Please come with me this morning to Colossians 2 where we are going to continue in one of the most amazing passages in all of the Bible on the doctrine of salvation. And I invite you today to gather up the scraps of your mind from wherever they might be scattered and to push away everything that would distract you because this is some of the most wonderful truth in all the Bible. And the better you grasp it, the richer your life is going to be as you walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, God built us so that we think and we feel and we interact with the world around us through our physical bodies which we inhabit. And we have our reactions to things. Something can startle us. Something can cause us to fear something. Something can maybe make us have an anxious response to something. But do you know we have the ability to take charge of all of those things? Most worry, most anxiety, Most foolish decisions that are made by Christians are the fruit of not knowing the riches that are ours in Christ. Or, even if you know them, neglecting to pay attention to the implications of doctrines like the things in the passage before us today. So I want to buckle down and mine this great passage. It occurs to me it is like a gold mine. Now, remember the context. The Apostle Paul wrote this. He is writing to the believers in the city of Colossae. He's writing from his jail in Rome. His friend Epaphras has come from Colossae. He probably is from Colossae. He probably had founded the church there. He has visited the Apostle Paul and given him a report on this church that Paul had never visited. He's told them that things are going well in general, but that there are these influences from some false teachers, and that is the main reason why this book was written, to send it back with Epaphras to correct the errors that were being hoisted upon that church. Now, this collection of false teachings has come to be called the Colossian heresy. Scholars do things like that. They put a nice label on something when they have no clue what it means. So if we just label it, it'll sound like we know what we're talking about. We do know what we're talking about in a sense. It is the heresy that was in Colossae. Any questions? Can we move on now? We just know from what is written in this book that there were components to this thing. Syncretistic heresy. Now, syncretism is the idea of, I'll take a little bit from here, and a little bit from there, and a little bit from over here, and a little bit of this, and I'm going to roll it all together, and that's going to become my theology. Piecing together your own view of things. We know that this was a syncretistic system of false doctrine that included several elements. One of them being Jewish legalism. Like the Judaizers that followed Paul around on his first missionary journey to Galatia, they came in and said, I'm glad you believe in Jesus, now keep all the feasts, keep all the dietary laws, be circumcised, do these things. There was an element of that. That wasn't all of it though. There was also a mixture of some pagan philosophy, some ideas about the world that are unbiblical. There was an undue fascination with angels and demons. And we're going to be seeing that, Lord willing, next Sunday and then the following one after that. And there was this emphasis on mystical experiences. The idea that in order to be saved, in order to be really something spiritual, you have to have these experiences where you look inside yourself and you discover the truth. I just heard on the radio this morning about somebody who after his second at DUI is going into rehab and he has to be somebody pretty famous. And he wants to take some time away from his own sport that he excels in to learn more about himself. He needs to learn what this passage says. You don't look inside yourself to gain truth about God. That is going to lead you way astray. So it was some conglomeration of these four elements in a syncretistic mess. And when you roll it all together, it was what I have come to call video game salvation. Like a video game where you start out and there's something cute, and you do the first screen, and then you finish that screen, you get to the second screen, you finish the second screen, you get to the third screen, and you keep moving on, and moving on, and moving on, and finally you finish level one, and then you get some new tool, and you go on to level two, and then you go through this screen, and that screen, and that screen, and then you get to level three, and then level four, and then level five, and then you become a master, and then level six, and it goes on, and on, and on. You never know when it's going to end. You never know if you've gotten far enough. And you're always tantalized to get a little bit more. That's what the Colossian heresy had turned Christianity into. And Paul, without going into all of the details of the bad stuff, does this masterful job of presenting, no, here's what you have in Christ. And one by one, he wipes away these