Let's pray first before we get into the message. Heavenly Father, we want to thank you so much for your continued grace, and we do want to pray for the mission team from BMC and for Jason and for Andrew, who are going to be headed out this Friday. We pray, Father God, as He has requested, that the camp would go smoothly, that there would be no opportunity for Satan to divide them, a greater heart, Lord God, for the lost, and specifically, Lord, for Jason, that he may be able to meet someone who is hungry, Lord, to learn, to grow, that he may be able to follow up on even after he comes back.

I pray for each of the team members, for the leaders, Lord God, who are leading this team, that you would watch over them, and that, again, it would be truly a time to bear fruit, Father God, and that their fruit would encourage us, Lord, when they come back as well.

We pray this morning as we search your word, help us to understand, Lord, your heart for us. Help us not to simply study, Lord, the meaning of it, but your very heart and thought, Lord, that it would convict our thoughts and our heart, Lord God. So we entrust this time to you in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. All right, let me start off this morning by asking you a simple question. In the last week, is there something that you've been looking forward to? Maybe it could be coming down next year, maybe you have a child coming, or maybe you have a vacation coming, and maybe in a few weeks or months, or maybe you apply for a job and you're waiting for a reply, and whatever it may be, what is it that you've been longing for or waiting for?

Now, all of us probably have something. Maybe there isn't anything specific going on in your life, but there's something that we're looking forward to, whatever that may be. And a lot of these things are not wrong, that's just human nature. If something exciting is happening or something is changing, it's something that we end up looking forward to.

But along with that question, when was the last time that you really thought that you were longing for fellowship with Christ? When was the last time you were really longing and anticipating for Christ coming? Now these short-term goals that we have, or short-term things that we're looking for, again, these are all human nature.

If there's change coming or something that we're desiring, a better position and job, or maybe a vacation you're going to take, there's nothing sinful about that. But these are all short-sighted things, only short-term goals. When was the last time you really longed for and looked for a deeper fellowship with Christ, and which caused you to long for the coming of Christ?

The reason why this question is so important, if you can't remember the last time that there was a stirring and longing, not just a simple passing thought, "I should be this way, I should be that way," but a stirring in your heart that is so deep, and it caused you to long for, maybe even look up into heaven and think, "When is he going to come?" That question is so vital that we don't just dismiss that, that we don't just file that away.

Because scripture says in 1 John 2 and 3, "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who does hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure." Our sanctification is directly linked to this longing for Christ.

It is this longing for his second coming, his longing to connect with Christ, is what causes you to seek him in prayer. If there isn't this longing in your heart, you can put in the time to pray, but it's always kind of like, "Did I do enough? Have I prayed enough and that's it?

Have I served enough and that's it?" We're always looking to just kind of do what's needed to do. Ultimately, our sanctification, our desire for holiness is directly linked to this hunger for Christ. So if you can't remember the last time you had this longing and hungering, not just a passing thought of duty, like, "I should do this," but this longing for his second coming, that may be a revelation that you've been disconnected with Christ.

You've been at church. You may have been putting in some prayer. You may have had some fellowship, but it may be a sign that you've been disconnected, that you haven't been growing, that you haven't been maturing. Sanctification hasn't been happening in your life because he says, "He who longs for these things purifies himself as he is pure." It is our longing for him, longing for who he is that causes us to be holy and to pray.

Now, why is this pertinent to the passage that we're looking at this morning? Paul has been explaining in the context genuine salvation because the Jews were so focused on the external things that they were doing and they were coming before God and said, "Look how much time I'm spending in prayer.

Look at what I'm doing. Look how much I'm giving. Look how much I'm serving at the temple." Remember what Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, that he doesn't care if you're worshiping in this mountain or that mountain. He's looking for true worshipers who will worship him in spirit and in truth, real worship, not just people who are checking off the box and say, "Well, I'm being discipled because I'm doing these five things." Is there this longing and hungering for God that's causing you to study the Bible?

Or are you studying the Bible because that's what you're supposed to do? Is there a longing and hungering for God that's causing you to want to pray and seek God? Or is it just another check off box that you need to do because that's what a good Christian does?

