SPEAKER_00: Is risen indeed.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah, hallelujah.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to you.
SPEAKER_00: If you're new or visiting with us, my name is Mark.
SPEAKER_00: I'm one of the leaders here at the church.
SPEAKER_00: It is great to have you with us on this Easter day as we remember the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: The resurrection from the dead of the Lord Jesus Christ is the greatest event that has ever happened in all of human history.
SPEAKER_00: It is God's great yes to his sacrifice upon the cross for us.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says in this passage that Clay read for us, he says, I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.
SPEAKER_00: And he said similar things back in John 3, just after that great verse that uh that God sent his one and only Son because he loved the world, that all who believed in him would not perish but have eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: And in verse 19 it says, For I did not come to condemn the world, but to save the world through me.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, who we celebrate today, is the savior of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And the empty tomb and the resurrection of Jesus is God's great confirmation and yes, an Amen, that Jesus is in fact the savior of the world.
SPEAKER_00: We as Christians do not believe that the resurrection is a metaphor or an image or an idea.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that it is an historic literal event that happened in Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: No one disputed at the time that the tomb was empty.
SPEAKER_00: There was much disagreement about how it came to be empty, but nobody disputed how that it was empty.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples, the first followers of Jesus, they preached the resurrection in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: That if he was dead and cold in a tomb, everybody could go, yeah, but hold on a second, there's a corpse there.
SPEAKER_00: They preached it publicly in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't go to some far-off land and make up a story.
SPEAKER_00: They preached it in the place where it could be debunked and disputed.
SPEAKER_00: Not only that, but those same disciples and all who had come after gave their lives for this reality.
SPEAKER_00: It is the most consequential event ever to take place on the stage of human history.
SPEAKER_00: It means that we are not alone in the universe.
SPEAKER_00: It means that we are not alone in our lives, in our grief.
SPEAKER_00: It means that death is not the final word over our lives.
SPEAKER_00: It means that we are and can be loved fully, eternally, unwaveringly.
SPEAKER_00: Every person here in this room longs for two things.
SPEAKER_00: You long to be fully known and you long to be fully loved.
SPEAKER_00: To be fully known, warts and all, and not fully loved is terrifying.
SPEAKER_00: But to be fully loved but never really known, well, it's just sentimental, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: But the resurrection says that God fully knows you, warts and all, sins and all, and fully loves you.
SPEAKER_00: And the empty tomb is proof of that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says in this passage, I am the savior of the world.
SPEAKER_00: But what does he mean by that?
SPEAKER_00: What does the resurrection show us that Jesus saves us from, saves us to?
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you three ideas.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus saves us from darkness and brings us into the light.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 46, I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.
SPEAKER_00: Darkness all the way through John's gospel has been equated with a kind of a spiritual blindness.
SPEAKER_00: It's not really physical darkness, it's it's more moral darkness, the darkness of ignorance and sin and hostility to God.
SPEAKER_00: And into that darkness of the world, the light of the world comes to shine.
SPEAKER_00: We read that in the very first chapter of John's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The light has come into the world, and the darkness has not overcome the light.
SPEAKER_00: Darkness is not just ignorance, but it is it is that which stands in opposition to the light.
SPEAKER_00: But as I said, we know that the darkness cannot overcome and has not overcome the light, and that is supremely demonstrated for us at Easter time.
SPEAKER_00: On Good Friday, it looks for all the world, like the darkness is engulfing the light of the world.
SPEAKER_00: But on Easter Sunday, the sun rose and the light shone never to be extinguished again.
SPEAKER_00: In the resurrection of Jesus, light conquers darkness, forgiveness conquers sin.
SPEAKER_00: Grace conquers your shame.
SPEAKER_00: Righteousness conquers injustice.
SPEAKER_00: Trust conquers, and truth conquers lies.
SPEAKER_00: Love conquers hostility and hatred.
