And uh, it's my privilege and honor to get to share a little bit from God's word, reminding us of the reason why we came looking for Jesus this morning.
It's been several decades now, but I remember one of my first trips to Dallas as a teenager, 13 years old or so.
I heard about a church group that was headed to Dallas to go ice skating.
And I thought, wow, that must be amazing.
How do you ice skate? I had seen it on TV, but I caught up with the group. My parents let me go, and off we went to Big Town on the east side of Dallas.
For a day of ice skating.
I didn't think too much of it. My ankles hurt in about five minutes and I was ready to move on to something else, but I stuck it out for a few hours.
And then I found out the even better part of the trip was where we were going to lunch.
A place called TGIF.
That stands for?
Thank God it's Friday.
Do you know that that little phrase, TGIF, showed up about 100 years ago for the first time in a slang dictionary?
It got popularized in the 1960s by a guy named Alan Stillman who founded the restaurant, TGIF.
It grew to about 600 restaurants, and now, at least in the United States, only about 100.
They're having a lot of success overseas in other countries, but apparently we got bored with it being Friday.
So this morning, I suggest we change it.
From TGIF to something more like TGIS, Thank God it's Sunday.
Or maybe even TGIE. Thank God it's Easter.
Because we have something to celebrate.
Matter of fact, this is the greatest of all reasons to celebrate.
I want to turn your attention this morning to just one verse out of the Bible, out of the inspired writing of one of Jesus's closest followers and friends.
The guy that we often call the one guilty of foot in mouth disease.
Because Peter, the apostle, so key in the story of what we know about Jesus and his arrival, his teaching, his miracles.
Peter, the only one to walk on water. The Peter that got to sell serve more than 5,000 people on the side of a lake.
Peter who, who proclaimed for the first time with his own words, inspired by God, you are the Christ.
You are the Messiah, only to turn around in maybe five minutes or five hours, we're not sure, to say something to Jesus that caused Jesus to say, get behind me, Satan.
This Peter who denied Jesus three times before he was crucified, but then was the fourth person at the empty tomb.
30 years after those first events, Peter still can't get over it.
And so writing, little did he know just a couple of years before his own arrival in heaven, Peter said this to a group of people on an Easter celebration occasion.
He said, "All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is by his great mercy that we have been born again because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead." And everybody that agreed with that said, Amen. Absolutely.
Obviously, Jesus is stuck in Peter's heart.
He's recalling probably a story that just repeated itself over and over again, recorded for us in John 3, when Nicodemus, the religious leader, came to Jesus under the cover of night because he didn't want to be exposed.
And he had a conversation with Jesus, and Jesus said, "Nicodemus, every one of you needs to be born again." Not of water, not a human birth.
But a brand new resurrected birth into a right relationship with God by faith in me.
That's obviously where this phrase born again came from.
From the great mercy of God, you and everyone who will believe can have a brand new start, a brand new life.
Through grace and mercy, through Jesus's sacrifice and resurrection.
Now, 2,000 years later, we're being told that, well, we're on the brink of a brand new resurrection and revelation.
We're on the brink of something that's going to change everything called artificial intelligence.
Maybe it will, maybe it won't.
But nothing, not AI or anything else, will ever change everything the way this Jesus and his cross and resurrection did.
So let's spend a few minutes praising him for that this morning.
We have the greatest reason to celebrate. Let me remind you of two or three of them.
One of them is, as Peter lays it out in this chapter, you and I have a brand new identity.
You saw all the babies coming in earlier, didn't you?
That one Eleanor with a beautiful green bow.
We all know what a baby means. It means a brand new life, a brand new start, a brand new adventure, a brand new glorious person.
Do you know that we are suffering, would you agree with me, an identity crisis in our culture.
So many times that word is being used, so many people, especially younger generation, struggling.
And you see it throughout our culture.
Judy and I went to a movie, haven't had a chance to go see very many movies the last four or five years, but we decided to go see the new Ryan Gosling movie on Thursday called Hail Mary.
It's a a story of another astronaut lost in space, kind of like Matt Damon in The Martian.
I won't spoil the movie for you, but let me give you a little hint of how it begins.
