The Resurrected King: Encountering Jesus Changes Everything

"The soul of man was made to enjoy God, and nothing else can make it happy” – Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good to see everybody this morning. The if you were here last week, we talked about what? If anybody remembers the beauty of the cross, right? The beauty of the cross. And we said the cross is beautiful in three ways. One, it reveals the glory of God. If anybody remembers, the cross uniquely demonstrates God's glory and that it demonstrates the fullness of his mercy, his justice, his kindness, his perfection, his love lived out in sacrifice. One, the cross is beautiful in that it reveals the glory of God. Secondly, it produces victory over sin and death. And we gave you four different kinds of concepts throughout the New Testament. Does anybody remember any of those four? Propation, redemption, justification, reconciliation, right? The victory over sin and death. It's one victory described in four ways. And third, the beauty of the cross is that it changes how we live. Today, we were looking at the resurrection, and that if in fact Christ is raised from the dead, what does that mean for us? What does it mean for you? We'll be in John chapter 20. But before we get there, there's a man by the name of Aidan Wilson Tozer. He was born in the late 1800s in a poor family in Pennsylvania, moved to Ohio, started working at Goodyear in his teens as a young, as a young boy, as a as a as a as a rubber cutter, and was in a poor home, wasn't in a Christian home. He was walking home from work one day, and he there was a street preacher of all things calling out to him, saying, if you want to know how to be saved, just call out to God for mercy to forgive you of your sins. And he will hear you. Decided, you know what, he's gonna give his life to Jesus, pray for the forgiveness of his sins, became a Christian, started going to church, decided he wanted to commit his life to ministry, the work of a pastor, and joined the Christian Missionary Alliance, the CMA church, eventually in Chicago. As a pastor, through his 20s, he was incredibly diligent. He didn't really have formal education, he wasn't formally trained, but he was incredibly diligent as a pastor and studying scripture through his 20s, early 30s. Wanted to be the best pastor. But in the mid-30s, he read a book that changed his whole trajectory of his life called The Cloud of Unknowing. The Cloud of Unknowing. It was written in the 14th century. I read it, I didn't find it all that enlightening. But for Tozer, it was life-changing. What was it? It was this idea that we can't know God just in our intellectual pursuits. He was the pastor studying scripture and the cloud of unknowing. The idea was that God lives in a mystery. We can't just know him and intellectually learning about him. No, we need to personally experience him. Personally experience him. For him, this was life-changing, that Jesus is in fact resurrected. And if he is resurrected, he's present to know. Just relationally, just like other people, we can relationally, experientially know God. Life-changing for Tozer. He went, and one of his favorite quotes from that was, look now forward and let be backward. And it was this idea that each day we have the opportunity to pursue a present relationship with God rather than looking back to nostalgia in the past. Thus began his unrelenting pursuit to know God, to experience the resurrected living God, summarized in his book, The Pursuit of God. And for a lot of ways, in a lot of ways, Tozer's awakening became a corrective message for the American church. That we can know God intimately, personally, not merely know about God. And that is that intimate knowledge of God is what it means to be a Christian for him growing up as a pastor in a church. He recognized this isn't necessarily what we always do. To know, experience the living God. So the pursuit of God. If Christ is raised from the dead, Tozer came to this realization, reality that that means something, and that we can personally, experientially know him, just like Paul writes. Yes, I want to know the power of his resurrection as I participate in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death in this current life. So somehow attaining to the resurrection from the dead. We'll be in John 20, reflecting on what it means if Christ raised from the dead. I'll pray for us and then we'll get started. But Jesus, we do just thank you that you are resurrected, that we can experientially know you, that Lord, you you don't it's not just the attending of church or reading of the Bible or learning about you that is our knowledge of you, Lord, but you are one living creator that we can know. And so, Lord, I just pray that we would just come to that same realization of Tozer, that um, Lord, we can experience you, encounter you. And Lord, just even in that realization of you being present in this room, Lord, that would shake us, Lord, the King of creation is present, resurrected to be known, Lord, not just to be thought about. Um, and so Lord, I just pray that you would speak to us today and that we would just find joy in you. Starting in John chapter 20, if you remember from last week, we went through Jesus' crucifixion. John chapter 20 is talking through the days after his crucifixion, starting in verse 1. Now, on the first day of the week, Sunday, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. This the tomb was empty. