Well, let's now turn in our Bibles to Romans 5, Romans chapter 5. And we are continuing our study through the epistle to the Romans. And today we'll start by reading from verse 1 through 11. So let's stand together and hear the very word of God. Romans 5 verse 1, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance character and character hope. Now hope does not disappoint. because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For when we were still without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. This is the very word of God. Let's pray. Oh God, we thank you for the good news. We thank you for what Christ has done for us. Illuminate this more in our hearts this day, shine the bright light of your word upon us that we would respond in this rejoicing we read about in verse 11. Father, that our response would be, this is true, this is amazing, and this applies to me. In Jesus' name, amen. Please be seated. The theme of the book of Romans as we've gone over it and over it from Romans 1 and verse 16 is that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation unto those that believe to the Jew first and also to the Greek. It is the power of God and we come back to the theme because it's so essential for all of us that we We be the ones who have experienced God's power, that we witness God's power in the sanctuaries we pray for, we prayed for this morning. So much of religion today is so powerless. And I do believe that we need to be those that can at least discern it. So you know what? There is a powerlessness sometimes. There's a promise of power. There's a promise of amazing things brought about by human governments, for example, Our president's always promised a golden age or whatever it is. It's always something, it's very, very good. The beginning of the four-year term and then turns out not to be quite as glorious as we thought it to be. But the works of men are not impressive. The works of men, the power that man brings about through his religious systems is not of any use whatsoever. It doesn't really do anything. So much of religion, and again, let's discern this. When we see a religion that is just full of hypocrisies, or layer upon layer of fakiness, rituals, et cetera, et cetera. This is what the world religions are all about, and much of American religion is the same way. But as far as we have seen this, and we see that there is no power, at the very least, would you just say there's no power? There is no divine power here. Can we at least just say that? And say there has not been transformation. There is no indication of God's raising the dead going on. There's indications of things that man can do going on in this religious exercise or something like that. But evidently, there's no God-sized power working here. So I think we should at least be honest from time to time. and say, there just isn't any power. But where God shows up, where the spirit of God does a work, the kingdom of God doesn't come by the words of man, but by spirit and by power. And that's how we recognize it, wherever we go. And so we rely upon the power of God to bring about great things through the gospel of Jesus Christ. All right, so first three chapters deals with our desperate need for this salvation, that we need this power, this other worldly supernatural power working. And we wait upon God, we look to God, we rely upon God, we believe His promises, we look to and agree to the words of the gospel. And this is the catalyst, this faith that's the catalyst instrument. And we get into that a bit in chapter three and chapter four. But as we look to, as we wait upon, as we rely upon the promises of God, as we believe in the works of God, we begin to see the power of God unto salvation because we are the ones who are believing. We believe it and we see it happening in our lives. two problems brought out in the first three chapters, two problems with us, we're unrighteous and we're dead by nature. Those are the two problems. We are sinful, we are unrighteous, we are wicked by nature. And it's all described there in chapters one, two, and three. And then we have this problem of death. And so we need these two things dealt with And Paul goes on to deal with the problem of unrighteousness first in chapters three and four. We'll get into the issue of life to the dead in chapter five, but the two problems are dealt with in chapter three and four, and then on into five. The problem of unrighteousness is dealt with by the justification that can only come by faith, by the instrument of faith, not by works. And we are thereby declared righteous, considered righteous. We just read that in the confession. because of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, to our account. We're forgiven of our sins, we're counted as righteous, we're seen as the saints of the living God, to the point that God can refer to us as His saints. We don't have to wait for the Roman Catholic Church to give us sainthood. At the point at which we're justified, we are counted the saints of the living God, we're the holy ones of God. And we are forgiven of our sins and we believe in Jesus. As Abraham was accounted righteous, this is all of chapter four, we just finished this. As Abraham was accounted righteous because of his faith, so are we. Abraham trusted God that he would raise his son from the dead. We trust that God raised his son from the dead. It's the same sort of faith. And that contrast is made there in chapter four. Abraham trusted in God who raises the dead for his own son. for the one who would provide for the seed, but then we trust that God raised his son from the dead as well. So same faith of Abraham is in us, and that is the faith by which or through which