He Is Risen: The Map to Get You Home
First B Jackson
2024-03-31

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

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Good morning. Happy Easter. I grew up with the call and response where people would say, is risen, and then the congregation would say, he is risen indeed. So let's do that again. He is risen.

He is risen indeed. Okay. I'm gonna start off with some scripture this morning. Luke 24 verses one through eight. On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.

They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, and when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like night lightning stood beside them. In their fright, the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen.

Remember how he told you while he was still with you in Galilee, the son of man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified, and on the third day, be raised again. Then they remembered his words. Let's stand together and worship. I can hear you. Sounds good.

God sent his son. Because he lives I can face tomorrow because he lives all

Okay. Looks like everybody knows the drill. Have a seat. Welcome. Happy Easter, everybody.

So glad to have you all here today. We're gonna do a couple announcements, let you know what's going on. First of all, you should be really excited about this. The super exciting, happy, happy Good Times budgeting workshop is coming up. Me and a couple other folks are leading a workshop.

If you need help figuring out how to budget or figuring out how to get out of a mess, We wanna focus on getting people out of debt and then saving for retirement and do it in a calm but fun way. You can bring slippers, snacks, bring your spouse. And if you can't bring your seats and things, that'd be great. It's April sixteenth, twenty third, and thirtieth, six to 8PM. And please RSVP if you can.

If you forget and it's all of a sudden you get an urge that night you really need to come anyway, just come. It'll be great. But you can RSVP to that email address. I wanna see you at Awana. We have Awana Kids Club in here on Monday nights, but not tomorrow.

We'll have it back a week from tomorrow. We'll be back in here in this room. Next slide there. Blake is in the booth. He's helping me out here.

So, oh, volunteers for the connect hour. Between services, we have snacks down the hall and coffee and all kinds of other things. We always need volunteers so that way we don't burn people out. We just have a rotating schedule. And if you'd sign up down the hall, that'd be excellent for us.

There's a men's Bible study that meets down the hall on Thursdays at 11:55. Brad Yates has been leading that, and it's really excellent if you bring a lunch with you guys. It's a it's a super super low impact way to get to know people. If And you're a little bit late, that's fine. If you have to leave a little early, that's fine.

It's flexible. So just come when you can. That'd be great. Jackson Hole Men's Alliance, is gonna be moved to April 10 instead of this upcoming week. Usually, it's the first Wednesday, and we're just bumping it one week later because of spring break.

And I think that's it. Thank you all for being here. We really appreciate you. Love you. And we're gonna sing one more song.

Thanks to our volunteers for filling in. Give give them a round of applause for filling in for us today. They're doing a great job.

Yes. Please join us again in singing he lives.

I serve a risen savior he's in the world today I know that he is living whatever men may say I see his hand of mercy I hear his voice of cheer and when it's the time I need him he's always near he lives he lives Christ Jesus lives today he walks with me and talks with me along he is risen from the dead and he is lord every knee shall bow every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead and he is lord every knee shall bow every tongue confess

I'll get in trouble if I don't.

Here you go. You just press it.

It's time for offering. Let's pray for a little bit here. Lord Jesus, we thank you so much. Today is all about you. You rose from the dead, and you broke the curse for all of us.

We take a little bit of time here to take an offering and give you some of our gifts, and we ask that you'd use them to further your kingdom, Jesus. Amen.

Thank you, Judy. I called Judy the band in the first service, and I think it kind of got her excited. But if there's anything prettier in this service, it's not going be for me. If we haven't met, my name is Brad Yates. I have the terrifying privilege of serving as an elder here.

And so I am not Ray McDaniel, but happy Easter.

So

I have a question for you today. Have you ever been lost? And I mean, like, lost, lost. Like, you weren't you didn't even know you were lost until you were lost. Like, I don't know where I am, and I'm pretty sure that dog wants to eat me lost.

