turn to the book of Titus this evening. We'll be turning to Titus chapter 3. And what I'm going to be doing for us, I'm going to be reading the whole of the passage that is verses 1 through 8 to get the context here. The sermon is going to be focused on the second half of verse five and the whole of verse six. If you're looking for it in your pew bibles, I believe it's on page 1272. Page 1272. Hear now God's word. Titus chapter three, verses one through eight, remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle and show perfect courtesy toward all people. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving-kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, being justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people." Thus far, the reading of God's word. Brothers and sisters in Christ, our passage for consideration this evening is essentially the center, to use this, pardon the political pun, the right of center of the entire passage here. Last time I filled this pulpit here at Bethel OPC, which I'm very honored to do, and thank you for the privilege for making this a reality again. But last time we looked at this passage, what we did is we did like a 30,000 foot overview to see kind of the macro version of its message. Here, Paul is writing to a pastor named Titus, who is also a church planter on the island of Crete, who is having some sort of heresy problems. And I'm not going to go about explaining what those heresy problems are. But because of these heresy problems, a lot of this book can be summed up in that sometimes it kind of floats like a butterfly, and other times it stings like a rhinoceros horn. Well, right here in chapter 3, verses 4 through 7, we have one of the rhino horns right here. In it, we've seen that God's grace is most clearly made manifest when God grants audience with us, this terrible, no good, very bad people. And then he saves us. He washes us. He makes us heirs of the kingdom of God itself, not because of anything that we've done, not because of any good things that we've done, not because we're remarkable at any stretch of the imagination, not because that we stayed away from drugs in high school or did all the right things or something like that. He did this because of his own mercy in giving us life, whereas we're dead outside of him. And this compels us to fill out some responsibilities of the position as those who will inherit eternal glory. Well, here tonight, in the second half of verse 5 and the whole of verse 6, this will be the fourth sermon dedicated to this wonderful passage. And I'd have to apologize to you, Bethel OPC, that I'm actually jumping over a couple of sermons to get here. It's just been kind of, to be totally honest, it's really kind of been burning a hole in my heart to write another sermon you know, to continue to preach through this passage as I'm able. But to get the gist of what came before our particular passage is that what we have in Christ is God's eternal goodness. God's eternal kindness appeared. And in view of his wonderful appearance, he saved us Again, not because of the good things that we do, but he saved us according to his own mercy. And that phrase, according to, we can listen to that sermon. I don't even know if it's on Sermon Audio or something like that. I don't control that profile. So if it's on there, it's on there. But essentially, that phrase, according to, basically means that there is a straight edge of all of God's actions. Reverend Williams just mentioned that, yeah, I do teach woodshop. And one of the things that I do is I teach people how to put things through a table saw. And what the table saw does is that the blade actually does the cutting, but every piece of wood you have to put alongside of what's called the rip fence. As goes the rip fence will go your cut. So this idea of according to God's mercy is somewhat of the rip fence that he does all of his saving activity. In other words, his mercy is intentional. And it's accomplishing his saving work. Nobody is saved apart from the mercy of God and Christ intentionally delivered to them according to his mercy. Well, this passage this evening builds upon this idea in a unique way. Paul here transitions from showing the basis upon which redemption is accomplished to the way in which redemption is accomplished. Here we get the inner mechanics of redemption accomplished and applied. This is one of the clearest passages in the Bible that answers the basic question, how does somebody become a Christian? Or maybe even more clearly, what actually happens when a person becomes a Christian, is it that I just changed my behavior? Or is it that I just merely believe things that I didn't before and now I've got to figure out how to go about explaining them? Is it that maybe I was an atheist before? Is it that I was just simply shown arguments to the contrary? And I didn't have the wherewithal to rebut any of these Christian arguments, and now I have no other way to turn. What happens when someone becomes a Christian? Just how does this happen? You know, what really happens with all this? Well, the title of the sermon, as the title of the sermon says, here we find Paul's exposition of the nuts and bolts of how we're saved. including a note about the washer, as well. Pun intended. That was