Easter: The Power of His Resurrection

John 20: 1 - 18

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SPEAKER_04 0:18

Would you now stand for the reading of God's Word? Our passage is John chapter 20, beginning at verse 1. That's page 962 in your Red Pew Bibles. If you didn't bring a Bible of your own, should be a red Bible laid around somewhere like this, if you want to hunt one of those up. And again, turn to page 962. It is John chapter 20, beginning of verse 1. We'd like for everyone to be able to see the passage as it's being preached.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him. So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there, but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus' head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally, the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went inside. He saw and believed. They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to where they were staying. Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, Woman, why are you crying? They have taken my Lord away, she said, and I don't know where they have put him. At this she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for? Thinking he was the gardener, she said, Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him. Jesus said to her, Mary, she turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, Raboni, which means teacher. Jesus said, Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news, I have seen the Lord, and she told them that he had said these things to her, the word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_04 3:00

Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Would you pray with me as we come to God's word? Lord Jesus, risen, Lord Jesus. We thank you and praise you this morning that we don't come together simply to rehearse a memory, but rather we are even now through your word encountering you, the risen Christ, who after you're resurrected, ascended to the right hand of the Father, and you are seated as King in this very moment at the right hand of the Father. Would you now send your Spirit this morning into each one of our hearts? Lord, that you would speak to us exactly what we need to hear from you this morning. That you would give us hope. That you would break the power of everything that holds us and enslaves us and entangles us this morning. Lord, set us free by the power of your resurrection. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So a question to think about this morning for our young people, but really for all of us. Have you ever had someone tell you some news, some incredible news, something that's happened or something that that is uh is gonna happen, somebody tell you some news and you thought to yourself, that's too good to be true. There's no way. There's no way that's true. So imagine this. Imagine tomorrow in the mail, you get a letter, and in that letter, you read that you have a relative you knew nothing about that has died, and they were incredibly wealthy and they had no heirs, and they have left their entire estate, their entire inheritance to you, and all you need to do is to come and claim that inheritance. What would you think if tomorrow you open a letter like that? I think for most of us, we would probably think in that moment, yeah, right. Come on. I know how this goes, right? I've been scammed before. I mean, we we we we are used to disappointments in life. And in fact, that's part of kind of what you collect as you get older in life, as you go through life. You know, you you you encounter enough hurt, you encounter enough disappointment in life, it's just hard to get excited anymore. It's hard to get worked up, it's hard to hope again, right? And so, because we're kind of wise to the world when we encounter things like that of great news, we're cynical, we're skeptical. But if you did receive a letter like that, even though everything in you is probably thinking, there is no way, you might have an instinct to just wad it up and throw it in the trash. But don't you think you would be thinking, even if you did throw it in the trash, don't you think you'd be sitting there thinking, but what if? What if it's true? I mean, something like that, the implications are so big, don't you think it's worth investigating? Don't you think it's worth, don't you think you would be sitting there saying, you know, I know it's not true, but if it were, I maybe better look into this a little bit. I I better collect a little evidence. Maybe I want to reach out, maybe I want to study this, maybe I want to ask some questions, maybe I want to get out and look at the family tree and make sure, is there a connection here in any way? You know, it would lead us, because the stakes are so big, it would lead us to investigate, to say, could this really be true? That's kind of what the resurrection is like. You know, as believers and as especially believers here in the Bible Belt, especially in America, which, you know, we we live, we're so blessed to live in a culture and a society and a country where we enjoy incredible security, I mean, really unprecedented security, if you compare this with the history of the world. And and even beyond that, the the health care that we have access to, I mean, we all have our health problems, right? And we we got things we're dealing with, and we could all bring our prescription medications and pile them up here in the middle of the room, and they'd be pretty high. But it it's pretty incredible that there's a general