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My father's last name is Reed and my grandfather's last name is Reed. My grandfather immigrated from around Motherwell, Scotland, near Glasgow. So I belong to the Robertson clan. My last name is Reed. Because I was born into this world by Reed Light, and because I was born by my father and mother's life, I carry certain characteristics that I never went to school to learn. They are inherent in the life from which I was born. So a family friend who I will show on a slide or a PowerPoint this morning, he said to me one day, you have a lot of your father in you. I didn't understand that at the time, but the older I get, the more I realized what he was referring to. And I see myself doing things the way that my dad did. My niece was at our Bible school and she said, you even walk like granddad. I never went to a boarding school to learn to behave and do things like that. That is inherent in the life from which I was born. That's what scripture means when it says life in his name. And the life of Christ can always and only do things naturally. We call it supernatural. He is always and only loving, peaceful, gentle, joyful. He can only have self control. He cannot be tempted to be anything other than he is, and he cannot change. That is the nature of his life by which I have been born again. John 3:16. When Jesus was speaking in Nicodemus and said those words, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but go to heaven. If that's what your translation says, it's a bad translation because that's not what Jesus said. The offer of the Gospel is not going to heaven. The offer of the gospel is eternal life. And eternal life is not a place I enter after I die. Eternal life is a person who enters me before I die. And when that's the case, I have an eternal home with him in the next life. Nowhere in the book of Acts or Romans when the gospel was preached was going to heaven the offer of the gospel. Please don't misunderstand me. Everybody who is born again by the Spirit of God in this life enters into what we call heaven afterwards. But it's the result of having received eternal life in this life before I reach that threshold that everybody does and I enter into the next life. Friends, we're not called to imitate Christ's life. We're called to imitate his mindset. Paul says in Philippians 2, have this attitude in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. But I'm not called to imitate him in his character, his lifestyle, for the simple reason I can't. It would be foolish for me to try and imitate our worship leaders this week. You would know immediately I was a fake. That would be a good way to end the meeting, but it's not a good way to start it. In my case, it's the same with Jesus. I can't copy his character. But the truth of Christianity is that when we're born again by the spirit of God, Jesus enters into my being so that I am indwelt by Christ, and he reproduces his quality of life through me. Eternal life begins at faith, not death. It's just that I had relegated in my understanding, I had relegated eternal life to heaven. And as far as I was concerned, it didn't have anything to do with this life. That was unfortunate in my case. Jesus said to a very religious man, you must be born again. What happens at birth is the life of a man enters into the life of a woman and a child is born. What happens when a person is born again is that the life of God enters into the life of man and I literally become a child of God and I become indwelt by the very presence of Jesus on my way to heaven. That's a Christian. I never worked at my own birth. I didn't do anything. My parents did something, and that's why I'm here. They did the right thing. I didn't do the right thing in order to be born. When I'm born again, God does the right thing. And when I respond to the offer of the gospel, the offer of eternal life, and I turn 180 degrees and I say, jesus, I don't want to live without you anymore. I want you to enter into me and make me a child of God. It's as simple as that. You say, I don't want to live the way that I did, but I can't live any other way unless you come into my life and change me from the inside out. And the Testimony is this first John, chapter 5, and verses 11 and 12. The testimony is this. God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has the life, and he who does not have the Son does not have the life. So the great question is, have I received Christ into my very being and am now the dwelling place of the living Christ? Next slide, please. I come from good heathen background. I have no spiritual heritage on either side of the family. And after my parents Got a divorce when I was about five. I belonged to a generation. Nothing was explained to us. And there's a sense in which that was a blessing in disguise because I didn't need to know all of those things. And it's amazing how resilient a child can be. Nonetheless, I became aware of the fact that something had gone wrong between mom and dad. And mom in the mid-60s, was left as a single mom and a parent of four