Live Sermon | At The Cross

Easter Sunday

Transcript

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Welcome to the Kid Us Off First Podcast, where we're building transformed lives one message at a time. Each week you'll hear Christ-centered sermons from Dr. J. Perry Fowler, rooted in the truth of God's Word. This is where real faith meets real life, because a life built on truth is a life that lasts.

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And while it was still dark, and saw the stone had already been taken away from the tomb. And she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple and said to them, They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him. So Peter and the other disciple went forth, and they were going to the tomb. And the two were running together, and the other disciple ran ahead faster than Peter and came to the tomb first. And stooping, he looked down. I want you to see that. He looked down. He looked in, and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and he did not go in. But Simon Peter also came in and followed him, and entered into the tomb and saw the linen wrappings lying there. And the facecloth which had been on his head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself, and the other disciple who had first come to the tomb, then also entered, and he saw, and he believed. For as yet they did not understand the scripture that he must rise again from the dead. I love the funnies on the internet. Maybe some of you do not, but if you don't, let me just ask you to look again. That's our series title. But let me just tell you, one of the things that I was doing this week is I was looking again. And there were several pictures that were on the internet. Here's one of them. I want you to see it. And you may look at this picture and say, what in the world is that? Well, that is a bearded man, and that bearded man is looking up. That's what that is. So that caused me to look again. And then I looked at this. This is a palm tree that's in an area that's heavily traveled in South Florida, and it makes you kind of look again. I don't know why that thing's upside down, but it is today. But anyway, it makes you look again. There you go. And here's the third thing. Uh I I was looking at this, and I as I saw this, you might see this going down the road. But does anybody ever do you see the cookie monster on the back of a flatbed? I I just saw that. And uh evidently the person that took a picture of this saw it because they looked again. And then here's a new surgical procedure by Twix bar. Well, that one's not a very big picture either. Who did this for me? All right. But anyway, it's a guy, and he has uh two Twix bars right here on his fingers. So, you know, there are a lot of things that make us look again. But this morning I want you to look again at the tomb. I want you to look again, and I want you to see what we see when we go to the tomb. The Bible says here that Peter, Mary Magdalene, and the other disciple, this is John, they all looked again. Now, nothing grabs your attention more than what happened on the weekend when Jesus died and rose again. On Friday, Jesus hung on the cross. And at first glance, the picture looked like defeat. But yet what we know is at a second look, it wasn't defeat at all. Through the cross, what we know is when we look again, it's our source of victory. Now, as well, when you look again, you think of Peter, when you look at the gospel story, you know that Peter, of course, at first glance, it looks like when he denied Jesus three times that it was all over. This was his final failure. But then when you look again, you will see him later preaching on the day of Pentecost. God used him, God wasn't done with him. And on Sunday morning, I guess if you were there in the day on the first resurrection morning, maybe you would have walked through the cemetery. And maybe you could have taken a casual look at the tomb. But as you look at it, maybe perhaps you should look again and look again at the linen clothes and understand that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. I want to encourage you to look again. Maybe in your life, you'd say, Well, I I I've I've not been that very religious. Or maybe some of you say, Well, I am very religious. Maybe some of you are saying, Well, I'm a seeker. I'm wondering, what is this thing about Jesus? What I come on an Easter Sunday morning, I figure this is one of the best days of the year to come and find out what is Christianity all about. Well, when you pause this morning with me, I encourage you, let's look again. Let's look again at Christianity and what it means. See, there's one thing about Christianity that is different than any other religion in the world. And it separates Christianity apart from any other, any other God, any other worship, any other thing, when you think about this thing called God or this person called God, and that is that when we look at Christianity, we have a God who came in the flesh, whose name was Jesus Christ, and when we look again, what we see is that he rose from the dead. The early church, the