sense that, like, even if something happens, you know, I got I got doctors, I got uh I got opportunities out there and everything. We we live in an incredible day of affluence. And so for us, the resurrection is often really fuzzy for us. You know, as we think about the work of Jesus, the cross makes a lot of sense to us, right? Okay, well, Jesus came and he died for our sin, and I deserve that. That's what we celebrated Friday. He was paying for my sin on the cross. He was taking my place. I think that often for us connects a lot easier than when we think about resurrection. Because the cross, it's easy for us to think, yeah, that's like a you know, the spiritual thing, I get forgiveness of my sin. But then whenever we move to thinking about the resurrection, this really physical thing, sometimes it's a little fuzzy. Like, what is the significance of that? I mean, is it really all that important that really this happened, that he raised from the grave in the body? Does that really matter? What are the implications for that, right? I think so often for us, it's a little fuzzy, and we think, uh, what what what does this mean? What does it mean for us? The implications as they are fleshed out in the New Testament are absolutely astounding. And I think so often the inheritance here that is ours by way of resurrection is so big that we ought to look into the evidence. We ought to take a look and say, wait a minute, if that's true, then what does it mean for my life? How does it impact my life? How does it impact me as I go to school to work tomorrow, as I go to school tomorrow? What does it actually mean for my life? Here's what we'll see as we look at this passage this morning. Believing and hoping in resurrection empowers us. It brings a power into our life. It empowers us to live lives of courageous hope. Courageous hope, free from the fears and the allure of the things of this world. That's what we'll see in our passage. So let's jump in together. You know, it's uh it's it's pretty astounding whenever you come to the New Testament just how central and necessary the resurrection, the bodily resurrection of Jesus really was. I mean, for instance, when you look at the book of Acts, and I challenge you to go do this. Go look at the book of Acts. One of the cool things about the book of Acts is that the book of Acts is primarily preaching. Did you ever think about that? Like it records like the sermons of the apostles. Like, you know, they're going around and they're going to new cities and to new places. Sometimes they're arrested, they're standing before a king, and it like records their whole sermon. And so we get a window into, oh, so what did they preach on? Well, what was the emphasis in their preaching? And what is stunning in the book of Acts is the centrality of the resurrection. I mean, it was at the heart. I mean, they they would use that thing, that thing meaning resurrection, to press it upon their hearers to say, listen, he got up, he was raised, and we are witnesses. That's how they described themselves, the apostles. That's how they actually saw their calling in life, that we are called to bear eyewitness testimony to the resurrection. That's who we are. We are going around and we are telling the fact that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. You know, in the ancient world, there were countless people who were crucified. I mean, it was it was like this Roman instrument of humbling and humiliating their enemies. And so they were all the time crucifying people, right? And so the fact that there was a crucifixion is not utterly unique. What is utterly unique is that this one person who happened to be crucified was raised from the dead. That didn't happen with anybody else. And the apostles went about saying, Because he was raised, you better listen to this. Because he was raised, you gotta deal with this. In fact, every human being must deal with him because he was raised. The apostle Paul agrees with that. The apostle Paul uh also so much of a focus on the resurrection, but there's this incredible place in 1 Corinthians 15. I read a portion of it in our call to worship this morning, but he says something crazy as he's getting to the end, he's closing the book of 1 Corinthians, he's writing to a church, and he starts to work out the implication of the resurrection, the bodily resurrection. And he says, listen, if if if Jesus was not raised in the body, resurrection, then we're not going to be raised. So for Paul, those are connected to each other. In fact, there's a there's a tie between the two. There's a guarantee when you look at Jesus' resurrection, it's a guarantee for us our future resurrection is coming. And Paul says, if he wasn't raised, then you're not going to be raised. And if Christ wasn't raised, then our preaching, my preaching is useless. Right? And if the dead are not raised, you're still in your sin. You see, he's just putting the resurrection just at the heart. Like everything hangs on this. That's a huge thing to say. If he was not raised, you are still in your sin. And then he goes on to say, if we're not raised, then we ought to just go get loaded. We ought to just go live for this world. We ought to do what the world is constantly inviting us to do and just live for now. If there's no resurrection, then there's no future hope. And none of this matters at all. But of course, his point is he was raised. And we've seen it. And Paul goes on to say, not only did I see him and encounter him, and he goes through and talks about all