we are justified. But how are we saved? How is the salvation made possible? Paul speaks of the sacrifice of Jesus in Romans 3, 24 and 25. and then again in Romans 4, 24 and 25. So if you look at, okay, where's Jesus? So far we haven't seen much of Jesus in terms of his work on the cross. That did show up for two verses in chapter 3, two verses in chapter 4, and now we're going to get into more of the meat of it. This is the most extensive coverage in the book of Romans concerning the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. We see it here in these verses and we're going to dig into this today. Now we have two trunk truths about this redemption of Jesus and what I would call three vital benefits that come with it. So that's where this sermon is going to go this morning. Two trunk truths about this redemption and three vital benefits that come from the work of Jesus Christ on the cross as we get from these verses here. So let's start with verse six. Paul begins with this first trunk truth. For when we were still without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly when we were without strength. So again, this comes to the issue that we all need. We are those who are weak. We are those who cannot save ourselves. Nothing we can do can save ourselves. We are totally helpless. We are totally without strength. A good picture of this might be somebody bound hand and foot to a train track, and the train is coming. The rumbling sound is heard. But perhaps that person is content to be in that place, not really seeing their need. This person, all of us by nature, we have no power. We can't save ourselves. We can't accomplish our own salvation or apply our own salvation to ourselves. But it took the spotless, innocent, holy Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, to die for us, for the ungodly. We are the ungodly. And Jesus came to die for the ungodly. And this is a very basic, I say, trunk truth because this is what the gospel is, that Jesus Christ has died for us. You see this again in 1 Corinthians 15. This is one of the most basic definitions of the gospel, that this is what we have needed more than anything else. is that the Son of God, Jesus Christ himself, would come and die in our place. We should have died, we should have been there, and yet Jesus did this for us. Jesus died for me. Jesus died in my place. Now, one of the questions that comes up is as we consider this horrible death that Jesus died for us on the cross is why did he have to do it? Why did he have to do it? Now, the simple answer to that is that God required it, that God required it. Of course, the world doesn't appreciate the fact that the very Son of God was put on a cross in order to bring about our salvation from sin. But the book of Hebrews reminds us that without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission. Now this lesson I think was embedded into the consciousness of man from the time of Abel, perhaps even further back when God killed those animals and then put those coverings upon Adam and Eve in the garden after the fall. But it's always been the case among pagan nations that there is some need for sacrifice. In fact, many of the pagan religions, all the way up into the Aztecs and the Mayas and the Incas, they knew there was something of a need for a human sacrifice. Think of the hundreds of thousands of people that were sacrificed on those Aztec temples. before the coming of Cortes and his men. Think about the consciences of pagan man was well aware of this need for a satisfaction, a propitiation, that the gods were not happy, that somehow people had to die. You see, people in these pagan countries had consciences, something called consciences. in which they were tormented by the idea that they did not match up to the expectations of the gods. And I realize this is something the modern world has very little knowledge of. The people today, of course, horrified by the idea that there needs to be a human sacrifice for our sins, that we are that wicked and there is that much wrath in the heart and the mind of the one true and living God that there must be a human sacrifice to meet the demands of justice. See, that's so far away from the mind of modern man because he is so self-righteous. Somehow, amongst the apostate age of the post-Christians, they somehow think that they are good enough for heaven, that somehow they are not that sinful, that it cannot be that bad that would require the death, a cruel death of the very Son of God on the cross for them. It comes down to that horrible pride and self-righteousness that just so consumes so much of the population today. And yet, brothers and sisters, we know that this was an absolute necessity for us. We were the ungodly and the only solution for any of us was the death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross for us. That's the first trunk truth. Let's move on to trunk truth number two, comes out in verse eight, where God's love is demonstrated in the most powerful way in Christ's death for sinners. That's verse eight of our passage. this morning, I'll read it one more time, but God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. So this is an amazing demonstration of love and that we would meditate upon this, this I believe to be the most important object of our thoughts and meditations. If there's anything that we ought to ever be meditating upon, we pass over so much of the Bible, but We need to be meditating upon something. This is it. Above anything else, I think this needs to sink in to us today. Think about what could possibly address the hopelessness of death and the bondage of sin. These are the things that afflict us by nature. What can address the