if you have your Bibles while you're standing go ahead and reach down and grab them and turn with me to John chapter 5 John chapter 5 and we'll be working through verses 24 through 29 so we're continuing in Jesus's conversation with the Jews after his healing of the lame man at the pool of Bethesda. And our sermon today is really gonna draw out two main points. First, the everlasting life of the believer is a present reality. The everlasting life of the believer is a present reality. And then number two, the resurrection of the body is yet to come. The resurrection of the body is yet to come. And on that second point, we're going to actually look pretty closely at how we will be judged by Christ after that final resurrection. So let's look now at God's holy word, John 5, beginning in verse 24. This is the word of the Lord. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes in him who sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when 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 to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth, those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation. Let's pray. God, we thank you for this wonderful word that you've given us. We thank you for revealing yourself that you are the one who not only judges, but gives life. God, we thank you that when we hear your word, God, when we hear your word, we know that that is a life-giving word. Like we learned in Hebrews today, that your word pierces sharper than any two-edged sword, even to the division of soul and spirit, God, that you can awaken dead bones to life. God, I pray right now here in this gathering, if anyone here is still dead in their sins, that you would awaken them to life. That we would, in fact, see new birth this morning, God. And I pray that all of us, you would strengthen all of our faith, that you would preach directly to our conscience, that you would speak right to our hearts, God, that I would not get in the way of your spirit leading and guiding and teaching your people. Lord, help me to only say that which is in accord with right doctrine, that is following closely after your word. And God, if I begin to veer off into something strange or wrong or distracting, God, just put me back on course. God, and just bless us now as we hear from you. In Christ's name, amen. You may be seated. Our passage today opens with the words, most assuredly. Or a more literal translation would be as the King James Version renders it, verily, verily. Or as the ESV says, truly, truly. The words in Greek are literally, amen, amen. Amen is a word we use often today, but it's not an English word at all. It's just a word that we suck straight from Greek and put into English without translating it. And it just means truly, or it is the truth, or indeed. We say it as a word of affirmation after we pray or after we hear something in a sermon that we agree with. We say, it is the truth. So when Jesus says amen twice here, Amen, amen. What he's doing is he's emphasizing the fact that what he is about to tell the Jews is absolute truth beyond any shadow of a doubt. As the New King James that I read translated it, it's like he's saying, most assuredly, most assuredly, what I'm about to tell you is set down in stone. It is unable to be changed, washed away or erased. Clearly, this is something Jesus wants us to give our full attention to. Now we should give our full attention to all of God's words. There is no doubt about that, but there are certain things at certain times that Christ takes even more care than normal to emphasize. And here we are. Now we might ask, well, what is it then that the Jews who did not understand Jesus's authority or divinity, what else did they need to know? He's already been explaining to them in great detail that he is God and he has the authority to judge and to give life. Most assuredly, he says in verse 25 of our text, he who hears my word and believes in him who sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death into life. And in the context here, when Jesus says, shall not come into judgment, that word judgment really means condemnation. That he who has believed the word of Christ and has trusted in Christ, he will not come into condemnation. Like our assurance of pardon that we read, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Jesus has been telling these Jews in no uncertain terms that He is God Himself. That He is equal with the Father and is worthy of receiving the same honor as the Father. And just as God raises the dead and gives them life, so also Jesus can and does give life to whomever He will. And Christ is not referring here to physical life, although he did just perform a miracle, physical miracle of healing the man. And although we will see shortly in our text, in just a few minutes, that he absolutely has power to give physical life to dead bodies as well. But what Jesus is talking about here is spiritual life. Compared to the healing of the lame men at Bethesda, which is the reason the Jews approached Jesus to have this conversation anyway, they are upset that he has healed a man on the Sabbath and then commanded that man to walk and carry his mattress with him. They thought that he was breaking the Sabbath. Well, compared to that, Jesus says, that's just a small miracle. That's just something on the lower tier. I can do far more amazing things than that. I can grant spiritual life. And there's two reasons here that the granting of the spiritual life is so much better than even the healing of a man who had been lame for four decades. First, even if you receive the ability to walk and you've never had it in your life and you live to old age, even if you receive that, your body will still one day lose that ability again and you'll be laid in the grave. And if you do not have spiritual