Because I grew up driving in an era before GPS and phones were omnipresent. And for my seventeenth birthday, my dad bought my friends and I tickets to go see Robert Earl Keene play at the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth. Now I grew up in Dallas, and you need to know that while Fort Worth is close to Dallas, Fort Worth is not Dallas. And so for 17 year old me to navigate home in the dark, I lost sight of what I needed to know. And we didn't have the Grand Teton in the middle of the Texas Prairie to serve as a bearing for wherever you were, and I really could have used it.

Because I got on what I thought was the correct highway. And we were having so much fun recounting the concert and the songs and the encore and all that sort of thing that into what should have been about a thirty minute drive, I didn't recognize we were lost until we were about 40 miles south of the Oklahoma border. Now at that point, it is late at night. So we pull out the old Mapsco map. And in case you guys don't know what this is, I bought one to show you.

But this map, this was the truth that I needed in order to get home. It showed me that I 35 W was actually different from I 35 E and was not, in fact, taking me towards Dallas, but towards my certain death in Oklahoma. Similarly, Paul today, he's pointing us to the map, to the basic truth that we need in order to get home. So our text for today, we're gonna look at first Corinthians fifteen fourteen through 20. I'll read it for you here today, and then we're gonna focus in on our key text, which I've already highlighted for you in yellow because I have a high opinion of you people.

Now if Christ has preached that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith also is in vain. Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God because we testified against God that he raised Christ whom he did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless. You are still in your sins. Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ only in this life, we are of all people most to be pitied. But the fact is Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.

So by way of context here, Paul is summarizing the entirety of his first letter to the church in Corinth. He's addressed a number of pressing issues that that need to be talked about in the church, and now he's ending basically with this, that if any of you do not believe that Christ was raised from the dead, you're not missing out on a big portion of Christianity. You are missing out on the entirety of Christian belief. This is so fundamental that you cannot go forth in the faith without it. Paul talks a lot about hope in his letters.

And what he's talking about here, and so what I'm gonna emphasize today, is the same idea. That when you read hope in the letters of the New Testament, you can think, hope in what? In the resurrection. Because our hope is not in the gospel of good works. It's not in following a good teacher.

Our hope is that Christ Jesus died for your sins, that he gave you peace with God when you could have never achieved it on your own, and that through him, we are reborn and will one day follow him in that resurrection. In contrast, I think our immediate culture tends to portray spirituality a little bit like a cruise ship buffet, where you can mix different cuisines and still end up with a satisfying meal. You can have caprese salad, and you can have sushi and guacamole and prime rib and mix it all together and probably be stuffed at what I call the squat and gobble. But, similarly, the culture wants you to listen to the teachings of Jesus in terms of loving your neighbor or of taking care of the poor, but the culture will hear nothing about the exclusive claims that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. That we can there is this pervasive lie that we can call ourselves Christians, that we can have just a little bit of Jesus added to our lives, that we can call ourselves Christians without making him lord of our lives and everything in it.

But Paul is saying here in our text today, and it's echoing the claims of Christ, that Jesus is the only way to God. And not just some vague idea of Jesus, but the specific belief that he lived a perfect life, and that he died the death that we deserve. And then on the third day, he was resurrected and now sits at the right hand of the throne of God. For the longest time, you guys need to know, I didn't understand this. I attended church, but I wanted to live life my way.

And I could never have articulated at the time, but there was this constant battle within me for who was going to be lord of my life. Was it going to be Brad, or was it going to be Jesus? And that conflict inside me, it was tearing me apart from the inside. Thankfully, I had men in my life who, like Paul in our text today, pointed me to the true hope because otherwise there is no telling what my life would be like today. So if that's you, if that sounds anything like you, please know that we are thankful that you are here, that you are trusting us with your time.

But we are not trying to chase you away. No. We are trying to point you to the truth so that you may be aware of it and can do something about it. You can experience the rebirth that's available in Jesus. Said another way, in the Christian faith, there are nonnegotiables.

