The Present and Coming Hour (Part 1)

John chapter 5, verses 25 through 29.

! And the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.

And he has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out.

Those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. May God add a blessing to the reading of his word.

Would you please be seated? When I was in high school, I worked for CarQuest. I worked at CarQuest Distribution Center.

CarQuest was an auto parts store, and so I worked in the warehouse where all of the parts were stored. And my job was to take whatever product that needed to go to the store and to load it into the semi-trucks that would then overnight it, take it to the stores where they could stock their shelves in the morning.

And I worked there for a couple of years, and I remember one summer we were severely understaffed. It was just me and one guy doing the work that four of us had previously done.

And what ended up happening is over that summer we were going home every night after 11 o'clock. And so as young guys, we got really tired of that.

We got really tired of not being able to see our friends, especially on Friday night. And so one Friday, I remember me and my buddy, we decided, you know what, we're tired of this. We've been working hard, but let's kick it into an extra gear.

Let's work even harder to make sure that we can get out of here at a decent time. And so we worked really hard that day, and we were ahead of schedule, and it looked like we were going to be able to get out of there at a decent time to spend some time with our friends.

Well, towards the end of the day, we got a last-minute order in for boxes and boxes of motor oil.

And me and my friend realized that, no, we're going to be here again well past 11 o'clock. And so on one of our breaks, one of our 15-minute breaks, as we were talking, somebody posed the hypothetical thought, what if, question, what if that last-minute order for motor oil that we just got, what if that was somehow misplaced?

And so together, we hatched a scheme. And so somehow, that order was misplaced. And so here's what would happen with the motor oil.

We had pickers, and the picker's job was to get the orders, and then they would go and pick the product off the shelves and then bring it to the loading area, where my job as a loader was to take it and to load it into the trucks.

Well, we didn't do that with the motor oil. Well, with the motor oil, they would just hand us the stickers. And the stickers, we would peel, and we would put them on the box so that they could be scanned and make sure that they went to the right place.

And so we had a big roll of stickers that somehow, that night, mysteriously disappeared. And we got out of there, me and my buddy, at a good time, and we were able to go out and hang out with our friends, which we hadn't been able to do for a while.

It was a great weekend. But then Monday came. And when Monday came and we went to work, we realized that there was a lot of confusion over what had happened with this order.

Our stores had called the distribution center wanting to know where their motor oil was. And our bosses wanted to know why that order wasn't filled.

So at first they went to the pickers and they asked them questions about what happened. And of course they told them, well, we gave those stickers to the loaders. And then they came to us, me and my buddy, and they asked us to explain ourselves.

And in that situation, I mean, what do you say? We, well, you know, we wanted to hang out with our friends. And so we purposefully lost that order.

And so there really was no good excuse for that. Luckily, because we had worked there for a while and proven ourselves to be good workers, they let us keep our jobs.

But things changed a lot after that point. And I bring that up because, you know, cutting corners in a warehouse, in a job like that, is one thing.

Eventually, all of those orders were filled that week and life went on. Everybody got the motor oil that they wanted. But there are other jobs where cutting corners like that have much more severe consequences, which leads me to think about my current job.

Ultimately, the Bible says that pastors will give an account not to earthly bosses, but to the boss, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

And the reality of that comes to my mind every week as I sit in my office and as I prepare these messages.

And so I want to share with you some of the verses that are always at the forefront of my mind as I work to do that. The first is Hebrews 13, 17. It says there, And so the Bible says that the primary way that the pastor keeps watch over the souls of their flock is through the preaching of God's Word to them, a task that should not be treated lightly or taken lightly or given secondary priority status to.

And so we see in James 3, 1, it says there, Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

And so a verse that I use to keep me focused on fulfilling this task with these other verses in mind is Colossians 1, 28 through 29. Him we proclaim, Warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. And so we see here that my job, a pastor's job, primarily is to prepare you as best as I can for that coming day of judgment when you will stand before the Lord Jesus Christ.

This was seared into my mind and into my heart when I was in seminary, especially primarily in my preaching classes, that the best method, the best way of doing this, of preparing the flock for that day when they will stand before the Lord is to preach expositionally, to preach expository messages.