impossibility of overcoming our own sin? We all know what it's like to be in bondage to sin. What could possibly overcome the power of the devil? Does anybody have a sense for how powerful that devil is? Not just to tempt, but to hold people in fear and abject fear for generations. for thousands of years to suppress them in darkness, the condemnation of the law. What about the eternality of hell fire? How can we get around these things? What can possibly address the greatest difficulties, the impossibilities of the human soul? What can get through these things? Here it is, love, God's love. God's compassion, His concern, His pity for us. And here we read that God demonstrates His love to us or for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. This word demonstrated is the idea of exhibiting, of highlighting it, giving it the ultimate definition and manifestation so that we would understand it. God magnifies it. He shines it on the big screen, 1,000 feet by 2,000 feet screen. so that you can't miss it. So this is the most obvious and amazing demonstration of love that humans could ever, ever see. So we consider the amazing love of God at the cross, that God should so love us. So many do not love, you know, so many are not loved in this world. around us. You consider the misery of the world and think about how much people are not loved. You ever run into people that just are not loved? You ever run into a child that, boy, that child just wasn't really loved by their parents? Well, think about the million plus, the 14 million children whose poor bodies are being flushed down toilets and down sinks and abortion clinics and such in any given year. Who cares about these children? Who has any compassion for them? You see a wasted drunken man dying in the ditch somewhere and you wonder, so many pass by. Well, oftentimes, I think the idea is, well, he certainly deserves, wherever he is today, there he is, you know, dying, perhaps he's not dead yet, but he's dying of drugs and drunkenness, and there's just little compassion. Most people are driving by at 38 miles an hour, and not even paying much attention. I remember a story of, I think it was E. Calvin Beisner, raised in India, and he said he would, in his early years, be walking to school and you'd have to step around the dead bodies of people who had died on the streets during some plague. Just shocking difficulty to see this. And friends, just there are so many people that are dying in the world and there's not very many people stopping and getting involved, yet God stopped. God was concerned. God wanted to get involved. He wanted to do something about it. God so loved the sinner. God demonstrated His love for us. Wow, we were still sinners. We were dying on the sidewalk. We were the drunk in the ditch. But God stopped. He was concerned. He got involved with us. Not everybody takes an interest in degraded, ruined, hopeless children prostituted in Tamil Nadu, India, yet Amy Carmichael did to the point that she took 1,000 in to her own orphanage, her own home eventually. But see, what happens is love, somebody does get involved. I mean, perhaps there were a few others funding Amy's mission, but how many did not? And I'm just saying, generally in our world, we don't see that many people stopping. really getting involved. Yet God does. God gets involved. He decides to help us. He steps out and then provides the ultimate sacrifice for us. So God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And then verse 7, Paul adds, actually, grace upon grace upon grace. He says, throughout this passage, he's adding these little comments, and then much more than that, and then even beyond that, and then over that. Let me add this, and this, and this. So he's really trying to make this case of the amazingness of God's love and His grace. And here he says in verse 7 to just highlight what God did for us. He says, scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. Not very many people would really want to give their lives up for a scoundrel. That's just hard to do. I don't know there's that many who would want to really give up their life for Jeffrey Dahmer, for example. Now, Jeffrey Dahmer didn't really offend me personally. Nevertheless, it seems a little difficult for somebody like me to want to give my life up for Jeffrey Dahmer. It's just not a natural kind of thing. Most of us, I think that would be a stretch. That's the point that the Apostle is making here. We ourselves are not the ultimate standard of holiness either, so we have to keep this in mind, that we ourselves are not the ones who are ultimately offended because we are not holy. We are not the one who has the ultimate right to be offended. Sometimes I find in conflicts that people are most concerned in conflicts for how the other person has sinned against them, how they've offended the great me of the universe. You know, that my children are not honoring me, the great God who ought to be honored. Instead of coming to the conclusion that that's not the issue here. They're dishonoring God who himself has established a law that they might honor their mother and father. It's God who is offended more than anybody else. And yet, as God was the one who was ultimately offended, God is the one who gets involved here. We were the ones who violated his holy law, like we violated the holy bride. This is the way God would look upon the violation of his holy law, as if somebody has violated the holy bride belonging to somebody else. We were the ones who killed his son. And so this is a personal thing with God. And so this magnifies his love for us. God exhibits, displays his love in living color for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And