A decent summarized list of these is the Nicene Creed, and you guys should read it this week. I would love to do a line by line study of it as a church one day. But for today, we're gonna focus on the foundation of the whole thing, on the resurrection. Because it is, after all, Easter Sunday, which is not about bunnies or candy or eggs or depending on where you're from, seersucker suits and pastel dresses. It is instead a celebration and a reminder that Christ is risen, and therefore, we are set free.

So our key text for today out of that passage, we're gonna look at verses seventeen and nineteen. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless. You are still in your sins. Verse 19, if we have hoped in Christ only for this life, we are of all people most to be pitied. Do you believe this to be true?

I mean, like, gut level operating from it, believe this to be true. Or do we affirm this to be true on Sundays, and then we live as functional atheists Monday through Saturday? There's a great quote from AW Tozier here that I think is appropriate, which is that we tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the church. Later on in the same book, he says, what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

Worship is pure or is base as the worshiper entertains either high or low thoughts of God. Church, what we're doing here today, what we try to do every day is to get a high view of God so that our our worship might be worthy of him. Paul is saying in our text today that if you need a foundation of the faith, if you need to get a bearing, if you need to look at a map in the midst of your spiritual Oklahoma, you can look to the resurrection. We can trust in it. And God has shown in the resurrection that he can be completely trusted.

We can trust in it, in his life, in his death, and his resurrection. Because if we dwell on this, this is the single most life changing fact that we will ever encounter. The worst day in history, in fact, becomes good when even though our God was crucified, when he was murdered unjustly, what has the power to make that good? What has the power to make it good Friday? It's the resurrection.

In contrast, many men throughout history have claimed to be divine leaders, that they had some unique inspiration from God or that they themselves were a messiah. But none of them could authenticate their message. All of them died old and prosperous, but they died. And we can go see where they buried. None of them were resurrected, but Jesus was.

And this is critically important for us for two primary reasons today that we're gonna look at. One, what it proves, and two, what it achieves. So our outline then from that, and we are a Baptist church, so I used alliteration, which is that we are the it's the providence of the resurrection, it's the purpose of the resurrection, and it's the people of the resurrection. It's basically what it authenticated, what it achieved, and what we are to do about it. So point one, the providence of the resurrection.

And I'm borrowing a term from the art world there, but it's it's that Jesus was authenticated. He said a lot of crazy stuff in his ministry, and I'm not gonna cover each of these. But this is just a quick survey that I threw together out of the gospels of things that Jesus said where he claimed to be God, where he claimed the resurrection, where he claimed to be able to forgive sins. Jesus said in John fourteen six, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.

Later in prophesying his own resurrection, Jesus said to them, destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it up. Later, he said, an evil and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except for the sign of Jonah. Guys, the sign of Jonah, that's resurrection. That's what we're talking about today. Think about how dramatic it is what Jesus says here.

These are bold claims to be God, to forgive sins. These are not the claims of a moral teacher or of a good person. And I think many of you know that, but it's worth emphasizing because there's a silent growing heresy in our culture. And I don't think it's something that's being taught in most of the churches directly, but polls show recently that a growing number of people that call themselves Christians have come to believe that Jesus was a good teacher. C.

S. Lewis wasn't the one to invent it, but he made popular the paradigm of lord, liar, and lunatic. And here's the gist. It's that good people, good teachers, they don't say these kinds of things. They don't make these claims.

People that make these claims are either liars or lunatics, or they're the Lord of all. And before you think, well, maybe the disciples made all this up, you have to remember that these very claims, it's been historically proven time and again, are the very reason why the Sanhedrin conspired with the Romans to have Jesus murdered. And it's also why all 11 of the faithful disciples were brutally and gruesomely martyred. All they had to do was say that this wasn't true, and they could have escaped their untimely deaths. But they didn't.