things. Now, our passage for today is just part of what we call the heart of this doctrinal portion of the book of Colossians. Chapter 2, verse 4, through the end of the chapter in verse 23. Like I say, he doesn't recite the false teachings, he recites the critical, crucial truths about Jesus Christ and your relationship with Him, which refutes video game salvation. Now, we've already seen part of this particular section. Let me just give the running start for today, starting at verse 9. For in Him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. Now, there's strike one for the Colossian heretics. You don't get a little bit of God and a little more of God and a little more of God. You get Jesus, you have the whole thing. And He says, "...and in Him you have been made complete." Strike two. You don't have to work your way up to get a little more and a little more and a little more. You have Christ. You have it all. And He is the head over all rule and authority. Strike three for the Colossian heresy. All those angels you're so fascinated with, Jesus created them. He's in charge of them. They answer to Him. He is their judge. Come to Christ. You have it all. And in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands and the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ." Strike four for the Colossian heretics. It's not Christ plus keeping these festivals and feasts and new moons and Sabbaths and all of that stuff. Come to Christ. You get it all once for all. "...having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God who raised Him from the dead. Strike five or whatever strike we're on. You come to Christ. You are raised with the same power that raised Him from the dead. You are seated with Him. It's complete. It's done. You don't need another level. You just need to know this Savior. Now, there's key things in there. In Him, you have been made complete. It's done. It's a done deal once for all. You receive eternal life by faith. It comes to you all at once. It's not the bottom rung of the ladder and you keep climbing. You have been made complete. We point it out to you as in a verb form that means that it is something accomplished completely in the past with results present in the future. That's A huge strike against the Colossian heresy. And it's in the passive voice, which means that you receive the action. God does the work of salvation. You receive the benefit by faith. You don't add to it. You don't do it on your own. And the circumcision with a circumcision made without hands means it's the work of God which deals with your inner being, with your heart. It is completely apart from works. There's nothing you could do to earn it. Good works are the result of your love for God who saves you. They are not the means by which you achieve acceptance with God. You've been buried with Him. You've been baptized and raised up with Him by the power of God. It is completely the work of God. Water baptism is a picture of the spiritual transaction that takes place when you put your faith in Christ and you are made alive with Him. Now, this wonderful description of salvation continues in the next three verses. We're going to whack off two of them today, but I want you to see all three for a reason. If you know Christ, Three key statements flow in these next three verses. Number one, He made you alive. That's verse 13. Number two, He took away your debt. And then verse 15, He triumphed over your enemies. And we're going to save that for next time for a reason. We're in the middle of this detailed description of salvation. And as I studied this for weeks, I realized it's very much like a gold mine. A really rich gold mine. You can walk into this mine and just turn on your flashlight and find nuggets. You can't miss them. Everybody has to get something out of this. You can walk around and explore a little more carefully. Maybe penetrate a little bit farther into this mine and you'll find even more that will enrich you. And if you brought a little pick with you, you can start scratching the walls a little bit and you're going to get even more of great value. But when you take a look at this carefully and deeply and accurately, you will reach the mother load of the riches that are here for you. That's what I want for you this morning. Now, I outlined this this way. I actually had trouble finding commentators that paid attention to the structure of this text, but I did find out there are some out there smart enough to agree with me. These three key statements are the structure of verses 13, 14, and 15, which is like a sub-paragraph within this section on salvation. So let's look at what is before us this morning. It starts with, if you are in Christ, He made you alive. V. 13 of Colossians 2. And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions. Now here's a way you can look at this. It tells you a problem you have. And it tells you the divine solution to your problem. The problem is you were dead. You were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh. Apart