life before you were laid in that grave, if you do not receive spiritual healing and spiritual resurrection, then all you've really received is a stay of execution. Sometimes when a man is condemned to die, a governor or a king or maybe a judge will sometimes issue a stay of execution. That means that the actual killing of the condemned man is postponed. It's put on pause. It's put on hold for a period of time. It could be a day. It could be a month. It could be much longer. But a stay of execution does not mean that the condemned man is not guilty. And it does not mean that the condemned man will not still be put to death. He still remains on death row. He is still a criminal. A stay just temporarily postpones or delays things. It's like when you're watching a movie and you hit the pause button. That's very different than turning off the TV. We turn off the TV, it's gone. When you hit the pause button, that picture is still frozen up there and just waiting for you to come back and hit play. That's a stay. And if you do not have true spiritual life within you, Whether you've been healed of the worst disease imaginable, or whether you've even been brought back from the dead, all you have received is a stay of execution. And you will die again, and you will be condemned, Jesus says, to the hell of fire. So coming back to the matter at hand, just healing a man who had been lame for decades, if you also don't grant him new spiritual life, is really just like a condemned man receiving a stay of execution. He's still getting executed. The can just got kicked down the road a little ways. But Jesus is saying, I don't only grant stays of execution. I can do far more powerful things than that. I can undo the power of death itself. That brings us to our first main point of our sermon today. The everlasting life of the believer is a present reality. The everlasting life of the believer is a present reality. Let's read that opening verse of our text one more time. If you still have your Bibles open, look down at John chapter five, verse 24. Let this truth sink down deep into your heart. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes in him who sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. You see how Jesus says that the believer has everlasting life, something that he is currently in possession of, that he has passed from death to life, that's past tense, it's already been done. Christ doesn't say that the believer will enjoy everlasting life in the future. Of course, that's true, he will, but that's not what he's emphasizing here. Jesus doesn't say that the believer will pass from death to life at some further point in time. Right now, what Christ is emphasizing is the presentness of His great work of granting new spiritual life to His children. That man that receives the stay of execution has just had his death pushed back a little bit. On the other hand, the man who is given the gift of everlasting life, by definition, can never die. It's not just that the penalty has been delayed, even for an indefinite or incredibly long period of time. No, he is unable to die. And in fact, he begins the believer to enjoy and experience his eternal life the very moment that he receives it. If you are in Christ, brother or sister, your eternal life has already begun. Freedom from sin, peace with God, holy desires, a transformed mind, all of these things are yours by right in Christ. Now someone might object and say, but how can we be already experiencing this wonderful everlasting life in the present when every single believer in Christ still does in fact die and we still sin and we still struggle through this life which often looks like a great valley of tears. But this pushback, even though those are powerful things that we have to contend with, the pushback is still easily dealt with. First of all, it's true that all believers will die, with the exception of that last group on earth when Christ returns. But this is only physical death. The death that every single man and woman dies is a physical death. The sentence of execution against us, though that Jesus removes, is not a sentence of execution of physical death. It's a sentence of condemnation to everlasting hell, which the Bible calls the second death. That's what Christ removes from us. When Jesus saves one of his children, he does not impart new physical life to them. He does not heal his children of all of their sicknesses. He does not grant each one of ourselves some type of permanent regenerating ability so that the aging process freezes or reverses. He doesn't make us unkillable. Now, our bodies don't go through any essential change whatsoever when we are born again. Rather, when Christ saves us, he grants us new spiritual life. Spiritual life. Paul says in Romans chapter 8 that if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness. Your body is still in the slow process of dying. even the healthiest looking person you will ever meet, even the cutest little baby that you will hold in your arms. Both of them, and indeed all of us, are minute by minute getting closer and closer to death. Our cells, even right now as I'm preaching, are in the process of dying off. Our bodies are getting older. Our appointed days on earth are getting fewer and fewer, like a clock that is counting down to zero. But even though this is true, Jesus says, do not fear, do not worry. If you hear my word and believe in him who sent me, that's God, you have everlasting life. You will not be judged and you have already passed from death into life. Or as Paul says in Ephesians one and two, you were dead in trespasses and sins, You were dead, that's past tense, but God being rich in mercy made you alive together in Christ. This is the great biblical doctrine called regeneration, or the new birth, or being born again. The