So I do hope today that as you leave, you will grab one of the Easter is coming bracelets. Put mine on the other day and I was looking at my wrist this morning, I have two bracelets on. One is the Easter is coming. But right under that says, love Toccoa. And I just got to staring at that.

That because I love Toccoa, man, I want Easter be the best it's ever been. And because Easter is coming, I want to love Toccoa. And so as you put these bracelets on, I mean, they're there to help remind us, like what's going on in our life and where our priorities are. And that's kind of where I want to go with our message today. As you Turn to Galatians 2.

20. As we've been walking through the gospel, we've talked about the cause that God loves us. We've talked about the problem that sin leads to death. We've talked about the solution that Jesus Christ, the son of God, died and was raised again. And then we talked about how we receive that message that we confess and we believe and we repent and we're saved.

And we talked about, well, what happens when you're saved? Well, he gives us the Holy Spirit and the Spirit changes us. He regenerates us, he rebirths us. That's good news because none of it depends on me. None of it depends on what I do or what I don't do.

It totally depends on him. I mean, think about Peter. If Peter would have been so focused on his works and his perfection, he ought to be the stereotype and the example of how God's grace is so good that even the man who denied knowing Jesus three times was given ministry. That's good news, is it not? I want you to imagine for a moment you were not born where you were born, that your parents were not your parents.

In fact, I want you to imagine you weren't even born in America, but in fact, you were born in a poverty stricken area of this world and you weren't born in a Christian home. You weren't born in a nation that practiced Christianity, but in fact, you were born into a home that had satanic practices instead. I want you to imagine that you're a little boy living in this household where the mom and the dad are sacrificing animals and drinking blood. It's pretty grotesque, is it not, that if I refuse to participate that my parents beat me. I want you to imagine growing up that way and maybe around age 15, your parents sent you to America to New York, specifically, a place of opportunity, a place for a fresh start.

But rather than taking advantage of that fresh start and leaving the pain and abuse behind, you actually became the abuser. There was such a young man who grew up in Puerto Rico and was sent to live with his brother in New York. And when he got there in the 50s and 60s, gangs began to rise up. And the purpose of these gangs wasn't just to pillage and to steal. The purpose of these gangs was territorial.

In fact, it's believed that this man stabbed and killed at least 16 people. He moved quickly from the age 15 to 19 to not just being in the gang, but to be a warlord of the gang. And then he moved from being a warlord to actually the president over the gang, giving the orders. And in his own admission, he had so much pain and so much heartache that it made him feel good to make other people hurt. There's an old saying that says hurting people hurt people.

Well, this is the extreme of that, to relish in the pain that other people have. But one day at age 19, he's walking down the street and he encounters a man who a little bit different. And this man comes boldly up to him and begins to tell him about something different. He begins to talk to him about love and about a man named Jesus. And this young 19 year old gang lord looked at him and said, I will cut you to pieces.

Listen to what this man says. In response, he said, you could cut me into a thousand pieces and lay them out on the street and every piece will still love you. That young man was confused. He didn't know what to think because this man showed no fear when he was threatened. Strength for him led to survival and power and threats led to fear and control.

But this man came with the security of love, to the point that he would say, go ahead, cut me up to a thousand pieces and it will declare the love that Christ has for you. Today I want to talk to us in this last message of the Gospel and I just want to get face to face with you and ask you this question. Are you tired of living Christianity in a nominal sense? At the bare minimum, are you ready to live resurrection life? I think for many of us in this room, we are so stuck on did I do right, Did I do wrong?

Am I getting by? Is this right or is this wrong? You could go on the Internet and find a justification for any sin in your life and people will use the Bible to do it.

Just this week I heard one pastor defend transgenderism with the book Of Ruth you can find. I know it doesn't make sense to us, but I'm telling you, we live in a world where we're just getting by. I just want to make sure I'm a good person. One of Steve Payson's favorite words is moralistic therapeutic deism. Matt Chandler wrote about it in his book called Explicit Gospel, but it actually comes from another book called Soul Searching, where Christian Smith and Melinda Denton kind of unpack what it means to live.

What is a false gospel called moralistic therapeutic deism. Let me describe it to you. This is the view of Christianity where God kind of spun the world into motion and stepped away.