from Christ, if you do not know Him today, if He is not your Lord and Savior, you are a walking dead person. You might have physical life. Physically, you can live apart from Christ, but spiritually, you are dead. Now, He gives you two reasons why you're dead, or two parts of the basis for your condition of spiritual death. One is your transgressions. Transgression is one of the many words for sin. This is the idea of you walk up to the line where you're not supposed to go beyond it, and you step beyond it. You transgress. You go over the line. You've done that. You've sinned. I've sinned. We've all sinned. We're really good at it. We've done it a lot. We're pros. We are very consistent in our sinfulness. We have committed many transgressions. Not only... is it our specific personal acts of transgression, but also, and the uncircumcision of your flesh. Your flesh is that unredeemed part of you. It is the reason that you are so responsive to sin. It is that part of you that just wants to be connected to the world. And it needs to be cut away. It is cut away in Christ. Hence the term, the uncircumcision of your flesh that needs to be done away with. Your flesh will not be eradicated until you're with the Lord, but you have this resource that can guarantee your eventual deliverance from the flesh as well. So the problem is, you were born a sinner. Blame that on Adam. That is the uncircumcision of your flesh. And you not only have that as your nature, you have learned to use the gift. You've gotten good at it. So, apart from Christ, you're dead. Now what does that mean? Well, everybody knows what dead means. Really? Well, it means, in one sense, unable to respond. It means that stimuli don't do anything to you. You can't respond to God. But, let me give you a more theological definition of dead, in case you've never heard it. The essence of death, or to be dead, is to be separated. the immaterial part of you, the non-physical part of you, your soul, your spirit, your heart, your will, your mind, your emotions, when that part of you is separated from the physical part of you, we say you're dead. Right? The essence is separation. That's not the end of your existence, that's not the end of your consciousness, and that's not the end of you dealing with God, but that is what we call physically dead. When you are separated from God because of your sin, that is spiritual death. So, you were dead spiritually even before, or when you were born in this world, you were dead spiritually and you need to be made alive. That's the only thing that you can do about it is nothing. It has to be done for you. Your problem, if you've not put your complete trust in Jesus Christ, is that in relationship to God, you are dead. The solution. That's the first declaration in our text. He made you alive together with Him. Frontal, direct, in the forehead, between the eyes assault on the Colossian heresy. He made you alive. You didn't make yourself alive. You didn't contribute to it. You were just plain dead. He made you alive. God has granted to you the life of the resurrected Jesus Christ. You share in the quality of life that belongs to Christ. It's called eternal life because it is life which lasts for eternity and it is life that is not bounded by this world. It's a whole new quality. As Jesus says in John 17, this is eternal life, that they may know You and the One Whom You've sent. This is a crucial way to describe what it means to be a Christian. Problem. You're dead. Solution. He made you alive. That's Christianity. And there is, along with this clear statement, that salvation is nothing short of the miracle of making alive someone who is dead. Along with that, there comes this description of what is required in order for you to be made alive. Grammatically speaking, it's a participle attached to the phrase, made alive together with. Look at it in our text. Having forgiven us all our transgressions. Now what does forgiveness mean? Forgiveness means that because of what Christ did in your place, God lets go of His right to punish you for your sins. That's what forgiveness means. When you say to someone else, I forgive you, it means you say, I have no power. I am not going to inflict pain upon you even if you wronged me. That's what it means to forgive. He has forgiven us All our transgressions. Remember, that's one of the reasons you were dead. Because you're so good at sinning, there is not one single sin that Jesus Christ did not die for. There is not one single sin that you have to atone for in addition to all the ones you confessed when you first came to faith in Him. He has forgiven you. Why? Because Christ took that punishment. That's why God can let go of punishing you. His righteousness, His holiness, His character demands that sin must be punished. If God doesn't punish sin, God is not God and God is not good. Because God, in order to be good, has to be righteous. And to be righteous, He has to be holy. And if He is holy, He cannot welcome unholiness into His presence. And so, He has