Latest / Saint City Chapel / From Tears to Triumph | John 20

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From Tears to Triumph | John 20 · Saint City Chapel

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He is risen. That's right, He is.
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What an incredible start to Resurrection Sunday.
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Would you join me as I pray before we hear God's word?
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Lord, you are King of kings. You are Lord of Lords, and you
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are not dead. You are alive.
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You are a living Christ. And there's a tomb in the Middle
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East that sits empty right now because you beat death.
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And God, we worship you for that.
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We worship you for being willing to die, for having the power
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over death. And right now, as we come before
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your word, would you help us see you in all of your glory?
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Would you help our hearts be strengthened and encouraged by
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the gospel? The good news is that we can be
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forgiven of all of our sin. We can have power over sin,
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Satan, and death forever. It's the hope of the world and
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it's found not in a concept, but in a man, and his name is Jesus.
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And so we lift him high. We get ourselves low.
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Lord, would you speak to parts of our heart right now that we
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try to hide from the world, but that your eyes can see God?
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You can do that through a messenger like me, but help me
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to be as small as possible so you can be as big as possible.
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God that I would become less so you could become more get get us
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to see the things that we can't see.
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Get us to feel the things we can't feel.
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God would you help us to worship you in spirit and truth in Jesus
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name Amen. Amen.
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You guys can grab a seat. Thanks
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bro. How we feel into this
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resurrection Sunday. Hey, you guys brought some
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energy to the worship said I love it.
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If I don't know you, my name is Brandon Lodge.
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Welcome to Saint City. We are so glad that you are
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here. Whether you're here on spring
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break, you're here because a family member invited you found
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us on Instagram. I don't know how you got here,
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but I know this. We are glad that you are here.
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We love you, we love Jesus and we love the reality of what he
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has done for you. We just want to tell you all
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about it on this resurrection Sunday.
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So if you could turn your Bibles to John chapter 20.
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If you don't have a Bible, don't worry, you can still follow on.
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We got Bibles actually in the seats on the floor in front of
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you. If you don't have a Bible, we
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can keep that Bible. But it's going to be on page 906
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is where I'll be reading from today.
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We're not here to hear Brandon talk so much as we are here to
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hear, to hear the Lord speak. And that's why we open up God's
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words each and every Sunday. It's why we are built around the
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Bible because we leave. God has spoken and He has
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something to say to you. It is so cool to know that right
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now in across the world that this Resurrection Sunday, we are
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not alone. Like there's only a few hundred
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of us here in this room today, but across the world right now,
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we are joined with Saints from every nation, every tribe, every
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tongue celebrating the same thing.
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Jesus Christ is Lord and he is risen.
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Amen. Amen.
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Well, see, hear you guys sing like that thinking about the
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reality of the global church, It's enough to make a grown man
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cry. Frankly, I I'm not quite the
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most emotional person. I don't really cry tears of
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sadness very often, but tears of joy are common to me.
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Like this Easter Sunday. Just thinking about what God has
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done for me moves me. Seeing University of Arizona
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losing basketball last night may or may not have made me shed a
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happy tear. I don't know.
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Love you ASU, love you Wildcat fans.
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You're welcome here. But there's also tears of
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sadness in our world. Just yesterday, parenting my 4
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little kids, I think I experienced the full range of
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why a kid might cry. Whether they didn't get the
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candy that they wanted at the exact moment that they wanted
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might have shed a tear for one of my kids.
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The fact that one of them was getting crushed in a wrestling
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match might have invoked the tears of fear.
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Perhaps in our home. This is hypothetical, of course.
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My kids would never cry, right? Or maybe, maybe just the tears
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of the sadness of their family being far away.
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Tears are real and tears are something we are all familiar
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with. Tears are a sign.
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They're a signal to us that there's something wrong with
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this world. Often times when tears are
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happening, it's somebody saying through their eyeballs.
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It's not supposed to be this way.
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It wasn't meant to be like this. And they feel that grief, that
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sadness, that brokenness. There's a brokenness that exists
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in the world. It's around us.
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At times it's beside us, but brokenness is in us too, that we
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actually can feel the shattering of.
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It was not supposed to be this way.
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And some of the most deeply moving and personal things that
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actually move you to tears are the things that are broken in
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you or somebody did to break you.
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It's the brokenness of this world.
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It's the grief of loss. And every person has an answer
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for why brokenness is out there and a way to fix it.
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Whether it's time therapy, retail therapy, distraction,
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fitness, denial, there's a real brokenness in the world.