a joke. Oh, well. So to get the basic and most fundamental idea of what we're going to be looking at tonight, I'd like to summarize this passage this evening with this phrase. The Holy Spirit is poured out upon us in order to make us Christians according to the direction of Jesus, our Savior. If you get that, you get the entire sermon. The Holy Spirit is poured out upon us in order to make us Christians according to the direction of Jesus our Savior. Now, there's a lot packed into that one phrase, so I'd like to unpack it this evening according to our passage by laying out these three thoughts for us this evening. Number one, that the Holy Spirit is poured out. Number two, that he washes. And number three, that he renews. Again, the Holy Spirit is poured out, he washes, and he renews. Firstly, when we think about the Holy Spirit being poured out, I'll direct you to the passage in verse 6, which says, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior. Now, why do I start a concept found in verse 6 when the gist of the Holy Spirit's work is found in verse 5? There are simple ways to answer this. the ordering of the concepts here lend themselves to a priority of sorts. It's by the agency of Jesus, Jesus himself, that the Spirit of God is poured out upon us in the first place. Paul here says that the Holy Spirit is operating under the agency of Jesus. Yes, brothers and sisters, the persons of the Trinity are in direct concert with one another. This passage, perhaps more than any other passage that I could think of off the top of my head, says that the Father is in concert with the Son and the Holy Spirit to be poured out upon the elect. A whole sermon can be given over to this idea here about how the inner workings of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together are all for us. They're conspiring for our good. A whole sermon can be given over to this idea here, but suffice it to say that whatever the Spirit does, and for our consideration, He washes and renews. Whatever the Spirit does, that He does according to the agenda or the agency of the Son for His eternal glory. Second, putting verse 6 in front of verse 5 shows how closely the message of Paul is to the message of Jesus. Now, I say this. for a polemical reason, that for whatever reason, there's a trend out there. And I just listened to one of those debates that expressed this just yesterday. There's a trend out there nowadays that seeks to divide the word of Paul versus the word of Jesus. The trend basically says that Jesus spoke a different message than Paul did, and that the two are incompatible. Now, again, we can speak later as to what the reasons are for this. And I think they're really a bad reason. But one of the reasons to put verse 6 before verse 5 is that it really squares well with what Jesus says about the Spirit. John 16, verse 13, when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. It squares very, very, very well with what Paul says here in Titus chapter 3. The chief task of the Holy Spirit, brothers and sisters, is to reveal and apply the things of Christ to us. Both Jesus and Paul believes this. Both Jesus and Paul taught this. He's the very person who makes the benefits of redemption ours. It was a long time ago that a minister of another denomination, once made this offhanded remark. He said that, you reformed type don't know what to do with the Holy Spirit. And I think what he meant is that we wanted an excuse to do crazy things that don't square up with the Word of God, and we just blame the Holy Spirit. But because we don't have a category for that, we just simply don't know what to do with the Holy Spirit. So I did one of these. And before a word came out of my mouth, I said, what? And then he kind of just had to back down and backpedal on what he just said before I started lecturing him for three hours and stuff like that and the work of the person, the work of the Holy Spirit. But make no mistake about it, brothers and sisters, we take seriously the unanimous claims on of the Bible on the person and work of the Holy Spirit and his being poured out upon us. Now, there are certainly other times in the Bible where the Spirit of God came down upon someone. Think of the times in the Old Testament with the judges, Othniel. You think of Jephthah. You think of Samson. I believe that Reverend Williams is going through First Kings in the evening. So every now and then you'll see someone upon whom the spirit of God will come. Well, in the Old Testament, the spirit of God would come upon someone who characteristically has a larger footprint, so to say, in redemptive history. Symbolically, through the anointing of oil, the spirit of God would come upon a king to inaugurate and to legitimize his reign. And this is for one of the reasons why Samuel in 1 Samuel 16 will go over to David's house, Jesse's house, and find David and anoint him with oil, because now symbolically this would inaugurate and legitimize his reign. Hence, David can say things like, Psalm 51, take not thy spirit from me. David is not afraid of losing his salvation. The Bible does not teach that you can lose your salvation. What he's afraid of losing is the outward benefits of the Lord's protection of him and of his kingdom. So in the Old Testament, the spirit of God is put upon