So what does expository preaching mean? Well, I want to share a couple quotes with you from some well-known guys about what their definition of expository preaching is.

The first is John Stott. John Stott said, Exposition refers to the content of the sermon. Rather than its style. To expound scripture is to bring out of the text what is there and expose it to view.

The expositor opens what appears to be closed, makes plain what is obscure, unravels what is knotted, and unfolds what is tightly packed. And then another from Martin Lloyd-Jones. He said, Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire, and that the chief end of preaching is to give men and women a sense of God and his presence.

And so hopefully, as you sit under expository preaching, that is what you experience Sunday after Sunday. And so what I do is I take a book of the Bible, and I preach through that book word by word, verse by verse, because each word is a word from God to us.

And God has asked us, He's commanded us to know His word, to obey His word, and to conform our lives to what His word says.

And so it's so important that we know the word of God. God's word, the Bible says in Hebrews 4.12, And so that means that we, when we come to God's word, often we will encounter hard sayings, teachings that do not tickle our ears, teachings that maybe do not give us butterflies in our stomachs, teachings that instead discern our thoughts, that discern our intentions, that perform heart surgery upon us, and that isn't always comfortable.

But, as a pastor called to preach the word of God to you, knowing again that you will one day stand before the Lord in judgment, this is what I must do, this is what pastors must do.

And so no corners can be cut when it comes to dealing with matters that have eternal implications. And so this is a long way of saying that today's text, and next week, as we will continue to be in this text, it's a difficult one.

It's one that presents us with biblical truth and asks us some hard questions and gives us some real truth that we have to wrestle in and grasp.

It presents us with some deep theological matters to contemplate. And so we must seek to understand this passage as we seek to understand all of the passages, all of God's word contained in the Bible.

Because there is a coming hour. And a pastor's job, as we've seen, is to prepare you as best as we can for that hour that will one day come.

And so now is the time for you and for I, myself, to get ready for that coming day. Because that coming day is coming soon.

In this passage, we've seen that Jesus has given warning about this coming day. And He pleads with us in this present day to believe in Him and to trust in Him so that when that coming day, when that coming hour is upon us, we're ready to meet Him.

We're ready to stand before Him in judgment. And so here's the main idea for this morning's message from this text.

Jesus has the power to give spiritual life to the spiritually dead and the authority to execute judgment over those resurrected for eternal life and those resurrected for eternal punishment.

Today's scripture tells us about what Jesus is doing presently to bring spiritual life to those who are born spiritually dead. And He warns us that in the coming day, there will no longer be the offer of the gospel extended.

Now is the time. But there is a time coming when that offer will no longer be given. And so a pastor has really two primary tasks. He is to make disciples, like all Christians are called to do, by going and by sharing the good news of Jesus Christ.

And then He is to prepare and warn believer and unbeliever alike of this coming day, of this coming day of the Lord when all of us will stand before Him in judgment.

And so Jesus in His address to the Pharisees who did not believe His testimony that He was the Son of God says that the time for them to repent and to believe is now.

It's now. Because a future time, He warms them, is coming. Imminently. Imminently. And so there is a lot of theology for us to unpack in these four verses.

In a nutshell, they speak of resurrection, both of the spiritual and of the physical variety. For the believer, there are two aspects of their resurrection.

Spiritually, Christians are resurrected when God imparts salvation to their previously dead spirits. They receive a new heart. They receive a new mind, a new disposition, which enables them to see sin as God sees it.

Physically, believers should be confident that even though their earthly bodies are wearing out, they will one day receive a new resurrection body that will live forever and are uncontaminated forever from sin.

And so believers should look greatly forward to that day, to that hour, when our Lord returns. The Bible also teaches that unbelievers will experience a physical resurrection as well.

However, since they never underwent a spiritual resurrection prior to that, they will face their final sentencing at the final judgment when the Lord of the universe, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ returns for having rejected their only hope for salvation and deliverance.

And so the Bible repeatedly asks us this question. Are you ready for that day? Are you ready for that hour?