one thing that they consistently were known for, and the one thing that we consistently are known for is that when we believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Easter is not just a day for us, it is a present reality that we live with a living Savior in our life. Now, with that said, with that said, many religions say, well, Jesus is a lot of things. Some people say, Well, Jesus is a great teacher, and that would be true. Matter of fact, he's called Rabbi or Rabboni, which means teacher. Mary Magdalene called him Rabboni, and he's a great teacher. And but there are many great teachers in the world. But yet, as well, some people say, well, Jesus was simply a man of profound goodness, and without a doubt, he was a person of great profound goodness. He did went around, the Bible says, going around doing good. But yet, there are many people that go around doing good, but there's only one who is risen from the dead, and that is Jesus Christ. And anyone that has ever lived knows and understands that this is something that we as Christians long to look at over and over in our life. We long to think about this, to think about the implications of what it means that Jesus Christ rose again. See, Jesus raised three people from the dead himself. Jesus raised, of course, uh Jairus' daughter, who was from Capernaum, there, and we see that in scripture. Also, Jesus raised the widow of Nain, her son, and then just before Jesus went and he rose again, he raised Lazarus from the dead. But when we look again, what an incredible thing that Jesus would be able to raise three people from the dead. But what about raising himself up with a father raising Jesus up from the dead? That sets Jesus apart. And you should set him apart in your life because of the fact that Jesus Christ is living. We know that he lives in our life. He is present, he is real, he is constantly with us. And that's what makes Jesus so different. So let's look again at Jesus. And this morning, let's think about what Jesus has done for us through his resurrection. First off, Jesus, write this down, he proved that he has power, the power that he claimed to have. Now, Jesus had a lot of power, we know that. If you're raising people from the dead, you've got a lot of power, right? Amen. What a glorious thing. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Jesus foretold and said, Listen, not only am I going to dead, but I'm going to raise from the dead myself. Now it should have been no surprise, but when we read this passage, we read that the scripture tells us that they, that's these disciples, in verse 9, they did not yet, did not yet understand the scripture that he must rise again from the dead. So while Jesus spoke about it, while Jesus talked about it, over and over again, what we know is that there was uh this problem among the disciples, this failure to understand that Jesus was speaking over and over about going and suffering on a cross, and ultimately that Jesus would rise again from the dead. They didn't understand it. So in verse 1, what we see happening when we join the story today, the Bible says, now on the first day of the week. Well, that would have been on Sunday. For the Jews on their calendar, the first day of the week of Sunday, and so it would have been on a Sunday, on the first day of the week. Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb. Read there with me. And while it was still dark and she saw, I want you to underline the word saw. It's amazing how many times you read the word saw in this passage. And the words that are used there are often lost in translation. Now let me get a little technical here and help you to understand that when the Bible is written in the Old Testament, the Old Testament is written in Hebrew, the New Testament is written in Greek, and it's been translated. What we have here is a translation of English into English. And when we read this, one of the things that when it is translated, it's lost in translation, is as we just simply see the word saw. But there are three different words that are used here to describe what happens when they look into the tomb. And it helps us kind of understand a little bit of the reason why when they when they were there looking at the tomb, it helps us understand how they were coming to the conclusions that they were. Now, when we read this, what we read is Mary Magdalene, she came, and the Bible says that she saw the stone was rolled away. Now that's what we see here. And so where were they at? They were in a graveyard this morning early. I was at Winkenhofer and doing the early sunrise service, and nobody was there. I thought, this is not the favorite place for anybody to go. How many of you would say, well, this afternoon we're just going to take a leisurely stroll down to the cemetery? Or how many of you would say, you know, this afternoon, I think I'll just, I think I'll go just spend some time. How many of you would rather be at the beach? You know what I'm saying? But yet, when we look at where Mary Magdalene is going, she's going to a place that's a place of death. Now, no one's a fan of death, but the reality