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And what tears show us is this. It's not about the water in our
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eyes, it's about the wounds of the world we sense in us.
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It is not meant to be like this, that when we're in a place of
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grief, of weeping, we can see that there's a brokenness in
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this world that must be resolved or solved in some way.
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My question for you this morning that we might consider together
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is, who has the best answer for brokenness in your life and in
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the world? Because it's out there.
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There, there's no denying that there's reasons to cry, reasons
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to weep, reasons to tear up. Who has the best answer?
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I've entitled this sermon this morning from Tears to Triumph
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because we're about to encounter the resurrected Jesus in the
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story right now. And he's going to meet a woman
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who is in the middle of grief and weeping and tears are
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flooding her face. But she's going to move this
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morning from devastation to celebration.
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She's going to move from weeping to witnessing, from tears to
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triumph. And I think that's God's
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invitation for all of us today, that we would understand who
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Jesus is and what he means for the world.
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In fact, jot down this big idea that only Jesus can turn tears
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into triumph. He's the only one.
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There is no other solution. There is no other antidote for
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suffering in this world, for the darkness, for the brokenness
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that you find yourself in. I think Jesus is going to
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demonstrate in all of his resurrected glory the reality
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that only he has the authority, only he has the best answer for
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what to do about brokenness and suffering in the world.
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We're going to be in John chapter 20, verse 11.
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If you're there, say I am there. Now turn to your neighbor and
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say, let's go. Turn to the neighbor you like
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less. And I'm just kidding.
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John 20 verse 11 says this. But Mary stood weeping.
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Mary Magdalene, not Mary, the mother of Jesus.
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She stood weeping outside the tomb.
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And as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb.
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Pause right there. Think about weeping.
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Don't think like a barely a tear.
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Think like ugly crying, weeping, the kind where she can't get
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words out, the kind where she can't see she is weeping.
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And she Stoops to look into the tomb.
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And she saw 2 angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus
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had been laying in one at the head and one at the foot of the
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bed. They said to her, woman, why are
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you weeping? She said to them, They have
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taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.
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Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing,
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but she did not know that it was Jesus.
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Let's stop right there. Let's help turn our tears into
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triumph this morning. And let's stop and make note of
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this, that tears turn to triumph first when Jesus appears.
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And I see clearly the way through the tears, the way
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through the suffering is by seeing the appearance of Jesus
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Christ. That when you see Jesus clearly,
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you see the world clearly. When you see who He is and what
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He means for your life, you can't help but understand and
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see with crystal clear heavenly perspective on the world and on
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suffering. She came looking for a corpse,
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and she finds herself the King. This is so interesting.
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Like Mary is standing there weeping.
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She's coming to do the burial things, and she's like, wait a
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second, he's gone. Now, in the Bible, a lot of
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crazy things happen, but even Mary Magdalene didn't have a
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category for, hey, this guy could have actually rose from
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the Ted. She's like, obviously somebody
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must have took him. Somebody must have his body
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because dead people don't just start walking around.
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So she's grieved not just at the reality that he's dead, but also
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that her friend is missing. She is weeping over his lost
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body. And she turns around and she,
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after talking to the Angel, she sees what she thinks is the
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gardener. It's Jesus in resurrected glory,
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and he's not the the last time she saw him.
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I mean, he's as bloody as blood. He gets his face marred beyond
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all understanding and even visibility.
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And she sees a resurrected, glorified Jesus and she doesn't
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recognize him. You guys have had a similar
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experience before. You've been in an airport, maybe
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across the country, and somebody runs into you and you're not
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expecting to see them there. And they're like, hey, and you
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just can't place them. You're like, I know you from
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somewhere, but I'm not expecting to see you here across the
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country. So what is your name?
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You've had it somewhere, maybe not at an airport.
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But that bewildering experience is what she's going through
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right now. She's just like, I'm not
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expecting to see. You're like the last person I
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expect to see. But he has appeared and she's
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about to see clearly. And I can't help but wonder if
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you're here today and you're like, man, can I even trust that
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this story isn't just a fable, that this isn't just made-up?
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Well, listen to this. This is not the kind of way you
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would write a resurrection story narrative.
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This is not the way. If you wanted to make up a
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story, you wouldn't have started with a woman seeing Jesus back
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then. It said by rabbinical law that
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it was better to be burned than have a woman testify.
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If this was made-up, they wouldn't have said Mary was the
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first one to saw him, the first one to see him.