To a man, they went to their graves proclaiming this. And another way to think about it is that governments don't kill good moral teachers. The resurrection is proof that he wasn't a liar or a lunatic, but that he was Lord, the eternal son of God. This is why when critics want to tear down Christianity, the thoughtful ones, they go after the resurrection first. The irony, of course, is that if you spend a lot of time studying the history or the veracity of the resurrection, my bet is that you'll end up becoming a Christian.

Mhmm. Four of these guys in particular became Christian authors, and there's many more than just these. But these are guys if if you're you're interested, if this in any way speaks to you, take a note of these. Take a picture of this. Look into some of these guys.

They're fascinating stories. So if you're not all in on Jesus yet, I would really encourage you to do a deep dive on the resurrection. Because whatever your background or angle is, there are great questions to be wrestled with as you come to faith or as you deepen in your faith. I would love to talk to you about what mine were, or you can bring anybody in the church yours. But you need to know that most of them are satisfied in the birth, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Similarly, if you've if you've never really done a deep dive into the history of the faith or of Jesus himself, you're probably only vaguely aware of the idea that Jesus was the long prophesied and awaited for messiah. Because Jesus didn't just initiate a new faith on the earth in his ministry, but he instead perfected the Jewish faith. He had thousands of years of prophecy that pointed directly to him. Here's what he said about himself in John five to the Jews. He said, you examine the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is those very scriptures that testify about me.

One of those most famous scriptures is what we call the servant songs. In Isaiah 53, we can focus on verse five, where Isaiah writing about the the Messiah to come writes, but he was pierced for our offenses. He was crushed for our wrongdoings. The punishment for our well-being was laid upon him, and by his wounds, we are healed. King David, who wrote about half the Psalms, here in Psalm 22 wrote about the Messiah and the crucifixion.

They pierced my hands and feet. I can count all my bones. They look, they stare at me, they divide my garments among them, and they cast lots for my clothing. And in Psalm 16, and this is one that Peter quoted in his first sermon at Pentecost recorded in Acts two. He said, you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, as the Jewish word for the afterlife.

You will not allow your holy one to undergo decay. Guys, those first two quotes, those are talking about a crucified Messiah, and this one, this is talking about a resurrect a resurrected one. By his wounds, by the wounds of Christ, we are healed. Our sin is paid for. And what Paul is saying today, what Peter quotes, and what David here foretold is that in the resurrection, we have the receipts.

Jesus was approved. In that, we have certainty that Christ's payment was sufficient. Similarly, if you if you look at the Jewish system of sacrifices in Leviticus one through eight, you were always going back to the temple. There were the burnt offering, the grain offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, the trespass offering, on and on this system of sacrifices and offerings went. But it wasn't the offering that you brought that justified you.

What reconciled you to God was the faith that God would accept your sacrifice and the sacrifice that is to come. That was your righteousness, as Paul talks about in Romans four. But now we have the perfect offering, the one Passover lamb whose righteousness and self sacrifice was sufficient enough that the entire system of sacrifices and ceremonial law was completed. And this is just a bonus, so don't say I never did anything for you. But this is why and there's confusion around this.

This is why we still follow the moral law of the Old Testament, but we don't follow the civil or the ceremonial. Does that make sense? We hear this a lot in the culture. But this is why we can still adhere to the moral law of the Old Testament, but we're free to eat bacon or eat shrimp or get a tattoo if you want. And we have Christian freedom in that.

And are we glad for that freedom? We are. And we get to be sure of it through the resurrection. Because in Exodus, the sacrificial lamb dies, but he doesn't come back because a zombie lamb would be really creepy. Like, I don't want to eat the same lamb chop twice.

I don't even know how that would work. But our lamb, the lion of Judah, the lamb of God, he rose again on the third day in fulfillment of all the scriptures and all the prophecies that existed for him, displaying the faith and the holiness of God. So God approved the sacrifice of Christ at the resurrection, and he approves of us if we would but identify with his death, burial, and resurrection. That's what public baptism signifies. Death, burial, and resurrection.