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, which was probably John, and said to them, They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him. She looked at the empty tomb, she suspected someone must have taken it, taken the body. They didn't know where he was. We're not exactly like Mary in reciting those things of we don't know where his body is. We know the tomb is empty, but practically in how we live, we often say the same things. That yes, we know intellectually the tomb is empty, but practically we think, well, but we don't know where he is. We don't see him. Perhaps someone has taken his body. You might say, well, Pastor, well, how do we do that? How do we say that you know that we don't know where Jesus is? Well, we might pray like no one is listening, or we read the Bible like it's merely information, or we fail to share the gospel as if Jesus is still dead, or we worry like no one is sovereignly good over our lives, or we pursue sin like no one is watching, or we treat church like a human business that we need to run and manage, or we live for the temporary things. We don't know where they took Jesus, but I assure you today, Jesus is alive to be known and experienced and encountered. He's not hidden, he is present. Personally, encountering the living relational God changes absolutely everything, as Jesus says in John chapter 14, because he lives, we also can live. Today we'll look at five ways that encountering the risen Christ, that if Christ is raised from the dead and we can encounter him, we can know him, we can experience him personally, five ways that changes us from the book of John. First, encountering the reigning, living Jesus gives us joy. Encountering God gives us joy. Verse 11. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. She was sad, and as she wept, she stood to look into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. And they said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? She said to him, They have taken my Lord. I do not know where they have laid him. Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. And Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, Sir, if if you carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned and said to him in Aramaic, Rabbinai, which means teacher, awakening joy. Encountering the risen Jesus gives us joy. It's common for all of us to pursue joy. We pursue happiness in circumstances, we pursue joy in status or reputation and leisure and wealth and experiences and relationships. We're all in this pursuit of happiness, right? It's the American pursuit, pursuing happiness. But when our expectations or dreams are not met, we often fail to find joy. We only know happiness when our happiness, when our circumstances are fulfilling. You've been in pain over various trials or struggles of life, challenges in life, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him with your eyes, you believe in him with your heart and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Knowing God, loving God brings us joy in this inexpressibly filled glory. That's the kind of joy that I want. Encountering God gives us joy. As many of you know, I really like Jonathan Edwards. And one of my favorite teachings of Jonathan Edwards is he believes that we experience joy, happiness, satisfaction in the knowledge of God. There is great pleasure in knowing God. That as we know God, as we encounter God, our heart is filled, stirred with joy and affection and passion and love. And he writes on this continually. I learned this week he got a lot of these ideas from a different guy named Henry Scogel in a book, The Life of God and the Soul of Man. And you can kind of summarize the book in his one statement. The soul of man was made to enjoy God. You were made to enjoy God, and nothing else can make it happy, can make it happy. And if you continue through the book, that enjoyment of God is in the knowledge of God, is in encountering, experientially, personally knowing the resurrected God. We experience great joy. I was surprised to learn that George Whitfield also found this book massively life-changing, massively life-changing. If you remember George Whitfield, he was in a holy club with John Wesley, Charles Wesley. They were deeply devoted to learn scripture, to memorize scripture, to wake up early, to pray, to fast, to give everything they had every single day. They were going to study to the greatest lengths of scripture. They're an incredibly disciplined group of people. George Woodfield at one point kind of got worn out by it. Tired of it. Like, I'm tired of doing all of this work. This is this is hard work. Charles Wesley gave him this book, The Life of God and the Soul of Man, changed his life. He really later wrote, I never knew what true religion was till God sent me this excellent treatise. John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitfield, they all use this phrase true religion, largely coming from this book. I mean, it's this idea that true religion is genuinely experiencing the resurrected king. That we he is a he is a risen king that we can know, we can experience, we can interact with. And that is