Gosling wakes up in the middle of a spaceship somewhere out in outer space, unsure of where he is, how he got there.
And as he begins to get oriented, he goes to the whiteboard and the very first thing he starts to do is to list the things that he thinks he knows.
But at the very top, the very first thing he writes is, who am I?
Because he's been in an induced coma for a period of years trying to get to deep space.
And as he tries to gather himself, the first question is a question of identity.
Peter started off this letter to his friends, far from Jerusalem, by helping them grasp their new life and identity with Christ.
Let me read the greeting to you. It says in the first verse of this chapter, This letter is from Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.
I am writing, let me oh, let me do this. How about you close your eyes?
I want you to listen, I'll try to emphasize it. I want you to listen to six different words of identity.
Would you mind? Close your eyes and just listen for the words.
This letter is from Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. I am writing to God's chosen people who are living as foreigners in the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.
God the Father knew you and chose you long ago and his Spirit has made you holy.
As a result, you have obeyed him and have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.
May God give you more and more grace and peace.
All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead.
Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance.
An inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, and beyond the reach of change and decay.
And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day.
Did you hear the words of what it means to be a child of God, born by grace?
Through faith in Jesus Christ. Let me point them out to you and talk just a minute about them.
He says, we're chosen in Christ.
That we've been selected, that we were desired by God, that that we were wanted, that we are valued so much that Jesus would rather come to the earth, live on it like you and I, experience some of its challenges and sufferings and sacrifice himself.
He would rather do that than live eternity without all of us.
Now I don't know if heaven will be as crowded as it is right now in here.
But it's going to be full.
And Jesus loved you and me so much that he was willing to die to make it possible for us to be with him. He chose us.
He says that we are foreigners. That is a word that literally means exiles for a period of time.
We are not yet home.
We are homeward bound people. We are pilgrims. You might even call us immigrants looking for our homeland.
And we ought to always remember that no matter how good and comfortable we may get in this life, this is not our permanent residence.
It's not our permanent place. He says we are known in the foreknowledge of God that before the foundations of the earth were laid, God knew that he would need to send his son to be our savior and he made a plan.
Because he would know everything about every one of us, good, bad, and ugly, even down to the very hairs on our head, no matter how many we have or don't have.
He says that we are holy.
Not many of us are comfortable with that word.
It means to be set apart, it means to be set aside. It means to be made special by a faith that drives us gratefully into obedience with Jesus.
And then he says we're cleansed.
That's a word we like to hold on to even more.
A word that means all of our sin has been forgiven, all of it has been washed, all of it has been canceled, all of it has been ransomed.
But among all of these terms, perhaps the best one is the last one.
He says that we are heirs.
Heirs of the very kingdom of God.
That we have something so far beyond our imagination.
And that if you're going to have an inheritance, he says, you've got to have two things. You got to have somebody that can pass on wealth to you, and you got to have some people that are going to be safe and secure that can actually receive that inheritance.
And he says, you know what? That's what God is doing. He's working both sides of the equation.
God has created in Christ, with Christ, through Christ, an amazing, undefiled, perfect, and pure inheritance.
And he's going to make sure that every one of us that believes in him is safe and guarded and certain to ultimately receive that prize.
Which is ultimately not about whatever other blessings there may be in heaven. It is ultimately about being able to know and walk with and celebrate and love and connect to Jesus as our brother and as our savior.
On Friday, I was flipping through the headlines and I I caught the Wall Street headline that really grabbed my attention.
It said this, When are heirs, when heirs are right to say, thanks, but no thanks to an inheritance.
Now I didn't have time to read the article, but I thought, who would do that? Who, who would say, thanks, but no thanks for the inheritance that is being offered to them.
I'm sure it has something to do with tax implications and all other kinds of struggles and things that might come if you got that kind of a windfall.
But you know what? It might be many of us.
Reminded me of an earlier article I read at the first of the year.
Do you know that over the next 25 years, we're going to witness as a culture the largest transfer of wealth.
From baby boomers and perhaps a few of the greatest generation that are left, the baby boomers will be transferring their wealth to their millennial children and Gen Z grandchildren.