there are so many levels to this, but what is this love? I want you to focus in upon this. If this be the great demonstration of love, how one would love somebody else in this most phenomenal way, then what is this? I think some of us, when we think of love, we think, well, loving person, Loving people is affirming others. It's giving them hugs. It's providing gifts of things that might comfort them. It's spending time with others and building relationships with them, making them feel like a million bucks. These are the sorts of ways in which we might be able to love others. But here we have something unusual that God demonstrates his love for us in giving up his son for us. Not many loving people will give up their sons as a human sacrifice on a cross. That just admittedly is a shocking manifestation of love. Think about this, as God presents the picture of love and we look to it, he says, here it is, he pulls back the curtain and there we see the writhing tortured body of his son on the cross. That seems strange to us. Some are shocked by it. Here is the whole burnt sacrifice, the atoning sacrifice of my Son for you. This is a demonstration of my love for you. Friends, this is not a sentimental love, and I think we have to get past that. To be loved by God is that God gave up His only begotten Son on the cross for sinners, wretched sinners, hell-deserving sinners like you and me. Sentimentality will not really wanna face the reality. Why? Because of my sin, because of death, because of hell, because of judgment, because of the wrath of God. And this indeed brings about the agony of his son's suffering and dying on that cross for me. This gets beyond the sentimentality of it to what it really means. And so God gave up his son, the son whom he loved. No question God loved his son. He loved his son with an infinite love, an eternal love. He'd been with his son through all eternity. And now he gave up his son for the love and concern and compassion and the pity and the mercy that he had for you and for me. So the one who was ultimately offended, The one who was infinitely offended actually died. For who? For the ultimate offender. The one ultimately offended gave up his son for the ultimate offender. And that was us. So take a moment and consider these things, brothers and sisters. I just want you to let it sink in for a little bit. That God sent his only begotten son the son whom he loved, he gave him up for you, for you and me. Can you say that the son of God died for me? When I was undeserving, when I was hell deserving, when I was so helpless was nothing I could do to save myself. Christ died for me. God so loved me that he gave his only begotten son for me. Can you say that? Can you consider for a moment the amount of love it must have taken to give up a son on the cross to take your sins and the curse of your sin upon himself for you, a sinner who did not deserve any of it. What sort of love must that have been? How much do you think God loved you to bring this about for you? Consider this. This is the application this morning, not to pass it by, but to consider that love that God had for you and for me. Every day, I think this should set a context for our thinking and perspectives. How could you ever get beyond this today and on into eternity? What would this do for us if we understood the love of God? Paul's concern in Ephesians chapter 3 is that we would better know the height and the depth and the breadth of the love of God because At root, that's going to be the point at which we will love, that's the point at which we will understand our identity, we will understand the blessedness of our condition, the hopefulness of our future, and the joy in serving God and serving one another in all of the contexts of life. Think about what would happen if we were overwhelmed by this perspective every day, that we could stand at the cross and see the magnitude of this gift, this infinite gift that God gave up for you and for me on a daily basis. What would it be like to be so loved by God, to be so undeserving, yet so privileged and graced by God? to be saved, to be those that have been saved by the most outstanding rescue operation in the entire history of the universe, to be so rescued by God. If this is our perspective every day, then how would we live? What would be our perspective as we wake up in the morning? Let me suggest a few words to you. I think relieved. There's something of a sense that is just a huge relief. When you know that you've been saved from eternal damnation, you'll be eternally grateful. And I know we use that word eternally grateful, but just the idea that this gratefulness, the gratefulness we feel this morning is never going to end. That as far as we realize who we are and what God has done for us, we are just grateful today and we know we're gonna be grateful tomorrow and we'll be grateful the day after that because, well, I think I've used this illustration before, the guy who wakes up out of heart surgery and complains about a mosquito bite on his nose. You know, he's just been rescued from the possibility of a terrible death. And he's a little concerned about a mosquito bite. But again, the idea being that in the wider perspective of things, God has already given us his son. How shall he not with him also freely give us all things? So we have this sense of relief and gratefulness that just overwhelms us. So brothers and sisters, stay here. Be at the cross every day. There's a point, and the open grave as well. but to see what God has done by the death of his son, by the life of his son. We'll get there in just a little bit. But then again, what can possibly go wrong now? What can possibly go wrong today, given what Christ has