And that when I'm in trouble, God comes and comes to my rescue. But my goal in life is just to be a little bit better than somebody else. And that, my goodness, is what's going to get me to heaven. In fact, they unpack five things that define moralistic therapeutic deism. And I'm going to call it at the most nominal, Christianity, that God exists, who created and ordered, and he watches over the world.

How many Marvel fans are in the room? Have you watched the series? What if there's a character called the Watcher, and the Watcher's goal is just to watch over the universe, but he can't interact with it? There's no difference. Number two, if I believe in moralistic therapeutic deism, God wants people to be gooder and nicer, fairer to each other, as taught in the Bible and practiced in religion.

Number three, the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about myself. So when I'm feeling bad about myself, I go to God and I let God pat me on the back so I can feel a little bit gooder about some of the things I've done. Number four, God does not need to be particularly involved in somebody's life, except when there's a problem. How many of you know that? Five years ago I was in a play.

I was in the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It's my only play. It'll be my only play. But I was Father Christmas and somebody came up to me and tried to call me Santa Claus. And I said, stop right there.

I'm not an overweight man trying to squeeze my bike side down a chimney.

That's how we see God. God, I'm hurting. Help me. Help me. Help me, help me.

Oh, I feel a little bit better. Let me just keep on going, living my life. Number five, if you believe moralistic therapeutic deism, you know what you think Good people go to heaven. How could God be so mean to send somebody to hell? I think that's why Catholics came up with Purgatory, because they wanted to feel better about their loved ones dying in sin and going to hell.

They came up with purgatory so they'd feel like, well, maybe they got a second chance in the afterlife. You want to rest your security of Christ in a place called Purgatory and keep living the way you're living so that you can get another second chance. Jesus Christ came to this earth and died a horrible, awful death for your sin and my sin. And we still think that my goal in life is just to be a little bit better than somebody else. The truth today is, folks, we Resurrection life comes from his life.

Resurrection life does not come from me walking around in my sin, chained and shackled to death. It comes that I have been set free. Isaiah 40, verse 31 says that we would soar on wings like eagles. We're not a wet bird. He said we would run and not grow faint.

How many of you, 60 and older, would like to run again?

I'm getting that way myself. And walk and not grow weary like we accept nominal Christianity. I just need to get by and feel a little bit better about myself today rather than living in the power of the Holy Spirit who indwells me. There's a power plant living inside of me. There's a power plant living inside of you.

If you put your faith and trust in Christ. Why are you turning the light off?

Let's talk about resurrection living today. Go ahead and stand with me as we read Galatians 2, verse number 20. And this is. Let me just go ahead and tell you, this is one of those dashboard note card verses. I have been crucified with Christ and it's no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me.

And the life I now live. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Father, be with us as we read and we study your word. Let it change us, motivate us, move us today. In Jesus name, Amen.

My question to you today is this. Are you satisfied with the nominal Christian life that you're living? Let me pose this to you. We started this service about 30 minutes ago. 30, 35 minutes ago.

I'm only going to preach an hour and a half today.

If everything we did from that time till now is in our own strength, it's worthless. Where's the power of God? Where's the power of the Holy Spirit? Why waste your Time. You know what I think?

Sometimes Christianity is like weekend jail. You ever know anybody go to weekend jail? They go check in on Friday night, they check out on Sunday night, and they go to work. Some of you feel like you're in jail being in this room.

My gosh. Can we as Christians come in and expect the Holy Spirit to grab ahold of us and move people of God? Did you pray this morning that God would show up? Did you pray this morning that somebody might get saved this morning? Did you pray that God might draw a lost, broken, hurting person into this room?

Or are you still getting over the drunk from the bar last night and came in here half drunk, nowhere in your senses, because you won't let go of the sin that trapped and enslaved your life? When are you going to declare death to that which kills you? When are you going to get the death certificate? Because you're going to die. You either die to sin or you die because of sin.

And what this passage is teaching us today is this. We need to die in him. We need to die in him. I don't know where I am in these notes. I'm going to throw them in the back wall.

Let me give you this one. Sanctification. That's a big word. God's not done with you. When you walk an aisle and bend a knee and say, I'm saved.