of the encounters, the eyewitness encounters with the risen Jesus. And Paul goes on to say, at one point, 500 followers of Jesus saw him at the same time. Right? So, you know, if somebody says, I saw something, maybe this happened in your life, you know, hey, I saw this happen the other day, and it sounds outrageous, and you say, Okay, sure. But if you got two people who saw it at the same time, you say, that's interesting. But if you got 500 people that saw something at the same time, and they're all still living, you got yourself a resurrection. And that's what Paul was saying. You know, there was this uh in 1996, there was this New Testament scholar named Richard Baucom, and he wrote a book called Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. And it was a really important book because what the argument that he's making there, and again, he's a New Testament scholar, the argument that he's making is that the gospels are really at their heart eyewitness testimony. And he goes all it, he goes into it in all of these ways, showing the ways that they write, the ways that they give you detail, the ways that they give you specific names of specific people, and they'll often list their parents and they'll list where they live and all of these things. And he he's he's drawing out the gospels and he's saying, listen, this is eyewitness testimony. That's what it looks like. I mean, you can go out and you can, there's actually a field of studying. What what what determines if a piece of literature is actually accurate and it was uh it was uh written at that time. There's a whole there's a whole field in that where they study that. And and and the point that he's making is that whenever we come to the gospels, they have the un the unmistakable uh uh characteristics of eyewitness testimony. This happened. That's what they want us to see, and they're written by the people that saw it. So as we come to this passage from from John, John is saying, listen, I saw this. Here's how it happened, and the ways in which they give you the detail is is a way of proving it, of saying, listen, here's what it saw. I mean, one of the things that that we notice we see our passage today is that just the fact that the the apostles were not expecting this. You see that throughout the passage here. You know, they're they're not sitting there thinking, maybe, maybe he's gonna rise up from the grave. Maybe there's there's maybe we we uh maybe there's some other part to this. They weren't thinking any of that. They were crushed, they were hopeless. Mary Magdalene comes to the grave early in the morning, not looking for an empty tomb, but to grieve. The way in which many people, whenever they lose someone so close to them, they just want to be close to that person, right? Because of their grief. She did not go looking for an empty tomb. The disciples were not gathered together thinking, all right, when's this gonna happen? Do y'all know when that resurrection's going on? They weren't thinking of that at all. They were crushed. They were like, what just happened? The one that we thought was the Messiah, we just saw the Rome. I mean, we thought he was gonna overthrow Rome, that he was gonna set God's people free, and then we just watch the powerful Roman Empire drive spikes into his hand. Imagine how crushed you would be. And that's where they were. I mean, they they did not expect this at all, which is this real evidence. This happened. This was their real experience. So Mary here goes to the tomb, she's at the tomb, she's grieving, she's heartbroken, and then she sees and finds that the tomb is empty, and she doesn't say, Oh, yeah, a resurrection. How can I forget? It's not what she says. She deduces in that moment the grave's been robbed. Somebody's taken his body. And so this that's like another twist in the knife for her. I mean, not only have I watched them crucify the most important person, the one who has changed my life, now they've stolen his body, right? So she's it, I mean, she's gotten even lower than she was before. She goes back to the disciples and says, they've taken him. Again, not resurrection, he's alive. No, they've taken his body. And so the disciples run. You know, Peter and John, they run. And I mean, just the detail here, the detail about who gets there first, and of course, Peter, uh, you know, John beats him there, but Peter, you know, true to his kind of nature, I mean, he there, just no hesitation. He's all the way in, right? John stops and he looks in, and it would have been a small opening, and he looks in and he's like, what's going on in here? And Peter just boom, right in there, right? But did you notice just this detail about the linens? Isn't that interesting? Look what he says in verse 3. He bent, uh, verse 5. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there, but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around his head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Three verses on the linens. Isn't that interesting? What what you know if someone was just writing a fable here, you wouldn't get that. Why do you get that? Because he saw it. He's describing it. And why did that stand out to them? Because they thought it had been robbed. They thought someone had taken the body. And if you're stealing a body, what would you not do with a body that had been wrapped heavily with linens? You wouldn't sit there and unwrap it, right? The linens were there, and there was no body. And the linens are lying there, not in a pile as if someone had gone to the trouble of unwrapping. You know, you unwrap it, you're in a hurry, you're you're robbing a tomb here, and you throw them all in a pile. No, they were almost as if the body within them were gone, just dropped. And the sh the cloth that was around his head, as he describes here, separate, folded. Right? This so John's giving us this detail because he's sitting there thinking they've stolen his body, but why? But why are Are the linens there? Why are they separate? Why are they not in a pile? Why are they even here? What's going on? Right? He's walking us through his own wrestling with the details that he's observing there. And even more, Mary becomes the first eyewitness to the resurrection. Isn't that fascinating in the passage here? Mary, Mary Magdalene, whom Jesus had delivered from seven demons, who was utterly devoted to Jesus, who had been one of the few that actually remained at the crucifixion to the very end, who, whenever Jesus has set her free, literally had given him her whole heart. Right? And here she is grieving early at the tomb. And she is the first person to encounter the risen Christ. And it's a powerful encounter, is it not? Where Jesus didn't just say, hey, it's me, right? He engages her. He draws her out. You know, what's wrong? Woman, why are you weeping? And then just the word that changes everything, Mary. Just spoke her name. It's a powerful encounter. But then what does he say to her? Go and tell. You're going to be the first evangelist. You're going to be the first eyewitness to my resurrection. Go back and tell the disciples. And she runs off and does that very thing. Now, here's one of the fascinating things about the New Testament world. If you were going to build a case that a resurrection had happened, you would not make the first eyewitness to be a woman in this day. The testimony of women in this day was not permitted in court. And yet, who does God choose to give testimony to his resurrection as the first? Mary. John and he tells us at the end of his gospel, you know, I write this so you may believe it happened. I'm an eyewitness. I've seen it. In 1 John, he says, I've seen him. I'm not talking to you about some philosophy or something that I heard. I am telling you about something I saw. And that was what was vital about the authority of the apostles. They were eyewitnesses. So why does that all matter? Because this happened. You see how unique that is to Christianity. You know, in every other religion of the world, in every other religion of the world, it's about a way of life. It's about a set of teaching. It's even about a set of things that you're supposed to believe. But the essence of Christianity is about something that has happened. It's news, it's a report. The heart of Christianity is not, here's what you should do. The heart of this very faith is, here's what God has done. You see how unique that is. So the center of our hope is not anything in us. The center of our hope is not even the degree to which we believe it. The center of our hope is not how am I doing with this? How am I performing? Am I getting it right? Do I know enough? Am I doing enough? That's not the heart of what makes us reconciled to God. The heart of what sets us free and brings us into the arms of God is what He Himself has done for us. That's the gospel. And it's at the heart of what John wants us to see here. He did it. He was raised in the body. Period. This happened. And if this man was raised, you got to deal with it. Everyone has to deal with it. Right? There are people who have come back to life after being dead. You know, Jesus raised in the book of John, Jesus raised Lazarus, a friend of his who had gotten deathly sick and had died. And Jesus raised him from the dead. But that was not resurrection, it was temporary. Lazarus died again. In fact, everyone else who's ever lived has died. Even the few that were raised from the dead, they were going to die again. This is wholly different, completely different. It is resurrection. You know, the Jews believed throughout the centuries, they believed that at the end of time, on the day of judgment, there would be a resurrection, a bodily physical resurrection, where everyone would be raised and stand before God for judgment and God would make all things new. They believed that. This is not resuscitation. This is resurrection. The foretaste of what's to come. Now, what is the implications for our life? What does it mean? Because that's what we got to ask. Okay, this happened. What does that mean for us? And there are many. I just want to highlight two. One, hope. The fact that Jesus was raised from the dead and resurrection in the body is the heart of our hope. It's new creation, it's about what is coming in the future. That's what Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 is at pains to show us. He calls the resurrection of Jesus the first fruits. And what are the first fruits? You know, if we're in an agrarian society, we'd know that right off. The first fruits are the first part of the harvest. And when that first fruit comes in, it is a foretaste of what's coming. It's a signal. You taste it and you're like, oh, wait, no, this one's going to be good this year. It's going to be good. Why? How do I know? I got the first fruits here. That's how he describes the resurrection of Jesus. It is the first fruits of our future resurrection. That whenever you look at the resurrection of Jesus, it's a picture of what's coming for all of those who are in Christ. That we are going to be raised. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15 that we read at the beginning, we will be changed. That means our hearts, our minds, our thinking, and our bodies. We're going to get new bodies. And we're going to reign with him in a new world. A new creation is coming. What makes you believe in something like that? The resurrection of Jesus. It was the foretaste. You know, it's interesting in this encounter with Mary. There's this little, you know, John's just dropping all kinds of little hints and little connections here in the passage. But when she sees Jesus, she doesn't recognize him. And that often happens. When they, uh, these disciples who live day in and day out with Jesus, when they encounter the risen Christ, sometimes they don't immediately recognize him. There is something about the resurrection body. It is, it is Jesus. He is recognizable. You can see the nail marks, but yet it's a different kind of thing. It's like a visitation from the future. This is this is a it's like a whole future world has broken into the present. So when she sees Jesus, she doesn't recognize him. She thinks he's the gardener. Now don't miss that connection that John wants you to see. The garden. This is the second Adam. You remember the first Adam and God's perfect, beautiful creation, right? That He created, but it fell. Adam fell. He turned against God. He, through His sin, led us all into the mess that we're in now. God's first creation is broken. And yet here we see the second Adam in the new garden, ushering in a new creation. That's what the resurrection of Jesus means. He is making all things new by virtue of the power of the resurrection. That is huge. As we walk through this life with our bodies breaking down, surrounded by the reality of death, you know, in our culture, we're kind of we're kind of obsessed right now of trying to delay death, trying to figure out a way to deny death and look younger and all of these things. I mean, it's just no matter how much we try to put death away from us, it's haunting us. Everywhere we go, it is the great fear because it is the great enemy. But you know what the resurrection of Jesus means? Death has been defeated. For those in union with Christ, death becomes like a portal to real life. And in sickness and broken bodies and broken relationships and broken world, a world torn by war. The resurrection of Jesus means all this is getting made new. It's going to be raised, the earth will be raised. And our future hope is a physical, renewed, embodied hope. Like everything we love about this world, only raised to newness of imperishable life. That's what the resurrection of Jesus means. Listen, the resurrection of Jesus gives us an indestructible hope as we walk through the brokenness of this world. As we face the fears of this world, as we face the threats of this world, resurrection kind of anchors you because you're like, this life, man, it's like a vapor. It's over in a second. But the resurrection of Jesus shows me there is a future world and life and body and everything that's coming, and it's going to last forever. So you know what I can do? I let go of this life. I let go of it. I don't have to hold on. You know, you want to take my life? Okay. All you do is bring me into fullness of life. That's the resurrection power of Jesus. And the second, first it means hope. Second, it means power. It means power. You know, it's not just future, but it is power now through the union that we have with Jesus in his resurrection. Power. You know, I don't think we, especially Presbyterians, think enough about power. Right? We think about thinking. Let me understand it, right? And sometimes we think that the Christian life is just about getting your theology right and then just hanging on till we die. We so rarely understand the power that is available for us. But but the New Testament talks about it. Paul talks about it. Paul actually prays for the Ephesian church. He says, you know what I'm praying for you? He actually, you know, tells us what he's praying. When he's praying for the Ephesians, what's he praying? Here's what he's praying. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened. Now that's an interesting little thing, right? I'm praying that, do your eyes have heart? Does your heart have eyes? Yeah, we see things with our heart, the affections of our heart. He's saying, I've I'm praying you know something that you don't know right now. What is that that he's praying for us to know? That you may know the hope to which he has called you. What's that hope? Resurrection, the riches of his glorious inheritance and his holy people in verse 19, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. Incomparably great power. What does incomparably mean? Like you can't compare it to any other power. You know, we live, we live in a world where everybody wants power, right? Everybody wants to rule the world, right? That's how it goes. We look around at the world, and there's these, there are people today who claim power, and there's people who have earthly power. But what Paul is praying that we would see is that there is a power in you that is beyond anything in this world. An incomparably great power. What is that power, Paul? What kind of power are you talking about? That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms. That's resurrection power. See what Paul's saying to us? The same power with which God raised the Son of God from the dead in new glorious life and exalted him to his right hand, that power is at work in you.