is nobody can stop it. Everyone will experience it. And even Jesus experienced death. He died on the cross. And can you imagine what Mary must have been feeling that resurrection morning? When you read verse 1, here she is. She goes early while it's still dark. And when she does, she saw something. And what she saw, she saw. And it caused her to come to a conclusion. Now, what is going on here? Well, she was looking, but the word there that's that's used there is the Greek word blepo. And that word is different than the other words that we're going to read in this passage, and it helps us to understand where she was coming from, but that word means a casual glance, an initial look, a first opportunity to look at something. So when she comes to this particular tomb, the tomb of Jesus Christ, the word there blepo, means she just took a casual glance. And when she had a casual glance, what she ascertained was that someone had stolen the body of Jesus. Now, notice, second off, in verse 6, we see, and Simon Peter also came following him, and he entered into the tomb. Now, she looked into the tomb, she glanced into the tomb, but now Peter goes into the tomb. This is the story. And when he goes into the tomb, the Bible says, and he saw. What did he see? He saw the linen wrappings lying there. Now, this is a different word. This isn't the word that describes what Mary Magdalene experienced. She bleppoed, if you want to put it that way. She saw with the casual glance what was there in the tomb. But Simon Peter went in, and the word there that is used is the same word from which we get our word theory. So he began to think it through. He began to theorize what was going on. His brain was in high gear. He was looking, he was trying to figure out what exactly am I looking at here. Have you ever done that in your life? You look at something and you're trying to kind of theorize. What am I seeing? I don't know quite what that is. But that's exactly what we see Simon Peter doing, and he needed to look again. Now, in verse 8, we we see another word for the word Saul that is here in verse 8. It says the other disciple who had first come to the tomb, then also entered. And here it says again, and he saw, the word there is Oreo, which is, I didn't say Oreo, but it looks like Oreo. So here you have three people that come to the same tomb, come to the same event, come to Easter, if you will, and what they do is this one of them just takes a casual glance. The second one just comes and he begins to theorize. I don't know what this is really about, but I'm gonna go take a look. And then the other one saw and believed. He understood. Now my goal today is to get you from Mary Magdalene's experience to get you all the way over to the Apostle John's experience. Because the reality is that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. It's not just something we take a casual glance at, but we look again. What do we look again? We look again and say, okay, what exactly are we seeing here? What exactly is this all about? And then we come to the point where we see and we understand and we believe. Now what are they seeing? Verse 7 tells us what they saw. Verse 7 says, and the facecloth that had been on his head was not lying in the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. The word there is Soterion, which is describes what Jesus had was he was wrapped up. And by the way, what they did is like when Jesus was born, they wrapped him in swaddling clothes. What they do is they take strips of cloth and they would wrap around them, around the baby, and swaddle them that way. In the same way, when a person in that day died, they would wrap them with cloth. There would be hundreds of cloths that would wrap around them, but then they would have a simple napkin-sized face cloth that would cover their face. And that's called the Soterion. And these were his grave clothes. But what they did is as they went and they saw, one took a casual glance, the second one began to theorize, and then the other one began to see and understand. And what happened was they saw something significant. And I encourage you to see it today. What they saw was they saw that while Jesus Christ, while his body had laid there, those wrappings around, by the way, they put they put hundreds of pounds of what I call smell good stuff, spices and so forth, and they were still in the linen wrappings. But then you have this cloth, and what the Bible says here is that it was lying off to the side. Amen. And he said, I don't need that anymore. He didn't need a borrowed tomb. Our God doesn't sleep or slumber. Guess what? He rose from the dead, and he's alive. And so what we find here is a pleasant surprise. You ever had a pleasant surprise? You like, boy, that was a pleasant surprise. I was reading this week about a couple. His name was Alfred, her name Jerry, and they're from uh Masick Beach, South Carolina. They got a phone call in the middle of the night, and they were told that their son Freddie had been killed in a car accident. Can you imagine that? Well, they called their son Chris. See, Freddie and Chris lived together. They