SPEAKER_00: That is what the resurrection of Jesus means for our world.
SPEAKER_00: That love and truth and justice and life and light and goodness are ultimately triumph.
SPEAKER_00: That's such good news.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing that Jesus saves us from is he saves us from death and brings us into life.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus in this passage uses the idea of judgment.
SPEAKER_00: He speaks of judgment, and judgment in the Bible's mind is synonymous with death.
SPEAKER_00: Death is a consequence.
SPEAKER_00: It is how it is that humanity faces judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Death is part of the curse for our turning from God.
SPEAKER_00: You can think about it this way.
SPEAKER_00: If God is the source of life and we turn from him, we face the judgment of death.
SPEAKER_00: God rightly, because he is concerned for justice and righteousness, he rightly judges our divine treason, our de-goding of God, our harming of others.
SPEAKER_00: And that judgment is death, not just physical, but an eternal separation from the God who made us.
SPEAKER_00: But the wonderful news of Easter Sunday, the news of the cross and the resurrection, is that in the gospel, Jesus has conquered death.
SPEAKER_00: How?
SPEAKER_00: By absorbing it into himself, by taking it upon himself, by taking upon himself that judgment that we all deserve.
SPEAKER_00: And he plunged it down into hell and rose victorious on Easter Day.
SPEAKER_00: But he did it so that you might never have to say those words.
SPEAKER_00: There is a way out of death, and it is through me.
SPEAKER_00: I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.
SPEAKER_00: Just as it did not have the final word on Good Friday.
SPEAKER_00: For all who trust in Jesus, death will not have the final word over your life.
SPEAKER_00: That is the great hope of resurrection and reunion and renewal at the end for all who trust in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so we can even face grief with hope, with the hope of resurrection existence.
SPEAKER_00: We can face death with the hope of renewal and resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: That is the hope that Jesus offers on Easter Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: And so the third point is this that Jesus saves us from despair and gives us hope.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus saves us from despair and gives us hope.
SPEAKER_00: There's so much hopelessness in the world, so much hopelessness in our city, so much pain and anguish and grief and tragedy, as uh Philippo was praying for.
SPEAKER_00: You don't even have to look on the news, you look in our streets to see people wandering, hopeless.
SPEAKER_00: They are in need of the hope that Easter Sunday represents.
SPEAKER_00: Not only them, but we ourselves, as we as we wrestle with who am I and all of the anxieties and the tragedies and the griefs that befall us when we uh feel like we are losing hope, grasping for meaning and significance and satisfaction in all those places that disappoint, and we're looking for something solid.
SPEAKER_00: Easter Sunday has something for you.
SPEAKER_00: The empty tomb offers you something permanent.
SPEAKER_00: Because hope for the Christian is not some airy, fairy, fly by night aspiration.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a it's not a kind of, I hope it won't rain during our Easter egg hunt later on.
SPEAKER_00: Well, good luck with that.
SPEAKER_00: No, hope for the Christian is sure and certain, it is solid, it's concrete, it's take it to the bank sort of hope.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus actually literally rose from the dead on Easter Sunday, and our hope is attached to him.
SPEAKER_00: You see, hope's like a rope.
SPEAKER_00: It matters very much what you attach it to.
SPEAKER_00: You attach it to circumstance, and those change, and your rope fractures, and where's your hope then?
SPEAKER_00: You attach it to Jesus, who is alive and who is in heaven, physically, bodily, ruling and reigning over everyone and everything and all time and all places.
SPEAKER_00: You attach it to him, it means you can go through anything and still have hope.
SPEAKER_00: It means you can have any tragedy befall you and still have hope.
SPEAKER_00: It means that you can pursue all of the excellence that you wish to pursue in your life and not let it crush you or define you because you still have a hope that's greater than it.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus delivers us from despair and gives us hope.
SPEAKER_00: The resurrection of Jesus says that none of the tragedies or anxieties of this world will be final.