Paul has said, he says, "Moses writes," in verse 5, chapter 10, verse 5, "Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandment shall live by them." In other words, if you are going to base your righteousness upon what you do, you need to do this perfectly.

He says in the next passage, "Who's going to say? Who's going to go up to heaven and bring him down? Who's going to descend and bring him back up?" In other words, it is impossible. Even by faith, if we were to be saved in any other way, he said, "You need to be absolutely perfect.

You would have to go up to heaven and bring him down. You'd have to descend into the abyss and bring him up." In other words, it is absolutely impossible. So the beginning of our salvation is recognition that we cannot. This morning, we're going to go into the second part of what I started last week.

And then I'm going to just give you, again, three-point outline of this morning's sermon so that it'll be easier for you to follow. First, saving faith. Saving faith requires confession of lordship of Christ. We kind of started on that last week and I didn't get to finish that, so I'll finish that this morning.

Saving faith requires confession of lordship of Christ. Second point, saving faith requires belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Oh, sorry. B, saving faith requires inner transformation that leads to outer confession. Saving faith requires inner transformation that leads to outer confession. Thirdly, saving faith requires belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Last week, we talked about how it says, "He who confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, believes in his heart that he was raised from the dead, he shall be saved." And we talked about last week about how in the oral tradition that what they said and what they confessed was equivalent to today of maybe signing a contract or even a marriage ceremony.

So oftentimes, people took that oral, this confession as kind of like public baptism. Where somebody stood and publicly professed their loyalty to Christ was no different than today if they were to come into a marriage contract and filed it into the court of law, it was binding. So confession wasn't simply words being spoken.

It was a public declaration of radical change that took place. And what was this confession? This confession was to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus Christ is Lord. Now again, you and I live in a culture where we call him Lord without really giving much thought about what that means.

We sing songs about how he is Lord, we establish you and we worship you, we say all of these things, we confess all of these things without really giving it serious thought. Is that true? Are the things that I am saying, do I really believe this? Am I studying the word of God and listening and reading these things, do I really confess to believe this?

And you know, the sad thing is when we live in our Christian bubble and we're not being challenged, we never really have to even think about it. You know, that's why it's very uncomfortable. If you're, you know, while you're in college, you're surrounded by other Christians and we're all we're doing is affirming each other's faith.

It's like, yes, you know, don't worry about it. Don't be discouraged. The Lord loves you. He makes all things work out for good. And we have these cliche things that we say to each other and all of a sudden we graduate and we go to our workplace and somebody asks, you believe that?

How could you believe that? You mean Jesus Christ is the only way that you really believe that he died and was resurrected? And then once we get challenged, we feel uncomfortable because we never really had to answer these questions before. And so our knee jerk reaction is, oh, those people are, you know, they're not, they're hostile to the gospel.

So we end up kind of staying away from those people who make us uncomfortable. But if we're regularly engaged with non-Christians, these are things that they will constantly ask you, do you really believe that? And they're going to make you defend it. But as long as we're in our Christian bubble with Christian friends and Christian family, Christian church, you don't really need to answer this question because there's a constant affirmation.

You are, of course you have genuine faith. Of course you have this. I didn't, it is absolutely crucial we're able to answer this question with an amen, not just I think so, because our whole salvation hinges upon the genuineness of our faith. Our whole hope in Christ hinges upon how genuine this faith is.

So if we just assume faith and we're constantly encouraged not to think any deeper than, of course you do, then what if we never really asked the question and we die and then standing before God, we realize that this confession wasn't real. It is absolutely essential. And that's why it says, "He who confesses with his mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord." We talked about that and again, I didn't get to finish it last week, but you know, in the scripture, the very definition, the very definition of sin is to not to have Christ as Lord.

There's a lot of different words that have been translated. There's transgression, disobedience, there's error, blemish, lawlessness, but the most common word that is translated in the English Bible where we see the word sin is hamartion. And the word hamartion simply means to miss the mark. Now that doesn't sound too serious in comparison to transgression or disobedience or wickedness or lawlessness.