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He appears first to women. That detail is in there because
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that's what happened. And that should give you some
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confidence that this story isn't fake.
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It's not made-up. But in case you're still
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wondering, like, hey, can I trust the resurrection count of
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the gospel? I know that I'm in a church
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right now. I know that Jesus is who you
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guys worship. But what other theories are even
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out there for what happened on that day in that tomb other than
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he resurrected Because the cynical side of us might go, you
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know, I kind of doubt that he rose from the dead.
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Fair. But let me explain some
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alternate theories to you where a speed run through these
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objections. The first one I call Black
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Panther theory. Black Panther theory is that
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Jesus like faked his death almost.
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That he only appeared to have died on that Roman cross, That
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the Roman soldiers didn't know what they're doing.
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That for some reason on that day they did not figure out how
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crucifixion worked and that Jesus just faked his own death
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just to appear dead. But listen to me, that is never
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happens in all Roman history. It just doesn't happen even
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through outside of the Bible. There's no example of a
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crucifixion just not working. They knew what they were doing.
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So Black Panther theory doesn't feel plausible to me.
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Ocean's 11 theory. These are all movies, by the
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way, because I like movies. Ocean's 11 theory is the idea
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that the disciples took him in a holy heist of some sort.
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They're like, you know what we're going to do?
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We're going to get past these Roman guards.
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We're going to roll away this massive tomb and we're going to
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we're going to get Jesus out of there.
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That's hard to maintain a conspiracy of that magnitude.
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First of all, and you might be a conspiracy theorist, but the
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reality of those Roman soldiers would not have seen, heard, or
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even vocalize the reality. It's just not plausible that
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they stole the body of Jesus. They had to take him across the
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distance all the way to the reality that like, hey, we hit
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him just long enough so that he could be seen.
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It just doesn't make sense. And and the reality that his
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body when it's seen again, does not have much of the wounds that
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he carried. He just has the nail pierced
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hands. How do they do that?
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How do they fix that up? I mean, cosmetic surgery is good
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nowadays. I don't think it was that great
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back then. I don't think Ocean's 11 theory
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really works, nor Parent Trap theory that this is the idea
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that Jesus had a twin who died in his place.
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People, you might be thinking that that seems plausible.
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Like you're like I like Christopher Nolan movies.
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Maybe you think of prestige instead of Parent Trap.
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I don't know. But listen to me.
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His wounds were a visible post resurrection.
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He still had the nail scarred hands.
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So you got to deal with that. Either he died or he didn't.
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And if he didn't die, then how? It's not very plausible.
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The inception theory is a group. Group think like hallucination
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that we all dreamed this up, that all 500 people who saw him
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after he resurrects, they're like, yeah, no, we all saw the
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same thing at the same time in the same way, the same Jesus.
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This was public. What's crazy interesting to me
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about that is up until this point in history, if you wanted
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to be a Messiah figure, nobody thought to themselves, hey, let
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me resurrect. Like that was not the way of the
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Messiah. That's all following Jesus.
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Jesus does it because that's what he did to save the world.
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And so Messiah figures after started that, but not before.
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It was not a hallucination. Nor is it this the dumb and
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Dumber theory, which is the idea that as we look back in history,
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that we actually nowadays, we have better technology, better
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intelligence. We know more than them.
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And I just think this one is a little bit silly because they're
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more acquainted with death than we are.
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They knew what a dead body looked like.
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They knew what a dead body smelled like.
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They knew what to do with it even more than we do.
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Like they didn't need to call the mortician to figure that
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out. They knew what a dead body was.
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And we are not smarter than them because they realized what we
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know. Dead people don't rise up from
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the grave. The empty tomb is not the
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problem, it's the point. Do you believe?
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And do you see what Jesus has done?
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That he beat death, robbed a grave.
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That's the point. Every theory collapses under the
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same question. How do you explain then
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terrified disciples who were not even there that day of his
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death, going from that to martyrs on the basis of we saw a
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resurrected Jesus Christ, People would die for a lot of things.
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They won't die the way the disciples did for the lie.
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They'll recant, but they did it because they're willing to go to
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their grave saying, I've seen him.
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Seeing Jesus clearly changes how you see everything.
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Tears turn to triumph when he appears.
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You see clearly. I think one of the things you
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see most clearly is that God cares about suffering.
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God died in the most brutal, gruesome, horrific way
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imaginable. He cares so much about suffering
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that he went through it himself. That Christianity is the only
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religion that offers that that reality that God is going to
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suffer among us. He came our way.