unknown 36:43

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 36:44

Paul's saying, you don't know it, but I'm praying you'll know it. Right? Man, what if we believe that? Look at the apostles in the book of Acts. I mean, man, these guys were afraid of their own shadow. Right? They were so weak, they were so afraid. And then you look at them in the book of Acts. What the heck happened to them, right? I mean, man, they're going, they're standing before kings. You know, you ever stood before a king? I haven't. You imagine what that'd be like? To stand before someone with incredible earthly power. I mean, my knees would be knocking. I mean, if I got pulled over by a cop, I'd be scared, right? But here they are standing before kings and boldly declaring the kingship of Jesus right to their face. You know what you do to a king and you say somebody else is king? You know what that means? It means you lose your head real quick. But their boldness, I mean, they were taking beatings and singing hymns. They were sitting in prison, shackles on their feet, and they were singing hymns of praise to God. Like, what happened to these guys? One answer: resurrection power. You see, Paul saying, I pray you just know that. You know, so often in life, we we we look at our circumstances, we look at our struggles, we look at the areas of our life where we're stuck, where we're like, it's just never gonna change. It's never gonna change. Or we we look at some situation in our life, maybe sometimes it's someone in our life that we long to come to know Jesus, and we just think, yeah, it's not gonna happen. This can't happen. Right? I'm powerless. You know, let's just hang on. I'm never gonna be any further than I am now. You know what resurrection power is? It is the power through which God gives life to our deadness. It's sanctification power. That that what that means is that by his power, you won't be the same next year as you are right now. That's what the Spirit does with resurrection power. He wants to raise. Anything that's dead, he wants to bring it to new life. Right? That we would be formed into Jesus. That's the power. But you know, it's so often in life we're like, there ain't no power here. So Christianity is just this kind of like believe the right things in your head and avoid the big sins and just hang on till you die. Right? And Paul says, the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, it's a matter of power. Do you know there's power in your life? Because it's yours, Paul says, I pray you'd know it. Now, the power is not in us. You know, sometimes as Christians, we're like, let me muster up some power, act like I'm powerful. The ironic thing about resurrection power is that it actually comes through our weakness. That's the upside down kind of thing about it. It's it's not our power. If if you're a Christian, you're like, all right, I'm I'm gonna power up here. And we're so right now, especially in our culture, right now, especially with politics, because politics is power, right? We think. We're so drawn to that right now. We're trying to find where is the power, and so we're thinking, ah, maybe, maybe politics, you know, maybe the voting booth is where the real power is. You know, it's that's not power, that's earthly power. This this power comes through our weakness. It is the power of love, self-giving, self-dying love, cross kind of power, right? It's there in us. What would happen if resurrection took more and more of a hold over your heart? What kind of fears would be defeated in your life? What kind of attachments and allurements of the world? I mean, that's our reality, right? We're we're constantly being sold something. Like, constantly, right? All around us, things are like, here, come over, come look at this, come experience this. You know, come over here. Here's fun, here's life. Hey, you need to get away. Go experience this or experience that. Get yourself a bucket list, right? We're we're being allured by these things. But resurrection power is saying, No, there's a future world that's coming. I'm living for that, I'm bearing witness to that. Let me just close with this. Have a few moments to discuss. Tim Keller says this if Jesus Christ is raised from the dead, then all your bad things will turn out for good. All the good things in your life can never be taken away, and the best are yet to come. Do you believe the best is yet to come? That's what this means. The best is yet to come. So you don't have to have it now. So let's stop there and we have a few moments to discuss or interact with this. We do this, if you're visiting here, we do this each week to kind of pause and just hear from how we're impacted by the passage in the scripture. It's a way of for us to be doers of the word, not just hearers of the word. And so, what's happening in you as you wrestle with resurrection and the implications and what does it mean for us? Let's hear from each other.

