There is much to teach from the Bible, so why am I belaboring Salvation for weeks? Because most people will be lost. Wide is the gate many will walk through to destruction, but narrow is the way, and few will find it. I don't want you or those you love to be lost. Before we start with the Gospel memes, let's look at the brief list of lost people going through the wide gate.

• The atheists who refuse to thank God and are given over to a reprobate mind.
• People who fail to love the truth to be saved.
• Other religions, ideologies, and philosophies that worship idols of their creation.
• The influencers who don't like the terms of Salvation, like the young rich ruler who walked away sorrowfully because he had too much to lay down.
• The called-out ones are no longer available but make excuses and ask to be excused from what God commands, like the servants of the wedding feast and those who wanted to follow Jesus but wanted to do something else first.
• The hearers and not-doers deceive themselves like the crowd banging on the door to be let in, but Jesus doesn't know them as His disciples.
• People who were motivated by everything but love and are nothing but a clanging cymbal.
• The ministers who have a form of holiness conformed to this world but are not transformed by the renewing of their minds to the Word of God. They, too, beat on the door to be let in, but Jesus doesn't know them as His disciples even when they forged His name to do their will and ministry.

Let's go with a summary from the past several weeks before going further. Leaving Egypt and crossing the Red Sea is a shadow of being born-again and water-baptized. The wilderness is renewing the mind: thoughts, emotions, and will. And entering the promised land is entering the kingdom of God, which is the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, the peace of God beyond understanding, and the joy of the Lord, which is our strength to overcome the giants of sin in our life. Heaven and eternal life are waiting for the overcomer by the blood of the lamb, our testimony in the faithfulness of God, and loving not our life unto death but losing it for Christ's sake.

Heaven will not be Heaven if the flesh goes with us. The flesh will not inherit the kingdom of God. Iniquity would take over if we could take our choice of sin into the promised land. Let's look at a few case studies from scripture that were recorded for us in the New Covenant to glean from.

The first case is where eight people were saved from the destruction of a world where every thought was fused with violence. Noah was considered a righteous preacher. However, as soon as the Ark takes dock, Noah carries out the longest premeditated sin. After giving sacrifices to God, Noah plants a vineyard, gets drunk in his tent, and is naked. I'm unsure why the Bible details the nakedness, but it has something to do with Noah's son Ham. Both bring the old world into the new world.

The second case of leaving the flesh behind before entering the promised land is the story of Abraham and Lot. Abraham interceded to have Lot and his family delivered from Sodom & Gomora to restart the cities from within a cave. Lot and his two daughters escaped the destruction of four cities just to start the cities over with incest. Lot's daughters knew that God once destroyed the world with water to cleanse it for a new beginning. And Lot's daughters knew that God would destroy the world again with a more potent cleansing agent of fire. Maybe Lot's daughters thought the world was destroyed, and it was up to them to repopulate the new world. Whatever they were thinking, they birthed a new Sodom and Gomorrah. But that is what sin does to us: it causes us to think too highly of ourselves.

Knowing God in the wilderness, the womb, 2^nd trimester

The second trimester is about renewing the mind that we are the head and not the tail in Christ. We must not be conformed to the world we left behind but transformed by the renewal of our minds. God intended Israel to renew their mind in the wilderness before inheriting the promised land. At the last moment, even Moses conformed to the flesh in striking the rock rather than speaking to the rock.

In the wilderness, the second trimester of the new birth, we learn what it means to have Jesus as Lord and Savior for real and not just a confession we made once after walking down an aisle. Jesus is the Manna from heaven. Have our appetites changed? Do we hunger for every word from the mouth of God more than the bread that molds with the passing of time

Jesus is the living water that turns bitter water into drinking water. What do we thirst for when things are bitter in our life? Do we thirst for righteousness? Or do we complain about drinking from the cup of the word? Sweet in our mouth but bitter in our stomach. But after following Jesus, the bitterness is drinkable. Can you drink from the cup of bitterness of the Lord?

In the wilderness, Israel was given work to do. They were to carry the Ark of Covenant everywhere they went. And we, as Christians, are as well. Inside the Ark were God's commands now written on our hearts. The Manna from heaven was also in the Ark and the Christian's heart. And so is the rod of authority. Who is our authority? Who do we belong to? Who is our owner? If the answer is, Jesus is my Lord and my God. Then, we are under the correct authority, which shows when we speak to the mountain to be moved to the sea. The rod of authority is in our mouths when we obey Christ Jesus.