already done for me? Well, let's wrap this up this morning with the three things accomplished by the redemption of Jesus, the three vital benefits that flow out of this. And there are three bys here. You'll see that in verses nine and 10. We are justified by his blood, saved from wrath. We are reconciled to God by Jesus, the son of God, verse 10a, and the much more saved by his life. Justified by his blood, reconciled by his son, and saved by his life. Now, these address the three problems we have. And it's the judicial, the relational, and the constitutional. And you probably remember the illustration I gave quite a number of months ago that you take the thug who kills the judge's son. There's a thug who is in wrath, anger, malice, and forethought. This guy has knocked off the judge's son. And he's only judged in the county or in the state. And so there the man stands before the judge. He's got three problems. The man who kills the judge's son has three problems. First, he's got a judicial problem. Secondly, he's got a relational problem. with the judge. And then thirdly, he's got a constitutional problem. So he got three issues. He's got a judicial problem with the law and that the judge before the law has an obligation to throw the book at the guy. That's number one. So first of all, he's got the judicial problem. He's got a relational problem because the judge loves his son and the judge has been very much insulted and offended by the man who's killed his own son. You see, so he's got a relational issue as well. Then he's got a constitutional issue. If the judge forgives him, if the judge lets him go, then the judge knows that this guy has so much anger and so much wrath and malice towards the judge and his sons that he's gonna run out and kill another son. You see, that's the constitutional problem. So the thug that stands before the judge has a judicial problem with the law, a relational problem with the judge, and he's got a constitutional problem with his own situation that his heart is such inclined to continue this pattern of murder against the judges, children, and others in the community. So how in the world are we going to stand before the judgment seat of God? Given these problems, well, because of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have three vital benefits, the first of which is we are justified by his blood and saved from wrath. That is, Jesus was punished for us. He was made a curse for us. He took the punishment upon himself. He was condemned for us that we would never be condemned. His blood was shed that we would never have to suffer for our sins ever, ever again. Now, in some senses, this is too much to process, I understand. But the idea of being saved from wrath is important for us to consider. I mean, it's hard to consider the magnitude of the wrath of God towards sin. The prospect of being subjected to the wrath of God who gave up his own son as a sacrifice to quell his own wrath against us is itself more than we can consider. I mean, think about his own son taking that wrath upon himself instead of us. Revelation chapter 14 brings out the wrath of God, which indeed is a big deal. It's not to be trifled with. Listen to this. The wrath of God is poured out without mixture. And those who had rejected God are tormented here with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and the lamb, that's Jesus himself. And the smoke of their torment ascends up forever and ever, and they will have no rest day or night. And chapter one, verse 18 also of our text. Reminds us that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness in the world around us today. There is so much pain and suffering and agony and death in the world around us today. All manifestation, demonstration of God's wrath towards sin. Anytime you see death, anytime you see war, anytime you see the suffering that comes because of a consequence of sin is an indication of God's wrath poured out upon sin, upon this world. But multiply that by a thousand and then take it into eternity and you'll have a sense for the seriousness of the wrath of God upon sin and sinners. It's a very big deal. But now here's what it says. This blood sacrifice of Jesus on the cross has saved us from this wrath. Hallelujah. There's a narrow escape. That's the narrow escape of narrow escapes. This is the most spectacular rescue that you could ever have imagined. That by the grace of God, by the pouring out of the blood of Christ on the cross, you have escaped eternal wrath of God poured out upon you in hellfire forever and ever. Amen and amen. That's the first vital benefit. We are justified by his blood and saved from wrath. That's a hallelujah. Amen. Then number two, we are reconciled to God by Jesus Christ. So even in this more positive sense, We have peace with God and with the Lord Jesus Christ, through the Lord Jesus Christ. It's Romans 5 verse 1. We studied that last time, but now here we're reconciled to God by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore we're no longer enemies. We are made friends. We are made sons. The marriage has been restored, as it were, The prodigal has come home. He has a place at the table now. We are now the sons of God. We are no longer subjected to wrath, but in a very positive sense, we are the sons of God and we are heirs. We are eternal heirs with His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. This cosmic estrangement has been completely restored by the Lord Jesus Christ, whereas at one time we were enemies running from God, doing our best to ignore Him, suppressing His truth and unrighteousness, plugging our ears to His word, disobeying His laws. We were the vagabonds. We are rebels, traitors, renegades, defectors, and