So point two, the purpose of the resurrection. More than anything, it glorified God. It displayed the faithfulness of God and gave us a more sure hope to his glory. And we have to remind ourselves that that's the purpose of everything we do. The purpose of all of it is the glory of God.

It was true for Jesus. It was true for Paul. It's true for Ray, for me, for all of you. We all exist to glorify God. And that's a bunch of churchy words, I know, but I'm trying to be very specific in that.

Because God showed us a lot about himself in the birth, crucifixion, and resurrection. So that when we and the angels worship him, we can do so more accurately and with hope. If I tell you that I love my wife, Natalie, because she's five feet tall, she has black hair, and she loves cold weather, and then you meet Natalie, you're gonna she's back there, by the way. You're gonna recognize that what I told you is totally different. That's not that's not an accurate portrayal of my wife.

That's not me loving her well, and then, therefore, that's not me glorifying her well. How much more the creator God of the universe? We have to know about God in order to worship him well. In Philippians two, Paul writes to the church of Philippi. This is about Jesus.

He said that Jesus, he already existed in the form of God, that he did not consider equality with God something to be held onto, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a bond servant and being born in the likeness of men, being found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, death on a cross. God showed us his very nature in the advent, in the crucifixion, in the resurrection. And doesn't that sound like a good father? The best father?

That the standard is perfection, but that there is grace and mercy for our mistakes no matter what they are, no matter how long they've gone on. And the strength God has the strength and the wisdom to make them work for our good. Because before the redemption of mankind, Satan and the demons, as as the new atheist movement does today, could accuse God of being all powerful, but not of being all good. And stay with me here because this is actually really powerful medicine for day to day living. Because God not only created us, he gave us a will.

And when we rebel against him, he could prove his love and faithfulness to us anyway, and it's all as part of his plan. This is what happened at the cross and at the empty tomb. Is at the cross, God showed that he himself demanded perfection, And he demanded atonement, yet he was willing to pay for our sins to allow us to be reconciled to him. And at the empty tomb, he showed that he was merciful and loving and still just because that one perfect payment would be sufficient forever. That doesn't cheapen grace, and that doesn't make our sin okay.

What it does, it makes it paid for expensively by the perfect blood of Jesus. And why is this good medicine? It's so that when we can't see the point of what God is doing in our lives, we can still trust him no matter what we're going through because he voluntarily put himself through worse. You've heard the old saying that if you if you can't see God's hand, you can always trust his heart. And that is true because of the resurrection.

So when life gets hard, and whether that's by our own doing or by external circumstances around us, we can look to the cross and to the empty grave to reconcile it, to make sense of it. And that's because Jesus was the first fruits of the ultimate reality, the eternal life that is to come. We can recall from the gospel accounts of the resurrection that Jesus didn't just disappear from the grave on the third day. We don't have a missing body claim in the gospel. Scripture says that he did oh, that's way too small.

That we did all of he did all of the following. That he walked around for forty days, appeared to at least 500 people. That he ate fish, that he went through locked doors. It's like the amazing things that Jesus did between the resurrection and the ascension make it clear that the gospel claim is not a missing body. The gospel claim and the hope of the church is resurrection, a new body, the truest version of ourselves that has eternal life and doesn't bear the stains of a world marred by sin.

We will then follow Jesus in that resurrection. But we need to get our ideas as a church right about what resurrection means. Because just like angels are not babies, they're not your dead great grandparents, and they're not timid. Just like that, our resurrection hope is not that we're floating around on the clouds like chubby babies playing a harp, because that would be awful. No.

It is an eternal restoration of all things made right. It is an unveiling of God's true purpose for each and every one of us that we will work without growing tired. We will fight battles for God without even the possibility of losing, and we will enjoy the unveiled company of the creator and redeemer God of the universe. There will be no sickness. There will be no sorrow.