people who have some sort of remarkable significance, a large footprint in redemptive history. Well, here in the New Testament, the shadows give way to the fulfillment. What is only in utero in the Old Testament actually comes out in the new, the substance is revealed, no longer the shadows. The substance of what was always intended now can be presented. You have the spirit of God being poured out at Pentecost, that great passage, Acts chapter 2. where now thousands of people, thousands of people, have the Spirit of God poured out upon them. Joel chapter 2 is quoted in this passage. God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your young men and your young women shall have dreams. The Spirit of God is now being poured out richly, abundantly upon us. People are coming to Christ in droves. Acts 2 verse 33, Peter has a sermon in which he says about Jesus that he being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. Our passage here is clearly a continuation of this great Pentecost event where now the Spirit of God can be poured out on us. Us who, in comparison with the scope of redemptive history, we're probably not even going to make a dent. But He pours out His Spirit on us. He pours out His Spirit on us. A fitting, interesting thing about this passage, I believe I mentioned it before, but this passage, if it's indented in your translation, in your font in front of you, the reason why it would be indented is because a lot of scholars assume that this is a hymn of sorts, or a poem of sorts. One of the greatest scholars whom I'm reading on this passage believes that this is a hymn that is typically sung at a baptismal event. So the Holy Spirit is poured out upon us in this passage. Now, we could speak about baptismal regeneration later. I don't believe that this passage teaches that. But yes, the Holy Spirit is poured out upon us. And I've said this before, but look at this adverb that's used here. How is the Holy Spirit poured out upon us? Well, he's poured out upon us richly. He's poured out upon us richly. He's only poured out in the measure in which Jesus would have him be poured out. And the text says that the Holy Spirit is poured out upon us richly according to the direction of Jesus. You see, brothers and sisters, heaven spares no expense for us. There's never any lack within God's storehouse of mercy. He doesn't give the best to the cream of the crop and then just let the rest of us fight over the scraps of the storehouses of God's mercy. He gives us His gift richly, lavishly. He lavishes His love upon us. We can say this, not a single one of His children will ever be able to exhaust the riches of His mercy in Christ Jesus in this age or in the age to come. Why? Because the Holy Spirit is eternal God. The third person of the blessed, holy, undivided Trinity God from everlasting to everlasting. The very God who fills the heavens and the earth. Who accounts the earth as a speck of dust on the scales if it could even be counted as anything. He's the one who fills the heavens and the earth. He accounts mankind as almost nothing compared to his very presence. And he's been poured out upon us. Richly. You know what richly means? Think of the idea of richly. You know what richly is? It describes the time that you go to the grocery store, and you're just about to check out. You've got a basket full of groceries. And then you see Bill Gates behind you, and he says, I got this one. And then he buys the entire store for you. You know what richly is? It's a time you're at grandma's house. There's so much chocolate in those hot brownies that's placed in front of you that there's no possible way that you can cleanly eat them. Richly, lavishly. You know what richly is? It's when puny man rebels against God Almighty under the warning of death. And then this puny man wakes up the next day. It's when this almighty God who alone fills the heavens and the earth from everlasting to everlasting deigns to clothe himself with humanity. You know what richly is? It's when God almighty enters into his own creation and takes the place of puny man's rebellion. You know what richly is? It's when He takes puny man's replacement of his own rebellion, and he suffers the consequences on behalf of puny man. And you know what Richly is? He rises victorious over the grave. And you know what Richly is? The fact that he's not done, that he does something more in his resurrection from the dead, he not only shows us the way to himself, he is the way to himself. And he causes us and empowers us to walk in it. That's what's meant by richly. Now, the rich way that he's been poured out does something. He being poured out has certain effects. for the purpose of our passage. Our passage says that the Holy Spirit washes and He renews. These two will be the next two points of our meditation this evening. Again, the Holy Spirit is richly poured out upon us in order to make us Christians according to the direction of Jesus, our Savior. Well, what does the Holy Spirit do? First, according to our passage, He washes. I used to live near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for a number of years before, during, and after college. There was one time I worked for a general contractor who took jobs all around the city. One of them was in a town that's called