And so before that day comes, the Bible continually tells us now is the time, today is the day to put your hope and your faith in Jesus Christ, to turn away from your sin and to pursue Him and His will and His purpose for your life.

And so Jesus begins by talking about this present hour and the importance of the spiritual resurrection that precedes our physical resurrection.

And so in verses 25 and 26, Jesus talks about this present hour. In this present hour, Jesus has the power to give spiritual life to the spiritually dead.

resurrection is something that the Old Testament and the New Testament have much to say about.

And so for sake of time, I've chosen two of those many passages, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament that talk about the reality of the resurrection.

The first is from Daniel in the Old Testament, chapter 12, verses 2 through 3. And it says there, And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever.

And then in the New Testament, John chapter 6, we'll be here eventually. Jesus says, And so I'm going to present three aspects this morning of the spiritual resurrection and the next Sunday, three aspects of the physical resurrection that the Bible speaks of.

Again, we'll only get through these spiritual aspects today. So I hope that you'll be here next week, if not physically present, watching over Facebook Live so that you can learn about what those other physical aspects of the resurrection will be because you will be resurrected and you'll want to know what the Bible has to say about that.

So first of all, Jesus speaks about the people who receive spiritual life. The people who receive spiritual life in the beginning of verse 25. Jesus says, as strongly as you can with those two words, truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God.

And so Jesus begins this section of his discourse with his defense against the disbelieving Jewish leaders that they did not believe that he was the Son of God.

And so if you remember, they've put the judge of the universe on trial and so Jesus is giving his defense to them. And he begins this portion of his defense with a seemingly paradoxical statement that an hour is coming and now is.

So what's Jesus talking about here? Well, the hour of the believer's resurrection is now in the sense that Ephesians chapter 2 explains it.

I want to read Ephesians 2, 1 through 5. It says there, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air and the spirit that is now at work and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved.

And so this scripture speaks to the present hour of our being spiritually dead and being given spiritual life through salvation in Jesus Christ.

Yet an hour, as we'll examine more in depth next week, is coming when believers will receive resurrected, incorruptible, glorified, sinless, perfect bodies.

But until then, our salvation, our having been born again, our having been given spiritual life is proof to us in this present hour of the joy that we will experience in that hour to come.

Again, today is Mother's Day and I remember when my wife was pregnant with Jack, our first child, and she was pregnant during Mother's Day and we celebrated her motherhood on Mother's Day because she was a mother.

Jack was alive in her womb and so in one sense she very much was a mother. And I'll never forget the joy that we experienced that day when we found out that she was pregnant.

and each time leading up to Jack's birth, going to the doctor, seeing the sonogram, seeing his face, seeing him move around on the screen, I mean, it was just an increasing joy until the day came when he was born.

And to be able to hold him, to be able to hear his baby noises, his cooing, to be able to see him face to face, that was a joy that far exceeded all of those other joyous days.

And so likewise, as believers, we have the joy of knowing Jesus Christ. That day when you were saved, what a wonderful and joyous day that was when you went from spiritual death to spiritual life.

What a great day. And hopefully, it should be the case for you as a believer. You can look back upon your point in life now and that day when you were saved and see an increasing amount of joy as God has revealed more of himself to you, as God has guided and directed your steps.

And so there's increasing joy in knowing Jesus. But then when this day comes, when Jesus returns, when you receive your glorified, sinless, resurrected body, that will be a joy that far exceeds all the other joys that we have experienced in Christ.

what a great day that is going to be. And so Christians right now in this present day, we live in light of the promise that that day is coming and it's coming soon.

And that should give us hope always. No matter what we're going through in life, we always have that promise. We always have that hope. No matter what our present circumstances will be, we know that things will get better.

and no matter how good things are for us right now, we know that this may be good, but it's not going to be anything compared to that day and how good it's going to be when I see the Lord Jesus Christ face to face and when I receive my glorified, resurrected, eternal body, uncorrupted by sin without any desire for anything that is sinful.

The New Testament frequently describes unbelievers as those who are spiritually dead. Paul exhorted the Christians in Rome in Romans 6, 13 to present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead.

