are you going to die? Because everything about life, when you see that little baby there tells you that life is wonderful and life should be positive and life should be great. And yet, you know, from the moment we're born, we're headed for something else. So you can ask someone, are you gonna die? Yeah, well, then the Bible says, that's proof you're a sinner. We don't have to number their sins, they don't, see, I am gonna die. And you're gonna die. So that which is flesh is what? Flesh. But that which is spirit is spirit. So if the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of God gets hold of someone, then what it can do is it can make sense of forever. So there's a stark contrast, there's flesh and there's spirit. Now watch, there's death and there's life, okay? That's the difference. When Jesus said, that which is born of the flesh, it dies. It has to. I know. We're really praying the rapture will come. Okay, wonderful. But it's been a couple thousand years and a whole lot of people had to accept death. My dad was very strange. Once he got saved and learned his Bible, they'd be talking about the rapture and he'd say, man, he said, I want to die. I said, dad, what is wrong with you? He said, I want to know what it's like. Cause you never get that chance to know any other time. I was like, well, there's that adventure anyway, man. Now, if I had to choose between the rapture being in 10 years or the Lord says I can go home today. I'll see y'all later. I'm going home. Okay. I'm ready to go. And the idea is that he's shown us this stark contrast between these two things. So when we deal with eternity, when we deal with where you're going as an individual, it's the difference between being tied to earth or being connected to the spirit world, to heaven, outside of this earth. Now, I know that might sound a little scary and all, but it's not. It's really real, I promise. So watch this. So in verse seven, He said, marvel not that I said unto thee, you must be born again. And now he's going to talk to us about the spirit's ministry. He's going to talk to us about what God, the part of God is called the Holy Spirit. He's going to talk to us about his ministry. You know, if all there was, was earth, I think it'd be really discouraging because we're born and we go through life and you don't know my brother. It was killed at 15 years old right in front of the church in the middle of a Monday afternoon Well, that's not too encouraging. Amen And my mama went she's 54. My brother went before he's younger me. He went you never know. Do you when it's going? But if there is a spirit world and there is The Lord Jesus Christ is teaching us about the spirits ministry, what does the Holy Spirit do and So look with me, please. Verse 8, the wind bloweth where it listeth. That's what's happening today. Praise the Lord. We got heavenly, natural air conditioning. Amen. The Holy Spirit works like that breeze. Sometimes when the Holy Spirit's bearing witness to something, it'll feel sort of like that. Not crazy, okay. You're still going to speak in normal languages. But it feels like God's moving through there, because he likens the Holy Spirit to a breeze, a breath from heaven. So look at verse 8. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, whither it goeth. So is every one that born of the Spirit. Now, someone might say, well, I can tell you what direction it's come from. That's not what he's talking about. When I was much younger and still every now and then over there, some fellows I know, they like to play golf. Well, in golf, what direction the wind is going really matters. And it can really embarrass you if you get the wind wrong. So the idea is this. You can tell where it's coming from. I heard a fellow say he was a hunter. And he's talking about staying downwind from the game. And they were talking about having this meter and all this stuff. He said he learned from a fellow way out west years ago. He said, you keep turning your head till you feel the wind on both cheeks, and you're facing the wind. It says, as long as you're feeling it more on one than the other. And it's amazing, it works. And it's the same way with the Lord. You can't tell where it's coming from, but you can tell like what direction, what it's doing. But he says, look it with me, so is everyone that's born of the Spirit, capital S. Now this is really important. Because being a child of God, being a born again believer, It's not a formula. It's not a tradition. It's not someone saying, well, if you did this, this and this, now I know you're saved. It's not someone saying, well, but if you didn't do this, then you really didn't believe or say. And in a minute, we're going to look at what he gave us as the great example of believing unto salvation. And this is exciting because it takes away all that man made stuff. And it brings it down to a place where we can actually receive Christ. So notice there the Spirit's ministry. Now, I'm going to read verses 8 down to 13, and we're going to come back and walk through it together. Verse 