Well, he is risen.

He is risen indeed.

Yeah, some of you got that. It's a uh ancient practice and many traditions where uh some would say he is risen, and the response back is he is risen indeed. So let's do it, let's try it again. He is risen. Amen. Praise God. Well, listen, my name is Russ. It is so awesome to have you guys with us tonight. And a special thank you. We we were pretty packed, uh almost Sunday packed at the three o'clock gathering. And so uh what this tells me is is one of two things. Nobody's gonna be here tomorrow, or we're gonna have room for all the people God's gonna bring tomorrow. So thank you. Thank you for making making that that possible tonight. And there's a bunch of people serving, volunteering, leading us in worship, serving your children, helping serve refreshments, maybe do tech stuff. There's so many people that are here all this afternoon and tomorrow. Some people are coming to serve tonight, and then they're coming with their families tomorrow. So thankful for all of the people that make a weekend like this possible as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. Now I've got a dilemma. I have often been guilty of overcommitting and under-delivering. Sometimes my mouth gets ahead of my ability to come through. In other words, sometimes I write checks that that I don't have the equity to cover. I, you know, my wife went out of, she had to go out of state, she was helping a friend out who's been sick, and and and she leaves me a few things that she would like for me to handle. And so the first two days, I'm not looking at that list for the life of me, man. I'm I'm enjoying all this freedom that I enjoy. Now, listen, I don't like it when she's gone. I like it for two days, but then after that, the the groceries run out and and and I get lonely. I get lonely. But she leaves me this list to do, and so you would think after she's been gone a couple days that I would follow up and and get the list going. I'm like, hey, I can handle this in in two days. And then that the last couple days come up. I'm like, I can handle this in an afternoon. Do you think it got handled? No, because I am not great all the time at keeping my promises. I have I have this human dilemma. I know that none of you other men in this building have ever had to deal with anything like that. I know that. I know that. Um, for example, you know, my wife will tell me something simple. Like, we'll be at a ball game. And I think it's important because she grabs my cheeks and she says, Listen to me. When you leave here, you are to bring three children home with you. No problem. So ball game's over. We load up, get in the car. Hey guys, what'd you think about that game? Josiah makes a comment, Abigail makes a comment. I'm like, Caleb, what'd you think about it? Caleb? Caleb? Three! I was supposed to have three. Three, but it was okay. It was okay. I got back and got him before he even realized that he had been forgotten. And so then we made a deal. We had a little bit of negotiation on the way home. The fact was that, hey, everybody's safe and sound. Do we all agree? Yes. Does mom need to know every detail of this situation? And so I for some reason she's upset because I've forgotten one of our children. I'm like, honey, it was a baseball game. If if we were being judged by the same score, I was two for three. So, so but look, simple things. We we uh as human beings, I and listen, I think we all can identify sometimes we are not great at keeping our promises. I I mean, just and this is this is being for real. Like I I remember the early days in our marriage uh where she would say, Can you let me tell what time you're gonna be home for dinner? And I'd say, I'll be home at dinner. I'll be home by 6 o'clock. Well, 6 15 comes, 6 30 comes, I'm busy, I'm I'm caught up in something important like work, and and and I I I lose track. And that happened. Now we after we had the come to Jesus meeting, it stopped. I did better. But all just even simple things like I'll say yes, I'm listening, I'm listening, I'm listening. And am I really listening? I um um I have to remember we have two ears, one mouth, and so sometimes I'm running into friends and I haven't seen them in a while, we hadn't gotten together in a while, and and here's what we inevitably say hey, listen, we need to get together and have lunch soon. And then we run into each other six months later and have that awkward conversation all over again. So we make promises that we don't keep, and it's not necessarily a reflection of the intention of our heart, but listen, we're I'm I hate to say this, it's ingrained in all of us to be a promise breaker because of sin, because we're not perfect, because we are we're we're we're we're human beings. We have fallen short of the glory of God. We're marred by sin and the reflect the results and the consequences of disobedience and rebellion. We can't even keep promises to ourselves. I'm gonna start eating healthy on Monday, and Monday goes great until the afternoon where the package of double stuffed Oreos are torn open. And then I tell myself another promise that I know that I'm gonna break. I'll start new tomorrow. And so we we we have all of these problems with keeping promises. We we laugh about it, but but can we all relate a little bit? Help me out, or I don't feel so bad. Can we relate? Say amen. All right, we can relate to this. Underneath the joking is something real. The fact that we're promise breakers. And these promises seem harmless, and maybe they seem even humorous, but the sad reality is the longer you live, the more you're gonna need to come to accept and come to grips that broken promises are a way of life, which is sometimes why we get so hurt. We have this expectation