called Chris and said, Chris, did you know that Freddie was killed last night? He goes, No, last time I left, he was on the couch downstairs asleep. To which Chris ran home and he went down and there was a pile of covers down there. And while he looked at the pile of covers, he went up and he got a broomstick and he poked the pile of covers, and all of a sudden his brother Freddie jumped up and said, What are you doing? And Chris was saying, You're supposed to be dead. And what we found out, what they found out is somebody had stolen their wallet and gotten killed in a car accident. So that's the real true story. But they didn't know it was a point of mistaken identity. But when it came to Jesus, there was no mistaken identity. Jesus was dead. He lay dead in the tomb. And what we know is Jesus Christ, while he looked like his life and ended on Friday, and it was not the end, it was only the beginning because Jesus Christ came forth from the dead. And Jesus said this I am the resurrection and I am the life. He that believes in me, though he may die, shall live. So what does this mean to you and me? This means that in Jesus we can know we have eternal life. You don't have to guess, you don't have to wonder, you don't have to live your life saying, Well, I dread death, because the reality is, is you can know that you know that you know that you're born again. And if you're born again because Jesus rose, you will live in eternity. That's the promise of Jesus Christ. It's not the promise of a preacher, it's not a promise of religion, it's a promise of Jesus Himself. So if you're afraid of death here today, let me encourage you to look again at the person of Jesus Christ. He came to deliver you from it. The second thing is Jesus has the ability to be a friend. Listen, does everybody any how many of you need a friend? How many of you say, Well, I came to church today hoping to be a friend? Find a friend. Anybody gonna raise your hand? There's lights up here. I can't see very well, but let me just ask you, does anybody need a friend? Will anybody raise your hand and just admit you need a friend? Okay, there's a few people here that need a friend. How many of you like your friends? How many of you say, I have a great friend and they're sitting right next to me? All right? My neighbors are right over here, and they're my friends. I'm gonna tell you what, they've been my friends for 18 years. We're friends, and we love each other, we care for each other. Listen, Miss Kathy watches over my house. I mean, her and Jesus have got it covered. Amen. I don't even need an alarm system. It's good. I love that. They're my friends, and if there's any problem, and Mike, my other friend, my other neighbor, he calls me. But here's the thing: we all need friends. And here's what we know about Jesus. See, it's hard to be friends with somebody that's dead. I mean, you can go out to a cemetery and you can sit down and you can talk to a gravestone all you want, but I have news for you. They're not going to talk back. They're just not going to do it. But because Jesus Christ is alive and he's living, what we know is Jesus Christ wants to be your friend. The Bible tells us Jesus is a friend of sinners. And guess what? We are all sinners. We've all come short of the glory of God. But one of the people he was friend with, I want you to see the rest of the story, one of the people he was friends with was a woman. And her name was Mary Magdalene. We read about her in verse 11. The Bible tells us in verse 11 that Mary Magdalene, of course, had become Jesus' friend. And what we know on resurrection morning was but Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping. Why? Because she had lost her friend. Her friend had died. And so she wept and she stooped and looked into the tomb. So now she's beginning to go from just a casual glance to beginning to theorize, and then ultimately she's going to see and believe. And so what we see here is we see Mary Magdalene. Let me tell you a little bit about her. Mary Magdalene, the Bible tells us that she was full of demons. As a matter of fact, the Bible says that when Jesus first met her, she was uh she was uh filled with seven demons. I don't know if you believe in demon possession today, uh, but if you ever go to a preschool, you'll believe in it. I'm just teasing. But there are people that are demon possessed. I I've met a few people that I think they are. And uh it's not like what you think. But uh she was full of seven demonic spirits and they tormented her. Let me tell you, Satan doesn't want anything to do with you except to torment you. He does not love you, he does not like you, he does not care about you, and all the sin that came into the world, he was the culprit that brought that temptation, and we fell to it. That's what the Bible teaches. But she was demon-possessed and it derailed her life. A lot of people look at her and say, they try to come up with things that maybe she did. Some people say she was a woman of adultery, some people say all kinds of stuff. As a matter of fact, even liberals try to act like Jesus and her relationship was somehow