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Transcript

EASTERFEST 2026 || M E R C Y R I S I N G · Wesley at FSU & TSC

• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, let's say thank you to the band.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Come on.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to invite you to just have a seat right where you are, and I just want to say again thank you for being here this morning.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to talk this morning about mercy.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And a mercy that interrupts, a disrupts.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: And my prayer this morning, as you hear the scriptures read, as you hear a story that might seem very familiar to you, is that you might hear it in a different way.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: A way in which God is speaking into your life to disrupt it right where it is.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: With nothing but goodness, mercy, love, and grace.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so this morning, I just want to pray as we study our hearts and prepare to read the scriptures.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Let's pray over the preaching of God's word.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh God, we come to you from a million different places with a million things on our mind.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we come with one purpose this morning.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: To celebrate your resurrection.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Something that makes no sense, God.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God, as we prepare to hear your word, both read and proclaimed, God, I ask that you be with us.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: We know that your word is a lamp into our feet and that it's a light and to our path.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so we ask this morning that it speak to us and it speaks through us for the establishment of your kingdom on this earth.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: And oh God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight and in your sight alone.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh God, you are our rock and you are our redeemer, and we love you.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: We love you because you first loved us.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we pray this in your holy and precious name, O God.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to be reading this morning out of Luke's Gospel, the 24th chapter.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a Bible, you can open it.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it'll also be on the screen in many different fonts.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can find it in multiple places.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever's easiest for you, uh, I'd encourage you just to turn your attention here and hear the reading of the Easter story as Luke tells it.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: The women went to the tomb, bringing the fragrant spices they had prepared.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: They found the stone rolled away from the tomb.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: But when they went in, they didn't find the body of the Lord Jesus.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't know what to make of this, as you can imagine.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly, two men were standing beside them in gleaming, bright clothing.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: The women were frightened and bowed their faces toward the ground, but the men said to them, Why do you look for the living among the dead?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: He isn't here, but he's been raised.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Remember what he told you while he was still in Galilee that the human one must be handed over to sinners, be crucified, and on the third day rise again.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Then they remembered his words.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: When they returned from the tomb, they reported all these things to the eleven and all the others.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, the mother of James, and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Their words struck the apostles as nonsense, and they didn't believe the women.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: But Peter ran to the tomb.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: And when he bent over to look inside, he saw only the linen cloth.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Then he returned home wondering what had happened.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: My sophomore year of college, I joined a fraternity.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Don't I seem like a fraternity guy?
• 5:15
  unknown: Yeah, you do.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, thank you.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: I joined a fraternity.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna tell you this story.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh not many people in my life know this story, including my parents are probably watching on the stream right now.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: They don't know this story.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think my wife knows it.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but here we go.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: I joined a fraternity.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: And uh actually the fraternity was an amazing experience.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people have a lot of thoughts and feelings about fraternity, but I had a great experience in the fraternity.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like I got to meet people, know things that I didn't get to know otherwise.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: But in the fraternity experience, you go through what's called in our fraternity an associate membership.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Other fraternities call it pledging, right?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then you get to a point called initiation.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's usually late in the semester.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so we got to the initiation point.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: And as you're building up to initiation, you have these events that kind of teach you the values of the organization.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so you learn about things like trust and brotherhood, friendship, the power of those things.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: And in the week leading up to initiation, you have what's called a pre-initiation week, brilliantly named.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it has uh uh many different nights, every night that week, a different event where you kind of learn about these things that are very experiential.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I can't tell you them because they're secret, but they're amazing.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and so uh they're they kind of teach you what it's like to be uh a brother of somebody else.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a powerful statement, and especially for me who never grew up with a brother, that was a cool thing.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh you you kind of get to go through these experiences, but the thing about it is that during pre-eye week, all the associate members move into the fraternity house, into one room together, and we sleep on sleeping bags and cots and uncomfortable things.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you're going to bed because of these events and stuff, you're going to bed at three, four in the morning.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Always.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's at the end of the semester.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that same semester, I happen to be taking a course called Basic Christian Beliefs.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I haven't been a Christian at this point my entire life.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I signed up to take basic Christian beliefs, I need you to hear me say that I thought that was an A plus already, right?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how hard is it for somebody who grew up in the church to take a course called Basic Christian Beliefs?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I took it.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the thing that I discounted about this is it was being taught by uh Dr.