uh for other people we would never have for ourselves, and and we we can get hurt. Now, here's is this possible? Is it possible that the gap between the promises made and our inability to keep them potentially shape the way we view God? Is it possible? Because a lot of us in here, if I if I sat down and I said, hey, let me hear your story, you would inevitably tell me a story of probably some broken promises. And you might tell me a story about a parent, or you might tell me a story about a divorce, you might tell me a story about a diagnosis that somebody in your family received. You might you might tell me a story about about how a parent left and and and your family has experienced brokenness. You listen, we all have the stories to tell with which you're understanding. If if my father and if my mother, if my my best friend can't keep all their promises, how in the world would I expect my heavenly father to keep all of his promises? I mean, God is faithful, and and we look at sometimes the other stories where God, there's testimonies of God's faithfulness, but sometimes we don't feel like that applies to us. We want to believe God's promises, but when things don't happen, when and how we want, panic ensues, doubt, disappointment. Understandably so. And so the question for many isn't that we doubt that God can, but we doubt that He will. And so we're being we're finishing up this series. This is kind of unusual to finish the series on Easter Sunday, because I know this might be a Sunday where some people are here for the first time or the first time in a while. And we we we started a few weeks ago with a series called The God You Can Know, distinguishing the difference between uh what it means to know about God and what it means to understand religion and then what it truly means to understand an intimate personal encounter with God through his son Jesus Christ. Completely different things. And so the first week we talked about this pursuit, this pursuit. I think of Moses when he's when he's uh uh um before God in Exodus chapter 33, he says, please God, please God. In the King James it says, I beseech ye, O Father, show me your glory. Which a simple prayer is, God, if you are there, show up. Show me, reveal yourself to me. And I've found that when I pray that, God answers that prayer. He shows up. And so in this series, we looked at the second week that God is all powerful, God is all-powerful. The term that we talked about a lot was omni, uh omnipotence, that God is all-powerful, omnipotent, he is sovereign, he is in control. He, even as we look at this world and all the crazy circumstances that are taking place in our world, I'm telling you, God is not caught by surprise on that. He is in control, he is sovereign. The people who are in charge, he's in charge of them. And so last week we looked at the fact that God is all-loving. So God is all-powerful, but God is all-loving. We looked at this familiar verse where that says that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only begotten son, that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have everlasting God. This all-powerful God who is all-loving, there's a collision there. And I'm going to come back to that in a second. But what we see today, as we look at the resurrection story, is we see that the resurrection proves that God keeps his promises. He is a promise keeper. He is not a promise breaker. And my prayer for us, just as it is every week, is that when we open up this book, that we understand that God opens up his mouth and he speaks to us. And he reveals to us what we need to know about ourselves and what we need to know about him and his character. And here's the big idea: the resurrection proves that God keeps his promises. See, the Bible's a record of God's faithfulness. This book is a record of God's faithfulness in black and white and red letters as well. It shows that he not only will proclaim a promise, he will perform the promise. And page after page in this book is a story about how God shows up from Genesis to Revelation, and he is good for his promises. Look at Numbers 23, 19. It says this God is not human that he should lie, not a human being that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill? See, we can stand on the promises of God. We can take them to the bank, so to speak. We know that he's good to keep his word. There's roughly 7,000 promises throughout all of Scripture. Some that God has already kept, some that God is in the process of keeping right now, and some that will be fulfilled later. Come, Jesus, come. Amen? God keeps his word, and the resurrection is proof. At the very beginning of the story of Scripture, we see that sin comes into the equation and begins to break things down. Sin enters the world when Adam and Eve disobey God's one command for them. They choose to go their own direction instead of being obedient to God. And as a result, there's consequences to that. They're separated from God. They're banned from the garden. They're no longer going to experience immortality. They're going to experience death. But now there's two aspects to death. There's a death of just being separated from God, and then there's a physical death that they'll experience that all of us will experience unless Jesus comes before. And so there's three promissorial statements I want to look at. Where God gives promises. And the very first promise he gives, that is a promise to solve this issue of sin and separation, is given to us in Genesis chapter 3, verse 15. Let's read it there. It says, um, and this I'm reading out of the Christian Standard Bible. I'm also going to read it in a second out of the English Standard Version, but the Christian Standard Version says this I will put hostility between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head and you will strike his heel. And what he's saying here, he's talking about the hostility between the serpent, the enemy, the devil, Satan, Lucifer, who has deceived them. I'm going to put hostility between you and the woman. Between your offspring and her offspring. Now here's what the English Standard Version says, and I'm a little bit partial to it because of one word. And it says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head. I just want to say that to Satan one day. I want to, I don't, you know, that's just imagine how I would say it if I was Satan and saved it. He's going to crush your head. Jesus is going to crush your head. That's what the prophecy is saying. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel. So that the serpent might strike Jesus' heel, he did. That's what Good Friday was. But you know what? Sunday was the coming. And the promise is even though Jesus' heel had been struck by the serpent, what does it say? He's going to crush the head of the serpent. That's what resurrection Sunday is about. Crushing the head of the serpent. So what's Jesus makes a promise. God makes a promise. Genesis 3, 15. That is the first promise of the Messiah. It's the first promise of deliverance. It's the first promise of what will come in the future. What we celebrate today. God made a promise. And so in the beginning, God promises that He ultimately makes the promise that points forward to Jesus. He's saying that through one of the sons of Eve, Satan will be destroyed. He'll be crushed. It's the first place we see that promise given to us in Scripture. The promise of the Messiah that will come. Now, fast forward when this promise is fulfilled in Jesus. Some 4,000 years later, we know the story. Jesus, the Son of God, born of a virgin, lives a perfect, sinless life, gives his life as a sacrifice on the cross. But then three days later, he rises from the grave. Now here's the account of it from Luke. Luke 24, verses 1 through 8. On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the tomb, bringing the spices that they had prepared. They're going to come and prepare his body for burial. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb. They went in, but did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men stood by them in dazzling clothes. So the women were terrified. Understandably, I would have been as well. And they bowed down to the ground. When people encounter angels, when they encounter God's presence, when everybody tells you a story that doesn't include falling down on your face when you encounter God, they probably haven't encountered God. Why are you looking for the living among the dead? asked the men. He is still not here, but he has risen. There's an exclamation point. He is risen. Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee, saying it is necessary that the Son of Man be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and rise on the third day. And they remembered his words. So these women come to the tomb to anoint the body, which is a very significant thing. I don't have time to get into the fact that women are a part of this story in this ancient historical place. Women would not have been counted on to be a witness. And so it's significant that God includes the story about the women being the first ones that come to the tomb. And it says, since they were unable to come earlier, so when they come to the tomb, the body's not there. Angels say he is not here, he has risen. Now this is a miracle, right? This is a miracle beyond our wildest imaginations, but it should not have been a big surprise to the disciples because he had already told them what was going to happen. They had all been students of the word. They would have been familiar with the prophecies and the foretellings of what would come. Look back at Luke 9, verses 21 and 22, but he strictly warned and instructed them to tell this to no one. By the way, if you want to make sure somebody doesn't tell anything to anyone else, don't tell them not to tell anyone else. Saying, it is necessary that the Son of Man suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priest and scribes to be killed and to be raised the third day. So this is going back a ways. The promise is given. Jesus shares it not only there, but in Luke 18, 31 through 34, it says, Then he took the twelve aside and said to them, See, we are going up to Jerusalem. Everything that is written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles, and he will be mocked, insulted, spit on. And after they flog him, they will kill him, and he will rise on the third day. See, Jesus had told these disciples at least at least three times, as far as we know, that he would be killed, but it but it wasn't the end of the promise. The promise was that he would rise from the dead. Jesus' words aren't the first time we see these promises being made. We see them scattered throughout the Old Testament. We see in the letters and the books written thousands of years earlier that proclaimed this promise. So God gives a promise, but you know what does? God just keeps repeating the promise. And Isaiah chapter 53. And I'm going to read this in a second. We're going to read it. It's going to be on the screen together. I just want to I want you to understand the words I'm about to read. And I want you to understand who we are in our infallibility, in our humanness, in our sinful state. I'm talking before Christ. What our life caused the Son of God to suffer. And so He this is a prophecy. This is a promise. Isaiah 53, 4 through 8. Yet He Himself bore our sicknesses, and He carried our pains. But we in turn regarding