kids at home. I look at some of the single moms here, so thankful for a place like Gull Lake, takes care of the kids so mom can have a break. Mom got sick during this time and there was a woman across the road who is a registered nurse who came to care for my mom because she either had to go to the hospital or somebody had to care for her at home. With four kids, you have no option. I'm learning this as I watch my daughter with a two and a four year old boy at home. She can't afford to be sick. It's just opened my eyes to a whole other world and given me much greater understanding and compassion for those roles. So this lady came over and cared for mom. And this lady knew Jesus and one day she brought a little Bible tract. Can I be very honest with you? Sometimes I see these things and I'm going, are you kidding me? Am I supposed to take that seriously? Until I heard my mom say, I was so hungry for God, I laid that little pamphlet out on my bed and I read it over and over and over again because she had a hungry heart. We celebrated mom's 80th birthday at the assisted living facility where she still lives. And that lady was there. Her name is Nancy Perry. I said, nancy, I got to get a picture of you. She said, no, no. I said, yes, yes. Because you have no idea what that little gesture meant in my whole family. You need to be careful at the 80 plus crowd. With the 80 plus crowd, when you throw a surprise party. I mean, some of these pacemakers are going to go wild and start setting off the alarm system, opening up, you know, a garage door, the neighbor and things like that. That was Nancy Perry. Next slide is the man who said to me, you have a lot of your father in you. These were family friends. They came to Christ later in life at 4 Home, a conference center on the west coast. And they invited my family after mom had married my stepfather. They were hungry for God and they had soft hearts, but they were not yet born again. And this couple invited my parents and the four kids to the very first family conference on Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Next slide. So I went there. It was much like Gull lake. I was 13 years old. This looks like, you know, leave it to Beaver, but just bear with me. And I went to camp. And the middle school aged kids, they had their own program. We stayed in another facility. And every morning, the director of our program, Lenny Carlson, he's lying in the front row on his back with bare feet. He's now with the Lord. He would hold a short devotional. I had no clue what he was talking about, just with my puny understanding of scripture. We went to church when it was necessary, on specific holidays. But when he spoke, I realized whatever he was speaking about, it was real and it was true. And I got around these people and we had loads of fun, kind of like Gull Lake here. But I realized that they had more than fun. There was something about them that was different in a very attractive way. And Thursday evening, Lenny Carlson was speaking about his own life, like, I am mine right now. And he said, I have a personal relationship with Jesus. And when he said that, the spirit of God made it crystal clear it's Jesus who is so attractive to you. Looking back now over 50 years to that event, I would say to you, I didn't feel like I was fully alive. And indeed I wasn't. And I sat next to Bill Gibson. Bill Gibson is to the left of Lenny Carlson. He was 18 years old, never been to camp before. And I sat next to him because the offer was made. If you want to receive Christ tonight, you can do so. I sat next to Bill Gibson. Not Mel Gibson, Bill Gibson. And in a very simple prayer in which he led me, I said, lord Jesus, I want you. I want you to come into my life. Did I understand the consequences of that? No. I was ignorant of the Bible, but I believed with my heart that Jesus was alive and he loved me. And that evening, I was born again. And I went back to my little cabin. And God did exactly what he said he would do. In Romans, chapter 8. The spirit of God will witness with your spirit that you're a child of God. And I knew that. I knew that. I knew that Jesus had come into my life. Mom received Christ. Pops, my stepfather, received Christ. My older brother had actually received Christ the year before. My sister Heidi and my other sister Lori, they received Christ. And in a broken family, Jesus did a wonderful thing. Mom and Pops were married for 40 years. And I watched them be transformed by the spirit of God before my very eyes. Is the gospel real? You better Believe it is. Does it have anything to do with it today? Absolutely. And I say that this morning, at the beginning of this session. Because it could be that somebody came here, like me back then, in my family. And you may have a hunger in your heart to know Jesus. And you noticed something this week and you want it. I want to tell you it's not something you're missing. It's someone. And that's Jesus. And it is a very simple step of trust to come and give your life to him. And he would be delighted to give his life to you. We're going to have an illustration of that right now from John, chapter 11. But not just those who have not yet received Christ, but for those of us who have. And it's the story of Lazarus. And I want to start in John, chapter 11, starting in verses one through seven. Now, a certain man was sick. Lazarus of Bethany, of the village of Mary and her sister Martha. And it was Mary who anointed the Lord with the ointment. And wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. And so the sisters sent word to him, saying, lord, he whom you love is sick. And so when Jesus heard this, he said, this sickness is not to death, but for the glory of God. That the Son of God may be glorified by it. Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was sick, he then stayed two days longer in the place where he was. And after this, he said to his disciples, let us go to Judea again. After Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed two days longer where he was. That's not very loving, is it? You would have thought that he would have meant or gone immediately because he loved him. To heal a sick man. Jesus didn't do it. And so the sisters faced one of the most difficult things in the life of a disciple of Jesus Christ. They faced the silence of God. And that is tough. When everything in your past, everything that you know about Jesus. Is not making sense in what you're going through right now. And you face the silence of God. You would say with job in job 23. In verse 8, behold, I go forward, but he is not there. And backward, but I cannot perceive him. When he acts on the left, I cannot behold him. He turns on the right. And I cannot see him. But he knows the way that I take. And when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold. Two things about Jesus here. He was silent, but he wasn't deaf. He heard. He understood. And although he is loving and compassionate, he didn't show much sympathy here. If he had sympathy with the situation at hand, he would have gone to Lazarus immediately. But in the wisdom and counsels of God, he knew that this was one of those times when he needed to be silent. Ecclesiastes 3 and verse 7 says, There is a time to be silent, and there was a time to speak. And this was one of those times when Jesus in the wisdom of God, remained silent. If you take note of the silence of God in Scripture, the silence of God precedes some of his most wonderful acts in the Bible. Don't miss it, have hope. Secondly, Jesus was inactive, but he wasn't indifferent. It says that he loved them, and so he stayed where he was. And sometimes the love of God forces him to hold back and not meet my immediate need. Dear friend, if you are praying for something right now and God is silent, it could very well be like John, chapter 11, that he's got something better in mind. And he's not going to bend his will to my puny request. He's got something better in mind. Next slide. So when Jesus came, he found that he had already been in the tomb four days now. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off. Martha then said to Jesus, lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, he will give you. And Jesus said, your brother will rise again. And Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection. And on the last day, Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in him, in me, will live even if he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? Friends, if you don't see the hand of God right now, you can trust in the heart of God. He can't change. And his love is of an eternal quality. And the first thing that Martha says to Jesus is, basically, you made a mistake. It's easy to do sometimes, Jesus, you came too late. You blew it. One of the things that I'm learning, I need to learn is, is to believe the best about God instead of assuming the worst about him. It's easy to do, especially when you're facing his silence. And then she says, well, yeah, I know he'll raise on the last day. Jesus wasn't talking about that. And Martha was basically using heaven as an excuse not to expect Jesus to do anything today. Praise God. There will be a day where we will experience resurrection bodily like Christ did. But Jesus wasn't referring to that day, he was referring to the matter at hand. And he says, I am the resurrection and the life. And multiple times in John's gospel, Jesus uses the name I am. And then he gives a description of it and he goes back to Exodus chapter three, when Moses, you know, God says, I'm going to send you. And, and and Moses basically says, well, here am I, but send Aaron. And God is very patient. And then Moses says, who should I say sent me? And then God said, say this, this is my name. I am who I am. And when God gave himself a name from which we get the word Yahweh, he named himself with a verb, not a noun. And he named himself in the present tense because he is eternal. And then Jesus takes that and applies it to himself and he says, I am. I am the one who is active and I am the one in the present tense right now. In your experience, the best way to define eternity is to use the word now. Because eternity is