Living Water

Joy and I had dinner with some friends. They announced they wanted to share in a special occasion. When they were married some thirty years before, someone had given them a bottle of wine, made that year. They had been holding onto it for all that time, and had decided to uncork it that night. They wanted us to share in tasting it. Though we rarely touch wine, felt that it was important that we sample a glass.


Our friends uncorked the bottle an poured us each a small glass. Then-disappointment! It was not very good. It had not only fermented, but gone beyond fermenting. It was barely drinkable.

Think about that wine. For years it sat in their house, waiting to be uncorked, waiting for that special moment. In the bottle, the anticipation of it brought a special sense of joy. But they waited too long. The right time slipped into disappointment.

Don’t we behave that way when it comes to the Gospel? When we received it, it was the greatest gift we could imagine. God almighty wants to be our friend and give us eternal life. We always intended to share it. But we are too cautious. What if we don’t do it right? What if they laugh at us? There are a thousand reasons for not sharing the Good News.

The Gospel doesn’t change. But we do, and so do circumstances. We let opportunity slip though our fingers. There is never a better time to share than now.

God has a moment for us to share. That moment is now. If now now, when? Tomorrow is not as good as today.

Presbyterians are cautious people. We want to pick the best time and the best place, to minimize our risk. It’s amazing they ever get married. It’s even more amazing that we ever see anyone won to Christ, when we are so timid about opening our mouths.

Our Lord was not that way. Jesus was driven by an overwhelming desire to see others in the Kingdom of God. One place we see that is in John 4. 4-30. In this story, Jesus did not sit down and rationally plan a strategy for bringing the Gospel to the Samaritans. Instead He was compelled by the Holy Spirit that this was the right time, and he was compelled to do so.

The story begins like this--And he had to go through Samaria. Now why did Jesus have to go through Samaria? There were two other and better routes from Jerusalem to Galilee that did not involve going through Samaria. Both of them were safer and more comfortable.

Samaria was hill country. Anyone would get tired going up and down those hills all day.

But that wasn’t the real problem. Samaria was unsafe for a Jew. The relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans was very bad. No one wanted to go through there.

I read recently that the most dangerous neighborhood is in Chicago. That neighborhood t is so bad that there is a one in four chance for someone walking in broad daylight to be attacked. Most of us would not even think about going there. That was what Samaria was to the Jews.

But Jesus had to go through Samaria. Why?

He had to go through Samaria for one reason. It is where the Samaritans were. The Samaritans needed him, and somebody had to take it there. He had the Gospel, and it was time had to uncork it. If he waited the wine of the /Spirit might turn to vinegar.

Let’s set the scene. Samaria was, by the standards of the day, a slum. It had once been an important place, the capital of the Northern Kingdom. Jacob’s well was there, probably, covered with dirt and graffiti.

Even so, Jesus led his disciples there. They came to Jacob’s well about three in the afternoon. The disciples went into town to get food. Jesus stayed behind at the well.

The well was deserted. It was too late for the breakfast crowd, and too early for the supper crowd. But one woman did come--the kind of woman your mother warned you about.

In those days you did not talk to strange women. But Jesus did, breaking a social taboo.

“Give me something to drink.”

She looked at Jesus contemptuously. The probably assumed that this strange man was about to proposition her. These Jews were all alike, she thought. They pretend to be all high and mighty, but they are no different from other men.

She answered, “How is it that you, a Jew ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink? The Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans.”

Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

“Living water” meant running water. It was not a stagnant pool, like this well. It was good, clean water like a mountain spring.

"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"

Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

Clean, clear water is symbolic of a Spirit set free by the Holy Spirit. It washes us clean and keeps us clean, so we can stay fresh in the world.

Wouldn’t any of them want some living water? Wouldn’t they want some joy that would keep coming even if everything else seemed to be falling in around them? That sense of resilient joy is what Jesus had to offer.

The Gospel is resilient joy. No matter how far you have fallen, no matter many times you fail, God forgives you. Even if you were the worst person in the world, you could be clean if you turn your sins over to Jesus, and experience His love and forgiveness.

Here’s the problem with us Christians. We have the Gospel but we don’t believe it. We say we believe that Jesus has the power to make a saint out of the worst of us. But then we have a whole list of people who we believe will never change. We’ve got whole classes of people that we think we don’t have to love or care for—other races, other nationalities, strangers, aliens, and so on.