true religion. False religion is talking about this resurrected king without actually knowing him personally, experientially, where our hearts, our affections are stirred as we know him. Change Whitfield lives. He wrote, I prayed many times a day. I received the sacraments every Lord's day. Yet I knew no more that I was to be born a new creature in Christ than if I had never been born at all. God soon showed me that true religion was a union of the soul with God, and Christ formed within us. This union of the soul with God is our enjoyment of knowing the risen king, a ray of divine light instantly darted in upon my soul. And from that moment, but not until then, not before that, through all the work that they had done, did I know that I must be a new living creature. George Whitfield went on to lead the Great Awakening alongside John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards. The seedbed of the Great Awakening was more or less this statement. The soul of man was made to enjoy God, and nothing else can make it happy. It was a calling to a people to true religion where we know, interact, experience the living God. No longer is he some distant God that we don't act, that we gather around in churches without actually personally experiencing. No, he is one that we experience, and as we experience him, we enjoy him. Encountering God does give us joy. The awakening, the great awakening, first great awakening, second great awakening, built on similar premises. But I think it's also our awakening, just the realization, the reality that the living Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, is one we personally know, personally interact with, personally experience. And in that, he gives us great joy, despite or in spite of our circumstances. Secondly, encountering God gives us peace. Verse 19, on the evening of that day, the first day of the week, which had been Sunday, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews. The disciples were all gathered in a home. They were in fear, they were afraid. Jesus came and stood among them, and he said to them, Peace be with you. When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his sides. Then the disciples were glad, they were happy when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you. Encountering God gives us peace. Encountering the resurrected king gives us peace. Again, the disciples were afraid, locked away, hiding, looking at the tragedy of their circumstances without peace. But when Jesus showed up, there was peace, as he told them before his death in John 6, in me you will have peace. Similar to Isaiah 26, you keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you. Encountering God gives us peace. Third, encountering God gives us faith. Verse 24, now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the twin, was not with them when Jesus came. He was not in the room. So the disciples told him, We have seen the Lord. Thomas, he said to them, Okay, unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe. Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. And although the doors were locked again, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here and see my hands, and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe. And Thomas answered him, My Lord and my God. There was faith. Encountering the resurrected Jesus gave him faith. Thomas doubted, he wrestled. And what do we typically do when we doubt or we wrestle? We theorize or intellectualize or turn to YouTube or Instagram, but Thomas encountered the living Jesus, and that encounter brought him faith. Jonathan Edwards believed that there is a real faith that's based on real experiential knowledge of the living Jesus, that as we encounter the resurrected Jesus, we have real faith. Encountering God gives us faith. Or there's an empty faith or a vain religion that's simply based on knowing about God. We knowing about, knowing facts about God. He writes, there is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious. We can think about it, God might be holy and gracious, and having a sense personally of the lovely loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There's a difference between, for him, true religion and a false religion. A true religion, it's we have a personal sense of God's loveliness because we know him. There's a false religion of just we have opinions that God is holy and gracious because someone told us. The pastor said that he was holy and gracious. There's a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet. I read it in a book. Honey is sweet. They say they use it in all kinds of recipes. Honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness, having a sense where we've personally experienced the sweetness of honey, the true faith of encountering, knowing the real living God. Fourth, encountering the resurrected God gives us success. The disciples were out back in Galilee in verse 4 of chapter 21. It starts, just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore. Yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, Children, do you have any fish? They answered him, No. He said, Well, cast the net on the right side of the boat and you will find some. So they cast it, and now they were unable to haul it in because of the quantity of fish. Encountering God