inappropriate. Shame on you if you believe that. Because Jesus was sinless. But the one thing Jesus knew how to be, he knew how to be a friend to men and women. Jesus knew how to be a friend to people who had it right, seemed like they had it right, and then others that didn't. But yet the reality is when Jesus came to the world, Jesus came because he was a friend to sinners. And Mary here, she knew her friend had died. So she came early. Her heart was broken. You know what that feels like. We've gone through grief. And when you go through grief, what you know is you know that there's a need for somebody to come beside you, somebody to be your friend. That's why we have funerals, because we need friends to come around us when we're hurting, when we're going through grief. And she needed a real friend, and now she was there, she and some other women came. But the the the John focuses in on her because of what a great friend she was to Jesus. She was standing outside the tomb, and uh the Bible says she was weeping. Literally, the word there, it's a participle when means she was inconsolable. Have you ever been like that? You cry and you just can't get a hold of yourself. I think all of us have been there at one point in our life, you know, and maybe you've been there lately. We all go through trouble in this world. Jesus said, In this world you will have trouble. He didn't lie to us. He said, In this world you're gonna have trouble, but take heed, I have overcome the world. There's hope beyond. So and there may be illness here, but here's the good news. One of these days we're going somewhere because Jesus is risen from the dead where there's no more weeping, no more sorrow, no more dying, no more pain, because the former things are passed away. Now, we look forward to that, but for now, we need a friend. And Mary needed a friend. She stood outside that tomb and she was weeping. And uh here's Jesus. Something to understand about Jesus is Jesus knew what it was like to have an emotion. Matter of fact, Jesus had gone to the tomb of Lazarus, and the Bible tells us the shortest verse in the Bible, it says, Jesus wept in John 11, 35. But because Jesus was a true friend to Mary, what we find happening here is as he is a friend, he tries to do two things. He tries to comfort her first. How did he do it? I mean, he comforted her like nobody else could. The Bible says in verse 12, and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head, one at the feet, where the body of Jesus was lain. And so what we find is when Jesus himself was tempted, guess what happened? God sent two angels or some angels to minister to him. Well, Jesus here dispatches obviously from the throne of God angels to come minister to Mary. And by the way, have you ever stopped? Sometimes you just know that you're going through something, and there's this strange sense of, man, I know who I can go to. I can pray. I have a friend, and his name's Jesus. We almost all instinctively do that because we know that Jesus is a true friend. Interesting as well is in the Ark of the Covenant, if you've studied that, the Ark of the Covenant, there's an angel here and there's an angel here. And here in this passage, we see an angel at the foot and the angel at the head of where Jesus' body had once laid, but now it was like a cocoon with a linen cloth laying to the side. And what God is saying to her is, you know, the Ark of the Covenant is a symbol of the presence of God. And what God was saying to her is God is with you. God is living, God is alive, He is present, He's not left you alone. So maybe you're going through something today and you say, I feel very alone. You're not. Jesus is a friend. The second thing he does is he values her. Look in verse 15. I love to unpackage this whole passage. Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? So Jesus himself comes and says, What are you crying about? Can you imagine that? Here, Jesus, the risen Lord, comes to her personally. And it's a wonderful, wonderful thing. And by the way, in that world, women were not valued as they should be. And by the way, men and women, one of the greatest things we can do is value our relationships, value one another. But the Bible says that men should love their wives as Christ loved the church. What's that mean? Show great value to her. Jesus shows great value to women. And what he does is he allows her to be the first one that sees him in resurrected body. And so what does this say? Jesus is a real friend. He comforted her, he valued her. And if he comforted her and valued her, he comforts you and he can value you, and he does. You want to know how much Jesus valued you? He went to the cross and he died for you. And he rose again from the dead. You know, one of the things that I love, how many of you ever like to watch Toy Story? I mean, I just cannot help myself. I love the Toy Story. Anyone else love the Toy Story? Who's your character? Hey, I'm just gonna ask you, I got a minute. Who is your favorite character in Toy Story? Anybody want to tell me? Just yell it out here.

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Buzz.