We might come around to loving them eventually. But in the meantime, we hesitate too long. We can’t wait until they are gone, and then pretend to be looking for them. We might as well be fishing in a bathtub as to be seeking the lost only when they come to us.

He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."

"I have no husband," she replied.

Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."

Jesus is not condemning this woman’s bedroom behavior, nor is He condoning it. He is demonstrating His knowledge and power. He knows her secrets but doesn’t care. He is not interested in her past, but her future. He wants her to have eternal life.

People look at our past. Jesus looks at our future. He loves us where we are. He wants to see them have that pure water coming up from inside us.

When do we truly walk like Jesus? When we know that we have to go through Samaria. We cannot be truly Christians and not love those whom Jesus loves. God despises our churchy pretensions and wants us to embrace his love for lost sinners.

This woman was impressed.

"I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."

Incredibly, this was the first time Jesus told anyone He was the Messiah. He hadn’t told his disciples, but he told this woman He was the savior, because she needed a savior.

Do you need a Savior? Do you think your sins are bad enough to send you to hell? If you don’t need a savior, you don’t need Jesus, because that’s what Jesus is.

Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"

There is no difference in God’s eyes between you and a bum on the street. You both need Jesus. Only by God’s grace and the accident of birth are you not a bum on the street, if you don’t know Jesus. He has come to seek and save the lost, and we are among their number.

The end of this story is inspiring.

Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people,

"Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

There is a moment when the Good News must be told. This woman told. When she told, they came. Hundreds, maybe thousands of Samaritans poured out of those hills to meet this man that the woman told them about. As they met him, they changed, too—lepers were cleansed, sick people were healed, the demon possessed were set free, addicts were made whole, all kinds of things happened, because this woman believed. The living water flowed from her, into the lives of so many other people;

I have always wanted to see one of those moments, like the disciples experienced in Samaria and elsewhere, where people came down of their own accord, looking for the Messiah. We can’t call it a revival, because there was nothing there to revive. It is a move of the Holy Spirit, where He reveals Himself through changed lives, answered prayers, and unusual power and love. I have spent my whole life trying to get people into churches. It would be nice just once to see people who didn’t have to be persuaded to come. These Samaritans experienced the move of the Spirit, and th came.

I attended a Methodist school in Kentucky which had experienced such a move of the Spirit. That move swept across this country in the Seventies. For thirty-five years, I’ve wanted to be in such a flow of living water. But I have never seen it in this denomination. I am convinced that is why we are so small.

We have the Gospel of Christ, but we have kept it to ourselves. We have put it on the shelf and left the cork in it. We keep saying one day we are going to let it loose, tell the world, but we do not. The time never seems ready. One day it will be too late. There are other believers who will be obedient and willing to be channels of the Spirit, if we will not. If we do not use what we have been given, God will give it to others. But if we are willing to turn the Spirit loose, God can do great and mighty things.

Faith as an Unnatural Act

On Wednesday nights, we've been following the trip of the Israelites with Moses to Mount Sinai from he book of Exodus. When Moses went up on the mountain for forty days and nights, the people he left behind became nervous, then rebellious. They demanded a God they could see, who could be right in front of them to give them courage as they traveled through the desert. So they had Aaron make a golden calf on their behalf. The golden calf was most useful, not only because of his artificially comforting presence, but because he was a god who would always go exactly where they wanted, instead of the messy business of having to blindly following the God of Moses.


I can't say that I blame them. I would have probably done the same thing, giving the situation they were in at the time. They were a million and a half people on a barren plain in the middle of the desert. There was no natural source of food or water anywhere. would anyone in their right mind have recommended that they should stay in the middle of such a barren wilderness indefinitely? Even in a land where there was plenty of water and good grassland, it doesn't seem likely that they would survive. Common sense would have told them that this was a hopeless, untenable position.

Or think about the disciples on the day of Jesus' crucifixion. Many if not most of them seemed to have temporarily lost their faith. Wouldn't we? How many people do you know, get up and walk out of tomb after three days in an airless cave? In real life, people don't just get up and walk away after they've been buried. Common sense would suggest that when our loved on is out in the cemetery, we should let go and let the healing begin. Anyone with any common sense at all would not stand around waiting for a resurrection.