I signed a membership card. Well, great for you. You know why people do that? Because they need a group of people to do this. Come on, just pat me on the back.

I'm getting by. I'm doing the best I can. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. If you. Your Christian life is about you just getting by.

You've missed what resurrection life means. It's not about you getting by. It's about you thriving in the power of God. Sanctification is the work of God by the Holy Spirit. After regeneration, it took God to change and save you, and now it takes him to sanctify you.

What does that mean? To transform and cause a believer to live a holy, separate life. First, Thessalonians 4, 3 says that it's God's will for us to be sanctified. What does that mean? I'm not like the world anymore.

And if I'm still living in the world and by the world's standards and by the world's processes and what the world expects of me, this is where my Christianity is. It's at a baseline. But don't you want to live resurrection life? Don't you want to live a life that's defined by the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, now lives inside of me. That gives me power for living.

It gives me conviction, it gives me direction. It fills me with the grace of God that I could look at a 19 year old boy on the street threatening to cut me up and say cut me up and the pieces of my body will cry out, I still love you. Is that you today? Is that you today? Because if I have been crucified, that's what it says.

I have been crucified. I need to die the right death. In fact, if you look at that verse, some scholars and some modern scholarship believe I have been crucified with Christ needs to be with verse 19. So listen to verse 19. For through the law I died that I might live to God.

Through the law I died. How? The only person who could die to the law was Jesus. He said in Matthew chapter 5:17, he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. Romans 8, chapter 17, Romans 8 3, 4 talked about how that the righteous requirement of the law was met in his death.

So when Christ died, he died for all. When Christ died. Listen folks, I died. Unless as Paul's arguing in chapter two, I keep going back to those works and doing those works because Jesus sacrifice wasn't enough. If you're here today and your whole idea of Christianity is to do good things and not do bad things, you are actually living a works based gospel.

Are you tired? You should be. Because you will never achieve righteousness in and of yourself.

But God. But God through the Holy Spirit has rebirthed me, regenerated me. Now that doesn't not mean that I'm not going to mess up. That doesn't mean that I'm not going to get discouraged. That doesn't mean I won't sometimes lose faith.

But what it means is I got a way to recharge my battery. Some of you ladies, you live on 5% on your battery.

You'll go plug it up and get a little charge on that. Get me another hour folks. I'm telling you, when you plug into Christ, he doesn't discharge you up to 100%. It's more, it's more than enough. We need to die the right death.

That word is in the perfect tense. It means it has been done. Unless. Unless I choose not to live it. Have you died the right death?

You look over at Romans 8:5 and following in verse 6 he says knowing this, that our old self was crucified in him. Same word in order that our body of Sin might be done away with, folks. We're dying to that body. It's gone. And for my middle school boys, y' all ready for this?

Romans 6, 7. For he who has died is freed from sin. You'll never forget that verse again. The next time somebody puts their hands up like this, just remember. For he who has died is freed from sin.

If I got teachers in the room, the next time your kids go, six, seven, you go, he who has died is freed from sin because he died the death we deserve. When you look at this word in Strong's Concordance, it says this sub note. The death of Christ on the cross has wrought. That's a big word. Brought about the extinction of our formal corruption by the death of Christ upon the cross.

I have become utterly estranged from my former habit of feeling and action. And so here's my question. Are you tired of trying to stop your sin and are you ready to die to it?

You're gonna wake up tomorrow and say, you know what? I'm gonna put that addiction away. You won't. I'm gonna stop that drinking. You won't.

I'm gonna stop that abuse. You won't. You'll stop that gossip. You won't. Until you die to your sin nature and take his death on as yours.

Are you ready to do that and to write that death certificate? The second key here. No longer I that live. We need to live a life that belongs to Christ. Notice I didn't say live a life as if it belonged to Christ.

That's metaphorical. This literally says, I belong to Jesus. How do I know that? First Corinthians 6, 19, 20. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you?

Can I meddle today? Some of you will get hot headed walking in this room if it wasn't sanctified, not singing the right songs, you're not reading out of the right translation. And inside your heart is like a tomb, as Jesus said, full of dead men's bones. You're more worried about this tabernacle than you are your temple.