There will be no death. You've heard it said that time heals all wounds. And while that's partially true, it will be perfectly true in view of eternity. Because for those of us in Christ, it will make every bad thing, every sickness, every trauma, every loss, and all brokenness, not only that it didn't happen, but that it actually worked for our good. Because if everything sad just becomes untrue, then there's no real point in suffering.

We're just supposed to kind of look through it. But if everything truly works for our good, then we can rejoice in trials as the Bible is constantly calling us to. So we don't rejoice for the trials. We don't necessarily celebrate the brokenness, but we can look through it. We can see the purpose in it, and we can know that God is doing good in us for it.

So the purpose of the resurrection. Two points. It displayed the faithfulness of God that a perfect sacrifice satisfied his design divine justice. And two, that Jesus was the first fruits of the ultimate reality. He showed us what it's gonna be like for us.

So how do we now live as people of the resurrection in light of what is to be our eternity? Because we have the power of the resurrection in us. Simply put, we don't live as if this world is all that there is. Because if you don't follow Jesus, you better live your best life now. You better get it just right and get all of it.

Because this world that we're in now, it has all the good that you are ever going to Because hell is not going to be a place of rock and roll rebellion with your friends, with booze and partying and all that sort of thing. No. There will be nothing good in hell. There will be no music. There will be no friendship, no joy, no revelry, no light, no feasting.

There will be only sorrow and shame and regret. Instead, if you have a hope in the resurrection, then you can truly do all things through Christ who strengthens you. And that's not about me being able to dunk a basketball or rip a phone book in half in front of you guys. That is about me being able to have joy and purpose regardless of circumstances so that I don't have to live my best life now. I can be set free from that.

And when there is tragedy, and man, this church has seen some tragedy already in this young year. We don't grieve as those without hope, as Paul says in first Thessalonians four. No. We grieve as those with hope because we miss our friend or our brother or our sister in Christ. But we will see them again at the resurrection that is to come.

And that sets us free from a scarcity mentality. That sets us free from this pernicious idea that we've got to get ours. Because we have that mentality, whether it's around money or time or talents or powder days. We have this idea that we've got to get ours because it's getting away from us. The irony of any resource, any talent, any gift, money, whatever, it's only when you've given a bunch of it away, a painful amount of it away, that you can recognize that it doesn't have mastery over you, that you can recognize that it's a lie, that I need just a little bit more, or that I don't have enough.

So how do we become people of the resurrection today? Whoever you are, whatever your stage is, you can always take the next step in faith. I'm categorizing it three ways for our for our talk today, which is decider, disciple, and discipler. So a decider, that's somebody that you have not yet made a personal decision to follow Jesus. You need to know that you are not a debtor in prison.

You are not an employee with a bad boss or a slave with a bad master. You are not a sick patient in need of some medicine. You are dead in your sins as the Bible would describe it. You are in the grave. But so was Jesus, and he's the only man to ever defeat death.

And because he did, if we would but put our belief in him and make him lord of our life, then we will get to participate in that resurrection with him. We can come out of that grave. And this isn't just a resuscitation. Thank God, because I don't want that broken body that gets hurt, that needs to sleep, that gets sick. I want that new resurrection body.

I want the one that can work or run without getting tired or sore or hurt, the one without this weird neurological thing that I've been dealing with for several years. Because our resurrection bodies will be perfect. And it's not just linear. It's not just like I'm gonna be taller or stronger or better looking. We will be way new in ways that we cannot even fathom.

Not different in degree, but in kind. Like the difference between a seed and a flower. As Paul goes on to write in first Corinthians 15, he compares our current body to a seed that needs to be buried in the ground and die so that our new resurrection bodies can be the flower. Here's a a crazy example if you've never thought about this before. Did you know that with the resurrection bodies, we are likely to have way more senses than we have now?

We are not going to be dependent on sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. We'll have thousands of new senses. It will be like trying to explain to somebody what the sunrise is like if they had been born blind. And it's all gonna be so that we can understand and so that we can praise God that much better. We can glorify him.