Do I have any teenagers in here? Their ears might want to perk up right now.
How much will this wealth transfer look like over the next 25 years?
It will look like 124 trillion, trillion dollars transferred from the current generation holding those resources to their millennial and Gen Z children and grandchildren.
You might be one of those people.
If you are possibly one of those people, be really nice to your parents and your grandparents right now.
Especially over Easter dinner, okay?
And you might even be more kind and careful with your mom or your grandma because guess what?
Most of that 124 trillion is going to move sideways before it moves down.
It's going to move to your mom or your grandma because most of the moms and the grandmas outlive their husbands.
That's why all those athletes always look into the camera and say, love you mom.
I don't know if you or me, I don't know if we're going to be one of those people in that great wealth transfer.
But what I can tell you is there's an even greater inheritance.
And that's an inheritance you would never want to say no to.
It is the very kingdom of God, the very presence of Jesus Christ.
That's who we are.
That's something to celebrate.
The other thing that we have to celebrate is a brand new power.
An ability to handle life until we step into heaven as heirs.
You know, the most challenging thing for Christian faith, and really for any faith, is how do you handle and how do you understand the suffering that comes in life.
Right now, we are living in the meantime, and it's pretty mean sometimes.
Is it not? We are living in that season of what theologians call between Good Friday and Easter Sunday morning in some way, metaphorically.
That we know that Jesus has sacrificed himself, but we're not fully into his presence or into his kingdom yet.
We wonder, do we not, if God is good and God is real, then why is life so dang painful sometimes.
It's not a particularly good statement I've decided, but I learned it way back when when I was in college just down the road from here.
Be nice to everybody, because everybody is either on their way into trouble, in the middle of some trouble, or just coming out of some kind of trouble.
That's a pretty dismal way to look at life, don't you think?
But it is accurate in so many ways.
I don't know about you, but I kind of resonate with unbelievers, with atheists who say, you know what?
One single child with cancer is a reason enough, big enough to not believe in God.
Sometimes I look at our world and I look at how people struggle.
I look at how they get sick.
I look at how they suffer through war and through all other kind of matter and I wonder, why God, why?
Why is it going on this long and this hard for so many people.
Well, Peter doesn't hide his thoughts about that either. God inspired him to keep writing to his friends.
So in the sixth verse of this chapter of his last or second to last letter, he wrote this.
So be truly glad because of who you are, because you're an heir.
So be truly glad. This is wonder, there is wonderful joy ahead, even though, listen to this.
Even though you have to endure many trials for a little while.
These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold.
Though your faith is far from is far more precious than mere gold.
So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.
He's not telling us to be happy about our struggles, our pain, our troubles.
He's telling us that we can be joyful in them because of God's power and promise to us in the person of Jesus Christ.
Christianity alone is the one that promises that God knows about your pain, your fear, your struggles so well that he became part of them.
That he literally bore them with you on the cross.
So we can be joyful even though we face a lot of different stuff.
And people in this room have lost loved ones in the last few weeks or months.
There are people in this room who are having their first Easter without somebody precious to them.
There's somebody in here that's battling some kind of a diagnosis or some kind of a business challenge or some kind of a family challenge.
And they're struggling today going, God, where did this come from and why is it come to me and how long is it going to last?
But you notice what Peter said through the spirit of God, he said, these trials are necessary.
They're needful.
They come in all shapes and sizes in different seasons of our life.
But he says it's necessary for what God is trying to accomplish in us as he produces the character of Christ in our soul.
He gives us some good words. He says that they're temporary.
It doesn't often feel like they're going to be temporary or short-lived, but compared to eternity, they always are.
Our founding pastor here at the Chapel loves to remind us over and over again, Dr. Jim Dennison, God redeems.
He redeems all in this world that he allows or that he sends.
In his time and his perfect way, we're not capable right now of understanding it, but we can claim that promise.
No matter what we're going through, he will redeem it.
And we can understand that these challenges that we face are necessary to purify and cause our faith to bloom.
Now notice the metaphor that he uses. He uses the metaphor of gold.