forgiven us all our transgressions because He made the way for us. Now, when you get forgiven with that kind of forgiveness, it is transforming. Every time I touch upon this word, I have to look at this verse. Ephesians 4, verse 32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. There, my friends, is a test of whether you are a truly forgiven person. A truly forgiven person always wants to be a forgiving person. Now, some people will not let you forgive them. Some people are so cantankerous. They are so stiff-necked. They are so selfish. They are so self-righteous. Nothing you can do can restore a broken relationship with them. That's why Romans 12.18 says, if possible, so far as it depends upon you, be at peace with all men. Why? Because we want to forgive as we have been forgiven. This is at the core of what it means to be a Christian. If there is someone you are bitter against, If there is someone with whom your relationship is broken. If there is someone about whom you say, I can never forgive that. It's too much. You don't yet know who Christ is. You don't yet know what Christ has done for you. How dare you claim that you are more righteous than God. He, at His own expense of His own Son, forgave you. If you're a Christian today, it's because when you were dead, God made you alive, comma, participle, having forgiven us all our transgressions. When you comprehend that kind of forgiveness, you realize that it is so wonderful that it's nothing short of being made alive together with Jesus Christ. If you belong to Christ, the problem is you were dead. The solution? He made you alive. Then he says it another way. He took away your debt. Verse 14. This is the second description of salvation in these three verses. Stated in the form of another problem and solution. Colossians 2, verse 14. Same sentence. having forgiven us all our transgressions, comma, having cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, and which was hostile to us, and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross." Here's another way you can describe your problem apart from Christ. You owe the debt of the penalty for all of your sins. Every single one of them. Every one you committed rebelliously. Every one you committed willfully. Every one that you stumbled into. Every one that you didn't even realize you committed. Even the ones you thought of and didn't have opportunity. And even the ones that you just kind of in the back of your mind want to believe that that wasn't even in your mind. The certificate of debt It's a really interesting word picture here. That phrase, certificate of debt, translates one word, which is literally handwriting. If you have the King James, it uses the word handwriting here, and a lot of people say, what's that talking about? Well, this word was used in the specific context to describe a signed document that would be handwritten by a debtor and signed by him acknowledging his debt. If you've ever bought a house, you know all those papers you sign? I think it's on page 82, paragraph 19, subsection 4B. That's the one where you signed your name that said, by the way, I've got to pay you back all this stuff. You are on the hook. It's signed by you. It's a legal document that is a lien against you for all of eternity. That's the certificate of debt. That's what you owe. But, don't just browse by and pick up this one little nugget in our gold mine. There's another one lying right next to it, just half buried in the dirt. This certificate of debt, notice it says, consists of decrees against us. The word decrees relates to the Mosaic Law. Now, God gave the law to Moses, hence we call it. Mosaic Law. What a nice coincidence that that's what it's named. A whole bunch of laws designed to regulate Israel's relationship with God. God chose Israel. He sovereignly selected them, not because they were cute and cuddly, but because it was His will. I'm going to make this nation a peculiar nation. Peculiar not in the sense of strange, but peculiar in the sense of distinct from all the others. And one of the ways I'm going to keep them distinct is give them different dietary laws, a different calendar, all these things that they have to do. That's the Mosaic Law, and it includes all the moral revelations of God. But you know how well that worked? Israel failed to keep her end of the Mosaic Covenant, and for that reason, the law became the certificate of debt. Every single time that any single person in all of Israel failed to keep that law, it's like somebody took a big yellow highlighter and highlighted that part on page 84, subparagraph 3 of line 19. Every single one of those. That became the certificate of debt. And instead of it being the basis for blessing in Israel, And by the way, one day all Israel will be saved. God will redeem them all through the new covenant. But instead of that being a way for Israel to live a blessed life and to be an example to all the nations, Israel messed it up. They fell into apostasy. And so the law of God is hostile to us, all of