Sewickley. I believe there's an OPC congregation out there. And it was a demolition job in Sewickley, PA. Now, one of the things that most people don't know about the Pittsburgh area is that it's known for their steel mills. Even to this very day, it's still steel city. Hence, Pittsburgh Steelers are from Pittsburgh. There you go. So countless amounts of tons of iron and coal went in and out of those mills that you can even drive down Highway 65 from Beaver Falls into Pittsburgh right now and still see the railroad tracks that are built specifically so that supply and demand can be met. What would happen in the steel mills is that coal would be burned in order to get the steel hot enough in order to melt it or do whatever you want with it. But what this coal would do is it would produce soot. Soot would go through the air and it just so happened that the building in Sewickley It was one of the oldest buildings that had to be demoed in the town. So soot would go into the air and it would go onto the floors and whatever's not vacuumed up would be, you know, sink down to the floorboards and whatever then wouldn't be cleaned up or vacuumed up would go through the floorboards and onto the lathing strip of lathing and plaster of the floor below it. And there it would stay. until we came, because our main job was to take down the lathing strips and the plaster and things like that. And it didn't take long for all this soot that had been accumulating for about 50 or so years to come right upon us. And even though we had Tyvek suits on, it didn't take long for us to be covered from head to toe with soot that had been floating around the atmosphere there for the better part of about 50 years. and especially if you're working with it about eight to 10 hours a day. But it didn't take a lot for it to get onto our bodies. You stick your pole in one section, that's that. Now you're covered head to toe with this soot. I remember my arms were as black as my suit coat right now. And I realized, I'm filthy. So what I had to do is I had to go into the shower and as soon as I get out of the shower, I look at myself in the mirror and I realize I have to get back into the shower because I didn't scrub hard enough. So I had to go back in the shower. One time I had to shower about four different times. Never do you realize how poorly you clean yourself as when you're filthy from the top of your head to the very bottom of your feet. And it's this idea of washing that's conveyed here when the text says that we are saved, how? By the washing of regeneration. See, brothers and sisters, washing is a removal, a removal of sorts, a taking away of filth. What happens when a person gets saved? The Holy Spirit is poured out upon them and he washes them from the top of their head to the bottom of their feet. Their filth is removed from them and taken away forever. To use the simile in Isaiah chapter 1, come let us reason together. Though your sins be like scarlet, they will be as white as snow. They will be like wool. Think with me for a moment as to what washing meant in redemptive history. There we have Moses washing Aaron and his sons for priestly service. Perhaps the most pungent of them is what takes place in the tabernacle. You have the bronze basin right there that the priests would have to wash themselves in order to do priestly service before entering the holy place. You have a smattering of times when people need to be washed when they come in contact with a disease, leprosy, bodily fluids, et cetera. Washing is something that's symbolically done when declaring someone's self to be innocent. Think of Pilate. I wash my hands of his execution, Matthew 26. And there are certainly many ideas of washing that we can explore. Perhaps the greatest Old Testament parallel to this And this, by the way, carries many of the themes that are found in this passage. Ezekiel 36 actually describes much of this in picturesque form. Ezekiel 36 says, therefore, say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, it is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. This actually squares very well with verses 1 and 2 in our passage. 1 and 2 and 3 in our passage. O house of Israel, you have profaned my name among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God. when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses. Are you hearing this idea that we can't clean ourselves The gospel cannot be any more clear than it is strewn throughout the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments. Brothers and sisters, we are filthy. And all of our feeble efforts to wash ourselves are not accounted as merely feeble in God's eyes. They are accounted as a declaration, an act of war. We present to the Lord Most High a different gospel in this. We say, God, I would like to clean myself. Thank you very much. I say this a lot, but you don't clean yourself before you get in the shower. That's what the shower is for. You don't clean yourself of sins before you come to the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what he designates the Holy Spirit for. And if you were to take ownership of even one of your sins, the wages of it is death. And you own the filth of that sin until the offense is removed and it will never be removed. Our filth has to be taken away. And