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Okay, somebody said Buzz over here. Anybody else? Woody, okay, Buzz, Woody. Anybody else? Jesse, Jesse's pretty cool. Yes? Who? Who do you have? Olivia? Who's your favorite? Jesse's your favorite. You'll know my favorite, Olivia? My favorite is Woody. I love a Woody. He looks just like me, except he's skinny. That's the difference between Woody and me. I mean, he's kind of a little bit of a redneck, you know what I'm saying? He's got a cowboy hat, he can look that way, you know. He kind of likes just being kind of a cool guy. But one thing I bub about Woody more than anything is he always tells people how valuable they are. That's what I love about him. Woody always seems to tell people how valuable they are. And remember in the movie, what happens is Buzz finds out he's only a toy. And uh this is what Buzz says. Buzz makes a statement. He says, I'm just a stupid little insignificant toy. I'm just a toy. And Woody comes up and makes an announcement. He says to Buzz, he says, Listen, you may think you're a stupid little insignificant toy, but you're not thinking clearly. I'm gonna quote him. There's a kid who thinks you are the greatest, the greatest, not because you're a space ranger, but because you are his. And then he points to the bottom of Buzz's foot, and this is what he shows him. He says, Listen, Andy put his name on you, and here's what we know. What we know is that the Bible says that when we get to heaven, you may have not read this. I love the book of Revelation. I wrote a whole book about it myself. And in that, the Bible says that he writes his name on us. I look at that and I think, man, God's a lot like Andy. I love that. And I want to be a little bit more like Woody. I want to tell you today how valuable you are to Jesus. He wants to put his name on you. He wants to make you his. He wants to leave an indelible mark on your life and your identity, and he wants you to be called a child of God. He wants you to be able to know that you're his friend and that he loves you. He died for you, he made a way so that he could take possession of your life and he could come and could live in your life and lead your life. And no matter what it looks like, whether you feel like you're a space ranger or a nobody, a stupid little insignificant toy. Listen, God loves you. And if there's any message that should be preached from the church pulpits today, it should be that God loves you, for he so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. So don't leave this place today feeling like you're insignificant. Because God loves you. See, Jesus loves you so much that he made promises to you. I want you to see this as we kind of bring this to kind of some conclusions this morning. Jesus, here's what we know, is because of who he is, he and because he's living, he can keep all his promises he makes to you. You ever had somebody promise you that they would do something and then they just don't ever get it done. Or maybe you had somebody that you love that you, you know, you had a plan that you would go fishing, you would go next summer, and then what happened is maybe they they they left this walks of life. Those kind of things happen. But what we see is Jesus is alive, and every promise he makes, because he's alive and because he's gonna live forevermore, you can trust that whatever he promises you, he will deliver on it. And the first promise he made is listen, your past can be forgiven. I look at Mary Magdalene here and I think about myself. So often in my house, I'm not very good at projects. I wished I was. I wished I knew how to do a lot of stuff that I don't know how to do. I sure do try. And you know what I often do? When I try, I'll get about halfway through a project and I wish that I could start all over. You know what I'm saying? It's like I've already cut the wood and it doesn't look good. I already painted it and I got it wrong. Nobody else has that problem here. Since y'all don't have a problem, are y'all for hire? I need to hire somebody. You know what I'm saying? Or maybe you could come help me as a friend. I don't know. That'd be nice. But here's what happens with our lives. Sometimes we get started in our lives like Mary Magdalene. We don't know what all she did, but she ended up with seven demons in her, and we know the result of that is that, of course, she probably felt very, very much like a failure. Like I wished I could start all over. Maybe you look in the rearview mirror of your life, you'd say, there's some things I wished I'd have done differently. I wished I'd have done this, I wished I'd done that. But here's the good news. The good news is Jesus Christ, he's there for you. And Jesus Christ, he can forgive your past. And he wants to. He wants to forgive you. And the second thing, he wants to take a hold of your present. Because Jesus is alive, he can manage your present in your life. What are you going through right now? What is it that you're trying to get? Maybe