SPEAKER_02 42:42

Hi, so I don't have anything like profound question-wise, but I guess I'm just curious. Um, where did the word resurrection come from? I know sometimes you'll talk to us about like the Hebrew version of the words that we see in the Bible, and I always think that those are really cool and they bring like a new meaning to things. So I was wondering, is there a Hebrew word for resurrection that brings us a new perspective? Did the word resurrection exist before capital T, the resurrection, and what did it mean beforehand?

SPEAKER_04 43:10

Yeah, so that's actually I don't I don't know the answer to that question. That's a that's a good question. Um the concept is throughout the Old Testament. I mean, one one just one for instance is uh Ezekiel's vision of the Valley of Drybone, dry bones, you know, where he's seeing God's people and it's just it's just dead skeleton all over the desert floor as a picture of the deadness of God's people. And he's like, Can these bones live? And and he's like, only you know. And so he asks him to prophesy over them, to speak God's word over them, and God's spirit comes and they're raised to life. So that's So often in the Old Testament, it's those pictures of a coming into new life. It's even the Red Sea is seen as resurrection, like where they pass through and now they are coming into new life. And so there's so many images of it in the Old Testament, but I don't know the answer of the what is the Hebrew word for resurrection? That's a good question. Something to go research.

SPEAKER_03 44:26

Hey here. Nick. This is kind of a vague question, so you can do what you want with it. But I guess I've been thinking a lot about lately, like a lot of times when we talk about the cross, we attach it to our justification and like the legal uh like forgiveness aspect of it. Yep. But you kind of brought up the like the implications of the historical death and resurrection of Christ for our like growth in holiness. Yeah. And kind of the actual like us actually becoming righteous somehow comes out of the historical death and resurrection. I was wondering if you could like speak more into that.

SPEAKER_04 45:09

Yeah, so justification and sanctification, just those are biblical terms, so you should know what those are. Um justification refers to God's act of declaring us righteous when we're not. It's like a think courtroom, a court declaration. You go from having this status of sinner to where God confers on you the status, the standing, the record of righteous. Not just not guilty, but you are righteous. So it's the righteousness of Christ conferred upon us, right? So uh in Martin Luther's great um great statement of the Reformation, where he says we are simultaneously both sinners and just. That's what the gospel is. It's justification. But sanctification is the actual process by which God actually makes us holy. And it begins when we first come to Christ and it will continue until we meet him in resurrection and we're changed, right? So it's a lifelong process. It is a process. It is also a process that he leads. Now, here's the thing to see: those two are distinct. It's very important to see those as distinct. You so often in the Christian life, the greatest struggle we have is we base our justification on our sanctification. What I mean by that is we base our acceptance before God on how good are we doing. Like, if I've had a good week, I've had a lot of good quiet times, I've avoided those sins I'm trying so hard to avoid, then God accepts me right now. But if I've blown it big time, I feel like God's distanced himself or whatever. That's the tendency in the Christian life to base our justification, our acceptance on our sanctification. So understanding how those are distinct is very important, but what's also important is understanding how related they are. Okay. So our sanctification flows from our justification. It's the experience of acceptance that empowers our growth, our pursuing God, seeking God, seeking to obey Him, right? But also it flows in the other way in which if you believe yourself to be justified, but yet are not experiencing sanctification in your life, you really should question your justification. See how that works? Those they're inseparably connected. So the cross and resurrection of Jesus achieves both. It achieves our justification in a moment, and yet it is the power through which God works out the sanctification in our life. Is that yeah? Okay. Maybe one more. We're running a little late, and that food's gonna get cold.