SPEAKER_00: And in this passage, he talks about something that maybe looks kind of slightly oblique.
SPEAKER_00: He talks about the Father's commandment.
SPEAKER_00: They remind you of verse 49.
SPEAKER_00: For I have not spoken of my own authority, but the Father who has sent me has given me a commandment, what to say and what to speak.
SPEAKER_00: And I know that his commandment is eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: What I say, therefore, as I say, the Father has told me.
SPEAKER_00: What is the Father's commandment that leads to eternal life?
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: And because what this is what he says, and I know that his commandment is eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is obedient to something that leads to eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: There's a command that the Father has given the Son that leads to life eternally for us.
SPEAKER_00: What does he mean?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think probably what he means is he's talking about the Father's, the Father's mission, the Father's sending of the Son into the world.
SPEAKER_00: The Son goes in obedience to his father, he takes on flesh, he lives our life, and he dies our death in obedience to his heavenly father.
SPEAKER_00: It was the father's will that the son would go, and the son went not under duress, but voluntarily, willingly, out of love for his father and out of love for us.
SPEAKER_00: He was obedient to that commandment and he walked that road for us.
SPEAKER_00: And so the cross, the command to go and to lay down your life as a sacrifice is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
SPEAKER_00: The cross is that means the fulfillment of that commandment that leads to eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: It is Jesus' obedience on our behalf that leads us, that gifts us eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: He is the better Adam.
SPEAKER_00: Adam stood in that garden all those millennia ago and said, Not your will, but mine be done.
SPEAKER_00: But another Adam stood in another garden and said not mine.
SPEAKER_00: Not my will, but yours be done.
SPEAKER_00: And so on Easter Sunday, he walked from that garden to and offers eternal life to all who would trust in him.
SPEAKER_00: The cross is the means by which all who would trust in Jesus are given eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: And that is a life that begins now.
SPEAKER_00: Don't think that uh that if I become a Christian, that it's just my it's just my ticket to heaven when I die.
SPEAKER_00: That that's when that's when I get my delivery of eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
SPEAKER_00: For the Christian, the person who is trusting in Jesus, your eternal life begins today.
SPEAKER_00: If you become a Christian, today, or began the day when you first trusted in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that eternal life changes you now, every part of you, your mind, your love, your desires, your values, transforms your relationships and transforms how you view your work, transforms your identity and what it is that you put your hope in.
SPEAKER_00: Eternal life starts now, achieved for us by the cross and gifted to us.
SPEAKER_00: And so we have a hope for the future because of the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: A sure and certain hope that every injustice that has befallen you will finally one day be answered.
SPEAKER_00: A hope that all of our sufferings now are not in vain, but are in every part purposeful and meaningful and significant and used by God to bring good through that difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: It is a hope that one day all that is sad will come untrue.
SPEAKER_00: It is a hope that all of the besetting sins which we all struggle with, you know, you have that you have that sin that you keep on going to God with me again.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's the same sin.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I need forgiveness again, yes, I'm sorry again.
SPEAKER_00: You feel wearied by it.
SPEAKER_00: The resurrection offers you hope.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that you have a father who is never discouraged by that prayer.
SPEAKER_00: But the resurrection also offers you hope that all of those besetting sins which discourage and plague us now will one day be gone.
SPEAKER_00: You can scarcely imagine it, can you?
SPEAKER_00: It is a hope that one day every precious tear that we have shed will one day be wiped away.
SPEAKER_00: That is the significance of the resurrection for you today.
SPEAKER_00: And all of this is only true if Jesus rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: I mean it quite seriously.
SPEAKER_00: I said it on Friday, I say it again, Christians are by nature supernaturalists.
SPEAKER_00: We don't believe that this is a metaphor.