That sounds more like a sin that deserves punishment, but to miss the mark, it almost kind of sounded like you shot for an A and you got a B. You missed the mark. That you wanted to do something and you just kind of didn't make it or you shot an arrow and you didn't hit the center, you kind of hit the side, you missed the mark.

So on the surface, it seems like hamartion, the word sin, doesn't seem deserving of this judgment that we see in scripture. And we talked about that last week, how that word perfectly describes how the reign of death came into mankind. All they did was eat fruit that was forbidden from God.

God said, "Do not eat of this fruit or you shall surely die." What was so wrong about eating this fruit that sin would penetrate into mankind and sin and death would reign? What was so bad about this fruit? It was in eating this fruit. They were rebelling against the Lordship of Christ.

They decided that they're going to determine what is good, that they're going to determine what is bad. So in the very essence of the word hamartion, there is this idea of self-governing. I'm going to determine what is right. So this word hamartion isn't simply that you shot for an A and you got a B.

The word hamartion basically means I'm going to make my own target. I'm going to determine what is right and what is wrong. I'm going to determine what I'm going to do with my life. So the essence of human rebellion is to reject God's Lordship and to put me in that place.

You know what that means? That means you can be the most moral person in this room and not be saved if you miss the mark. That means you can be the best father and mother that you can possibly be and still miss the mark. You can be the best student.

You can have the most integrity in your work and people may say, "Wow, that person is really morally upright. They're really generous. They're giving and caring and kind." And you can have all of that and still miss the mark. And we determine for ourselves what is right and what is wrong, what I pursue, what I'm going to do with my life.

And that's why Jesus says, "He who finds his life shall lose it." In the context of finding life, a lot of times you're not trying to be a murderer or a cheater. You're just trying to be a good person. You're trying to take care of your family, pay the bills.

In and of itself, it doesn't seem like rebellion. In and of itself, it seems like that's what every good person should do. But that's exactly what Paul was saying. All the good that you've been pursuing, you've been trying so hard to take care of your family, you've been trying so hard to be a good Jew and to be faithful, serve the temple, even giving to the poor, and yet they completely miss the mark.

He says, "That's why he says, 'He who confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord.'" See, in Revelation 7, 15-17, whenever we think of lordship, we automatically think of somebody else outside of us oppressing us. Those of you, obviously, all of you guys, most of you guys are not teenagers anymore, but some of you guys don't remember, it wasn't too far ago, that long ago, that you remember what it was like to have your parents tell you what to do.

And now you're a college student or beyond college student or married and have kids, and you can determine for yourself. I make my own money, I do my own thing, so I don't have anybody governing me. So the idea of lordship, it kind of feels like it's taken us back to when we were young and having our parents telling us what to do, when to go to sleep, when to come home.

I don't need a curfew, I don't need somebody breathing down my neck telling me if I've spent too much money. So when we think about lordship, a lot of people have this knee-jerk reaction, it's like, "Oh man, lordship. I have to, he's going to tell me what to do." And so we wrestle with this idea of surrendering the freedom that we've gained from maturing, from just getting older.

But in Revelation 7, 15-17, there's a passage that we studied in Revelation this week, it says, "Therefore they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night." And he's talking about all of us. At the end times when we get to heaven, we're going to be serving him day and night.

So if you wrestle with lordship, the idea of lordship just kind of feels oppressive, that automatically kind of like, "Man, these are things that I want to do and God's going to give me a guilt trip." So if you get to heaven, he said, "You're going to be serving him day and night." You're not even going to be wrestling with it because God, you know, maybe he won't catch certain things when you're up in heaven, he's up close, he's going to see everything.

So if the idea, or at least your false concept of lordship feels oppressive, then man, you're headed for deep oppression when you get to heaven because when we get there, he said, "We're going to be serving him day and night." But I want you to continue to read what it says.

He says, "We serve him day and night in his temple and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence." They will serve him and in that service, when we are in his service, he says, "We are going to be sheltered," meaning that God is going to protect us.

He's going to provide for us. Just like any good father or mother will do for their children, he says, "I want you to obey because my ultimate purpose is to take care of you. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat, for the lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd and he will guide them to springs of living water and God will wipe away their tears from their eyes." You notice how lordship of Christ is directly linked to his shepherding presence?