us, because it defines and exposes our sin. Read Galatians 3 and 4. So this certificate of debt consisting in decrees against us and which was hostile to us describes every person's problem with the wages of sin. We've all earned what sin deserves. Eternal condemnation. So, you look again at Colossians 2.14. The problem is you owe the debt of the penalty for all of your sins, as defined and illustrated by the law of God. Here is a very good way that you can use the law of God, the principle of Colossians 2, verse 14, to introduce people to Christ. Now, I don't want a show of hands, but let me just ask, Have you ever told a lie? Somewhere between Little White and Great White Shark. Ever told a lie? Well, yeah, I've never talked to anybody that says I've never told a lie. Have you ever taken anything that wasn't yours? Ever stolen anything? You know, like maybe not rob the bank, but maybe like my employer paid me for 60 minutes and I gave him about 15 minutes of my productivity. That's stealing. Well, what do you call a person who tells a lie? A liar. What do you call a person who takes things that aren't his? A thief. Have you ever coveted something that wasn't yours? What do we call that person? the covetous or an idolater. Have any of you ever taken the Lord's name in vain? Ever used the name of God in any way that is remotely short of His ultimate glory? Well, yeah. Well, that's called blasphemy. What do we call a person who commits blasphemy? A blasphemer. Have any of you ever had an impure, lustful thought about some other human being? that was not your spouse, and if it's not your spouse, it is your spouse, it's not lustful, it's pure, it's appropriate. Anybody done that? Well, what do we call that? Well, Jesus said, if you look upon a person with the purpose of lusting, you have already committed adultery in your heart. Oh, it's not the same as the physical act, but it is the same essence of sin, just like being angry at somebody is the same essence as murder. It's just not taken quite to the extreme. So, we haven't even come close to finishing the Ten Commandments. And already, in your own mind, If you're at all tracking with me, you're saying, let's see, I am a liar. I am a thief. I am an adulterer. I am a blasphemer. I am a coveter. I've got a problem. Right? Well, there's a solution. If God is God, if He is what the Bible says that He is, what does He owe you? Do you deserve to be in His heaven? Nope. You sure don't. So how can you possibly get there when you have this problem of the debt of the penalty of all of your sins which is demanded by the goodness and the righteousness and the justice of God? Well, there's a solution. He has taken it out of the way. He has taken that contract and paid it off for you. What that means is that now a person comes into a relationship with God, apart from the Mosaic Law, apart from becoming a Jew, the debt has been cancelled. And that word cancelled, interestingly, is a play on the word handwriting. The word cancelled means to wipe away, as in erasing a blackboard. Ah, but there's even more than that. You have the certificate of debt based upon all the decrees against us which were hostile to you, which is the law, which condemns you, which tells you you need a Savior. And look at this. He has taken it out of the way. That's telling you He has not only gotten you off, He has removed what condemns you. The law of Moses is not in force today. Christ fulfilled it. Satisfied it completely. Once and for all. You say, now, wait a minute, Harris. You just whipped me with the Ten Commandments, and now you're telling me that that's not in force today. The law of Moses is not enforced today. Do you know that 9 of the 10 commandments are repeated in some other form in the New Testament? Or quoted directly in the New Testament? God never changes. God's morality never changes. And hence, what was right in the day of Moses is right now. What was wrong in the day of Moses is wrong now. So, morality never changes and the moral character of God never changes. You are just as guilty today as if you had been a Jew in Israel before Christ and the law of Moses was in full effect. But that has been taken away. Now, we don't pretend to come to God by keeping the law of God. We can't. We don't keep the law of God. We walk by the Spirit. We have a higher law. It's called the law of love. Or the law of liberty. There's a great parallel here. You know, Paul wrote from his jail cell, Ephesians and Colossians. And also Philippians and also Philemon. But Ephesians and Colossians have a number of parallels. And there's a great commentary on this from Ephesians 2. And I was going to take you there and show you a whole list of things that elucidate Colossians chapter 2. And then I realized, you know, some of these folks have to go to work Monday morning. We've got to finish the sermon sometime on Sunday. So I cut it down to a couple of verses. But look at this. Ephesians 2.11, Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, that's us, We may have an ethnic Jew