sworn enemies to the true and living God, the Creator, and our judge. Now we are restored and we are reconciled to God. We are standing before the cross as if we're looking across the cross of Jesus Christ, where his son has been stabbed and slain on that altar, and we're looking across this blood-covered Son of God on the altar, and we see God accepting the sacrifice The terms have been met, the contract has been signed, the offenders have been forgiven, and we have been sprinkled by the blood of Jesus Christ. As it were, the hyssop dipped into the blood of the Son of God, and sprinkled across our faces, the blood drops of the Son of God coming down all of our faces, and God looks at that blood and says, I accept the sacrifice, and you are accepted, you are reconciled to me. And you are my sons, and I receive you, and I will give you all the privileges of the sons of God. Then thirdly, and lastly, verse 10, is the final vital benefit that flows from the cross. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, even much more, having been rexiled, we shall be saved by his life. Now, What is this? To be saved by His life, reconciled by His blood, justified by His sacrifice on the cross. Now we are saved by His life. We again, two basic problems. One is the guilt and yes, the relational issue, but also the constitutional issue with us. Remember, we had problem of unrighteousness, but also of death. And so now the theme of life is starting up here in chapter five. We have dealt with the problem of unrighteousness. Now we're moving into the life for death. We have righteousness for unrighteousness. Now we have life for death. And this is, again, the second and wonderful blessing that Jesus' salvation has brought to us. It's, again, the salvation is not just reliant upon his death. He was not He does not remain in the grave, but he is raised from the dead. This salvation involves the life of Christ, and now this life of Christ has been infused into us as well. Romans 6 and verse 4 brings this up right away. We are united in the resurrection life of Jesus. therefore, Paul says, we now walk in newness of life, and then verse 10, for the death that Jesus died, he died to sin once for all. But the life now that Jesus lives, he lives to God. Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus and Lord so we have walked out of the tomb with Jesus by faith even as we walked with him into the cross we were crucified with him by faith we associate ourselves with his death now we associate ourselves with his life and we as it were walk out of the tomb with Jesus by faith and then walk in newness of life. Romans 8 and verse 10 as well, if Christ, that is the living and resurrected Christ, is in you, the body of the old flesh is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. Another parallel passage, I'm just throwing a few at you right now, but 1 Thessalonians 5, 9, and 10 is almost exactly what we read here in this passage. 1 Thessalonians 5, 9, and 10, for God did not appoint us to wrath, as we've just read, as we have just affirmed, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him. So whether it's in this life or the life to come, we are living together with Jesus Christ. This is a life that comes by a salvation and resurrection from spiritual death. This is the salvation of Jesus applied to us by a resurrection vital force that comes by this resurrection life of Christ. And this is what we read in Ephesians 2 verse 5. Because remember, we're talking about a salvation that comes by the life of Christ. Ephesians 2 and verse 5 speaks directly to this. By grace we are saved, remember. But Ephesians 2 and verse 5 describes what that salvation looks like. When we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ. By grace you've been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places Christ Jesus so our salvation is this tremendous resurrection that occurs we're raised together with Jesus that is he is he is dead and then he is raised from the dead and we are associated with him in this amazing resurrection and this Christ life is now surging through our veins and we are seated with him in heavenly places he has made us alive with him Galatians 2.20 also brings this out, I've been crucified with Christ, that is in his death and his crucifixion, but it's no longer I who live, but Christ is living in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So before we're done, I want to just touch on this issue of life. We're going to get into it more as we plunge into Romans chapter five, but what is this life? What is it to be alive? Children, what is it to be alive? You've seen some dead things, but what about a live thing? What is a live thing? It tends to move. The thing breathes, right? The thing is hearing. It's sensitive to other things. It has a physical sense to it. So when Lazarus was in the grave, Lazarus was dead. Lazarus could not hear anything. Lazarus could not see anything. Lazarus had no consciousness with the reality that was around him. Now, Jesus had to open up his mind, and then his mind had to work into developing of the ear canal, and the developing of the ability to hear, and eventually the ability to see, and all of this. At the point at which he could hear, he begins to hear the voice of Jesus, Lazarus, come forth. He hears a vague noise in the distance. Why? Because he's been raised. Because his brain is working now. He's sensitive to the noise that is coming from the other side of the tomb. So now we begin to hear things. We hear the word of God on Sunday morning. We say amen to it. Our eyes are open to these divine truths. We're overwhelmed by the grace of God, by the love of God for us. And we begin to