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Waite Willis, who is at Florida Southern College, where I went to school, and he has taught that course for 30 years.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever met a professor that's taught a course for 30 years?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: They know that course like the inside of their hand.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: They know everything about it, even though it's titled Basic Christian Beliefs.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, at the end of the semester, you have a big exam, unsurprising to you.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: And in that exam, you had an opportunity to take it written, or you could take it orally.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: It was totally your choice.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I started asking my friends who had taken it before, like, you know, should I take it written?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Should I take it orally?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And they were like, well, you know, if you take it written, if you get on the wrong, you know, on the wrong direction, on the wrong path, and you're writing that essay, there's nothing you can do to save it, right?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you've ever been in that situation, like, I'm just gonna start writing and hope I come to the right answer, right?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh that a lot of us have taken exams like that.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: But if you take it orally, here's what he does: he'll sit there and he'll kind of cross his hands, he'll ask you the question, and then if you're going down the wrong path, he'll just kind of go, and I thought, okay, I'll take it orally.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Most people did that.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think of the class of 35, like two took it written.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the oral exam uh was an hour-long session in his office where he could ask you anything from the semester, and then you were to respond.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm thinking to myself, see, he's gonna give me some hints, you know.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that exam fell Wednesday of pre-initiation week.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: I had gone to bed at around 3:30, 4 o'clock in the morning, and my test was at 8 a.m.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I felt.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I get there and I walk in.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the other thing is I'm thinking, you know, I'm a pretty charismatic guy, I'm tired, but you know, I'll be fine.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Did I crack the notes or book for that exam one time?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: No, absolutely not.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: I did not open them and I got to the exam and I thought, it's basic Christian beliefs.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: How hard can it be?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: About 20 minutes into the hour-long exam, he had done the at least 20 times.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I was going down the wrong path every time.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: About 20 minutes in, he stops me and he says, Bryant, I think we both know that you are unprepared for this exam.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Yes, sir.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also very tired.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I went into this kind of you know, thing that you do when you're trying to defend yourself in this moment.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, you know, I I haven't slept in three days, and we're going through this fraternity initiation, and it's been awesome.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: But like, I understand that I can I understand that academics are supposed to come first.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: I understand that, right?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever been in this situation?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yes, I will do all the work I missed when I skipped class, right?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: You never do.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so uh I was in that experience, like I can, oh I'm so sorry.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, Brian, stop, stop, stop, because I have a tendency to freak out.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Ask the staff.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Brian, stop, stop.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: He said, What I'm supposed to do right now is to give you the grade that you deserve right now, which is indeed an F.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100%.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And those of you who didn't respond, like, I know I love the credit you got me, but bro, it was an F.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: It was like a bad F, you know, maybe 5% total.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, that what that will do is I'm looking through, I'm thinking through the rest of the things that you've done in this class.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: It'll probably leave you with a C minus in the class.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking to myself, there is no way I am going home to my parents who raised me in the church and telling me that I'm telling them that I got a C minus in basic Christian beliefs.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Ain't gonna happen.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, that's what I'm supposed to do.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: But here's what I'm gonna do I want you to go home, not to the fraternity house right now, but I want you to go to your dorm.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, and I want you to lay down and sleep for the next eight hours.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're gonna get up and you'll go do the fraternity things.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Initiation was Saturday night.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: He said, You're gonna do those things, and then Sunday morning, you're gonna go to church.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then Sunday afternoon, you can go to lunch, whatever, but all right after that, you're gonna go back to your room and you're going to start studying for this exam.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you're going to do nothing Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and 8 a.m.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: next Wednesday.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to come back here and take this exam again.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: I felt the biggest weight completely drop off my shoulders.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever been given that type of undeserved mercy?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: I've been in college ministry a long time now, and one of the things that I've learned is that college professors who we love and adore care far more about the academic experience than the extracurricular.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're supposed to.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's their job.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: But as somebody who does the extracurricular, I'm like, bro, college would be so much better if school weren't in the way, you know?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh man.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And he in that moment broke a paradigm that I think all college professors and all of the universities have set up throughout the decades and centuries, which is that academics are the most important and everything must bow to them.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Let me just invite you to see a different way.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: It completely disrupted the paradigm, the framework with which I was working as a student.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, there have been so many moments in my life and ministry where I've thought about the mercy that he gave me when he absolutely did not have to.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: The mercy that he gave me in that moment that completely disrupted everything I once assumed to be true.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: I love that metaphor because that's what happens here.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: At the beginning of the scripture lesson, the women who have just witnessed, by the way, the death of their Lord, the women, they come to the tomb.