among us. I don't know of one. We are, by and large, the Gentiles, the non-Jews. Therefore, remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who were called uncircumcision by the so-called circumcision which is performed in the flesh by human hands..." That's very similar to Colossians 2, applied slightly differently. Verse 12 of Ephesians 2, "...remember that you were at that time separate from Christ." You had nothing to do with Messiah. Excluded from the commonwealth of Israel. You weren't among the chosen people. And strangers to the covenants of promise. All those promises that God made didn't have any application to you. Having no hope and without God in the world. Under the law of Moses, where did a Gentile stand? Outside. He would have to convert and become a Jew. Though God meant for Gentiles to come to faith through the example of Israel, they were to see Israel, they were to see the glory of God working in His people, but Israel's unbelief prevented that from happening. And so, instead of Israel being a channel of the river of God's blessing to flow to all the nations, Israel decided, let's build a dam. God's blessing us. Let's hang on to it. They stopped the flow. Israel became the dead sea of spiritual decay. And not only did Israel keep Gentiles from coming to God, they destroyed their own spiritual life by polluting the purity of that stream of blessing and holiness that God poured out on them. The way Israel twisted the law and turned it into a merit system of righteousness by works, turning everything upside down that God meant, Not even very many Jews were saved by the time Jesus arrived. Because think about it. If you were going to be saved, which has always been by grace through faith, you would have to reject all your own spiritual leaders to come to God by faith. That's why Jesus preached the way He did in the Sermon on the Mount. But now Ephesians 2.13, look at this. But now in Christ Jesus, you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. His death. Remember the Lord's Supper? Jesus holds up the cup and He says, this is the new covenant in My blood. You can come now freely because that old system? Done away. And your certificate of debt? Wiped away. Christ's death was the dynamite that blew up the dam on the river of God's blessing that Israel built by her unbelief and disobedience. And now the blessings of salvation flow freely to everyone who believes. Go take a few minutes and read through Ephesians 2 this afternoon. You'll see that salvation is the same for Jew and Gentile now. The dwelling place of God is now with all believers in all lands by the indwelling of His Holy Spirit. Anybody today who is trying to keep the law of Moses denies the gospel of Jesus Christ. He fulfilled it. He took it away. It's not how you come to God. Back to Colossians 2.14. How did He get taken away? Having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of degrees against us and which was hostile to us, and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When Jesus Christ died on that cross, He took care of your debt of sin and He made the way for all men and women Boys and girls, Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, old and young, any distinction you want, all come directly to God to be saved by His grace through faith. Listen, my friend, you had a terrible problem. You were dead. It doesn't get much worse than that. Dead when it comes to spiritual things. The solution? God made you alive together with Christ by forgiving you because Christ took the penalty. Yet another problem. You owe the debt of the penalty for all your sins as defined by the law. The solution? It's the only possible solution. He took away your debt. He removed the force of the law so that you have free access directly to God. That is a great deal. And Christianity is nothing less than that. And any modification of that is Satan's counterfeit of grace. And there's only one way you can counterfeit grace. It works. Something you do. Something you add to it. You're probably familiar with the concept of chapter 11 bankruptcy plans. Chapter 11 is a legal provision within our government for a struggling company that's unable to pay its bills. They can get a temporary reprieve from paying the debts that it owes while it reorganizes and streamlines and reforms its operations. When a bankruptcy judge approves the plan, then the company is allowed to continue on with a new plan, restructuring its debts, and it continues to operate and hopefully becomes a profitable company for a long time to come. God does not have a chapter 11 bankruptcy plan for people who are dead and have a debt they can't pay. Salvation is not a temporary postponement of your debt. It is not God giving you time and encouragement to reform and get a little better. It is not a matter of learning how to improve your operations so that you can eventually pay what you owe. When I sit down and talk to someone Maybe it, you know, comfort, counseling, we're getting acquainted, whatever it is. Maybe it's