understand, we make application to it in our own lives. So now we have eyes to see, ears to hear, and now we begin to move, and we begin to walk in newness of life. We begin to hear the doctor's voice, like a pastor saying, can you mortify a sinful lust? Can you hear my voice? Can you move your little pinky on your right hand? And you begin to hear that. Maybe you can get out of bed and go to the bathroom for the first time. You're waking up out of the surgery. And now you're beginning to understand to hear and to respond to the words that are being said. That's what it is to be alive. It's to be able to breathe and to walk and not as if you had to force yourself to it. It's actually a sort of a natural sort of thing. You know, if it's the kind of thing where we have to work a person like a marionette, that's not life. That's just sort of just forcing somebody to do this or that. No, no, the spiritual life is a natural kind of thing where you begin to breathe in, out, in, out. You begin to move your pinky and pull your feet out of the bed and walk from here to the bathroom. This is what happens as you come alive. And now we are alive to God, sensitive to stimuli, a revulsion into worldly sewers and to the dead flakes of dead flesh clinging onto us. We're now alive to these things, alive to the spiritual things, alive to God's word, alive to God's love, alive to God's will, alive to God's loves and what God loves and what God hates. We're alive to a relationship with God and alive to his praise and worship. We come alive even more so when it's time to worship. And we are alive to joy, to rejoice in God. And that's where the passage ends. Let's end here, verse 11. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. We rejoice in what God has done. We rejoice in God's grace, in that we are loved. We rejoice in that God rejoices over us. It's kind of something that that affects us and respond to it in that sort of way. We rejoice in God's successes and God's purposes and His victory. We rejoice that nothing can possibly go wrong in God's plans. We rejoice in the cross and the open tomb. We rejoice in God's glory and we rejoice to give Him glory. So we're not just not running from God, but we're running to Him now. So in conclusion, our passage again, God demonstrates his love to us. God has demonstrated his love to you in that while you were still a sinner, God died for you, Christ died for you. And therefore you are justified by his blood, reconciled to God by his son and much more saved by his life. So brothers and sisters, what's the application this morning? It's a heart leaps in joy, just knowing that this has already been done. God has already provided this for us. God has first loved us, and now we love Him. It's rejoicing in the Lord always. And again, Paul says, I say rejoice. And to consider the extremes for a moment, from hell to heaven, from sinner to saint, from enemy under the wrath of God, to now a son and an heir to the king. from death to life. These are the extremes. Rejoice in the extremes. You had a hangnail healed. You're probably not gonna dance for joy all that much, but your sight's been restored. You've been raised from death to life. Again, it's the extremes that gets you to dance. Does that make sense? It's the extremes. When you realize how much you've been loved, how much Jesus did, and what he has done for you, and you understand the extremes, your response is joy. Now, for those who just, this is so foreign to them, the idea of God's love. They've just felt so unloved and they've been so unloving. They've been an enemy running from God. Consider what it is to be loved by God, to be loved by God. You find something attractive in this. That God has come to send his only begotten son to save you by the sacrifice of his son on the cross and by the resurrection life of his son to infuse that life into you. Is there anything attractive about that to you? Is there something here to believe? Is there something here to reach out for and to appropriate to yourself today? Where are you here? Now, some of us may be kind of half awake to it. Pinch yourself and consider the reality. Come alive to the reality of these extremes and what God has done with his son, the Lord Jesus Christ for us. The extremes he went to. in order to bring us from death to life, from hell to heaven, to be his sons and his daughters and his family forever and ever. Stuff to rejoice in, stuff to dance over, stuff to praise God for. Are you getting it this morning? Are you finding an application to it this morning? Are you in a better mood now that you've heard the gospel one more time? Is it sinking in? Are you responding? Will you respond in joy and praise and worship even more so today than you did yesterday? Amen and amen. Father, we need to pinch ourselves, pinch us, Father, that we come alive to these realities of what you have accomplished through your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, increase our faith that we would believe it. that we would for a moment know the extent of your love for us to bring about this great salvation. Oh, that we will not neglect so great a salvation, no, but receive it and to know the height and the depth of it today. Father, to praise you and to worship you for the amazing grace, the wonderful love, the outstanding mercy that you have extended to us Father, that you cared for us, that you so had compassion, so you so extended so much mercy and gave up so much, the ultimate sacrifice to the ultimately undeserving. Oh God, oh God, oh God, help us to know it and to respond to this praise. and this love and this joy for having been received ourselves into your amazing kingdom by this love, in Jesus' name, amen.