SPEAKER_00: The um uh the the Archbishop of Perth in Australia was asked uh once uh by a journalist, and he said, if if the if archaeologists did excavating in Jerusalem and they find the tomb of Jesus, and by carbon dating and DNA evidence they were able to establish uh that that this really was the the body of Jesus of Nazareth, would it affect your faith, Archbishop?
SPEAKER_00: The archbishop thought for a second and he responded and he said, No.
SPEAKER_00: Because he has risen in my heart.
SPEAKER_00: It's lovely that, isn't it?
unknown: C.
SPEAKER_00: S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis once said that theological nonsense is still nonsense.
SPEAKER_00: If it's a metaphor, we're done.
SPEAKER_00: If it's a metaphor, we all go home.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not.
SPEAKER_00: It happened.
SPEAKER_00: It's true, and it changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: That is what we celebrate today.
SPEAKER_00: It is this news that is changing the world, this news that Christ has died for sin and rose again in victory.
SPEAKER_00: It's been changing lives all the way through the last two millennia.
SPEAKER_00: It's really quite remarkable.
SPEAKER_00: One of the, it's actually one of the proofs for the resurrection that how could this small Galilean sect explode in such a way, in such a way that no other, say it's not like Jesus was the first one claiming messianic pretensions.
SPEAKER_00: And yet this truth, this Messiah, this risen Savior has changed the entire world, changed the game completely, in ways that you don't even realize.
SPEAKER_00: All of our Western society has been shaped and transformed by his message, by what he said and what he has done.
SPEAKER_00: And by his spirit, he is continuing to change people now, breaking in that kingdom of God one heart at a time.
SPEAKER_00: It continues to the day.
SPEAKER_00: Change everything about you.
SPEAKER_00: You'll see with new eyes.
SPEAKER_00: You see, because if you're not a Christian here this morning, you couldn't have picked a better day to come.
SPEAKER_00: But you're still in the grave.
SPEAKER_00: You're still in the grave, you're still in darkness, you're still in despair.
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
SPEAKER_00: It's time to rise.
SPEAKER_00: It's time to hear the voice of the Son of God and live.
SPEAKER_00: It's time to rise, to hear his call on your life, to trust him and to live.
SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't end there.
SPEAKER_00: It begins at an empty tomb and it ends around a throne.
SPEAKER_00: And in the meantime, as we follow him until that day when we gather around that celestial throne, we take this news as the most significant news that anyone can ever bear and know.
SPEAKER_00: We take this news to a world in darkness, to a world in death, to a world in despair.
SPEAKER_00: Take it to them as the only answer to darkness, death, and despair.
SPEAKER_00: Politics won't answer it.
SPEAKER_00: Economics won't answer it.
SPEAKER_00: Moral change won't answer it.
SPEAKER_00: Only the gospel of the risen Lord Jesus can move people from darkness to light, from death to life, from despair to hope.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we exist.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we exist as a church.
SPEAKER_00: It is good to remember that.
SPEAKER_00: And in a sense, we pledge ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, every Sunday, every Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we gather on Sundays, because every Sunday is like a little mini Easter.
SPEAKER_00: But on Easter Day, again, we remember why we are here, why we exist in this city, in this time, in this place for these people.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus is alive.
SPEAKER_00: Because he is ruling and he is reigning.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we seek to grow and develop and mature as a church.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we want to connect people to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we want to grow them to spiritual maturity.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we want to serve one another in the community.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why we go to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Why do we plant churches?
SPEAKER_00: Why are we sending out Redeemer, which Lord willing will have their first service this Easter day in a year's time?
SPEAKER_00: Why do we do it?
SPEAKER_00: Because we believe that Jesus is alive.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that we have the only message that can bring people from darkness into light, from death to life, from despair to hope.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we do what we do.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we will continue to do what we do.
SPEAKER_00: This is why every one of you serves because of the conviction that Jesus is alive.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we raise our voices in worship and teaching one another.
SPEAKER_00: Because we believe that Jesus is alive.
SPEAKER_00: And we do it all to the glory of God the Father.