even a premarital counseling situation. I always ask, you know, tell me your spiritual background. And they say something and you can always pretty much spot whether they understand the gospel or not. And often somebody will say, well, I'm a Christian. I say, what do you mean by Christian? They say, well, you know, I try to live right. I do my best. Immediately, in my head, this giant red light goes off and this siren goes off. And I say, this is not a Christian. You are not a Christian because you're trying to live right. You are not a Christian because you're trying to be more moral. You're not a Christian because you've come through rehab. And you've gotten sober. You are not a Christian because you are reforming. You're not a Christian because you're better today than you were yesterday. You are a Christian if and only if you realize you were totally dead, couldn't do anything about it, you owed a debt you couldn't begin to pay, and you've been made alive, having been forgiven, and that debt has been taken away. That and only that is the definition of what it means to be a Christian. You see how profound this is? It's not hard work. It's impossible. You come and you are forgiven and then you are given His Holy Spirit by which you then have the power to choose to do the things that glorify God. To manifest the fruit of the Spirit. To honor Him. To worship Him in spirit and in truth. It is nothing less than complete forgiveness of all that you owe, accomplished at the expense of Christ on your behalf. If you are a Christian, it is because He made you alive. If you are a Christian, it is because He took away your debt. If you are a Christian, it is because, thirdly in verse 15, He triumphed over your enemies. Now, I need to leave off the third point of the outline. We'll get to it next time. And you'll see why I want to spend a little extra time with that. But I wanted you to see that it's all connected. It's another problem-solution formula. Verse 15, when He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him. The problem is you were under the dominion of Satan. You needed to be transferred to the kingdom of His dear Son. We'll come to that next time. You know, just once at a funeral, instead of merely preaching a message of comfort and hope to Christians and preaching the Gospel to unbelievers, I think it would be fun just one time to make the dead person alive. That would be great. I would never do it if it was a Christian's funeral. I would not want to do something that heinous to a person who had been ushered into the presence of Christ. But if only I could raise a dead, unsaved person, and maybe they'd have a chance to believe. I mean, that's horrible theology, but I wish I had that power. I wish the gift of healing would work. Today, like it did in New Testament times, people claim to have that gift today. You never see them putting St. Alphonsus Hospital out of business. I wish I had that power. Do you realize that something even more spectacular than healing the sick, even more spectacular than physical resurrection, even more spectacular than what Jesus did for Nicodemus has happened to you if you've come to faith in Jesus Christ? And if you are completely forgiven, you will be so transformed that forgiving is going to become your hobby. It's going to become your purpose in life. What if I could pay off your mortgage for you? Would you like that? If I could, I would. After I do mine. What if I could completely remove your obligation for all your debts? That's not even a fraction of what Christ has done for you. Have you received that free gift? If you have, you are part of the family. And next time, we're going to look in more detail at how Satan and his demons are now your defeated enemies. Oh, there's still some skirmishes going on. But I read the last chapter, we win. Why? Because He made you alive. Because He took away your debt. Because He triumphed over your enemies. Heavenly Father, thank You that it is true that we are alive together with Your Son, Jesus Christ. And as Your Word says, it does not yet appear all that we shall be, but by Your grace, We walk by faith. We look forward with unabated hope to all that You have for us in eternity with Your Son and basking in Your glory. And so now, Father, in this interim between the work of Christ in His first coming and His glory being unveiled in His second coming, may we truly stand in Your grace Whatever needs to be done in each of our hearts today, I ask You to do it. Maybe there is a heart here today that belongs to someone who is still the slave of sin, still not forgiven, still not having that debt canceled. Draw that man or woman or boy or girl to Yourself, I pray. Some of us have walked with You for a number of years, There's so much more work to be done to make us better representatives of Your Son here in this world. Whatever needs to be done, I ask You to do it that we might truly be living sacrifices presented on the altar every day for Your glory. So do Your work, we pray, in Jesus' name, Amen.