gives us success when we're fishing in the right place where He tells us to fish. Oftentimes we're fishing, though, in the wrong place on the left side, fishing merely for promotion or achievement, recognition, possessions, fishing for the approval of people, being liked, being celebrated, fishing for our comfort and safety, chasing adventure and convenience. But Jesus tells us to fish for men, to fish on the other side of the boat, fishing for the advancement of his kingdom. And it is there he gives us success, where there are people who need salvation, disciples who need formation, neighbors who need love, the poor who need compassion, the lost who need the gospel. As he told us earlier in John, I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me, and I in him, he is that bears much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. But if you abide in me, my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. Fishing where he tells us to fish. John John had mentioned, I guess, a couple weeks ago, um, y'all had done this circle maker book and praying over this church. And one of your prayers, one of your big prayers was that God would give the tithing to 10,000 a month, right? 10,000 a month. Uh Mark Batterson wrote this book called The Circle Maker, and it's basically drawing. Circles of dreams that we know God's wanting to do, wanting to move. He's wanting to save people, he's wanting to disciple people. He's saying, Dream big, pray hard, think long. If your prayers aren't impossible to you, they are insulting to God. Faith is taking the first step before God reveals the second step. When we're fishing where God tells us to fish, we will know that we, as we abide in him, we will bear much fruit. Encountering God gives us success in the things that he calls us to. And fifth, encountering God gives us purpose. If you remember from last Sunday, Peter had denied Jesus three times. Said he didn't know him. Jesus looked at him, we know from Mark. Peter is is is heartbroken and flees. Jesus restores him at the end of John. Jesus said to them, Come and have breakfast. And then in verse 15, when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? He said to him, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, Well, then feed my lambs. And he then he asked him a second time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? He said to him, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said, said to him, Tend my sheep. He said to him a third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he had said to him the third time, Do you love him? Love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you. Jesus said to him, Feed my sheep, denying Jesus three times. Jesus giving the opportunity to affirm his love for him three times, and in that restoring great purpose to feed his sheep. Encountering God gives us purpose. Peter denied Jesus three times, restored three times, but not just to restore to relationship, restored unto purpose. We read in Ephesians 2, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Encountering the resurrected God gives us purpose. Encountering God gives us joy, peace, faith, success, purpose. If Christ is raised from the dead, there is massive impact in our own life. As Tozer realized, came to came to experience. For much of his pastoring life, he was living in this reality as if Jesus was just hidden somewhere. He knew the tomb was empty, but maybe Jesus was just hidden somewhere. In his 30s, he came to this realization, no, Jesus is resurrected. And if he's resurrected, that means he's present with us. And he's present with us. That means every day I can know him, I can experience him, I can encounter him. He started reading Jonathan Wesley, George Whitfield, you know, uh uh John John John Jonathan Edwards, and they're all Charles, Charles Finney, they're all a lot of these revivalist awakenings, they're coming to the same place. Jesus is resurrected, and you personally can experience him, encounter him, know him. There's a there's a real encounter of religion where we, in that re encounter, we have joy that is apart from circumstance. Why? Because we're knowing something so beautiful, experiencing the beauty of God. We have peace, why? Because we know he is sovereign and good, we have faith because we we interact with them personally. We we have success in the things he calls us to. He gives us purpose in his mission. Tozer wrote, the world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God, and the church is famishing for want of his presence. In other words, he's saying it's the church is starving to death because we're lacking the real experience of God, the real presence of God. We're doing the fake religion, in his view, in his calling. If you read his book, he's saying we are doing the things around God, learning about God, learning things about God. He personally was doing that for years. He came to a realization, wow, no, but God actually is to be experienced. We can know his presence, and the presence of God always changes us. It's impossible to encounter the resurrected king and not be transformed. It's purely probably impossible. Presence in Hebrew is face, it is encountering God. But why is that? Or is it even true? Tozer's message, the church is famishing for want of his presence. We're