So if you've not made that personal decision yet to follow Jesus, would you take that step in faith today? Because we are never guaranteed tomorrow. For disciples, if you've made a decision to follow Christ, then pursue what Jesus has called you to in his word. Abide in him as he says in John 15. Because he gave us each other to help do that.

So join the church. Join a small group. Don't be a disembodied hand or foot. Be a part of the body and find someone to disciple you. Because you need to know that you are not free from sin to pursue your own life or your hobbies or your own desires.

You don't just need a little bit of Jesus as fire insurance in your life. No. We get to pursue Jesus and truly without stain or blemish. Because we don't get freed from sin to choose ourselves or our families even as our master. We choose Jesus as the only good master because he is the good shepherd that laid his life down for the flock.

Because if we choose to be our own man while attending church, we end up right back where we started, but just with more boring hobbies. Now we can daily choose the best master every single day in our quiet times, in our community groups, reminding each other of this. That we get to serve the one true kingdom, the only one that will actually last forever, and the only one that brings true life. This is how we get to live as Christ, to die as gain. Because if I can live my life with joy and purpose right now, and somebody has a problem with it, and they hurry along my already inevitable demise, I get to go home to be with Jesus.

So it's at first in that intermediate paradise like Jesus promised the thief on the cross, and then it's with that new resurrection body. So I can have joy and purpose now, or I can be with Jesus. That's what Paul's talking about when he says to live is Christ, to die is gain. And then third for my disciplers, for the mature believers, keep going. Don't be satisfied with your current state.

Jesus calls us to progress, never calls us to perfection. So if you have spiritual maturity, then be serving the body, be leading, help it reproduce, die to self, disciple others, and look around for others that you can help grow in the faith. When Jesus was about to ascend to the father in Matthew 28 at the great commission, He did not call the disciples to make converts, but to make disciples. We can and should live as if God has a purpose for each and every one of us to be lived out every day. So what are we to do about this?

All of us together. We cannot want anything more than we want Jesus himself. Even salvation, even the fruits of the spirit, good works, that that resurrection body that I talked about. We can't want any of it more than we actually want a personal intimate relationship with Jesus himself. He is what our primary hope is in.

Because those are all good things that I named, but they're not the ultimate thing. But because God is just and wise and perfect, he's made it so that if you would just but want Jesus, you get him. Right? Revelation said three, he says he stands at the door and knocks. Just open the door.

So if you want Jesus, you get him, and then you get everything else thrown in with it. You get the Holy Spirit. You get new desires. You get the ability to live with joy and with purpose. Because God has promised us for those that love him, who truly love him, that all things will work for our ultimate good.

That is true in loss and in suffering and in blessing. It's true for our brothers and sisters around the world that face persecution every single day because of the faith they proclaim, and we get to sit comfortably here in our church. It was true for Paul when he was getting his head chopped off. Because this world is not all that there is. It is but a dim vision of what ultimate reality will be.

And when you do that, when you throw in with the church, you will still sin, but there will be grace to meet you in that because you will no longer be controlled by sin. It will no longer own you. For the first time in your life, you'll be set free to desire the things of God. And then we as a church, we can be set apart. But we do it in love.

All truth and all love. That can only be accomplished in Christ. And we get to rest in it. I don't have a slide for it, but Jesus said it in John six thirty seven, whoever comes to me, I will never drive away. That's something we can rest in.

So many of us are looking for God. We say, where is God? He feels distant. But church, he's right where he said he would be. He's right here in every one of us that have made a real decision to make him Lord of our lives.

He's here when we gather together in the church, the ecclesia. He's here in power when we worship him with all of us that have made a decision to submit to him. And, yes, we live out our calling imperfectly. But like I said, there is grace to meet us in that, and we get to remind each other of that constantly. And church, we get to see miracles.

We get to see dead men come alive. We get to see people that have been conquered by sin and shame and addiction and despair and depression. We get to see them set free from those bonds. That's a miracle. The resurrection presents us with a choice that cannot be avoided, and it cannot be qualified.