He reminded the Ephesians that in their unsaved state, as we've read, they were dead in their trespasses and in their sins. Later on in that same letter, the apostle expressed the gospel invitation when he quoted Isaiah 60, verse 1, awake, awake, O sleeper, arise from the dead and Christ will shine on you.

To the Colossians, he wrote in Colossians 2, 13, when you were dead in the trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us of all our transgressions.

And so understand that when the Bible talks about being dead, to be dead means to be dead. It's not talking about some kind of a spiritual condition where you are in a coma, where you are comatose, or where you are spiritually ill and you just need to be made better.

No, the Bible says that prior to salvation, everyone is in a position where they are spiritually dead. Spiritually dead. And think about it, a dead person can do nothing.

A dead person can do nothing but undergo the process of decay. And so the Bible says that spiritually dead people, just like physically dead people, are insensible and insensitive to the things of God.

And for that to change, a miracle has to take place. And that miracle is the miracle of the new birth.

Remember, we were in John chapter 3 and Jesus spoke about the new birth with Nicodemus there. And he told him that in order to be saved, you must be born again.

We must undergo a transformation. We must undergo the miracle of salvation where the dead are brought to life.

life. They are born again. They are born from above. And it's the Holy Spirit who does this. It's God who does this. And when that miracle of salvation takes place, the Bible says the Holy Spirit of God takes residence inside of you.

And as a result of that, you're a new creation. Though the sinful nature remains for now, it no longer has mastery over you anymore because you've been set free.

We've been set free to choose to live our lives for Jesus Christ because we've received a new nature with new desires within us that want to do what God has called and commanded us to do.

And one day, that sinful flesh that is presently at war with our new set of desires to please God will be swallowed up completely and vanquished totally when that future day comes and when we receive new glorified perfected bodies that want absolutely nothing to do with the old sinful ways.

As I was studying this scripture, a quote that gave me a lot of encouragement is from John Owen talking about the fact that in this life we are at war between our old sinful nature and the new nature that wants to please God and if you're like me and you're like the Apostle Paul you know that this is something that can drive you crazy.

I want to follow the Lord. I want to be obedient to everything that the Lord has called me to do yet I find myself continually sinning continually to do the things that the Lord doesn't want me to do that I don't really truly want to do and so I love this quote he says if you are fighting sin if you are fighting sin you are alive you are alive take heart but if sin holds sway unopposed you are dead no matter how lively this sin makes you feel take heart embattled saint so how do you know that you are alive in Christ well because you are fighting a war with sin within yourself that Christ came to give eternal life to the spiritually dead is a central theme in John's gospel in fact it's the purpose for which he's written this gospel in John chapter 20 verse 31 he states his purpose there but these are written so that you may believe that

Jesus is the Christ the son of God and that by believing you may have life in his name you need life because you are dead you are never too far gone for God to save you you are never too vile and too dirty and too sinful for God to be able to save you there is nothing that God is incapable of doing now listen we know when a person dies here there is only so much that doctors and nurses can do but eventually they get to the point where their efforts their work is unable to take that person who has died and bring them back to life but what is impossible for us is not impossible with God nothing is impossible with him he can take the vilest of offenders and transform them into a holy saint who loves the

Lord and who does his will and he can do the same for you in this present hour you must put your faith and your hope in Jesus Christ you must trust in his testimony of who he is what he testified of himself to be your Lord and your savior the only one capable of living a sinless life the only one capable of doing all that the law required who is willing to come and die in your place for your sins that you might have peace with God who rose again from the grave on the third day who ascended to the right hand of the father where he sits and where we will see he will one day return and it could listen it could be we may not even be able to get to next week where we talk about the physical resurrection and so that's why it's so important guaranteed tomorrow and so you must trust in him in order to be saved and know that through the blood that he shed on the cross for you that you are cleansed forever from your sin when you put your faith and your trust in him