I want to be honest here, but I also want to be careful. I am not condoning their actions. The Israelite should not have built a calf. The disciples should have waited with hope. But these two examples illustrate an important lesson. Common sense is not always right when you are talking about heavenly matters. There is nothing common or sensible about the wisdom that comes from God. We serve a supernatural God, not a natural one. He doesn't have to play by our version of the rules, and neither do we when we are on His team.

"Faith," the writer of Hebrews said "Is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." We cannot walk by faith and by sight, It has to be one or the other. It's fine to follow our own knowledge when we have not heard from Him, but we must do it tentatively, ready to change when He speaks.

We may wish that God would show us what is around the next bend, but if He did, we would not walk beside Him. We would run ahead, lag behind, and saunter at our own pace. Faith will never make sense to us. God's desire is to keep us walking right by his side, obediently looking to Him for guidance and direction.

Presbyterians like to think of ourselves practical people, doing things in a slow, conservative, deliberate fashion. We do this without thinking whether or not practicality and faith can walk together without contradiction. To be rational is to lean upon our own understanding. When we are being rational, we have to know before we do. Faith asks us to do before we know. When the Hebrews started into the desert, they were marching into certain disaster without divine intervention. When the Peter and John went to the empty tomb, they did so with no more evidence than one hysterical woman.

How can faith be practical? Sometimes it can't.

I'm not suggesting we all take foolish chances. We must make sure we hear the God's Word before we take a leap of faith. Moses certainly sought and received confirmation before he marched into Pharaoh's court and demanded he let his people God. The disciples followed Jesus because they had seen three years worth of miracles. They diligently sought to understand God and had proof of His existence, before they stepped out in faith.

Faith is more of a skill than anything else. It something we develop with practice. The more we practice, the more we learn to stand on the sometimes shaky ground of faith. If we are going to walk on water, it is a good idea to get out sea legs first. Unfortunately, we are too impatient to practice faith. We don't pray through our situation. We get up off our knees quickly so we can do something, anything, rather than to wait around for an answer. When our schemes for church ministry don't work, we quickly find somebody to blame scheme again, rather than ask the question "What is God telling me in this defeat?"

If we are going to be people of faith, being naturally wise is not enough. We must be unnaturally, supernaturally wise, walking with our eyes on Jesus, listening for His voice, and taking His advice.