The lordship of Christ is directly linked to his presence. So when we talk about lordship, it's God commanding us, demanding of us to stay within his care. That he spreads his wing among us and says, "This is where I am." So lordship is him telling us to come under his wings.

So to rebel against that lordship basically is saying, "I don't want to be under your care. I don't want to be near your presence. I want to keep my distance so I can adore you from a distance." So there are so many Christians who live off of other people's testimony.

And we hear about other people who are going to far off countries and they come back and they're excited for their faith or people who've sacrificed and prayed and how God answered their prayer and they have all these testimonies. But so many Christians, in fear of, "If I get too close, he's going to demand things that I don't want to give up." So their testimony is always just observing other people from a distance.

So we love to read books, blogs. We love hearing testimonies because it makes us feel like we're close to God without being close to God. We love to hear like stories of answered prayers of what God is doing around the world because it makes us feel like we're near Christ without being near to Christ.

I think the best way for me to explain Lordship is, I know some of you guys have visited certain parts of the world that you wish that you could take your maybe future spouse, you know, or somebody that you really care about or a really good friend. And you come back and you show them pictures, you put it on Facebook and say, "It was awesome." You know, I've been to a couple places like that.

At one place, I really, I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to, but I've seen pictures of it, Machu Picchu. Some of you guys have been there. I don't know, like all the pictures I see online, that's one place I was like, "Wow, I want to go see that in person." I know some of you guys have probably visited that place.

I visited a couple places in China, and I'm not talking about Beijing. I went on this Silk Road tour when I was there the first time, and it took me down to areas of China where it wasn't developed. There's no big buildings. It's way in the countryside, two, three-hour drive.

And basically, we followed the Great Wall, or like the whole Great Wall, and there are some places where it just kind of, you can see it just kind of dwindle out and where they stopped building it. And you go to some of those places, I mean, it's just completely, no human hands have touched it in a long, long time.

And I remember the mountains that I saw, it was like nothing I've ever seen. So I came back, and I said, "Esther, you know, one of these days, I want you to come with me because I want you to see this scenery." We haven't been able to do that.

We've been to China, but usually it was for summer missions, so we didn't have opportunity to tour. But when you go to some place like that, you immediately have this thought of, "I wish I could show you what I saw." See, the Lordship of Christ is God trying to bring us into His life, into His protection.

But the only way to really show you is if you have to leave where you are and come with me. The only way that I can really show you what I saw is to let go of whatever it is that you're afraid of letting go and come with me so I can show it to you.

Ultimately, that's what Lordship is, where God is saying that you've been satisfied for too long with trivial things. You've been satisfied and content with trivial things that ultimately doesn't satisfy, and you know it. You know that the things that you've been pursuing, it's one disappointment after another. And Jesus comes to us, He says, "Well, I've delivered you from an empty way of life.

Now come follow me because I want to give you life. The life that you've been pursuing, it just keeps leading to an empty road or dead end." See, if we don't recognize Lordship as Him inviting us away from an empty way of life so that He can give us this new life, it will always feel like a burden.

And if it's a burden in your heart, then preaching of Lordship is just going to feel heavy. Life is hard enough as it is, and then He wants me to do more or do less. You know, these trivial things give me energy to make it another week, and you want me to give that up?

See, at the core, at the essence of salvation is to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Is to acknowledge that we've been living in sin before we met Christ. The essence of salvation is to recognize that what I've been pursuing, that I've been at the center of my life, that I've been making my own decisions of what I'm going to pursue, what is right and what is wrong.

The essence of salvation is to recognize that, to repent of that, and make Christ my Lord. Make His Word my Lord. What He values, my Lord. If you do not have that, that is not salvation. That's what James calls demonic salvation, where you acknowledge all the theology without embracing Him as Lord.

Having a form of godliness, have no power. You can talk about testimonies because it's always about other people, but it's never yours. You could share stories about what I've seen and say, "Oh, you know, Peter has seen this and this, and that's what he tells me." You can regurgitate that information to somebody else, but what does it mean to be a witness?