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the scriptures tell us, all the gospel writers tell us that they're bringing stuff to adorn the body with.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: You don't bring spices and sage to uh a live person unless uh you've done that recently.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: No, you you're bringing it to actually take care of the body, and they come upon the tomb, which by the way, they've been through a few traumatic things before this, right?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like they've seen the death of him, they they experience uh the fake trial that was put on, and then they're bringing this to kind of adorn the body, just to do whatever they can to take care of their Lord.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then they arrive there and things get worse.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is crazy to me.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine having all that trauma uh of the last couple days in your mind?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's just been a whirlwind of experience, and then you get there and you think the body's been stolen, bro.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, man, the what was there and so bad got worse.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden, a bunch of disruptions happen in their life.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was all planned, by the way.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: He tells us that later.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like the prophets foretold it, and Jesus told us a whole bunch of times.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: We just weren't paying that much attention to it.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: But there's so many disruptions happen in that moment.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: The first one is these two dudes show up in sparkling, gleaming clothes.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: They look a little like the staff this morning, you know, those fly suits they're all wearing, you know?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like they showed them these, and some of the gospel writers tell us that there's like a light from heaven coming down upon them.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Luke tells us in the next section that they are angels, so we can just assume that they're angels and they see them, and that must have been a big switch in their life, right?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: A big disruption, a big interruption in their life.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so they they kind of see them and they they fall down, uh, they're they're like nervous and fearful and all of that.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then they're kind of explaining what's what they well, where where did his body go?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: We just had it here, it was just here.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Where did it go?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they they said, I think the most disruptive line of this entire thing, which is why do you look for the living among the dead?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, my friends, until that point, if you forget Lazarus for a second, ain't nobody else risen from the dead.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Rosen?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's not a word.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Rose from the dead.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: Disruptive.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Why do I look for the living among the dead?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, because like that's what we've been doing, dude.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: We're like used to our loved ones dying and then us going to visit them at the graveside.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: All of us in this room have experiences in some capacity.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is normal, right?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then they get there and they say, Why do you look for the living among the dead?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: They're inviting him in their girls into this crazy disruption and change in their life.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Disruption.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Mercy, which is what Jesus does on the cross and then resurrected.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can't separate the two, by the way.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Mercy is disruptive.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things we do for Easterfest every year is that we try to raise money for an organization.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we've done it with a bunch of different organizations throughout time.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: And uh this year we're focusing on a group called Neighborly that we've been supporting on a on a weekly basis for the past while now at what they call Breakfast Brigade on Tuesday and sometimes Monday mornings.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's an awesome opportunity.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: You can go every Tuesday and Monday morning at 5 a.m.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and you can go serve food to those who are at the labor pools who are working too early for the soup kitchens to be open.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: So they don't have food, so this is an opportunity for them to find food.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's an amazing opportunity.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: I would encourage you to go if that's something you're interested in, service and that sort of thing.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's awesome.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it's run by this guy named James, his wife, and and they're amazing people.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: James was here sharing with us last week, uh, an extended sermon.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he was he's a really cool guy.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: They do all kinds of stuff, and we've been raising money, we've raised over$500 at this point uh to help support some of their missions and their ministries, uh, anything from providing clothes and stuff.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things I love about what James said last week when he shared with us is that it's really just the kingdom upside down.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: You should hear that in these words.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's just mercy providing a disruption.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because the world says work hard, feed yourself, deal with your own problems.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Mercy says, let me invite you into a different way to see the world.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to get up at 5 a.m.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: to give you breakfast, but man, mercy disrupts for all the bad that Christianity and the church have been known for for so long.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that such a good thing?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: I was at my uh a friend of mine's uh office at a church uh down the road this week, and uh we had been trying to get together for a long time.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: We just hadn't he runs a ministry here in town and he has an office at a church, and so I went down and and got to walk through uh his office and that sort of thing.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, Can I show you around the church?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so he shows me, you know, the Sunday school rooms and the hallways and the renovations that they had just done to the bathrooms, and then he shows me uh the sanctuary, which was awesome, you know.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like looking at his cameras and stuff like this.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're like talking through all of this, and he goes, Can I show you what I'm proudest of?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Which is a very much a Hamilton moment.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Have you seen The End of Hamilton, right?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Where she goes, Can I show tell you what I'm proudest of?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: The orphanage, right?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: She says, He says, Can I show you what I'm proudest of?