Born Again

“Born again” is not a term that is bandied about often in the Bible. In fact, it is only used twice in the New Testament, only once by Jesus. The first is In John 3, in a discussion with a man called Nicodemus.
“Nicodemus” is probably an alias. It means “ruler of the people.” He was one of the most powerful religious and social leaders in Israel, visited Jesus alone by night. He visited by night, because he did not want anyone to see him going to Jesus. He was an honest man, but not a brave one. He began with a startling admission. “We know you are from God, for no one can do the miracles you do if you were not from God.”
Notice he says “we” not “I.” Today, we would call him a whistle-blower. Some on the Sanhedrin secretly believed Jesus was from God—at least a prophet, possibly the Messiah.
Nicodemus did not ask for anything. Perhaps he was letting Jesus know that he could be of use. Nicodemus’ power and influence could keep Jesus out of trouble. It’s always helpful to have friends in high places.
Jesus is not impressed. Instead, he said, “You must be born again.” Jesus does not care that he is a ruler of the people. He does not care that he believed He was from God. Not even belief is enough unless we are born again.
People want change, but how much change do we really want? When a person sets out to change his or her life, there are three levels of change.
First, there is refocus and redirection. They don’t want to change much, just change a little. Most everything remains the same. They say, “You know, maybe I should pray more
or “Maybe I should start back to church,” or “maybe I should straighten up a bit.”
That’s how most people see religion--just cleaning what is already there. They get rid of their worst traits, treat each other nicer, clean up their language and kick nasty habits, but they don’t change much beyond that.
Or maybe it’s reformation we need—to reform or and rearrange. We rearrange the furniture of our lives, and things look new. But we are still made from the same stuff we’ve always been.
I knew a man once who had been a radical in the Sixties. He marched in the peace marches, demonstrated against the war, wore long hair and love beads—the whole hippy scene. Then he changed and became a conservative. He marched in antiabortion marches, demonstrated against high taxes, and wore short hair and a necktie. But he had not changed. He was the same radical he always was. He took the same pieces and reformed them into a different shape.
But Jesus did not talk about redirection or reformation. He talked about regeneration--a life change so complete that you are not the same person.
“Born again” was not a new term to the Jews. It was used for a Gentile but wanted to become a Jew.
Maimonedes, the twelfth century Jewish philosopher, summarized what the ancient rabbis said about this process.
“By three things did Israel enter into the Covenant: by circumcision, and baptism and sacrifice. When a gentile is willing to enter the covenant…He must be circumcised and be baptized and bring a sacrifice…And at this time when there is no sacrifice, they must be circumcised and be baptized; and when the Temple shall be built, they are to bring a sacrifice…The gentile that is made a proselyte and the slave that is made free, behold he is like a child new born."
There were three steps—circumcision, baptism, and sacrifice. It was only done to the male head of the family. He was baptized in the nude. Every hair of his head was shaved off. Then he was given a new name, to indicate he had become a new person.
John the Baptist redefined this Jewish ritual. He made Jews do it. John was saying that you can be religious and rotten at the same time. You must start all over again as a new person.
Jesus did not tell Nicodemus to be baptized, but to be born again. If he had asked Nicodemus to be baptized he would probably have done it. But it would just be one more expression of his “superior” piety. Jesus didn’t want him to simply be baptized a new person. He actually wanted him to be a new person.
What does it mean to be born again?
It means that we don’t want our old lives any more.
We are creatures of habit. We like things to remain the same. Old habits give us a sense of control. We like to know what’s coming. It makes us feel we are in control.
Because we like regularity, we learn to live with imperfection. If our lives are not what they once thought they should be, we don’t let it bother us. If our lives are less than perfect, we on’t care, as long as they are steady and predictable.
In the old days, when chickens were taken to the market, they tied their legs together. When they cut the chickens loose, they would lay on the ground as if their legs were still tied. They may not have liked having their legs tied, but once they got used to it, they thought itw as always supposed to be that way. Like those chickens, we have settled into habits and mindsets that do us no good. They may in fact be killing us, but as long as they are predictable, we don’t care.
It means we give up control to the Spirit.
When we are born again, the first thing to go is our sense of control. We have to rely on someone else to save us. We revert to being babies before God, A baby does not mind being controlled by others, as long that that other is a loving mother and father. We start over, nurtured by a new parental figure—God.
The enemy of our salvation is not the Devil but ourselves. True faith ends when we try harder or work harder, trying to master our own fate.
If someone asks you if you are a Christian, or if you are born again, how do you answer? Some say “I try to be,” Have you ever tried to be a puppy? You either are one or you aren’t-- trying has nothing to do with it. We must be born that way. Just so, you must be born again as a Christian, It is not something you aspire to. It is something that comes when we cease to try, and allow God full control.
Nicodemus could not understand this “How can a man be born again when he is old?” He took Jesus literally instead of figuratively. But Jesus corrected him
Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth,no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.'
We are born of water--the waters of birth. We come out of our mother’s womb wet. When we are born again we are born in the Spirit. We come out wet with the Spirit.
Baptism is an act of the flesh, not the Spirit. Joining a church, quitting smoking and drinking, keeping ourselves pure are all good, but they are not the Spirit. They are byproducts of it. We need new birth in the Holy Spirit.
8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
We are reborn like a feather on the wind. We do not control, we are controlled by Him. We cannot tell the reasons why God puts us here—where the wind came from. Neither can we tell our destination—where the wind goes to. We ride the Spirit like a surfer on a wave or a gull on the air.
It is to be enfolded into the life of Christ.
"How can this be?" Nicodemus asked.
"You are Israel's teacher," said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things?
1 tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven — the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
We die in Christ. This seems harsh, but we must understand. We are not the first to die. Jesus died before us. He went to the cross on our behalf. He lost his will, his power, his blood so that our birth might be possible.
Because we live, we can live with him.
When Jesus uses an illustration that he new Nicodemus would know. He referred to an Old Testament story—Num 21:4-9. The Israelites complained about the uncertainty and the quality of their food. God punished them by sending snakes to bite them. But as soon as the presented the illness, He also presented the cure. If they would only look up one more time at a bronze serpent on the pole, they would live. Some refused to look and died. But for every one who looked up, they were given a new life.
Jesus said He is the serpent on the pole. His own death would be the sign.
This is a difficult treacherous world. It is too treacherous, in fact for us to walk through u unguarded. We will all fall. In fact, we have all fallen. We are like pigs in a pig trough None of us can boast that there is no mud on us.
But if we look at Jesus, there is a cure. In Him, we can have new life, not be caught in an old one. He is the answer to all our needs and our longings. He is the bronze serpent put on a pole to remind us of the one who made the serpent.
But it is not a serpent on a pole. This a man on at cross. Our sins became His sins. His death became our death. His resurrection became our invitation to be born again. Jesus represented us in death so that He could represent us in live. In this ultimate act of sacrifice. He became our Savior and we became born again.