timelessness. Time is measured by change. So I went to my high school reunion. I'm walking around this restaurant and I'm going to myself. Many of these people look old in my self deception. And then I spoke to some of them and I'm thinking, man, they've really changed. I human life changes. Eternal life never changes. And friends, this is not just a nice philosophical consideration. This is something that I can bank my life on. He never changes. He can't change. And therefore I can thrust myself upon him in total trust, knowing that he'll never change. And when Jesus said I am, it was like I'm a blank check in the hand of a child of God. And I come to him and I say, lord, I'm not patient right now. He says, I am, Lord, I am weak right now. He says I'm strong and I may count on him to be the very thing that I'm not. He says I am the resurrection. The quality of resurrection is that resurrection can overcome the power of death. Death is human weakness taken to its greatest degree. You can't be weaker than death. Are we in agreement on that? So if resurrection can overcome the weakness of death, resurrection can overcome every other form of human weakness. What does that mean to me today? Jesus can overcome my anger. Jesus can overcome my panic. Jesus can overcome my addiction, my lust, my pride, my selfishness. How do we know that if he can overcome death, he can overcome any other form of human weakness? That's the one that I have received and who lives in me by his spirit. Since the day I was born. Again, so let's move on. Verse 38. So Jesus again, being deeply moved with him, came to the tomb. Now it was a cave and a stone was lying against it. And Jesus said, remove the stone. Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to him, lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days. And Jesus said to her, did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God? And. And so they removed the stone. And then Jesus raised his eyes and said to the Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but because of the people standing around, I said it so that they might believe that you sent me. And when he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, lazarus, come forth. And the man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. And Jesus said, unbind him and let him go. Once again, as in chapter six, at the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus says, thank you before the miracle took place, not afterwards, because he was living in perfect fellowship with his Father. And as he said In John chapter 5, the Father shows me at all times what he's going to do. And so standing in front of that tomb, an impossibility humanly speaking, he says, thank you, I know what you're going to do, and I believe you're able to do it. Jesus said In John chapter 17, as the father has sent me, so send I you. Personally. I think that he had to identify Lazarus by name because if he just said come out, a whole bunch of others would have come out as well. But he says, lazarus, you come forth. Because these need to see the demonstration of the power of God. Lazarus only hope was a miracle because he couldn't be any weaker than dead. We need to discover that to live the Christian life as God intended, I need to come to my grave like Lazarus did. My self effort and my self righteousness needs to go to the grave. And I need to learn that as necessary as Jesus Christ is to become a Christian, so necessary is Jesus Christ to be the Christian I become. And from start to finish, it's all dependent upon what Jesus is doing. It's not about me receiving him and then him expecting me to produce godliness, because I can't. Do you know what I am? I read this passage in Romans chapter 7. The first time I thought somebody's been looking at me and wrote about me in the Bible. Paul said, what I'm doing, I do not understand For I'm not practicing what I would like to do, but I'm doing the very thing that I hate. I said to myself, that's me. I know I shouldn't be doing certain things as a Christian and I go ahead and do them anyway. It's like being a schizophrenic. It's like having this split personality. And then he comes to the conclusion in verse 18. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. For the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. O wretched man that I am, who will free me from this body of death? Friends, once Christianity is reduced to something that is wholly within the realm of human capability, it ceases to be biblical Christianity. It's nothing more than evangelical humanism. If I can do it, You'll discover that Jesus is all you need when Jesus is all you have. And in order for him to demonstrate resurrection power, he needs a dead person to do it. And we need to die morally to our self efforts before we ever die physically and enter into his presence. That's exactly what Paul was speaking about when he said In Philippians chapter 3 in verse 7, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish that I may gain Christ. And what he is referring to is all the advantages that he brought to the Christian