8, the wind bloweth where it listeth, wherever it wants to. And now here's the sound. You ever try to keep the wind from blowing something away? It's going to do whatever it wants to do. Amen. And if it gets strong, where I live, they have what's called hurricanes. Where I live, they can come from both sides of you. Hurricanes can come from the Gulf side and the Atlantic side. And they are fearsome. And they blow, there are whole towns that were blown away seven years ago and they still haven't been able to rebuild them. Not too far from where I live. And what that was, that was that wind doing whatever it wanted to do. Amen. And so he said, it blows where it wants to. You can't tell whence it cometh, whether it goes. Now watch. So is everyone that's born of the spirit. Nicodemus and answered and said unto him, how can these things be? You know, that's a good question. If you are a Christian here today and you get a chance to talk to someone about their soul, give their questions honor when they ask them. Because most of the time, they have no idea what's really going on. They might be religious, but when you start talking about these things to somebody who's religious, it's really, Nicodemus is very religious here. Nicodemus is so religious that Jesus said, you ought to know this. You ought to know this. And Nicodemus says, how can this possible? You've got my head spinning. You know, I remember the first time, first few times I heard somebody preach the gospel. When I grew up, we didn't ever go to church. We didn't do any of this. We never had a Bible in our home. My grandparents didn't. There was no God in our life. We were just heathen. We were civilized. We went to the racetrack. We did business. We were heathen. And I remember the first time somebody started talking to me about these things, I was like, you have lost your mind. It was literally like they were just talking some other language and I had no idea what it was. And then I heard it again and I heard it again. Someone had put John 3, 16 out of this passage that we'll get to hopefully. Somebody put that on a billboard, big giant sign for God's love of the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. And I read that billboard and I never thought about the love of God at first. All I could think about was one word. perish. And that thing struck a fear in my heart. I'm glad it did. Okay. That said, you know, you might be headed for disaster. And then one morning, early in the morning, after being out all night doing heathen stuff, I'm eating food, trying to get coffee and everything in me to go to work. And I look up and there's a van. And there's all these words and stuff all over this van, none of it organized. But down the middle it said, repent, or you shall all likewise perish. And I said, there's that word again. Now let me say this to you. When it said repent, you shall all likewise perish, you know all it's telling me to do? It's telling me believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. When you repent of something, you're changing your mind about it. You're getting your head straightened out. What I needed to do was trust Jesus Christ, amen, to come into my heart and save me. So when we're reading the passage, think about this. He said in verse, well, let's read on down. Jesus answered and said, art thou a master of Israel? No, it's not these things. Now watch. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, we speak that we do know and testify that we have seen and you received not our witness. When we talk of something, when you're giving something to somebody, you're witnessing just by saying what it is. It's a witness. It doesn't have to be somebody hammering somebody. Does that be somebody with a certain plan? When you talk about God, you're saying, I know what I'm talking about. We're talking from a standpoint of knowing them. If I talk about my wife, I can talk about her with greater authority than any of you can. Amen. And why? Because I know her. So when we're talking about God and you know Him, the power is in the fact that we speak what we know. We have one Bible. We have that King James Bible. That gives us the strength to say, this is what God says. Not what I think, not what a teacher thinks, not what a whole group devoted on and think. No, this is what the Bible says. So Jesus said, we speak that we know, see that? And testify we have seen and you receive not our witness. So he says, look, if I've told you earthly things and you believe not, how shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly things? So what earthly thing is he telling Nicodemus? You ready? He's telling Nicodemus, I'm gonna give you directions to heaven, okay? He can't talk to Nicodemus about what heaven's like. He can't talk to demons about spiritual things because the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. So he has to talk to them about something earthly. You know what an earthly thing is? Believing on Jesus Christ is an earthly issue. You can only do it while you're on