starving to death because we were lacking the real experience of God, which was the message of the first great awakening, the message of the second great awakening, different theologies, really, but similar messages. Both awakenings are the same thing. We're starving to death because we're lacking the real experience of God. And the church awakened, okay. We want to actually experience the resurrected king, and that changed the course of this nation for the first great awaken. But is Tozer right? Was he right? He didn't die all that long ago. Was he right? And you have to ask, like, what are we seeking? That was Tozer's big question. What are we actually seeking? Tozer believed it all began with a hunger for the right things. What are we wanting? We only move in the direction of our hunger. You can be certain of that. Everything moves in the direction of its hungers. The sunflower that rises when the sun rises in the morning will turn its broad yellow face to the sun. And when you will become God hungry, you will be moved in the direction of God, in the direction of spiritual things and eternal things. To have found God and still to pursue him is the soul's paradox of love. Oh God, I have tasted thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. Tozer believed it all began in the why of what we're wanting, what we're seeking, what we're hungering for. For him, for years, there was a hungering for other things that were looked like religion, a shifting in his life of, oh, I'm hungering now to know, to experience God, to encounter the resurrected king, changed his life because his hunger, his desire, what he was actually seeking after, shifted. Charles Charles Spurgeon, if you have no hunger for Christ, it is because you are stuffed with the garbage of this world. May God give us an empty stomach that we cry out for the bread of life. Or John Calvin, our souls are like empty vessels. They cannot receive the grace of God unless they are first emptied of self and opened up to a true spiritual hunger for God. So the question for us today is what are we pursuing? What do we hunger for? Honestly. Do we live as if Christ is resurrected, present, waiting to be known? Is our hunger to experience the living resurrected King? Or are we settling for knowing things about God? Knowing that the tomb is empty, but perhaps Jesus, his body is just misplaced. Countering the resurrected Jesus changes everything. A few questions to process. When was the last time that we enjoyed God's present presence? Just enjoying Him. Enjoying being with Him without asking Him for anything. Is God your greatest treasure? Is Jesus your absolute treasure that you're hungering, that you're seeking, that you're yearning for? Or is he just merely your greatest helper? Do you desire God because He is useful to you, or because He is beautiful, because you love Him, because you want to encounter Him, experience Him, to enjoy Him? Is Jesus the means to your happiness, or is Jesus Himself your happiness? Do you want God to bless your plans, or do you want His plans, fishing where He tells you to fish? What are we hungering for? What do we hunger for as a church? Kind of made me reflect. What would it look like? And just reading through Jonathan Edwards' descriptions, George Whitfield's descriptions, Charles Fennie's descriptions last week. What would it look like for us to encounter the living Jesus? Full of joy and peace despite circumstances, full of faith and obedience in the things of God. What would it look like if we as a church encounter the resurrected Jesus? I don't want to speculate, but I can just encourage us that we hunger for the right thing. We hunger to know him and him alone. He is our pursuit, he is the resurrected king that we can experientially know. So let us put behind the past and make this moment and day one that we pursue to know him. His Christ has raised from the dead. And as we encounter him, as we know him, he gives us joy, he gives us peace, he gives us faith, he gives us success in his purposes. With that, let us pray. Lord Jesus, we do just thank you, God, that you are resurrected. Lord, I thank you for just the insight of just these men through history, Lord, that there is a true religion where we personally, experientially know the resurrected king, and that transforms us in every way. And and just even the insight of it being a hunger for you, Lord. We're getting what we're wanting. And we're when we're showing up wanting all these other things, Lord, we'll get those other things without with missing you. And so, Jesus, I just pray that Lord, you would be our hunger, our desire, our drive, our ambition, our hope, our our dream. And Lord, that we would encounter you. And Lord, we would encounter and know. As John Owens talked about, just the true religion where we heart our hearts are in alignment um with the living King. Jesus, we just thank you that you are present. Lord, I just pray that when we gather every Sunday, Lord, there would just be that awareness, that desire that, Lord, we're wanting, looking um to you, to know you, to um enjoy you, to hear from you. And that, or just the weight of that reality, that the King of all creation, the resurrected Lord is in our midst. And that we would we would live with with that just awareness. We thank you, God. Amen.