Him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities. Punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds. We all went astray like sheep. We all have turned to our own way. And the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted. Yet he did not open his mouth like a lamb led to the slaughter, and like sheep silent before her hearers. Every strike. Every swing of the flying. Every thorn on his head. Every ounce of blood spilled. He was taken away because of oppression and judgment. And who considered his fate? For he was cut off from the land of the living. He was cut off. He was cut off from the land of the living. What does that mean? He was struck because of my people's rebellion. Can I just share something? God is all-powerful. God is holy, and God is perfect, and God is just. And all of those characteristics, just those I've mentioned, plus the myriad of other characteristics and attributes that go with who God is, they all make it impossible for us to be in his presence. Because of our sin, because of rebellion. I mean, what is the dilemma? What is the, I mean, God is all powerful and he cannot coincide with sin. What is it that he's going to do to maintain his power and his holiness and his just character? He can't allow sin into the picture. So God who is all-loving, God who so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son, that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life. So an all-loving God who wants to be reconciled with his people, he can't be reconciled with them without dealing with the sin issue. Somebody's got to pay the price for the rebellion. And God, who is all-powerful, that can't let just anybody into his presence because he's holy, but he is all-loving. So what does he do? He says, I've got a plan. I'm going to handle it myself through sending my son. And my son will go through what he went through in holy week. Arrested, beaten, tortured. Every stripe, every bit of pain, he took upon himself every bit of the punishment that you and I deserved. So we see this promise, it's a prophecy of the suffering servant who was to come. Some scholars estimate there's over 300 similar verses pointing to Jesus and the sacrifice he would make for the sins of humankind. He who knew no sin became sin. So Jesus became sin. Jesus became rebellion. Jesus stood in your place. You want a simple four-word description of the gospel? Jesus in my place. The promise doesn't stop there in Isaiah 25.8. It says, when he swallowed up death once and for all, the Lord God will wipe away the tears from every face and remove the people's disgrace from the whole earth. For the Lord has spoken. Hosea 13, 14 says, I will ransom them from the power of Sheol, hell, separation, from being cut off, I will redeem them from death. Death, where are your barbs? You might say, Death, where is your sting? Sheol, where's your sting? So when Paul begins to share about the power of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, in a way he's mocking death. He's mocking death. Oh, death, where is your sting? Where's your sting, death? We've all experienced loss, haven't we? Probably. We've experienced the loss of a loved one. We've experienced what it means to lose someone, probably. If you haven't, you probably will. My mom passed away on uh this past May. And and and so can I tell you something? I wished I'd have, I wish I had this understanding when I was with her in her room in the rehab center. We think she had a heart attack, we're not sure, but it it came and it went fast. But in a sense, I wish I would have known and thought about this because I was crushed. I was sad, I was broken. But you know, even then I knew, man, my mom is not gone. Her location has just changed. She's not gone. I didn't lose her. And I wish I had the understanding. I wish I had was standing in the authority of this passage and the and what 1 Corinthians 15 says, where I could say, Oh, death, where is your sting? You think you've won this battle, but in the blink of an eye, I'll be reunited with my mother in heaven because she has chosen to follow Jesus. It's almost like mockery to death and the devil and sin. That's what celebration is about. Celebration of the resurrection. That's what it's about. And so God, God gives the promise, God repeats the promise, and then Jesus fulfills the promise. First Easter. Let's go back to it. Why are you looking for the living among the dead? Luke 24. Ask the men. He is not here, he has risen. Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee, saying, It is necessary that the Son of Man be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and rise on the third day. And they remembered his words. How important that statement is because I'm telling you, all of us are going to be in situations where the world throws us circumstances that feel like a punch in the throat. And it's in those situations we need to remember these words. And in a sense, we have the authority in Christ. When we feel like we're punched, we've got the authority to punch back. And just like being the kid on the playground being picked on, I had two big brothers that were always standing behind me. And people thought they were going to mess with me. And I'm like, they got two brothers, and I didn't know they were behind me, but they were behind me, but I'm standing up thinking, my brothers, and so I would run my mouth like a little squeaky little kid. You all know who they are. But listen, you you can punch the devil in the throat because you know Jesus has your back. He came to fulfill the promise. They came looking for a body, but instead they found a promise fulfilled by looking at the empty tomb. God always keeps his promises. God always keeps his promises. Now, how many of you