Told you I'd meddle.

How can you live resurrected life if there's no room in the end?

Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, he says, for you have been bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body. When you look at that verse, he says, it's no longer I that live. The no longer is an adverb, not an adjective. I'm not living dead life. I'm not living life that ends.

I'm no longer living the old life. Some of you are. Like that girl that broke up with you, and you just can't let it go. You keep calling them, or maybe a boyfriend. I don't care what it is, one way or another, you just can't let the relationship go.

And you call up and say, I'm so sorry, will you go back out with me? That's the way we do our old life. We treat it like Weekend at Bernie's. We're dragging around this corpse around with us, sitting him at the table, driving him in the car. And that's the way we live.

We need to live a life that belongs to Jesus. Not only have I gotten the death certificate for my sin, I've got a new birth certificate. And he's my God. He's my King. Do I live that way, though?

Is Jesus my Lord? As we read in 2nd Corinthians 5:14 a few weeks ago, for the love of Christ controls us. Does it? Are you controlled by the love of Christ? Do you see that evidenced in your life having concluded this?

That one died for all, therefore all died? Have you died? And now, is he your Lord? I don't coronate him as my king. He already is my king.

It's just a matter of this. When will I bend the knee? If every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He's Lord? When am I going to do that? Am I going to do it?

Too late, folks. Listen, I'm preaching just the blunt, honest gospel to you right now. Is Jesus lord of your life? Now, I don't believe you've got to say, be my Lord and I'm saved. That's a work.

If you're going to humble yourself to the truth of the gospel, you've already made him. Lord, is that you today, number three? Christ lives in me. He don't live beside me. He's not my best friend.

He's not my genie in a box. He's not my excuse. He's not my boyfriend. He's not my French kiss.

He's my Lord.

I literally must exchange his life for mine. Do you love the smell of a new car? You know, y' all can go to Walmart right now and buy a little air freshener that says new car smell. It stinks.

And you know what happens after a few days? Your car starts smelling old again. You smell the dirt that's in your floorboard and you smell the leg sweat in your seats. Or if you have a middle school boy, you smell their shoes.

I remember when we were little, when the kids were little, they'd drop their sippy cups. Ain't nothing more disgusting than to find a weak old sippy cup rolled under a seat where the milk has kind of become solid. And I mean, it smells horrible. I think a few weeks ago, Micah spilled some milk at the house and sopped it up with a towel and threw it in the hamper and it ended up in the bottom. We're going through putting that in the washing machine.

Whoa. I mean, the smell smacked me right in the face, folks. You can't get rid of the stink in an old car no more than you can get rid of the smell of death in your old life. I must exchange my life for his. Some of you know, watchman, nee Chinese pastor who died a martyr's death, by the way, said this.

When we think of the Christian life as a changed life, that is not what it is. What God offers us is an exchanged life, a substituted life, and Christ is our substitute within. So I ask you, which life you living are you living down here in this nominal Christianity, just trying to get by, just trying to make sure everybody thinks I'm a good enough person. The key to life, the key to resurrection life is not self improvement. That stuff ebbs and flows with emotions and expectations.

If I die with Christ, I no longer live my old life and I give my life to Christ and he gives his life to me. John 15 talks about the vine and the branches, that if I'm not in the vine, I'm dead. If I'm not in the vine, I can't produce eternal godly works. If you think you're going to leave this world and stand before God and say, well, God, I was a pretty good person.

What the Bible says, if I have not submitted my life to Jesus Christ in faith and repentance and have been regenerated, I will go to hell separated from God. We don't like that kind of talk around here. Truth. And for those of us that are born again, we will stand before Christ at the bema seat and he will look at our works. And as Corinthians says, he will burn them.

He's going to test them with fire, and the only thing that's going to be left is things of eternal value. So, yes, hold the door open for some little old lady. But God's looking for you to exhibit the spirit of God in your life that produces other fruit of the Gospel and in Jesus Christ. I don't want to be a boy scout Christian, do you? Because to me, that's just getting by.

I'm a pretty good person. Not if I haven't exchanged my life for his. That's the challenge, and that's what drives us today. In fact, Tony Evans said this. This is the substitutionary life of Christ, which is key to the victorious Christian Living My identity in Christ must be the most important thing about me.