I implore you and I plead with you to do that now is the time secondly Jesus talks about the power to give spiritual life in verse 26 the power to give spiritual life he says therefore as the father has life in himself so he has granted the son also to have life in himself and so understand this that no one can give to somebody else what they lack or what they don't have I remember a time I was in the car driving with Jack and this really nice really nice sports car drove by and it caught both of our eye and I remember he he piped up from the back seat and said dad why don't you go buy a car like that and I said well Jack those cars are really expensive and I lack the resources to be able to buy one and even if I had them probably could use money in better ways than that but anyhow I told him I can't get that

I don't have the ability to do that I lack the resources to which he replied well just go to the ATM just go to the ATM right it just spits out money to whomever wants it and unfortunately it does not work that way we lack the ability to give spiritual life to somebody else because our life has been given to us by God we have been created all life has its source in God the life giver who has life in himself and the same thing comes with spiritual life God is the source God is the one who is able and only he is able to impart spiritual life to spiritually dead people again when it comes to our own salvation we lack the resources to be able to save ourselves but where our resources are lacking God's are not let's look again at

Ephesians chapter 2 we've looked through verses 1 through 5 I want to pick up back at verse 4 and read through verse 10 the Bible speaks very clearly about this let's look at this let's read this slowly and think about what God is telling us here about our salvation and his power in it but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing it is the gift of God not a result of works so that no one may boast for we are his workmanship created in

Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them I'm sure that few of you and truly I hope that none of you would ever take credit for your salvation for what God has done to impart spiritual life to your spiritually dead previous condition if you do or if you are tempted to this passage should completely annihilate and vanquish that thought from your mind totally the power to give spiritual life comes completely and totally from God himself because no one else has life in themselves to give like God has the ability to give it our life is derived from him who has the power to wake the dead and give spiritual life to all who believe so the hero of your testimony as you give it should never be yourself as you give your testimony to unbelievers!

hopefully you do that and you tell them about what God has done in your life hopefully what that person walks away with is not how great you are but how great God is he is the hero of our story he is the hero of our testimony he is the reason that we have spiritual life and so to God be the glory always and forever thirdly Jesus talks about the purpose of giving spiritual life at the end the second half of verse 25 said the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live in Christ Jesus our past is redeemed our present makes sense and our future is secure and that gives us reason to be hopeful in this present hour and every hour leading up to that coming hour when we will see him face to face we will stand before him and see with our own eyes our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and so as believers who have undergone the spiritual transformation of going from death to life our attitude towards God should always be in humble adoration realizing who we were our inability to save ourselves and realizing who he is and the grace in which he has had and the mercy in which he has expressed towards us and in his taking us from a position of spiritual death wanting nothing to do with him to a position of spiritual life and seeing how wonderful and how great and how glorious he really is grace and so as a result of that having been the recipients of amazing grace we as Christ followers should be amazingly gracious people amazingly gracious people and like Jesus we too should step outside of our comfort zones we should be willing to go to unbelievers to those who are spiritually dead as he was willing to come and do the same and to share the good news of the gospel the good news of Jesus

Christ with them that God might do for them what he has mercifully done to us bringing them those words of life to the spiritual dead that they may have the same hope eternally that we have in Jesus in this present hour we share the gospel and if you are an unbeliever now is the time today is the day of your salvation believe in the Lord Jesus Christ trust in him who he has declared himself to be whom he has told you who he is and what he has done in coming and dying and rising again you believe in what Jesus has done for you you trust in him for your salvation and the Bible says that you will be saved now and forevermore and listen that day of salvation oh it's such a joyful day but I promise you that each day after that as you get to know the Lord whether you go through hard times and you will or good times it pales in comparison because you know how good God is and you can get through those hard times and you can enjoy those good times because you know the hope that you have in

Jesus that one day he will return and you will stand before him and you will hear his voice comforting you and telling you that you are welcome now to enter forever into his kingdom and you will receive that glorified resurrection body completely uncontaminated by sin that wants nothing to do with sin that's incapable of sinning aren't you I'm looking forward to that I'm looking forward to that not wanting anything to do with sin anymore not having any sinful thought or any sinful words spoken from my mouth or any sinful deed done with my body all I will want is what is what is right and what is good what glorifies the Lord and I hope that you say the same in this present hour now is the time to share the gospel now is the time for you to believe it if you haven't already and so secondly we'll get here next week but I just want to give you a preview