apostle Paul says to the Corinthians, anyone who is in Christ is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Or as the apostle John would later say, we know that we have passed from death into life because we love the brethren. He says you can have proof that you've passed from death to life. Right here, he says, because you love your brothers and sisters in Christ. John is talking about something that has already happened. Old things have passed away. you have become something new. And this is not merely a legal declaration, like Jesus is saying, well, I regard you as living even though you are really dead. Yes, there is a legal declaration to our salvation, absolutely. We are regarded as righteous in Christ, even though we still sin. But it is a legal declaration that corresponds to the new reality that Christ creates within us. When Christ saves us, he gives us a new heart. He sends his Holy Spirit. That's the same spirit that raised him from the dead. He sends his Holy Spirit to live within us. He makes us a new man or a new woman. This is the great promise for all those who embrace Jesus by faith. He will take out your old, hard, lifeless heart, and he will give you a new, tender, eternal heart that will never get worn out and that will never die. That's called being born again. And Peter says that when we are born again, it is not a birth from corruptible seed, but of incorruptible seed by the word of God, which lives and abides forever. The type of life we experience when we are born again is of a totally different type than the life we experience in our first conception and birth. Our first life, the life that we received from our parents, no matter how godly and wonderful and loving our parents were, that life is corrupted, meaning something is wrong with it. There was a problem with our first conception and birth. When we came into the world, though we were physically living, we were spiritually dead. Our lives were lives of death. That's why Jesus tells Nicodemus so plainly, you must be born again. You have to be born again. But this new birth, it has to be different from our first birth. Otherwise, we're just like the man who got the stay of execution. We're just kicking the can of everlasting death down the road a little bit. Our new birth has to be of incorruptible seed. That word incorruptible is amazing, and it's so important here. You see, when we are born again by the Spirit of Christ, we're not just given a clean slate. God doesn't just give us a fresh start. He doesn't give us a mulligan or a do-over. He doesn't say, here, I've wiped all your sins away. I've put you back at square run. Now go, go on. Don't mess up again. Here's your clean slate. Here's your clean heart. Don't get it dirty again. Absolutely not. That's the message that Paul preached against. He said that's not the gospel at all. When we are truly born again, not only is our new heart not corrupted, meaning it was clean when Christ gave it to us, not only was it not corrupted, it was incorruptible. It can't be corrupted. It's impossible for the new heart to be made bad or to be made dirty. It can't get sick. It can't die. If you are born again, that means you've been given a heart that will always live, that will always love God, and will never put you to shame. So someone might say, well, that must mean, James, that when I receive the new birth, I'll never sin again. No, no, no. That is not what that means. The same man who wrote that we used to be dead in our trespasses and sins, but now we are alive in Christ, that same man also wrote this. When I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being. So Paul's saying in my new heart, in my new life, in my new identity in Christ, the real me, I want to walk in righteousness. I want to do the right thing. But, Paul says, even though this is true, I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Paul says, I want to be holy, but I keep sinning. He goes through this whole thing where he says, the thing that I want to do, I don't do, and the thing that I don't want to do, that's exactly what I keep doing. Who can testify that that is the real lived experience sometimes of the born again Christian? Why is that? It's because even though my heart is new, I'm still living in a body of death. Even though I'm a new creation in Christ, even though I've been born again, it's also true that I have not been fully delivered from sin, from all sin's effects. Fully delivered from its guilt, but not fully delivered from all its effects. Because we're not just souls or pure spirits in like a body shell. We're both physical and spiritual beings. And even though our spirits are renewed when we're in Christ, we're still awaiting the redemption of our bodies, the full adoption as sons of God. That brings us to our second point for our sermon today. The resurrection of the body is yet to come. Look with me back at our sermon text today if you still have your Bibles open. John chapter 5, I'm going to read verses 28 and 29. Do not marvel at this, for the hour is coming when all who are in the graves will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation. See, all this promise from Christ here in verses 28 and 29 is different from what he says just a few verses prior. In verse 25, Jesus says, most assuredly, or truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming and now is when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. Jesus says that hour is right now. This is the day of salvation. An hour is coming and now is. where the spiritually dead will hear God's voice and it will give them new birth. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. Jesus speaks and the dead come to life. That happens now in this life, every time a sinner is born again. But see here in verse 28, Jesus says something quite different. He says, the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear his voice and come forth. This hour is still coming. This hour was not here 2000 years ago, and the hour is not here right now today. This has not happened yet, this is a future prophecy. This promise of Christ may happen in the very distant future. It could be thousands of years away even, we don't know. The new life though is here, the new spiritual life. It's present, it's not just a future reality, but it's not consummated. our new lives in Christ have not been consummated. And it won't be consummated until our souls and our bodies are brought back together after the resurrection of the body. We were dead in sin, body and soul, we were dead in sin. And if we're in Christ, we've been given new life into our spirits. We're alive on the inside. we still struggle with and suffer through sickness and besetting sins and physical death because our bodies have not been renewed yet. And this can be very defeating at times. It can be discouraging that we still struggle with the same sins that we've been struggling with for years. It can be defeating that no matter how holy our desires are or how much we pray to God, we still suffer through the same physical ailment or sickness. And we wonder, why can't we be delivered like this man at the pool of Bethesda? It can be difficult that believers still have to fight to live holy lives in Christ Jesus. And even though we have been given eternal life in the here and now, it is sad for us that we still have to see our loved ones and ourselves go through physical death. These are not enjoyable aspects of our journeys, but that is why it is such an encouragement that this life is not all that there is. This isn't it for the believer. The new birth even is not all that there is. Spiritual life with Christ alone is not even all that there is. In the future, there is laid up and waiting for us everlasting life, not only of the soul, but of the body as well. We were not designed to be disembodied souls floating on clouds, playing harps in heaven. We were designed to be body, soul, composite creatures, worshiping God with all of our heart and all of our soul and all of our mind and all of our strength. The old man that Paul says that even believers are struggling against will be gone. He will be dead one day. He will no longer be with us. We will be sinless and free from every effect of sin, body and soul, in the life to come. But it has to be asked, will everyone be sinless in the life to come? There are a lot of theologians that think so. And of course, in our popular culture, sometimes when someone dies, we say things. that are not true, but we think it might be comforting, like he's in a better place. He's not suffering anymore. As if you automatically get translated into holiness when you die. Is Jesus talking about a future universal salvation here? After all, if those who are dead and hear his voice in this life are granted new birth, which is incorruptible because it's brought by the word of God, what about those who will hear his voice in the next life and are resurrected then? Why are they not saved? Well, Jesus is crystal clear here for anyone who has this question or objection. He says, don't marvel at this. It's like he's almost anticipating someone saying this. Don't be surprised. Don't wonder. Don't be confused. There will come a day in the distant future when every single person who has ever died will hear my voice, my voice, that same voice that gives life, and they will be raised up. And what an astounding miracle that will be to see. Think about the raising of dead bodies for just a moment. Some of those bodies will be completely disintegrated. They will have become nothing but dust or fertilizer or soil. The different atoms of some of the dead bodies will have over thousands upon thousands of years been spread out even maybe all over the globe, all separate from each other, completely indistinguishable as something which used to be called a human being. And at Christ's words, they will rush back together in an instant. Body and soul together. Joints, ligaments, everything rush right back together. A new creation. They'll become whole again. And they will all be standing, all of these body, soul creatures. all of them will be standing before the throne of God, great and small, believers in Christ and unbelievers, people that died minutes before the final judgment and people that died possibly 10,000 years beforehand, all together, all living, all resurrected. But whereas the spiritual resurrection that everyone who trusts in Christ experiences in this life is exclusively a good thing and an incorruptible thing, Jesus says here to the Jews, all who were in the graves will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, but he says, those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation. So it's not universal salvation. This is not a resurrection you want to experience, the resurrection of condemnation. The spiritual resurrection that believers go through in this life and the physical resurrection that everyone will experience in the life to come do have some similarities, but they have differences also. They are similar in that when Christ raises the dead bodies of believers, they will be glorified and made holy. Body and soul will be together. They will be in total harmony and peace with one another and with God. There'll be no more internal struggle between sin and righteousness for the believer. And for the unbeliever as well, body and soul will be back together. There will for a moment be a type of relative harmony within themselves happening, but there will be no harmony with God for the unbeliever. They're also similar in that the first resurrection of our spirit and the second resurrection of