Everything else must be secondary. So let me talk about your temple a minute. How clean is your heart?

Have you let the Lord into every room in your life? Or is he the little Jesus, the little rubber Jesus that you find all over the place? Do you just kind of bring him out when you need him? Any of you ever go through a breakup where the person you were dating was, like, consuming all of your time? I did that.

I confess. Girl I dated in college, all of my time, all of my effort was to her. I stopped hanging around with my family, my friends, when I broke up with her or when we broke up. Let me be fair there. One of my buddies came to me and said, it's good to have the old you back.

And I'm like, what do you mean by that? And he said, well, because you were so consumed in her, everybody else didn't matter. Let me take and twist that into a principle here. Are you so connected with Christ that he's the number one who drives everything you do? Because if you're right with Christ, all those other relationships in your life will be right.

But if it's not, they won't. He must be the center of your life. So what secret places have you told Jesus no to come in? Is it that Saturday night gathering before you come to church on Sunday morning so you can pay penance before God and hopefully he'll receive that humility? And it's okay, buddy.

I know you did that last night. It's all right. You know what? If you truly come in repentance to the Lord, he said, yeah, and my son died for what you did last night when you were sitting there in that quiet room looking at that stuff, My son died for that. What if you invited Jesus to come sit in the chair next to you while you did it?

What if when you're at your gossip session down at the McDonald's having coffee, and you're ripping either your church leadership or a co worker to shred, why don't you ask Jesus to come sit at the seat next to you and ask him what he thinks? Kind of have a feeling he'd do this.

You know, I died for their sins and mistakes. And I also have died for the gossip that you're ensuing right now if and only if he's the center of my life. Point number four, the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith. Wait a minute. Flesh?

Yeah, because you're not gone yet till you leave this world. You're in your flesh. And we know that the flesh can do nothing to please God. But we know it only wants to please the self. But it says now.

Now own the new living. Now we have as a core value here to own our faith. Notice I didn't say own your life because you don't own your life. Who owns your life? Say it.

Jesus. I mean, if he really owns your life, you should be proud of it. Jesus owns my life because it's not yours. But you can own your faith. You can prioritize your faith.

You can make it front and Center. Romans 6:11 says, Even so, consider yourself dead to sin, but alive to God in Jesus Christ. What can I derive from that? That if I'm still practicing sin, I can't be alive to Jesus Christ. Jesus said, you cannot serve God and mammon.

There is no gray area in the Christian life. You either is living for him or you is not.

Have you owned your living? What does it look like to own this living one? I'm dying to sin. I'm dying to self justification. I'm exchanging my life for Christ.

I'm seeking to look like Jesus. I'm denying my flesh. I refuse to please people in my own righteousness. And and I'm committed to obedience and sacrifice. What does it look like to live the resurrection life?

I walk by faith and not by sight. Therefore, as I've received Christ Jesus, so I walk in him now. Listen to some of the descriptors. Being firmly rooted, built up in him, established in faith just as I and you and they have been instructed and overflowing with gratitude. Is faith and walking in Christ your priority?

Do you want to keep living here? I mean, you can choose this. Well, I got to heaven by the skin of my teeth. I want to live up here. No holds bar no fear.

What can man take from me but my life? That my Lord will then turn around and raise me back from the dead? Do I live with that confidence? Last point there. The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me three blanks.

Love him back. You want to discover resurrection living? Love him back. He loved you so much he gave. We started this by talking about for God.

So what loved the world even when the world didn't love him. Even when the world was rejecting him, even the world was despising Him. Even when the world nailed the nails in his hand and hung him on a cross. He loved the world so much. He gave.

He gave because he loved and he gave. I can trust him no matter what the reason. Today some of us are living nominally and not abundantly. It's not really that. It's really that you just don't trust God.

You don't trust him with your old habits, your old ways. You don't trust him with a new path and a new call. You. You don't trust him enough to forsake dangerous relationships and make new ones. You don't trust him enough to learn more about Him.

You don't trust him enough to commit to serving and sacrificing, giving and tithing, being in church. You just don't trust him enough. I take him at his word.