I suppose in the coming hour Jesus will execute judgment over everyone through the physical resurrection of the dead that's why this present hour is so important because that coming hour is imminent and like I said it could come at any moment are you ready for it Jesus frequently spoke about the importance of our being ready for that coming day we don't know when it's going to be but he frequently spoke about how important that it is and frequently warned that we be ready for that day and so in one instance his encouragement in us being ready for that day was in examining our lives and how we're living in Matthew 7 13 through 14 and there's a warning in this and an encouragement he says enter here's the encouragement by the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many for the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few the narrow gate and the wide gate are entrances through which we walk in this life you're either on one path or the other there is no third alternative it's the narrow gate and the narrow way or the wide gate and the wide path there's no other alternative unfortunately we see as Jesus said few find the narrow way why because it's constricted because it's precise to enter through this way you have to humble yourself you have to get small as you realize who

God is that means you acknowledge your sin and that you've been wrong about what you've thought previously about salvation or about God or about anything else in this world and you're realizing that God is right that God is true getting through this way requires!

it requires a turning away from sin and a turning to Jesus Christ the wide gate represents all other claims of salvation all other systems of belief in this world whether they're beliefs in God or disbelief in God all of those ways lead to destruction the Bible says the only way that leads to life eternal life is through Jesus Christ you're either on one path or the other and so my encouragement to you and my warning to you is that of our Lord Jesus Christ who will come to judge the living and the dead that now is the time for you to believe because a time is coming when it will be too late and as always I encourage if you have questions or comments or concerns listen you're not going to bother me at all with those things that's again why I said part of what being a pastor is all about sharing the gospel and preparing people as much as I can for that coming day so please reach out to me by phone email text message!

Facebook message I don't care mail me a letter it doesn't matter I want to talk to you about the Lord and I truly and sincerely mean that because this is so absolutely critically important it has eternal implications I want you to be ready for it that day so how do we apply this to our lives well again we are pursuing the best Highland Park Baptist church in 2020 and so we see as part of that we must build community and so again and we been the recipients of such a tremendous amount of grace we should want to extend that same grace as much as we can to one another which means that we love one another unconditionally which means that we fight to keep any kind of divisions from existing!

within our church we're not going to agree! on everything that would be impossible I think to achieve in this life but we have priorities we know what is most important and so we're not going to divide over the color of the carpet in our sanctuary or the color that we paint our walls down in the youth room or what not because we know that there are more important things for us to be concerned about and one of those things that we must be concerned about in this life as scripture commands us to be concerned about is one another and we build community through that when you enter through the doors of a church and you feel that people acknowledge you they're glad to see you and they truly mean it that makes a big difference for each and every one of us and so we do that well we should excel in it more and more and more as we seek to build community secondly we equip believers because again the hour is approaching the hour is coming and so we must continue to do all that we can for one another through how we we meet for

Sunday school how we meet for Bible study how we meet for all the different various meetings that we have as a church God's word is for them is equipping one another to live the Christian life now and also to prepare us for that coming day and the better equipped we are the better we will be at building community and then also we share Jesus and as a part of this we see that as Jesus has done as he commands us to do we warn unbelievers of the coming hour and so we share with them in the present hour the hope that we have in Jesus Christ we share our testimony with them and again showing them that Jesus is the hero of our testimony Jesus is the one who takes what is spiritually dead and gives it spiritual life and so in sharing Jesus this means that we must be involved with our community we as a church must be visible within it so that we can equip and then finally we teach the word we teach the word our community our being equipped our ability to share

Jesus again it's all founded upon the word of God the word of God is our foundation we don't teach our opinions we don't preach our feelings we teach and we preach and we strive to do that what God's word says because only it has the power to be used as the vehicle of the Holy Spirit to impart spiritual truth and spiritual life to those who are spiritually dead so let's as a church as believers strive to do this living in this present hour to share the good news of Jesus Christ to give glory and honor to our Lord Jesus Christ for that coming hour when we see him face to face and what a great day that will be and so

I hope that you're here next week in some form whether online or here presently to hear the rest of it about this physical resurrection Thank you.