Evangelizing isn't getting a set of facts and then transferring that fact to other people. Evangelism is what you have seen, what you have witnessed, you take it to somebody else and come with me so that I can show Him to you too. So if you are not seeing Him, if you're not connecting to Him, if you're not hearing from Him, how can you possibly be a witness?

See this Lordship of Christ is at the center of what it means to be saved. You become a Christian and then here's some other Lordship thing that you have to worry about. No. At the very core of salvation is to make Him our Lord. At the very core of our salvation is to abandon our old life and to embrace a new in Christ.

Secondly, saving faith requires inner transformation that leads to outer confession. If Lordship is, "Oh, you know what? That's what I should be doing," and there is no internal transformation, then yeah, everything that you hear this morning is just going to end up making you feel guilty. If all you're hearing is, "I got to do more," then you're going to leave this room heavily burdened.

How many of you who've been out of college for more than five to 10 years, has it been a cakewalk? Some of you guys had difficult time finding jobs. Some of you guys found jobs that you thought was so great and then you found out your boss was no good, or maybe your coworkers are slandering you, or someone else is getting the promotion while you are not.

You see your friends advancing and you don't see yourself, or maybe you feel stuck and life is hard enough as it is. Then you come to church and then I got to do more and the very little thing that I have that gives me strength to continue, like I can't do that anymore and I'm going to feel guilty doing that.

If there isn't an inner transformation that leads to this confession of Christ as Lord, yeah, then it will lead to greater burden. But that's not what he's talking about. That's why he says in two separate ways in verse 9, "Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." He basically says the same thing in reverse order in verse 10, "For with the heart one believes and is justified and with the mouth one confesses and is saved." Our confession, at least in the order that we see in scripture, if it isn't coming from what is within, and say, "Well, Jesus is Lord," but that's not how you really feel.

That's not what's happening within you, inside. It can become a tremendous burden. In Matthew 12, 35, "The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil." In other words, if this confession of Lordship isn't coming out of a transformation that's taking place in your heart, it will lead to bitterness.

I guarantee it. Let me give you a perfect example. I have teenage children in my house, and I have a little one. He's not at that point yet. My little one, who's nine, he's kind of like our pet. He still loves to go everywhere we go, and so everything is more fun when he's around.

But the teenagers in our home, wherever we go, if their friend's not there, it's not exciting. We've gotten to a point where we don't expect them to come with us. Anybody who's raised kids or anybody who's been a schoolteacher, you know how excruciatingly difficult it is when you have a group of people that you're going, "They just don't want to be there." They came because they had to come.

I stopped asking them to come to weddings, unless they wanted to come. They say, "Oh, yes." I stopped asking them, "Hey, we're going to do this," unless it's a family gathering where they have to come. Because when they come, they ruin everything. Because you know they don't want to be there.

The moment you get there, they're like, "How long are we going to be here? How long are we going to be here?" Every five minutes, "How long are we going to be here?" They say, "Oh, yes, the reception." It's like, "Wait, when's it starting? When's it starting? Are we going to stay for the whole thing?

The whole thing? We're going to stay for the whole thing?" It just ruins everything. They don't like it. I don't like it. So I stopped asking. Because they're doing something they don't want to do. But they have to do it because their parents are making them do it. So at some point, as soon as they're old enough, we stopped asking.

"I only want you to come if you want to come, because I don't want to torture you, and I don't want you to torture me." Religiousness, that's exactly how it feels. When you've got a church filled with people who are obligated to come to church, but they don't want to be there, it is excruciatingly painful.

You're doing Bible study with people who are really not that interested in what the Bible has to say, but they will keep coming because they have to come. If they want to be a member of this church, if they want to be participants of this community, I have to come.

But they're not interested in the Bible study. But we're going to have Bible study anyway because you're here. Oh my gosh, it's draining. Try to have prayer meeting with somebody who doesn't want to be there. But they have to be because they're supposed to be. What he's saying is like, "Oh, here's some things that you need to do," and jump over the hoops and just come.

I don't care if you want to come or not. The real confession comes from an inner transformation that takes place in our hearts. In 2 Corinthians 4, 6, it says, "For God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Our salvation happened first internally.