know what a check is? You know what a check is? A check is a piece of paper that the bank used to give you. Now, let's see, I can't find what I'm looking for. There it is. So now the bank, you know, checks are kind of gone by the wayside. But a check was this. If you went to the store to buy something, you would write a check and you would hand it to somebody and they would give you something in return. And you know what the check was? It was a promissory note. Now they give you a card. It's dangerous. And you swipe it. It's no different. I thought my mom had a checkbook. I'd say, Mom, can you buy something for me? She'd say, No, we don't have the money. I said, Mom, you got a you got a checkbook. And I saw all the checks. I've already seen them all. But there needs to be something to back it up, right? This card doesn't do me any good if no money is in the bank. Listen, God wrote a check and sharing the future promises of the victory that we would have in Jesus. But here's the difference. God has all of the heavenly resources at his disposal. At his disposal. Listen, God has a bank full of promise keeping. God writes a check, and he wrote a check by giving these promises, and he backed it up by raising his son out of the grave. Listen, you can write anything you want to on a check. Ten, ten thousand dollars. I wrote a check one time for a million dollars. You think anybody took that serious? No. Because it wasn't any good. But if Elon Musk came in here and wrote a check for a million dollars, we'd take him serious. And we'd take his money. I don't know about him, but I can just tell you, I'll take the devil's money or any money in the world, and I'll use it for kingdom purposes, okay? Listen, what does this mean for us? What does this mean for you? Some of you are believers, some of you know the Lord, some of you have put your faith in Christ, but you have allowed the circumstances and the bullies and the difficulties of this life to whoop you and to beat you up a little bit. And what you need to realize is that God, who bodily resurrected his son on that first Easter morning, still has the power to bring resurrective life into your life now, despite your circumstances. And we allow the world to steal the joy and the hope and the peace and the fruit of the Spirit from us. And so the first challenge is for believers to walk in the victory that we have in Christ. Now, for the rest of us, for some of us, for some of you, you maybe have never put your faith in Jesus Christ. And tonight is the best night to make it right with the Lord. Jesus came to live, and he died, and he was buried, and he was bodily resurrected to prove that he had power over sin and death in the grave and to give you hope. And he offers you an invitation to come. Come receive the promises. Come receive the salvation that Jesus has paid for. Come receive it. It's free. Now it's not cheap, it cost a lot. Jesus gave his whole life. So you need to understand the seriousness of it. But everyone's invited. All are received. All are accepted. You simply need to repent and believe. So would you bow your heads for a second? And if you're in the category of maybe, maybe you're not sure about your relationship with God, maybe you came in exploring faith, maybe you came in to kick the tires, maybe you came in because of that drug problem. Somebody drug you to church tonight. Whatever it is, maybe, maybe it's just Easter and you're here because, hey, this is what we do at this time of the year. But don't leave here doubting or wondering whether or not you're gonna spend eternity with a Savior that gave his life for you so you could know him. And if you, listen, if this is you tonight, I want you to, you don't have to pray these exact words, but it might be something like this. Dear Jesus, I come to give you my life. I turn and repent from my sin, and I turn to put my trust in you and what you did in your life and your death and your bodily resurrection that we celebrate this weekend. And I say yes to you, Lord. I say yes, I believe. I repent and I believe, and I now want to be identified as a child of the King. If that's you this morning, you pray that prayer for the first time this morning. Would you slip your hand up? So I can encourage you. Would you slip your hand up? Anybody? I'm looking all around the room. Slip it up, hold it up, hold it up high. Had about eight or nine people that responded at the last service. Anyone? So, Russ, I'm I'm praying that prayer tonight. I want to turn and put my faith in Jesus tonight. I see thank you. Thank you. I see both of these hands. Thank you. Thank you. I see that back there. Now, you put your hands down. But I want to encourage you. Don't leave here without telling somebody. You can come tell me. You tell the person you came with, tell the family member that you're with, tell your mom, tell your dad. I put my faith in Jesus tonight. And this will be a great weekend every year for you to celebrate your spiritual birthday. And then you decide what your next steps are. We want to help you take the next steps in your life as a Jesus follower. That includes your testimony. That includes continuing to grow. It might include just coming back next week. It might include being baptized. Don't leave here without telling somebody about your decision and your raised hand. Father, we love you. We thank you. We praise you. And God, we conclude this series with you. What a precious song this has been to us to say in prayer as we sing, I want to know you. No greater prayer, I want to know you. I don't want to know about you. I want to know you, and I want to be known by you. Thank you, Jesus. It's in Jesus' name we pray. And everybody said together. Amen. Join me and sing this last song.