our bodies, in both cases, were revived such that we live forever. When you're born again in this life, you're born again to everlasting life. Your soul's never gonna die. When you are raised again on that final day, your body is raised again such that it will never die. So both of these resurrections have an everlasting component. Those that have done good, Jesus says in Matthew chapter two, will inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. And those that have done evil, Jesus says, will go away into everlasting punishment in the lake of fire. So hearing Jesus say that, we can see how, even though there are similarities, there is a vast and unpassable, uncrossable distance and difference between these resurrections as well. Everyone who has been spiritually raised will forever enjoy the blessing of their heavenly Master and Lord. But everyone who is physically raised will not have the same fate. Just like those people that Jesus healed or raised from the dead while he was on earth 2,000 years ago, if they did not trust in Christ spiritually, if they did not hear his voice in their hearts, then they were healed or raised only to suffer a worse fate in the end by dying once more and then coming to judgment. But what does Jesus tell us here that our final judgment is based on? Does he say everyone who was born again in this life will enter into happiness and everyone who was not born again does not, that's not what he emphasizes here. What does he say? What does Christ say? He says, it's doing evil versus doing good. That's what the judgment is based on. And we might say, wait, I thought we were justified by faith alone. After all, Jesus wasn't a Roman Catholic, was he? Well, a lot of people think so, but no, he definitely was not. We are declared righteous through faith alone, but we are also judged, the Bible says, according to our works. The same Apostle Paul, who says that we are justified by faith apart from works of the law, in Romans 3.28, also says this in 2 Corinthians 5.10, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Depends on what you've done in the body, good or bad. And the same apostle John, who wrote that famous verse, John 3.16, which tells us that whosoever believes in the only begotten Son of God will not perish, but have everlasting life. That same apostle says this in Revelation 20.12, And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works by the things which were written in the books. It's a fair question to ask, how did these things go together? How are we declared righteous through faith on one hand, but judged by our works on the other hand? Well, I'll be honest, there is some degree of mystery here as to how exactly all of this will work out, but I think we have a very good idea. And I'm gonna give you three things that we can be absolutely confident of on judgment day if we are in Christ through faith. Three things. First, if we are in Christ by faith, that is if we've heard the voice of the shepherd during our lifetimes and trusted in him as his sheep, then God tells us in Isaiah 43 that He blots out our transgressions for His own sake and He will not remember our sins. He will blot out our transgressions and He will not remember our sins. So when those books are open, if the transgressions are blotted out, I don't know how to swear that there would be any works there to condemn us. That's the first thing that we can be sure about. God erases our sins from our record and he chooses not to remember them. The omniscient God, this is such an interesting thing. The omniscient God who knows absolutely everything makes a voluntary and active choice to forget the disobedience of his people on judgment day. The second thing that we as believers can be absolutely confident of on judgment day is this. we have received Christ's perfect record of righteousness. we have received Christ's perfect record of righteousness. In Philippians chapter three, Paul says, I also count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith. And in Romans chapter five, Paul says this, for when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son. Much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. It's not only Christ's death for our sins that saves us, it is his righteous life. Every single good thing that Christ did, every single way that Christ obeyed the law of God is credited to our account. That saves us. Paul goes on to say in the same chapter that, quote, through one man's righteous act, the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners, so also by one man's obedience, many will be made righteous. We are made righteous not by our own obedience to the law, not by our own works, but we are made righteous by Christ's works, by Christ's obedience. And then the third thing that we can be absolutely confident of on judgment day is this. If we are in Christ, we will have committed good works in the body that will vindicate our faith. Vindicate means to prove or to show that it was true. In his great explanation of the gospel in Ephesians 2, Paul says this, and it's a longer quote and probably one many are familiar with, but I'm going to read all of it. He says, 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, the spirit that is now at work in 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. That's the new birth. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him, 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 in kindness toward 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. Paul is absolutely clear here how works and faith are involved. He says our salvation is not of our own doing. It's not of our works. He says, in fact, it's the exact opposite. We are his workmanship. He is the potter, we're the clay. We're not sitting around crafting good works that we will then one day present to God and ask for His approval. We are the good work that God is crafting. Some of us, those who are in Christ for honorable use before His throne, some for dishonorable use, those who are not believers. We are the work. And what is the potter created? us for? What has the potter created those who he has elected to salvation for? Is it only for privilege? Are we only saved that we might have the privilege of not going to hell? No, that's not it. We are also saved to responsibility. We are saved not by good works, but we are saved for good works. He has created us, Paul says crystal clear, for good works. And just to make sure that no one grabs onto that idea and thinks, see, we have to do good works in order to be saved. He says, no, no, no. He even prepared the specific good works that he wanted us to do before the foundation of the world. He laid them out for us. And when we are born again, we will, through the Spirit, not through ourselves, do those good works. We will do those good works. The unbeliever on Judgment Day, on the other hand, will have absolutely zero good works read back to him when the book of his life is opened. No matter how kind he was to his neighbors, no matter how many little old ladies he helped cross the street, no matter how much money he gave to the poor, no matter how many luxuries he denied himself. If a man did not trust in Christ Jesus as his Lord and God, then the Bible says that even his best works are nothing but filthy rags and God demands white robes on Judgment Day. The unbeliever cannot do a single, one single truly good work. But every believer, every single believer will have, at the absolute bare minimum, at least one good work, a truly good work, wrought by the Spirit, vindicating his faith. Even the thief on the cross, who may have died just a minute after he was born again, even the thief had at least one good work, possibly more. Because in John 6, Jesus says, this is the work of God, that ye believe in the one whom he has sent. And the thief believed, and he lived. And I would say he even probably had more because he stood up for Christ in front of the heathens. He had multiple good works, and he was only a born-again Christian for seconds or minutes. It's God's work, but it's done through the Spirit working in us. So who will enter eternal life? Who has done good in this life? It's the one whose sins the Lord will not remember on the last day. That's our number one thing we can be confident about. The Lord will not remember our sins if we're in Christ. He's also the one who will have Christ's perfect record for himself on that last day, whose life is hid entirely in Christ so that Christ's record of righteousness completely covers his record of sin. And he's the one who has walked in the good works that God has prepared for him beforehand. If you were saved, then you were saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. But if you are saved, your faith will not be alone. You are not saved by a faith that does no works. That faith would save no one. If you are saved, you will bear the fruit of good works in this life. And these good works will vindicate or prove that your faith is not fake, it is real, and it is in the finished work of Christ on your behalf. So today, if you are hearing Christ's voice, if you are hearing the words that he is speaking here in John 5, and if you believe in the one who sent Jesus, that's God, to live a perfect life for us and to die a perfect, satisfactory death for us, do not harden your hearts. Do not harden your hearts today. Humble yourself and trust in him. Trust in the one who loved you and gave himself up for you. Repent of your sins and your self-righteousness and receive the new life of Christ today. For those of you who are in Christ by faith, keep pressing forward. We are promised victory. We are promised the full redemption one day. Right now we're in the valley, but we will get to the mountain. Keep pressing forward, keep striving for perfection. As God's word tells us, the old man that you were struggling with, Maybe there's a besetting sin that you feel that you cannot conquer. The old man that you were struggling with is on borrowed time. He is the one who did not get a stay of execution. He will be fully and finally defeated. Each day you live is a day closer to death. That's true, and that can be scary sometimes. But that also means each day you live is a day closer to the consummation of your salvation in Christ. when you'll no longer want to sin, when you'll no longer even be tempted to sin, when you'll be truly righteous, body and soul, without any blot or wrinkle or any such thing. Long for that day, believer, and seek to live this day in light of the glorious eternity that is to come. Let's pray together. God, we thank you for your goodness in sending Christ to live a perfect life for us. We thank you that you, have decided in your infinite love and according to the perfect counsel of your will to choose us in Christ, to set your love on us, and to give us that record of perfect righteousness so that when we stand before you on judgment day, we won't be wearing a robe full of our works or the works of any other mere man or so-called, you know, sainted person, God, that we will be wearing the perfect robes of Christ. made perfectly, brilliantly, dazzlingly white in the blood of Christ. God, we thank you for that gift. And we ask that you help us, Lord, as we just seek to live out your will for us in this life, that you would give us a desire to walk in those good works that you've laid out for us, that you would keep us on the narrow path of the Christian life, not swerving to the right or the left. And God, we ask your continued blessing today as we seek to worship you through song and through sacrament. In Christ's name and amen.