earth. Okay? There's only you, your life, and there's only your lifespan. There is no one here, no one. And I say it with respect, okay? No one here that can promise me you will be around by this time tomorrow. Nobody. You don't know and I don't know. And we can hope it, right? And I'm not telling you to get depressed, but I am telling you to get ready, because you don't know. So he says to Nicodemus, he says, look, I can't tell you about anything else about God. And so when you're talking to somebody about their soul, And they want to talk about all this other stuff, like in chapter four, where the woman in the well wanted to talk about worship and all that. Jesus said, forget all that. You can't even understand it yet. We have to graciously, but firmly keep them focused on what matters. And that is making sure I'm born again. Not that I've done a certain thing you tell me I got to do. Not that I've got certain activities in my life. I've believed on Christ. So let's read on with it. Verse 13, no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in heaven. So we see that the Spirit's ministry is unseen while it is seen. It's both. And the next thing he does is he refers to himself as the Son of Man. Why is that important for us? We need a mediator. We need someone to stand in front of God for us and take our judgment. so that we don't face it. Now, I will die. You will die. Okay? Because I will die, because you will die, I will stand before God. If I have not Christ, I stand before God as a man that has no answer for being a sinner. But I'm gonna stand before God and I've got an answer. And that answer is gonna stand between God and I and say, I'm his answer. He trusted me. He believed on me. I'm his answer. I paid his sins. And the father says, well, well said, son. Well said. So the Lord Jesus Christ says, verse 14. Now this is really, really, it's very cool. It's very important. Watch this. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up that whosoever leave than him should not perish, but have eternal life. Now, if you're writing in your Bible, you're making notes, this is Numbers chapter 21. I'm just going to recount the story. Israel had been disobeying God. So God sent what the Bible calls fiery serpents. It's poisonous snakes. Now, I was a missionary in Australia for 20 years and went in the outback and spent a lot of time where there's a lot of bad, creepy, crawly stuff. Spiders, scorpions, snakes, poisonous. Those poisonous snakes are what the Bible refers to as fiery serpents. When they bite you, you've got a fire in you and you better do something about it. It'll kill you otherwise. Now, there's some snakes that'll bite you. I've been bitten by snakes, having to catch them and move them out, get rid of them, and they'll bite you, but they're not venomous. They're not fiery. And you got to clean the wound out. That's not a big deal. But if a venomous, a fiery snake bites you, you're in trouble. So these serpents are going through the people of Israel and they're biting them because they're cursed. And Moses says, God, we need an answer. We need an answer. Stop the serpents. He said, I cannot stop the serpents, but I can give you a way to fix it. And he said, go make a serpent on a pole out of brass and have Aaron walk through the congregation and whoever is humble enough and willing enough to let me save them from it, all they have to do is look and live. All they have to do is look and live. Now, if that was today, some of your religious friends would say, but did you look in the right way? Did you look long enough? You'd say, man, I don't know. I looked and I'm alive. The snake didn't kill me. They say, did you look and did you behave differently afterwards immediately? You're like, you know, you've lost your mind. And the person who's asking you that is probably fading away quickly because they didn't look. Because they're too busy asking themselves, well, I just don't know about this. Doesn't it sound almost unbelievable that all you had to do was look at that serpent on the pole? But God was pointing to a day off in the future. when they would take his son and they would nail him to a cross and they would stand that cross up and he would hang between heaven and earth and he would take upon him our sin. The bite of the serpent, the curse of the serpent, the Lord Jesus Christ, he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin. He knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. On that pole, did they have to look and memorize? No. Did they have to look and make sure that they acted a little different? Immediately so that someone would say, oh, now I know you've looked. You know what the proof was that they looked? They lived. The proof of looking at Jesus Christ is that you are born again. There's a life in you. I'm going to say more about that in just a minute. Look on with me quickly. The famous verse, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his son in the world to condemn the world, but the world through him might be saved. Two things. It's