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Sure.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: And he walks us me over to their clothing closet.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: He opens the door of the clothing closet, and I've never seen so many clothes in such a small space before.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, It's so neat because we're open for a certain amount of hours, and every family can come in here and get one uh like set of clothing, not article of clothing, set of clothing once a week for their family.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: That is awesome per person, bro.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, this is this is amazing.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm looking up, and he's got all of these suits up on the wall.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's a historically black church, and so uh he was like, you know, in our tradition, in our culture, like everybody's gotta wear suits.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Get that staff?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's gotta wear suits, right?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, and so well, a lot of people don't come to church because they don't have a suit.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: So here we are in a mercy ministry just providing a suit.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: So no longer do you have to have that like feeling when you go to church and like, am I dressed right?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like the pastor's wearing a jean jacket, okay, on Easter Sunday.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like, am I dressed right?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Mercy disrupts.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Undeserved.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: The world says, pay for your own clothes.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: The church says, mercy, it disrupts.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: It interrupts.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, why are you looking for the living among the dead?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: Stop working under that paradigm and come into one that's going to change your life.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Mercy disrupts.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's a little paradigm here too, I want to point out at the end.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: I just like, I just think it's a funny thing.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you've ever been in Bible study with me, you know that I'd point out these things that are kind of pointless, but I think it's interesting.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: The women go and they they experience this whole thing, and then they go tell the rest of the disciples, and they don't believe them.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Ever felt that way, women?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so Peter, he's gotta run down there to double check.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, bro.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: And he finds it to be true as well.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And he comes back and tells that story.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where you are at in your life today.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Some of you I do, some of you I don't.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what you're carrying.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know the things that you feel like are finished.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, my friends, if you feel like things are finished, mercy is rising.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Some of you, it might be a broken relationship with a family member or a parent.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, you know, that relationship, it is severed.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's never gonna get any better, it's never going to rise.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: I a lot of you have have kind of this kind of hard relationships at home.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just tell you, let me just tell you that this story tells us that mercy is rising.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's rising in your life, in your life, because we worship a God who did not stay in the grave.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's Easter Sunday, amen.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Some of you might be at that point in a course right now where you're like, it's just, do I even keep going at this point?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Ever had that experience?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Some of you who are not the best students, you know exactly that that feeling like, uh, maybe I'll just let that one go and I'll retake it next semester or something.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, I didn't expect to be across the the couch from a professor who had taught this for 30 years and him say, I'm not gonna fail you.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you that mercy is rising.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: You should probably work pretty hard for the next month, okay?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: But mercy is rising.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Some of you, this is like your first week back in a church in a while.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: I get it.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Ain't no judgment from this.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Some of you, like you're carrying this a lot of things, like, I don't think I want to go to church.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even want to be involved in what they do.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't believe in what they say.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just tell you that if you feel like that relationship with the church is broken, mercy rises.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's happening in your life, and I can see it in so many students every day.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Mercy is rising.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Perhaps, though, that's also your relationship with God.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because let's be honest, a lot of us, a lot of things go on in our life and we blame God for them, and we're we're not sure exactly where our relationship with God is at any point, or you might be in that place where I can't come back from that land.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: I tell you, mercy rises.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: It disrupts everything that you think, oh, that's finished, that's done.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: No, my friends, because Jesus is risen from the grave.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: He gave us a mercy that we are undeserving of.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Paul tells us in the sixth chapter of his letter to Romans.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Well, uh, the wages of sin, the things that you earn is death, he says.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: But the goodness and the love of God is in Christ Jesus, he says.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: He's talking about a disruptive mercy.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Do you hear me?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: He's talking about something that will speak into your life more than it's ever spoken before.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Mercy disrupts.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: You are not too far from the Lord.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care where you are.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: His mercies are new every morning.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Every day.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that's my invitation to you this morning.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Allow the God who overcame the grave to disrupt your life.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Change it.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: All the paradigms that you've just kind of submitted to, the systems that you're like, well, that's just the way it is.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's always the way it goes for me, isn't it?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: All of those things that you've thought and said, can I tell you that mercy rises?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Just invite God's mercy into your life.