Because either you believe in the resurrection or you do not. It is that simple. It's binary. In John eight, Jesus said, I try that again. I told you that you would die in your sins.

If you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins. There is no middle ground on this. There is no third choice. If he is who he said he is, then we give everything for him. Not just Sundays, not just some fixed percentage of our income.

There is no claim on our lives that he can make that we can say no to. And yet his burden is light. Any other burden that we choose, and you're always choosing something, any other burden we choose will crush us and bury us. Or we're all fools, and there's no point to any of this. It's a waste of time and money and effort.

And like I said, this bet can't be hedged, and we must bet our entire life on it. But because of the resurrection, we can have hope. Not hope in the weak way of like, hope it snows tomorrow or I really hope that winter's finally over for some of you. But in a, the resurrection is true. Therefore, my hope cannot be shaken.

So I'll challenge you to think up through this on a few closing comments because I do not want this to just be an annual Easter ceremony. My prayer, my hope for this day is that this is resurrection day hearts, for each and every one of us, that we would be reborn as Jesus called Nicodemus to be. Because how much did it cost your God to love you? Your mental image of God, how much did it cost him to love you? So many people these days, and myself included sometimes, we don't want to believe in a God that is both just and loving.

Sometimes we forget that God is holy. Others forget that he is loving. But both of these aspects are shown in perfect display at the cross and at the resurrection because Jesus paid the debt so perfectly, so completely that God resurrected him as the first fruits of what is to come, and we cannot incur a debt to God that is greater than what Jesus has already paid. You need to know that Jesus was also the only willing sacrifice in history. Yes.

There have been other martyrs. Yes. There have been brave sacrifices elsewhere. But you need to know those were all accomplished by people that were gonna die anyway. As we looked at with Philippians two, Jesus did not see equality with God as something to be held on to.

He set it aside for each and every one of us. He took on flesh. And when he was in the Garden Of Gethsemane, he set his face to die for you, for me, for every one of us. And in that perfect submission, he made a way for us. And God is just.

He cannot accept a double payment. So Jesus' payment is sufficient. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. But Christian, please hear me. Stop trying to earn what you've already been given.

So we do respond in obedience. We do go forth and do good works for the kingdom, but it's as a result of our salvation not to earn it. And I'll invite Judy back up, but it's important to note that tomorrow is April Fool's Day. Paul says in our text today that if the resurrection is not true, then we are fools. But church, we are not fools because Jesus did walk out of that tomb on the third day, And history has never been the same since that day and neither have I.

Jim Elliot, who would be murdered shortly after writing this, he was trying to witness to an unreached tribe of cannibals in Ecuador. He knew that he would probably die. And he wrote, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Jim Elliot was no fool. Jim knew that he would rise again at the last day.

Church, don't be a fool. Don't live functionally denying the truth of the resurrection. Because when I was lost twenty years ago in Texas, I pulled out the map, and I knew all of a sudden that I was a long way from home. But now I knew how to get there. Similarly, if you've wandered away from home or maybe you've never been home, Look to the resurrection because the resurrection is the key to life.

Believe in it. Profess that Jesus is savior and lord. That the grave is empty. Receive the Holy Spirit. Be a part of the church.

Read and share the written word of God. Because church, he is risen. Happy Easter. Thank you so much.

Let's celebrate together in singing, how great thou art.

God to thee how great thou art great thou art then sings my soul my savior God God to thee how great thou how great thou and when I think that God his son not sparing I scarce can take it in that on the cross Christ shall come with shouts of acclamation and take me home what joy shall fill my heart then I shall bow

So as we leave today, I wanna read one more scripture from Ephesians three chapter three verses 16 through 19. I pray that out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the Lord's holy people. And this is the greatest part, to grasp how wide and how long, how high, how deep is the love of Christ, and to know that this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Amen.

Happy Easter.