in Christ, brothers and sisters, it is. God himself has to scrub us clean. We're told in another passage, in a parallel passage in the book of Ephesians, that husbands are to love our wives just as how Christ loved the church He goes into it more. He gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her. How? Well, by washing her with the water of the word. For what purpose? So that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without any spot or wrinkle or any such thing, so that she might be holy and without blemish. Well, even this washing has an effect in our passage. It's certainly a washing, no doubt about it. Look with me in the tail end of verse five as to what this washing does. The Holy Spirit washes us, and this washing is described here as a washing of regeneration. Literally, palingenesis in the Greek, to be born again. Regeneration is a wonderful concept that speaks to the effect of the one who is cleansed. The Holy Spirit is poured out upon us. He has done His work. To quote the Catechism to you, He has convinced us of our sin and misery. He has enlightened our minds to the knowledge of Christ. And He has renewed our wills. And He has persuaded. And He has enabled us. to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to us in the gospel. And you know what? We have embraced him by faith alone. And we're alive because of it. What happens when someone becomes a Christian? Life for those bruised and broken by the fall. A life, by the way, that's patterned very closely after the resurrection of Jesus himself, where he takes back his life to himself and raises victorious over death. Now the key difference here is that for Jesus, he may take it back upon his will. For us, we must be given it. Jesus told Nicodemus that we must be born again, literally born from above, or born of a different order in order even to see the kingdom of God. That is to say that you cannot get yourself into heaven. You must be born again. The spirit of God must give life to you. He must regenerate you or you remain dead in your sins, no matter how good you look on the outside. Remember the theme, brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit is richly poured out upon us in order to make us Christians by the direction of Jesus, our Savior. One of the effects of his being poured out is that he washes us, he regenerates us. Now lastly this evening, I'd like us to meditate on our last point, that he renews us. Titus 3, 5, and 6 says that he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior." Notice here that whereas the washing of regeneration removes our filth and our death, renewal is kind of a positive impartation of something else. Washing takes away our filth. Renewal is a positive impartation of something else. The word here, anakinoseos, basically means a restoration, a making things new again, a word that's virtually unknown in extant literature before Paul uses it. The only other time he uses it in his literature, exactly as it's found Here, Romans 12, verse 2, we're told not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, to the being made new again of our minds. Of course, in that context, I believe he's speaking of a continual renewal. In this context, he's speaking more of a one-time event. I say this because nothing else in this passage refers to a continual progressive event, though the combination of the two certainly balance each other out. In other words, we can say that we are renewed, and we continue to be renewed until Christ comes again. There is a point, brothers and sisters, in which we are made new again. And there is a point, a prolonged period of time, in which we're continually being made new day by day. It just so happens that this passage here speaks of that one-time event aspect, because our justification is a one-time event. Now, all this to say, the work of the Holy Spirit is rather full and complete. We can say that the Holy Spirit's work is very much well-rounded. We can say that we find in Jesus a perfect Savior, and that's exactly what He is, especially when we remember all of His benefits. He takes us in our condition of deadness and sin, and by His Spirit, He pours out upon us. He washes us, and in so doing, He removes all that is unseemly. About us and believe you me. There's a lot unseemly about us. I mean just in case you didn't know there's a lot unseemly about us Just I don't know if that's a you know, kind of a news flash or something There is a lot that is very much unseemly about us the Holy Spirit removes it washes all of this and then he grants us life and And now our renewal is the vigor and strength of that new life. Paul says in Colossians 3 that we're to put to death our old self, and we're to put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. He tells the Ephesians, a parallel passage, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. when he considers the contrast of the brevity of life on the one hand and the work of the Holy Spirit on the other, Paul says, 2 Corinthians 4, he says, we don't lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. Brothers and sisters, if regeneration is our rebirth, We can say that in our passage, renewal is our first gasp of breath of fresh air, our first gasp, our first breath of fresh air that we take as baby