He says in the same way that gold is refined from its original condition in the earth to something so beautiful that you can wear it on your hand or on your ears or around your neck.
In that same way, God has to send trials and struggles to bloom and grow and polish and purify your faith.
Now I've heard this metaphor almost from the very time I became a Christian at 17.
That God is refining us through challenge. I never, ever really like the conversation very much.
But I also went and did a little bit more study about how this process works.
You might remember if you're old enough, a song called The Refiner's Fire.
I can remember going and looking for precious metals when I was a kid.
My parents took us to the Arkansas Diamond Mine looking for diamonds.
We came up broke, by the way.
But do you know how gold usually comes out of the ground? It usually comes when we're mining it deep into the earth, and it comes out encapsulated in rock.
And you just see these little yellow lines running through the stone.
And so they they mine it out with huge machines now, and then they have to take it to a place where they can pulverize it.
They literally take all of that rock that contains those veins of gold in that rock and they pulverize it until it is literally like flour or like sand.
Once it is in that condition, they take all of what they have pulverized and they put it into a furnace at about 2,000 degrees.
And when they heat it up that much, guess what? The gold is an element weightier than everything around it.
So the gold will go to the bottom. All the other elements, including some precious metals like silver, copper, zinc, and other impurities, those will rise to the to the top and the gold will go to the bottom because of the 2,000 degree heated furnace.
It's called smelting. And then they have a process in which they just scrape all of those other metals and impurities off the top.
And that's when the gold that you could see in the vein actually starts to show itself as a brilliant yellow.
But even in that case, it's not pure yet.
And so they then take that gold that has been crushed and put into the furnace and they put it through another chemical process that moves it from being 80% pure to now being 99.9% pure gold.
We know how valuable it is, just like they did.
One ounce of gold on Thursday before the stock market closed was at a valued at about 4,700 for one ounce.
But then Peter says, your faith, your saving faith is what is is worth so much more.
But God has to refine it, and he refines it through the experiences of challenges and pain and temporary suffering that he is in the process of redeeming.
One other thing that this new birth brings us, it brings us the best reason of all to celebrate.
It is great that we have a day like this.
And Peter wanted them to just relish the the reality of what Jesus has given.
So at the beginning of this letter, he said that he was writing to believers that have been scattered across five different regions.
Some of them as close as 800 miles from Jerusalem, some of them as far as 2,500 miles away.
He wrote to these Christians that were scattered everywhere. It's kind of ironic that Peter is probably writing here mostly to a Gentile audience when he spent most of his life in the book of Acts reaching out to those who were Jewish in their orientation of faith.
But here, probably writing from Rome, not knowing that his own death was coming, probably inside of 24 months.
He gives one of the most beautiful statements that you and I get to claim 2,000 years later.
Here's what it says in the eighth verse. You love him, that is Jesus.
You love him even though you have never seen him.
Though you do not see him now, you trust him, and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy.
The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls.
Listen as he goes on with the party. This salvation was something even the prophets wanted to know more about when they prophesied about this gracious salvation prepared for you.
They wondered what time or situation the Spirit of Christ within them was talking about when he told them in advance about Christ's suffering and his great glory.
Then they were told that their messages were not for themselves, but for you.
And that includes us.
And now this good news has been announced to you by those who preached in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.
It is so wonderful that even the angels are eagerly watching these things happen.
Do you really count yourself more blessed, more fortunate, and more encouraged than any prophet you've ever read about in the Old Testament or any angel that you ever thought might be watching over us?
He says, as you and I know Christ through the word of God, we are more blessed because we're included.
All of us. We didn't have to be there on that first Easter Sunday morning.
And while we can still go back and visit these places, if we have opportunity, we don't have to in order to know him.
In order to love him, in order to trust him, no matter what our lives are in the present condition, we can overflow with a joyful faith because we believe that these are true.
It's the biggest reason of all. More than what the prophets or the angels could ever imagine.
The prophets strained to understand, and the angels are, well, the angels are rubbernecking even today.
Do you know what a rubbernecker is?
If you don't know what a rubbernecker is, well, you've been one. You just didn't know it.