He shed his light where? In our hearts. There was a transformation that took place that caused us the desire to want to know him. So our worship is a privilege when there's a transformation that's taking place in our hearts. But when there's no transformation in our hearts, it's like taking teenagers to a wedding that doesn't want to be there.

They'll put in their time, right? So in their minds, they go, "Well, that wedding's 45 minutes and reception an hour. I'll put up with that." Anything more than that, anything more than that, you'll hear grumbling and complaining, right? It's no different. You have a church filled with people who are not really attracted to Christ.

You are longer than you're supposed to be. It's not exactly where you want. Any little thing is cause of grumbling. Food, position of chairs, the temperature of the room, certain people, where they sit, where they don't sit. Why it's this? I mean, it's just any little thing. But that's not what Christ calls us for.

Hebrews chapter 8, 10, it says, "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." Where is he going to write them?

On their hearts, meaning salvation happens in our hearts first. There is a longing and a stirring that takes place within our hearts when true faith, saving faith happens. And it causes us to see Christ as our treasure and not this world. And when we see Christ as our treasure, we get to come and worship him.

We get to pray and connect with him. We get to declare him to other people. But when he is not our treasure, and he says, "Pick up your cross," like, "Oh my gosh, the cross." We don't see what's on the other side of the cross. We don't see what the cross produces.

We only see the heavy burden of the cross. See, it says in 1 Corinthians 12, 3, "No one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except in the Holy Spirit." Unless the Holy Spirit is in you, stirring you, drawing you to him, you cannot confess, at least in the way that the scripture declares it, that Jesus is Lord.

You can say it. Anybody can say it, but what he means by confess, to make this covenant, willingly, joyfully, to publicly declare that he is my Lord. Not only is that the case, in 1 Corinthians 2, 14 and 15, you can't even understand the things of God unless there has been a transformation taking place in our hearts.

The natural person does not accept the things that are of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. See, this idea of placing him as Lord in our lives is foolishness to those who have not been changed. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

So unless there is a spiritual transformation in our hearts, every Bible study, every prayer meeting, every gathering, every worship is just clocking in and clocking out. It is nothing more than superstition. It is nothing more than superstition because you have been raised to think that if you go to church, God will bless you.

If you don't go to church, God won't bless you. So you feel a sense of uneasiness when you are not at church. So you go, like a teenager, to a wedding he doesn't want to be at. You go to prayer meetings, like a teenager going to a wedding that doesn't want to be there.

You go to Bible studies, like a teenager who doesn't want to go to a wedding but has to be there. And it's not producing in you life, it's producing in you death. Doesn't it? Religiousness produces death. You feel suffocated in religion. It doesn't produce joy, but when real worship takes place, there's life.

When you search the Word of God and you hear His breath from His Word, there's no Netflix movie, there's no blockbuster movie that can compare to being in the presence of His Spirit. Lordship is not something that you have to do and you calculate, I shouldn't do this, I shouldn't do this.

Lordship happens, not because you're a good person, but because we're selfish. You understand what I mean? Lordship happens because we're selfish, because we want to be happy. Lordship happens because we want to feel alive. It's not because we're benevolent, not because we're sacrificial. Lordship happens because we're selfish, because we want what we want and we want Christ.

So lordship happens when there is inner transformation. That's why He says, "He who confesses with the mouth of Jesus his Lord and believes in his heart that he was raised from the dead, he shall be saved." Third and finally, and I won't spend too much time on this, saving faith requires belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Now why is this particular doctrine singled out? There's His death, His incarnation, there's all kinds of things, like glorification, but why just His resurrection? One, this is not comprehensive. Obviously you also need to believe in His death, His deity, His incarnation, you need to believe in all of that.

This is being singled out because it really is at the core. There's three things that I want to quickly mention before why He singles this out. One, just to give you an example, in 1 John 4, John is dealing with Christian Gnostics who are denying Jesus' incarnation. So he says, "By this you know the Spirit of God.

Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God." So he singles out His incarnation as genuine faith because that's what he was dealing with, with the Gnostics. Here he singles out resurrection because the resurrection was at the core.