we have students here that are saying, I'm trying to just get through college. If I can just get there. Maybe some of you are saying, I'm just trying to get to retirement. Hallelujah. Or I'm just trying to get through the night. My grandkids are coming over this evening. I need some help. Jesus, help me. I don't know what all it is that you want to try to get through, but guess what? You don't have to do it alone because Jesus Christ is living, he's alive, and he'll do it with you. The God of heaven that created you is willing to come and live in your life and manage your days and work in your life. Ephesians 1 tells us how we do that. The Bible says, because Jesus lives on the inside of us. He says, How incredibly great is the power to help those who believe in him. The same mighty power that raised Jesus from the dead. Can you get that your mind wrapped around that? The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power of Jesus Christ in you. He can do anything. And we don't always know what his will is on everything. But I tell you what he can do. He works all things together for good to those who love him. And I want you to grab on to that today and say, God, no matter what I'm going through, no matter what that situation is, here's the good news. No matter what I'm going through, God is able to work this somehow out to my good. I can't change my situation, but you can change my attitude and my spirit, and you can change the outcome because you're that good. And the third thing is, is my future is secure. 1 Peter 1:3 tells us this. It says, we have been born again into the full life of hope through Christ raising from the dead. Our future is secure. So the good news is today we can take another look. And that's what we do. At first glance, you may look at the cross and you may say, that doesn't mean there's any hope. You can look at the tomb and you say, it doesn't look very good. On Saturday, yes, on Saturday it looked hopeless. And in your life, there's things in your life where you say, oh, it looks hopeless today. But yet God here is with you, and the power of Jesus Christ is present today. And he says, Listen, it might be Friday, it might be Saturday, but Sunday is coming. The Lord Jesus Christ is with me. And so with that said, look again. On the third day, Jesus got up, he raised up, he stood up, he lifted up our hope. He gave us help for every day, my future. Jesus got up, walked out of the grave, and because he did, I can walk with him forever. On the streets of gold, on the glorious day where Easter never ends. Did you know Easter is a day on the calendar in America? But in heaven, Easter is an everyday reality. So Jesus, the reason why is because Jesus will see him face to face. Jesus said this: blessed is those who have not yet seen, but believed. Maybe you'd like to just kind of you know rewind back and go back to the days of Jesus. He said, Well, if I could have gone in the tomb, I would have believed. If I could have had the experience of Mary and Martha and John and Peter and all the other disciples, if I'd had that, I'd believe, would you have? Some of the most religious people in the world who put Jesus on the cross. And while they knew the truth, they didn't embrace it. But today you can. And I can as we bow our head and close our eyes. Would you just say to Jesus today, Jesus, I know you're the resurrection and the life. I believe you rose again from the dead. And I believe that you're alive. I believe that you're living. And I believe that you are the savior of the world. And this morning, Lord, you know my heart. And I want my heart to be filled with your salvation. I want you to be my savior and Lord. I want you to guide me. I want you to live through me. I want you to make a home for me in heaven. So, Jesus, today I turn my life completely over to you. I bring my sins to you. You can forgive my past. I bring my present life to you. You can manage my day today. And Jesus, you can hold my future. I give it all to you now. And I trust you as my personal Lord and Savior right now. If you've prayed that prayer this morning and you really meant it from your heart, we're going to have counselors here. They'll be glad to talk to you and help you in this new step of walk with God that you've just taken this day. And we're going to invite you to just step down the aisle and come talk to them. Or maybe you can catch us afterwards as well. You can do that. But listen, it's really important that you look again at Jesus and walk with him. Every day, get up and look again and know he is the Savior. He's the King of the universe. He's the Lord of all. And when you look at him, you'll figure out. He brought me to faith. He is the author of my faith. And not only is the author, but he is the finisher of my faith. Lord, we trust you. We thank you for this day. This glorious resurrection morning, the celebration, the study of your word, and now the response to it in Jesus' name.

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