If you were driving out here to be a part of this celebration this weekend, and there was an incident, an accident, or something going on on the side of the road, particularly on the other side that was coming towards you, then the traffic slowed.
And the interesting that even when there is a a traffic problem on the other side of the road, you slow down for it.
The reason, you want to rubberneck.
What's going on, what's going on over there? What is that? Oh, did anybody get hurt?
That's rubbernecking. You know where that term comes from?
Little over 100 years ago, people started riding on tour buses.
And the tour bus company wanted their riders to stay on the bus as long as possible.
They wanted them to have a good experience. And so they would plant tour guides on the buses to point out significant things on the bus tour.
And they would explain to people, oh, this is what that means and this is what that building is for.
That's why that tree is significant. This is what's special about this part of the river.
And those original tour guides were called rubberneckers, because when they started talking, all the people on the bus started craning their neck trying to see what everybody was paying attention to.
Do you know what? That's what angels are doing today.
Can you imagine the privilege it was to be the angel selected, as Judy read about a few minutes ago, the angel selected to come down on the first Easter morning and to either push the stone away or to watch it being pushed away, and then to be the first angel to get to announce, I know you're looking for Jesus.
He's not here. He's alive, just like he said he would be.
And still today, in heaven, the angels are rubbernecking.
Waiting for God's next big move.
And it might be Jesus coming for all of us.
And it might be Jesus coming just for you today, if you've never believed in him.
That the reason that God has so ordered your life is so that you could be here at Possum Kingdom Lake and Possum Kingdom Chapel so that on this Easter Sunday, some 2,000 years after the first Easter Sunday, Jesus came to knock on the door of your heart.
And to invite you to believe if you never have.
And on the authority of God's word, I can promise you that even today, if you will bow your heart and trust in him as the son of God and the savior of the world who sacrificed himself so that you and many more of us could be in heaven.
If you will believe in him today, you can become his child, you can become his family, you can become his everlasting heir.
Would you say that you party well?
Are you what we call in high school or college, a party animal?
That probably evokes all kinds of memories for you, many of which you can't share with your children or grandchildren.
Many of which your grandchildren won't share with you.
I wonder if you think of yourself as a good party animal.
Well, not in that shallow and sometimes dangerous way that we talk about it when we're teenagers or young adults.
But do you really have a reason to celebrate?
Do you have a reason to buy a new Easter dress or a new Easter shirt?
Do you have a reason to get some new Easter shoes? Do you have a reason to ask your family to come and to gather and to be a part of just being together, claiming the promises of God?
This is the greatest party that will ever happen.
Because of what Jesus did on that very first Easter.
So what is my prayer for you?
My prayer for you is that you would know that you are bound for glory.
That because of God's great mercy, he has given you a brand new identity.
He's given you power to handle the meantime, and that he has a promised inheritance that will blow your imagination forever.
Would you pray with me?
Lord Jesus, thank you.
We can never say it enough. We can never grasp the fullness of what it meant.
We'll spend all of eternity celebrating the greatness of who you are, the wonder of your love, the incredible reality that you became one of us.
You stepped into our pain and suffering, that you experienced it with us and still do even today.
That you are the God who is a part of our moment. That you are the God who is gathering up all of our tears.
That you are the God who will redeem all that you have allowed or sent.
And that God, you are setting the table for the grandest party that we will ever, ever experience.
And it's already started. It's palpable even in this room today.
As we sing, as we fellowship, as we eat together, as we are reminded of the great promises that you have given us in Christ.
Lord, we claim again that it is your great mercy that has changed everything.
Because Jesus died for our sins and rose again to bring us everlasting life and freedom for sin.
God, we are full of joy because nobody could have done it but you.
It almost sounds too good to be true, and it would be too good to be true if it came from anybody else but you.
God, help us to grasp your promises in love a little bit better so that today we overflow more and more with joy, inexpressible, with joy overflowing, with joy that is relentless until we see you face to face.
We pray all these things in the name of the resurrected Jesus who gives us life now and forevermore.
And everyone said together, Amen.
God bless you, and may you go and share what those first witnesses did on that Easter Sunday.
You're dismissed.