simple, yet it's profound. And it's a specific gift. Now watch. If you will believe on Jesus Christ, what is the number one gift he will give you? Please look at the end of verse 16. This is really important. I know you think, oh, this is too simple. It can never get too simple. What is the number one gift you get from God when you come to him? Everlasting life. You don't get this wonderful moral out life and everyone thinks you're a great saint. You know, you are just so wonderful. That would draw away from Christ. That doesn't mean we should not live right and do right and walk right. But none of that is what he gives us first. He gives us everlasting life. It's a specific gift. You know, when the Lord Jesus came and fulfilled all the prophecies and did all the things Ask yourself this. He said, God sent not his son of the world to condemn the world, but the world through him might be saved. So here's what I believe. If God did all that for mankind and offered it to everyone, by the way, if you want to go through here, if you're having trouble with the fact that everyone has a chance to get saved, not just a certain select few, go around and circle the whosoever's and circle the he that. And there's hundreds of whosoever's and he that's and ain't none of the other ones. So here's what he said. He said, look, I'm not trying to make anything hard on you because I sent my son. I hear people preach and I think, you know, they make it sound like God's looking to smack you with a club every chance he gets. I don't believe that for two seconds. I hear Bible believers preaching such a way sometimes. They make it look like God's just waiting for you to mess up. Now, I had a school teacher that way. She had a long stick. We called it a yardstick. It was about three foot long. And she carried it with her throughout the class. And she was looking for you to mess up. She got good, great joy out of boom on your knuckles. For me, the knuckles didn't work. So she hit me on the top of the head, knowing that she was getting closer to some kind of reaction. But that's not who God is. Now look, he's a God of judgment, all right? He's not gonna let you slip into heaven because you said, well, Lord, it was embarrassing to get saved. He's not gonna do that. But he is not looking to keep anybody out. He is not looking to make it hard on anybody. It's not a matter of, oh, you're making it too easy. Please read on with me, verse 18. He that believeth on him is not condemned. But he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. So Lord Jesus Christ didn't make it difficult for us to trust him. In fact, what he had to do was make it where we could trust him, where a child could trust him. We're an old man. My grandfather was 73 years old when he trusted Christ. Had a hard life. He had these two fingers missing. He was working at a car factory, and he got him caught in the press. And in those days, they didn't have all the stuff. They gave him a shot of whiskey and cut him off with a hand saw. Every time I'd see him rubbing those nubs, and where I lived, it was cold. We'd be out, you know, hunting and trapping animals for the fur and the meat. And I'd see him rubbing that hand, and I think he remembers that day they cut them fingers off. Tough guy. All the years I spent with him, I knew he loved me, but he never said it. I got saved. His wife, my grandmother got saved. My folks got saved. About three or four years went by. I was down in Florida in Bible school and I got a phone call that said, your grandfather trusted Christ. A man went visiting me, trusted Christ. And I said, well, I'll figure this one out. I made a phone call. Granddad answered, and I said, how you doing? Da da da, and we talked. And at the end, as I had done for 20, some 25, whatever years, I said, Granddad, I love you. He used to say, I know, I know, Mikey, I know. And instead, he said, Mikey, I love you too. You know what had happened? God himself had moved into that old man. God himself had said, you're not flesh anymore, you're spirit now. And he didn't, he couldn't have given you one verse of scripture. He couldn't have defended his decision before you, if you're trying to criticize his life. All he knew was something that changed. Amen. And so it says there about them. He said, if you don't believe you're already damned. So verse 19, this is the condemnation that light is coming to the world. And men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. And I want to talk about this last point for a couple of minutes. And I'll say this. the society of the born again. The society of, and would you write this down in your mind, the whosoever will. I am a member of the society of whosoever will. Every one of you who've come to Christ, you are, whether you realize it or not, or whether someone maybe tried to pump some other doctrine in your head, we are a society of whosoever will. You know, there's a song that always has stuck in my mind about this, about salvation. It's in your hymnal and it's 796. I'm going to read you a line out of it. I'll leave the singing to Brother Andrew. But it says here in the second verse, born of the spirit with life from above into God's family, divine, justified fully through Calvary's love. Oh, what a standing is mine. And then it says, and the transaction so quickly was made and the transaction so quickly was made. When as a sinner, I came. To the offer of grace, he did proffer, he saved me. And I've thought so many times, do you understand what happens when you act? The moment, the moment you ask Christ to save you, he does. The moment you say, Lord, I accept you, he gives you a new birth. He doesn't just give you a stamp like on the passports we use to come in the country. He gives you a new birth. You're a new creature. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. The song says, heaven came down and glory filled my soul. And when I think of that, I just think, and the transaction so quickly was made. Boom, it happened just like that. Listen, the baby's coming. And it's coming along and coming along. And you mothers know this. It's coming along. You're like, hurry up, get here. And then boom, it's born. It takes its first breath. And there's that baby. And we must remember that we are as newborn baby. First Peter two says as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word. I want to throw this in as babies. A baby is completely, absolutely helpless when they're born. They tell me my birthday is June 16th. I don't really remember it. I don't remember looking at a calendar or anything. I don't remember him smacking me. I think he smacked me on the wrong end probably, too hard. I don't remember any of that. I can pretty much figure they were right, but there was someone there. that birthed me into this world and can attest to that day. Amen. So whether I can remember all those details, I'm alive. And when somebody comes to you and tries to give you a bunch of doubt or something and say, well, did you believe this? And did you believe this? And you turn from this, say, Hey, hold it, hold it. I'm born again. I've been born. I've got a new birth inside me. And you can try all that other stuff. And I say that because we're born as a baby in Christ. It doesn't matter if you were eight years old. It doesn't matter if you're 50. My dad was 48 when he came to Christ. He was 52 when God called him to preach. He's still a baby in Christ. You ever met somebody, they try to interrogate you about your salvation? You know, are you really saved enough? Did you really mean it enough? That'd be like walking up to a three-month-old baby and trying to have a conversation with them. That isn't going to work. Most of the conversations are from them to us, telling us what they need. And so as a baby in Christ and us as Christians, babies grow by those who care for them. Babies grow by those who take care of them. So when someone comes in the congregation and they get born again and they come receive Christ, they will grow according to how you help them come along. And if you took a baby and you left it out there under a tree somewhere, it's not going to be able to take care of itself. Sometimes someone will come to Christ and people are like, I don't stand why they're not growing. I don't stand why they're not different. I don't stand why I don't see fruit. It's because probably somebody didn't help them grow. Our gain for eternity, a baby can't be a grown person. A teenager can't be a grown person by themselves. So a baby's influenced by its carers. And I will say this this morning, the church, it's called the church, the assembly of the firstborn. That firstborn's connected to the Lord Jesus Christ. And here's what he did. He came in to just a human body. He wasn't just like us. He couldn't have been or he couldn't have died for us, but he came into a human body. He took, Mary gave him a body. Joseph gave him nothing, okay? In animals and horse breeding, you always look at the mother's side for the physical nature and the father's side for the heart and the spiritual nature. In the Old Testament, when people were related on their mother's side, they called themselves flesh and bone in your King James Bible, not flesh and blood. If they're on the father's side, they were flesh and blood. So when the Lord Jesus Christ came, what I want to point out is this. He came and he incarnated, he came into the human body for us. He lived, he fulfilled the law, he died, he was buried, he went to hell, paid his stuff, came back up, resurrected, ascended. But now, according to John 3, you know what happens when you come to Christ? Because he came into that human body and did all that. He comes in to you. That may not be real to you yet, but it will be. You keep coming to church, a church like this, and hearing the preaching, and follow what they do, and you that know what I'm talking about, help those who don't know yet. But the greatest thing that empowers us is knowing that He came into us when He saved us, and that's what's working in us. May we pray. Turn it over to the pastor. Bow our heads for prayer, please.