Do you? Do you take him at his word? Fred shared with us this week as we were talking about some of the nuances of this message, he said, he said, hey, look at Warren Wierspie. I think that's one of your favorites, right? Right, Fred, listen to what he said.

And I want you to think about nominal to resurrected life. Too many Christians are betweeners. They live between Egypt and Canaan, saved but never satisfied, wanting to go back to Egypt. Or they live between Good Friday and Easter, believing in the cross but never entering the power and the glory of the Resurrection. Are you living the nominal Christian life or are you living the resurrected life?

You know where it begins. I want you to look at me. It starts with gratitude.

The way I don't show gratitude to Christ is I keep going back to the very things he died for.

But when I show gratitude, it produces worship.

It produces sacrifice. I beseech ye therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your life a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is our reasonable act of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. So that I can know the will of God, that which is good and pleasing, until I die to my sin, exchange life with his and begin to live in this place where I love him back. I cannot experience resurrection life.

This gospel is such good news because we are changed. Has he changed your life? Are you a new Christian creation in Christ? How can you and I today live wholly different? Called to be holy like Christ as our Lord changed in exchanging my life, that young 19 year old man, his name was Nicky Cruz.

And that night when he encountered David Wilkerson on the street and told David, you could cut me. David told him, you could cut me up into a thousand pieces and lay them in the street. Every piece will still love you. Nikki's own words. He said, that did damage to me, good damage in my brain, in my heart.

He said, I began to question, and for two weeks, I could not stop thinking about that love. And then he says, Nicky and his gang, which was at the time the MAU Maus gang of New York, one of the most horrible gangs ever, they showed up at one of the rallies, and one by one, they gave their life to Jesus. He said it was the crucifixion, the death on the cross, that grabbed Nicky's heart. He said, I was choked up with pain and my eyes were filling with tears. And I came to know.

And more and more kept coming as I was fighting and fighting. But then I finally surrendered. I let Jesus take me, hug me, lay my head on his chest. I could never do that with his mom or his dad. And he said to Jesus, I'm sorry.

Forgive me. And he said, for the first time in my life in 19 years, I told somebody I loved them. The love Nikki got in return changed his life. He said, when I opened my eyes, I got a new heart. I had been born again.

And I knew that I was a child of God. And it did change everything. He was no longer who he used to be. The hatred was replaced, the violence was broken. His identity died, and Christ began to live in him.

And today, in the upper 80s, this man still preaches the purity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He exchanged lives with Christ, and it made all the difference. Not nominal living, but resurrection life. Many of you are familiar with Andrew Murray. He said this in talking about the people who came to the tomb to see it empty.

He said, what is the difference between a dead Christ who the women went to anoint, and a living Christ? He said, a dead Christ I must do everything for, but a living Christ does everything for me. Have you exchanged your life for his? As we get ready to open this altar, you know this is just a place of prayer. If you need counseling.

Fred, Randy and myself, Kevin, we're down here. Come talk to us. We want to talk to you. We've got a QR code you can scan. If you feel weird or feel intimidated about coming down to an altar, scan it so we can talk to you.

I want to ask you five questions to reflect about. Number one, do you need to sign the death certificate today to your sin and decide you know what sin will no longer rule over me. What things in your life compete for Christ being priority? Are you obeying him? How are you?

He said, if you love me, you will keep my commands. Are there areas inside that are unholy, that are uncleansed, that you've said, jesus, you can't come here. What if today you said, you know what, the door's open, Bring in the shop vac and suck out every cobweb, every piece of dust. Is Christ your number one? Because then when we step into resurrection living, we'll discover joy, passion, integrity, grace, purpose.

And all of this points back to Romans 5:1 that we can then have peace with our God. Father, as we go into this time of prayer and decision, they don't need me to tell them what to do. Lord, you lead them. Let your spirit speak to them. Show them what they need to do in their life.

And it may be more than just coming down to an altar and praying. Lord, somebody today may need to come down here and give their life to Jesus. Do what only you can do. Draw by your spirit, lead by your spirit, reveal by your spirit, change by your spirit, saved by your spirit, and show us, Lord, what we can do. In Jesus name, amen.