Six Questions

I preached my first sermon when I was seventeen years old while I was working with Southern Baptists in Tennessee. It was a church of eight people who met in a house in Raccoon Valley. I was given two hours notice. At that time, I was on the high school newspaper staff, and had learned the six questions reporters are supposed to ask--who, what, when, where and why and how. I had also served as a youth counselor at a Billy Graham Crusade, and learned my first six verses—John 1:12, John 10:10, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, Romans 5:8, John 1:12. Somehow, it occurred to me to put those two lists together, so my topic was "the who, what, when, where, why and how of salvation."


It has now been forty years since that afternoon, I have never preached that particular sermon again, nor could I recall exactly what I said. Lately, though, I have often thought tha I should preach that sermon again, not for your sake, but for mine.

Over the years I have become a “sophisticated” preacher. I have learned Greek, Hebrew, systematic theology, archaeology, anthropology, and psychology. But the more sophisticated you become, the harder simplicity becomes. You want to show off how much you know. It has become harder to simply tell the story of salvation in a way that will change lives.

I am sorry for that. Being a believer is the most wonderful thing in the world, and we have made it into “religion”—rituals practiced without meaning, worldly organizations instead of spiritual reformation. We have turned the simple gospel into complex beliefs, and in doing so lost the power of the simple.

So today instead of giving you something new and hard, I want to give you something old and easy. I want to tell you about the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the gospel.

First, who needs to be saved? You do. I do. We all do. God loves us, and wants us to spend eternity with Him. John 3:16 starts "For God so loved the world" You are part of the world that God loves, and so am I. He wants us all in heaven.

He loves you more than your mother does. He loves you more than your father does. He loves you more than you love yourself. God wants us to live with him forever, and to be with Him for all eternity.

Think of it. God the king of all the universe knows your name. He hears your prayers. He loves you with all his heart. More than anything else, God wants us to have eternal life--John 10:10 "I have come that you might have life, and have it ti abundance."God does not want us living a lives of quiet desperation. He wants us to have lives of purpose, value, and joy.

We live in a world that desperately want to be seen as happy, but inwardly is miserable. People pretend all the time. Our heroes are actors and entertainer. Our businessmen are taught to appear strong and powerful, even when they are small and weak. Our politicians pretend to have answers, when they have none. Our teachers pretend that they know their subjects, when they do not have any idea whether or not what they have been handed from their teachers is actually true. Loves pretend to love, partygoers pretend to have fun. People pretend to believe what they don't believed. All around us are people who need salvation, but are two afraid to admit it. For all these people Jesus promises life .

Second, what do we need to be saved from? In a word--sin. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, were created to live in a perfect world. Then sin entered the world, and the world was never right again.

What is sin? The Bible offers two definitions for sin. The first is James 4:17--"If any man knows what it right to do, and does not do it, to him that is sin." Sin is when you don't do what you believe you are supposed to do, or when you do what you believe you should not do. Don't get hung up on all the laws of the Old Testament, and all the complexities of interpretation. Sin is not just drinking, smoking or cussing. It is not individual acts. Sin is the act of being willfully disobedient to God. The act of sin varies from one person to another, but the fact of sin does not vary. We are all sinners, because we all are guilty of acting against the conscience God had given us.

The other definition of sin is Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned and come short of God's glory." Sin is falling short of God's perfection. It is thoughts, actions, intentions, and omissions that are less than what God wants for us.

Are some sins worse than others? Not according to God. You cannot be a little pregnant. Nor can you be a little rebellious. We are either rebels or saints. There is nothing in the middle.

How good to you have to be to not be considered a sinner? Jesus said "be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." If you are not perfect, then you are a sinner, because you fall short of God's glory.