life. I don't know if you've ever said this or heard this before. Somebody looks at somebody who's not yet born again and has received Christ and we say something like wouldn't they make a wonderful Christian? Paul says, I count those things as loss. They're rubbish. Please don't get me wrong. God wants to use my individuality and my personality in the way that he has made me. And Jesus wants to express Himself through all of my uniqueness in a way that he can't through somebody else. But he needs me to die to my own self effort before he can express himself through me and allow me to reach my potential as a human being. Because it takes God to do that, That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death in this life in order that I may attain to the resurrection of the dead. I wrote, I read this book years ago. There's a pastor named well was. He's now with the Lord. His name was Watchman Nee and he lived in China. He wrote a Book called the Normal Christian Life and it's his exposition of Romans 5 to 8. In that book he gives the following story. He was at a conference, he was a pastor and he was speaking there. And one afternoon they went down to the shore of a lake upon which that conference took place. And he and another staff member were watching some of the guests swimming, enjoying themselves on the lake that afternoon. And as they were standing on the shore, watchman he looked out into the lake and he spotted a man who looked like he was struggling. And he made as if he was going to go out and save him. And the guy standing next to him held him back. And they watched. And this guy sure enough was struggling. And right before it looked like he was going to go under, the other staff member dove in, rescued him, brought him up on shore and he was saved. Watchman Nee was furious. He said, don't you know that he could have gone under? Don't you know that he could have died out there? And a staff member looked at him and just said this. If you would have gone out there and tried to save him when you wanted to, he would have had enough strength to pull you both under. I needed to wait until all of his strength was gone before I could save him. I've talked to our students who are lifeguards. I said, is that true? They say, oh yes. In fact, we're taught to punch somebody out if they're struggling too much in order to save them. In order for us to live the life to which God called us, we need to come to that point in our self effort. And it's scary because you think God is going to be furious. He won't. He knew exactly what he got when he got Peter Reed. And that's why he didn't just give Jesus for me, he came in the presence of his Spirit now to live in me in order to enable me to live a life that I otherwise couldn't. Our self confidence needs to be transformed into a Christ confidence. A dead man has no confidence in himself. He doesn't compare himself with others because he knows there's nothing to compare. A dead man, you know, doesn't panic if he's considering how he's going to perform. A dead person doesn't condemn themselves. A dead person is free from themselves. You can throw a dead person out of a hundred story building window and it won't hurt him. You can criticize and malign a dead person and they won't be offended. Paul said, I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives within me. I don't need just forgiveness for my sins. I need freedom from me. So when I was at Bodenziov, I spoke to middle school age kids in my broken German and this was the only way that I could describe this truth to them. This light bulb in my hand is dead. It's not doing the right thing. In fact, in this condition, it can't do the right thing. That's what it was created for, to shine. But it is imprisoned to its own failure in this condition. The fact that it can't shine, that's not the problem. That's a symptom. The problem is that it isn't indwelt by electricity. These bulbs are shining on me from the spotlights. The Bible calls those righteous light bulbs. They're doing the right thing. But they're only doing the right thing because they're indwelt by the right resource. What would happen to those light bulbs if you withdrew the presence of electricity? Would anything change? What if Christ died today and no longer lived in me? Would anything change? Or would everything just continue on as normal? Because I've settled for evangelical humanism and I'm bent on doing it myself. Struggling the whole time, feeling bad about myself, disappointing others, heaped in self condemnation, which is actually rooted in my self righteousness. Friends, when we received Christ, we received Christ. What is it about the vocabulary that I adopted within the church and at the end of a church service often heard, lord, go with us into this new week. Amen. How often I have been at a worship service and somebody says, lord, we invite you into our presence tonight. Amen. For me personally, I've had to change my vocabulary because my vocabulary taught me to deal more with the absence of Christ from my life rather than the presence of Christ in my