SPEAKER_01 48:19

Yeah. Um, Hutch, you talked about new life uh after death for those who um put their trust in the Lord. Can you talk more about what that new life is and like what like you talked about like a bodily um like resurrection and like because I think yeah, there's something really exciting about a new life and a new earth, and I just want you to speak more towards that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:50

Yeah. So um I think this is one of the biggest challenges in American Christianity is understanding that our hope, our future hope, is physical. I think we just naturally think about the Christian life as being like a spiritual hope. And so after we die, our bodies just stay and rot here on the earth, and our spirits float up to heaven, and we're like ghosts free all of eternity. You know, we we sit around on clouds and we play harps and sing in a choir for all of eternity, which doesn't sound like heaven to me. I don't I don't want to sing in a choir for all of eternity, right? But you see, we weren't made to be disembodied spirits. Paul describes that as a temporary reality. When someone dies now, their spirit goes to be with the Lord in heaven while their body rots here on the earth. So we got it right there, okay? So when someone dies, their soul is with Jesus, when they die in Christ, in union with him, their soul is with the Lord. So that that is true. We're good there. The problem is that's a temporary arrangement. You know, and in Revelation, we get the picture of the throne room and all the saints who have died in the Lord, with the martyrs at the very front, and they're standing there and they're worshiping the Lord, right? But you know what they're saying? Not so glad we finally made it. You know what they're saying? How long? How long till we go back and you vindicate our blood? How long till you do this thing? How long until you fill the earth with the kingdom of God? How long until you take back what is yours? Because this creation is his. He doesn't retreat, right? The creation fell, and he doesn't be like, that was a heck of an experiment. Let's go get on the clouds. No, he's like, that's my creation, and I'm gonna make it new. And that is the great hope of the Bible. So in heaven, they're saying, win, win, let's do it. You've promised it, you it cannot fail. Jesus is gonna stand as a king on the renewed earth. Everybody's gonna be raised. So that's our future hope. And so it's so physical, right? It's it's and I mean we're we're made to be embodied. You know, Paul describes that state of being, my soul's with the Lord, body here. He describes that as being naked, unclothed, right? And he says, we long to be clothed with our heavenly body. That doesn't mean in heaven, that means like the realm of heaven come down to the earth. And that's where the Bible ends. The Bible ends not with us flying away on a spiritual spaceship to heaven and the earth blowing up behind us. You know how the revelation ends this thing? Heaven coming down to the earth like a bride, beautifully adorned for her husband. What is the marriage we're watching there? The marriage is the marriage of heaven and earth. Heaven is it's not just some place, you can't fly to it or get to it. Heaven is God's realm, the place where He visibly reigns. And so the separation is the whole problem of the Bible. The separation between heaven and earth, that's the problem. The great hope, and this is what resurrection is all about, is they're gonna be reunited. It's the it's the union of everything under Christ. And so that's the great hope that heaven and earth will be made one in the great resurrection of all things. So even creation's gonna be resurrected. So, like, we're how do we know? Well, the Bible would say, Well, look at that. You look at Jesus' resurrection, and it is the foretasting picture and the guarantee of what's coming. So let me close this in prayer. We're very late here. I kept going. Let's pray, Lord Jesus. We we worship you this morning. You've done it. You are the great champion who has run this race and has made it all the way to the other side, and that you have come back. You're standing before us and inviting us to yourself. Lord, I pray that by the power of Holy Spirit we would believe. And for those of us who do believe that our belief would get deeper and more real and more firm, we would believe it so deeply it would free us from this world. It would free us from fear, all of the fears that just enslave us, all the ways in which we would just get so drawn into living for this life now. Lord, set us free by your resurrection to be a people who are living, bearing witness to resurrection. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.