It gave flesh to everything that Jesus said. So there's three specific things that I'm going to mention. One, resurrection of Jesus Christ distinguishes Him from every other prophet. Many other people came and they kind of performed miracles, remember? Even when He was delivering Israel from Egypt, He performed these miracles and they tried to match everyone point by point.

In fact, if you look at the prophets of Jewish history, the greatest prophet or the prophet that performed the most miracle was not Jesus. As much as Jesus did in His life, if you look at Elijah's life, he did some crazy stuff. You look at Elisha, Elisha probably performed more miracles, more spectacular miracles than that may be recorded of Jesus.

Maybe he did more, but at least that's recorded. What distinguished Jesus from any other prophet, because many people believe Jesus, maybe He might be that prophet. He might be the greatest prophet possibly, but what distinguished Him from any other prophet, any other human being was His resurrection. Secondly, the resurrection proved that Jesus had the power to forgive sins.

That His proof that He was beyond the prophet, that He really was the Son of God as He proclaimed, that He was equal with God, that only He had the power to give life and take it out. He said He has the power to forgive sins. His resurrection, His resurrection proved with power that He had the power to forgive sins.

Jesus Himself said, "I lay down my life. No one takes it away from me." But along with that, He says, "There's no greater love than this, than a friend lay down his life for his friend." So His resurrection was a proof that He was beyond other prophets, that He said who He said He was, and ultimately that it proved His love when He resurrected.

But third and finally, resurrection is the ultimate goal of salvation. Remember we talked about that last week? You have, when we talk about salvation, you have, we're saved from something, and what's the other part of it, saved for something. See His death at the cross saved us from our sins.

His resurrection from the dead saved us for this new life. That's exactly how salvation is described in Romans 6, 3-4. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life.

You notice what He says here? You were buried with Him in death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead in the glory of the Father, that you too may live a newness of life. So we were saved from our sins in order that we may live unto God.

So the resurrection in the confession of itself is to establish His Lordship over our life, meaning that our old way of life is being put away. First Corinthians 15-20, "But if in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruit of those who have fallen asleep, for as by a man came death, by man has come also the resurrection of the dead.

For as Adam all died, so also Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order, Christ the first fruit, and at His coming those who belong to Christ." Our whole point of salvation is not to prevent eternal damnation. He prevented eternal damnation in order that we may have this newness of life.

Whole point of Christianity is the resurrected life. The whole point of His death, and that's why His resurrection is called the first fruit, is the first of many to come. And you and I are the many. The whole point of our repentance is to live the new life, new life.

So let me ask you with this, and as I started with the same question, when was the last time that you can remember where there was this stirring for Christ that led you to pray? When was the last time you came to Scripture because you recognized this new life and you desired it, you hungered and thirst for it?

And that's what caused you to search through Scripture. When was the last time that you hungered and thirst for this new life, and that's why you wanted to connect and fellowship with other Christians, to talk about what you loved, not simply because you felt lonely or you needed friends?

If you can't remember the last time where there was a stirring, you're in big trouble. Because that's the essence of Christianity. That is the backbone of Christianity. That's the foundation of Christianity. So if that is not there, whatever it is we're pursuing, in light of that, if you really believe it, could it be that important?

Could your school be that important? Could your job be that important? Could your relationship with your family and friends, could it be that important? Even your kids, is it even that important if the core of salvation, you don't have assurance? Has it become an obligation? Has it become your life?

It is impossible to please God without faith. He who comes to God must first believe that He is, and He is a rewarder of those who genuinely seek Him. I pray that we would be those people who genuinely seek Him, who believe with all our heart that He is.

And that's why we come. That's why we pray. That's why we study the Bible. Let's take some time to pray as, again, we ask our worship team to come. Again, just take a few minutes to come before the Lord in genuine confession, genuine desire. Because it is so easy to fall into this routine.

You don't have to make a decision to dry up your heart. It happens when we're not being deliberate, when we focus our eyes upon the problems in our lives instead of fixing it upon Christ. So let's take this opportunity to come before the Lord. I've been focusing so much attention on the externals and maybe not enough on where I am in my heart.

So let's take some time to come before the Lord in prayer as our worship team leads us.