life. But Jesus, I don't feel you never let the feelings of his absence blind you from the truth of his indwelling presence. He said, I will never, no, never, no, never leave you or forsake you. So at the end of this meeting this morning, we have the privilege of saying, Lord Jesus, thank you that you go with us. Because you live in us. And Lord, it's not about me, it's about you. Thank you that you can save me from me. Last slide. The greatest discovery that Lazarus ever made in the Christian life was made in his grave. And the death of our self effort precedes the working of his life. By the way, what did Lazarus contribute to his own resurrection? Death. That was his Contribution to the whole thing. In verse 44, Jesus says, Take off the grave clothes. We could liken those to what Scripture calls dead works. Hebrews, chapter 9 and verse 15 or verse 14. Dead works. Their works, but they're absent of life. Christ, life. Work takes effort. Life is the inherent ability to reproduce itself. And the Christian life is lived from the inside out. And I need to adopt a disposition of heart called faith, whereby I allow somebody to do something for me. And I come with empty hands. Not full them full hands. And I said, lord Jesus, I can't live the life to which you have called me. You've got to do the miracle in my life. You need to change the motives and desires of my heart so that I actually want to do the very thing that you would do. And it's you living in me. That's called the New Covenant. God said, I will write my laws on their heart, causing us to live righteously. To close in chapter 12 and verse 1, it says Jesus. Therefore, six days before the Passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was whom Jesus had raised from the dead. And they made him a supper there, and Martha was serving. But Lazarus was the one reclining at the table with him. Do you know what Lazarus sitting at the table reclining with Jesus was? It was a miracle. It looked pretty normal. It didn't necessarily look dramatic. But the only explanation for Lazarus sitting at the table was a miracle. And this is what the Christian life turns into. It's the miraculous in the mundane, ordinary details of life. That's what I need. That's what I need for my wife, my staff, my children, my grandchildren. Christ living in me. And I don't know who said the prayer last night, that night. But everyone would have reason to say this to Jesus in their prayer. Lord, thank you that you didn't answer our prayer in the beginning. Thank you that you didn't heal a sick man. You came and raised a dead man. Now we know what you can do. Thank you. To close this morning, I'd like to read a prayer. And if we want to bow our heads and in silence, listen. And if we want to echo this in our hearts to the Lord, we may do so this morning. It's a prayer for those who can't anymore. Heavenly Father, I can't do it. I've been terrified to tell you this. I've tried my best to live for Christ, but the more I've tried, the more I've failed. I come to you with a broken but honest heart and want to admit that I cannot live The Christian life. I know now that this is no surprise to you, but it has been a shock to me. I realize now that my best effort is not enough. I need something more than effort. I need Jesus. I just don't just need Jesus who died for me. I need Jesus who lives in me. Father, I confess my need for Christ as a Christian. I now know that I don't just need Christ to become a Christian. I need Christ to be the Christian I have already become. And although I've received Christ, I have stopped receiving from him. And I paid a high price in doing so. But I thank you that Christ has paid an even higher price so that I no longer have to live this way. I come to confess a sin that I have not recognized as sin before. It's the sin of unbelief. I confess that I have not trusted you to do the very thing that I've been trying to do for you. And I say with Paul, no good thing dwells in me. I'm bankrupt. Jesus, I want to trust you today. I want to trust you not just to save me from hell, but to save me from myself. And my desire is to stop try living for you, Jesus, and begin learning how to let you live through me. So please teach me how this can become a reality in my life. Jesus, I come to begin walking as I received you. I take this one step today and know that I have to take the same step tomorrow. And I take responsibility for trusting you in order that you might take responsibility for me. I trust you to do what I can't and what God never expected from me. So thank you, Lord Jesus, that you live in me. I thank you that you never left me nor forsook me. I will no longer be fooled by the feelings of your absence and I rejoice in the truth of your presence. I do God's will for me in thanking you for living in me. And I look forward to what you will now do in me today, even though I may not see it until I am with you in eternity. Father, I pray this in the strong name of Jesus and am convinced that you'll answer this prayer for Jesus sake, not just mine. It's no longer about me, it's about him. Amen.