Christians, breathing in the aroma of life, spreading this aroma of life out. It's the first beat of our newly implanted heart of flesh. You can call it a wiping of the new eyes to look at the world as citizens of the age to come. It's kind of like a clearing away of the cobwebs of the new mind that for the first time can set itself on things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of the Father, a renewal is the first instantiation of this experience as new creatures in Christ. The old has gone, never to come back ever again. The new has come, always to remain with us to the end of the age and beyond. It's God fashioning a new humanity out of us, one that's no longer represented by Adam the fallen, one that's represented by Jesus, the risen Savior, who brings about His ministry, a new world order of sorts. So brothers and sisters, what happens when someone becomes a Christian? The Holy Spirit is richly poured out upon us. He washes us in regeneration, a new birth. And He renews us to walk in strength, one that we didn't have before. All this by the agency of Jesus, our perfect Savior. Reverend Bruce Hollister preached a sermon this morning from Matthew chapter 9 in which this renewal, this reinvigoration is perfectly depicted. There was a man who was brought to Jesus who had been a paralytic. And after seeing their faith, Jesus heals him. the scribes, the teachers of law take special offense at what Jesus says, that his sins are forgiven. And then Jesus says, in order that you might know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he looks at the man and says, get up, take your mat, and walk home, which is the very gist of this passage. Get up. Take to yourself a strength that you didn't have before in regeneration. Take up your mat. Now that you have youthful, spiritual vigor, pick it up. Go home. Verse 7, that we might become heirs of the kingdom. What happens when we become a Christian, brothers and sisters? We're washed. We're renewed. And we can go home as heirs of the kingdom of heaven. Well, all this should come with some points of application. Just how do I internalize this passage, what this passage is all about? Yes, I know that what happens when someone becomes a Christian, I know that the Holy Spirit is poured out. I know that he washes me. I know that he's renewed me and that he's continually renewing me. But what does this passage call for? Well, for this I'd like to leave you with a couple of points of application. Firstly, don't ever be annoyed when someone doesn't become a Christian. We've had some prayer requests just before. Keeping people in mind, maybe it's the case that you've been praying for them for a long time. I don't know. We're going to go to the Boardwalk Chapel. We're going to speak to a lot of people about the message of the gospel. Lots of them. How many are going to turn over? I have no idea. But that's not my weight to bear. That's not my load to lug around. Regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit. It's not a task that you can shoulder yourself. It's not a task that I can shoulder myself. I cannot make someone a Christian. I can't clean them of their sins any more than I can give spiritual life to them. So brothers and sisters, use this as an encouragement to keep pressing heaven's courts on their behalf. Keep praying for them. Keep praying for them. Pray for them and engage them tirelessly. Live like you are one on whom the Spirit has been richly poured. Remember, the Holy Spirit needs to be poured out on them just as he needed to have been poured out on you. Paul encourages the Corinthians After giving them a list of sins in which they once walked, he says to them, and such were some of you, 1 Corinthians 6, 11. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. Don't get annoyed when someone doesn't become a Christian. Secondly, now that you've been renewed, regenerated, renewed, keep seeking to be renewed further and further. Press the claims of Christ himself to get with him in his word, to engage him often in prayer, to make use of the sacraments often, brothers and sisters. Get involved in the local church. I'm sure that there's a few positions over here that need to be filled. Get involved. Stay involved. Brothers and sisters, this is where he promises to meet us. He promises to meet us through the means that he has given to us. Use him. Find yourself reinvigorated, renewed. This is where he promises to meet us. As I read before, that he washes us with the word here in the local church every time we meet together for corporate worship. Meet him. Spend time with him. Spend precious, precious time With him often keep seeking more opportunities to be enriched enlivened encouraged jesus himself promises to meet us That though our outward self is wasting away Our inner self is being renewed day by day and for this we give him thanks and praise Would you join me in prayer? Heavenly father we do thank you for this regenerative work that you've done in our hearts And I pray that you would allow us to take ownership of everything that you've given to us, that we would regularly and often be renewed day by day by day in thankfulness of the work of the Holy Spirit, who has been poured out on us richly through Jesus our Savior. And it's in his name that we pray. Amen.