All sin has the same punishment--death. "The wages of sin is death, "Romans 6:23 says. There are no exceptions. Wages are what we earn by what we do. If we work at a job, then our wages are money, but if we work on a chain gang, our wages are our just punishment. Once our debt has been fully paid, then we can go free. The only thing we earn by sin is eternal death. We owe death for sin, and not until our lives are over have we fully paid it. But Paul goes on and says "But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." God gives us what we have not earned an not given us what we have.

Third, when were we saved? This answer may surprise you. You were not saved in your lifetime. You were not saved in this century. You were saved two thousand years ago, when Jesus died on he cross. Romans 5:8 "For God demonstrated His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

God made the offer of redemption before you were ever born. He paid for your redemption before you ever asked. Your redemption is yours to have, through the death of Jesus Christ.

Think on this. If the wages of sin is death, then someone has to die for sin. You can't do it. I can't do it for you. The only person good enough to die for the whole world is Jesus Christ, who was God in human form.

Jesus anticipated our birth. If he anticipated our birth, he must then have anticipated our sin. If he anticipated our sin, the He also anticipated our salvation through His blood.

In the Old Testament, people atoned for sin by an animal sacrifice. This may seem strange to us, but it was not to them. They knew that the only way to redeem a person who deserved to shed blood was by the shedding of blood. But the blood of animals was not an adequate shedding for all sin. Only the blood of a pure person, who never committed any sin, was pure enough to atone for the sins of the whole world. Jesus endured the most horrible punishment imaginable, so that you would not have to be punished for your sins.

Fourth, why were we saved? Because He loves us.

I John 2:1-2 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense — Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

In the end, it is not just the Jesus' blood that saves us--it is his love. We are saved by such an overwhelming love, that He would not shirk from the most humiliating death imaginable.

Crucifixion was the most humiliating death that the Romans could imagine--and they could imagine some pretty horrible stuff. A person was stripped naked. Then he was physically nailed to a wooden pole or cross. Once he was on the cross, he was forgotten. He was considered dead, even while he was alive. He was never taken down from the cross. He was left there to decay, in front of the entire world, until the vermin picked his bones clean, and he fell into a rotting pile of corruption. No one could touch him once he was on the cross. Everyone looked away in horror.

The point is not how horrible the Romans were, but how deep God loved us. God loves us enough to endure the suffering Himself on our behalf. He literally shed blood to buy us from sin, and offer us a new life. We are saved by His love.

Fifth, Where were we saved to? The world "saved" has been used so much in the context of the church that it risks losing its meaning. "Saved" means to be rescued, just like a person is rescued from a burning building or a sinking ship. What is most important in any rescue is not where we are rescued from, but where we are rescued to. Where does God take us?

We are rescued to everlasting life with Jesus. "God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever would believe in Him would not perish, but have everlasting life." Everlasting life is heaven--an eternity with God.

I don't understand heaven any more than I understand hell. But God occasionally gives us glimpses of what it will be. All human joys and blessings are simply foretasts of what heaven is supposed to be for us. Every sunrise gives us a glimpse. Every clear, starry sky displays heavens distant lights. Every roll of thunder or purple mountain reveals it's majesty. I do not know exactly what heaven will be, but when we get there, I believe we will say "of course, this is what life was supposed to be all along."We will know it when we get there.

Sixth, How are we saved?

Admit that we are sinners and cannot save ourselves.

Believe that Jesus Christ died for our sinners

Confess publicly that that we receive Him as our Lord and savior.

John 1:12 tells us "For as many as have received Him, to them He gave the power to become the children of God, even to those who believe on His name."

It is not hard. We just confess and believe. We put our trust in Him, and He saves us.

What is the path to God? There isn't one. There is only salvation from God. We cannot go to Him unless He first came to us. When he does, then we must receive what He has offered---eternal life.

There are no time limits in heaven, but there is on earth. We have a limited time offer of salvation. It is limited to this time and this place. So if we are to receive Him, we must do it now, during this brief time on earth.

None of us know how brief that time will be. You never know when death may come over you, or with what suddenness. For that reason, it is vitally important we know what we believe now. If you are not sure what will happen to you after you die, then make sure. Take the time to know for a fact, that you are saved. It is the simplest truth in the world.