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We didn't have to go to him. He came to us.
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And when you see suffering like that, it changes everything.
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It's not the only way that our tears turn to triumph, though.
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The second points in the text that you'll see is that tears
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turn to triumph when he speaks. And I hear personally, she
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didn't just see a resurrected Jesus, She heard from him
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personally. Look back at the Bible with me.
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Jesus said to her in verse 15, woman, why you're weeping?
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Why are you crying? There's no crying in baseball.
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No, he didn't say that. He said, Whom are you seeking
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and supposing to be the gardener?
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She said to him, Sir, if you have taken, if you have carried
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Jesus away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take
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him away. Jesus said to her one word that
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changed the whole conversation. Jesus said to her in verse 16,
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Mary. Now I don't know if he said it
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in a tender way. I don't know if he said in an
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authoritative way. I don't know if he said it with
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an accent or in a goofy way that she heard it.
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All we know is that Jesus said to her, Mary, and when she hears
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her name, she turned and said to him in Aramaic, Raboni.
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Raboni, which means teacher, the best kind of teacher, that this
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is the biggest word for teachers that they've got.
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Raboni, that when Jesus speaks, he speaks personally.
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The God who spoke the world with a whisper, who was humble enough
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to die for the world. He is personal enough.
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He is near enough to call you by name.
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He is transcendent over the world, but near.
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Near enough to know your name and know your story.
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Know you. The resurrected Christ knows
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your name. He knows your grief.
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He knows your loss. He knows the broken things that
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you've experienced. He knows them personally.
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And guess what? He meets you in it.
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She is in the middle of the tear fest still.
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She's still sobbing thinking her friend is gone, but he is not
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gone. He is there and he sees her and
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calls her by name. Every other worldview is going
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to attempt to explain to you the brokenness of this world, but
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none with an answer as accurate or as personal as Jesus and
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Christianity. Listen to me, secular
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materialism. We'll put it this way, that
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suffering is random in your life.
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It's meaningless. It's just atoms, like we're just
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going about our life and guess what?
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It's actually meaningless. So don't take it personally
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because it isn't personal. It's just random with that's
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without hope, there's no meaning to it.
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There's no purpose to our existence.
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That feels very bleak. Moralistic religion will tell
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you that suffering is punishment, that you did
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something wrong and that's why you're being punished.
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You didn't do enough good things, you didn't pray enough
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prayers, you didn't go to church enough.
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That's why what you're experiencing is happening.
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There's religions that claim the name of Jesus that are not the
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way of Jesus. That would tell you that That's
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why you're suffering. Eastern philosophy will tell you
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that suffering comes from your desire, and the antidote to that
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is to detach from the world. Hurricanes don't make sense of
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that. Losing a child.
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There's real brokenness in this world and some of you have lived
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through it. And all of these other religions
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with all these other world views, I don't think they hold
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the candle to Christianity suffering.
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Christianity is that it's real. It is not denied, it is
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happening, it is existent. You can't deny it, but it can be
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redeemed because God himself entered it.
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He entered into it. He joined the suffering of our
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world by incarnating himself from the throne of heaven, by
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joining us as a human being. And he tells us that the hope
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for our hardship is not in ourselves, it's in him.
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Stephen Colbert, who's a popular late night host.
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He had this conversation a few years back with Anderson Cooper.
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If you don't know about Stephen Colbert, he when he was a kid,
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when he's 10 years old, he lost his father and his teenage
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brothers when he's 10 years old in a horrific helicopter crash.
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What he says is it's a gift to exist, and with existence comes
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suffering. There's no escaping that.
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You get awareness of other people's loss, which allows you
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to connect with that other person, which allows you to love
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more deeply and understand what it's like to be a human being.
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If it's true that all humans suffer, then we must realize
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this, that if that's true, then then we must hope in this, that
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in my Christian tradition, you're really not alone because
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because God does it too. That cross that represents what
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happened 2000 years ago back in Jerusalem.
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It shows us that Jesus was willing to bear the heaviest
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crown of suffering that's ever existed because he was not
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guilty. He was innocent, paying for the
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sins of the guilty so we could be forgiven.
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He had three to four inch thorns driven into his skull.
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He had nails pierced through his hands and his feet.
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He took lash after lash after lash, 39 on his back, tearing
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skin from bone. It's that graphic on purpose.
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Because God wants us to know He sees you.
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And when He calls you by name out of your suffering, out of
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the brokenness, He wants you to know that He loved you enough to
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empathize with it, to sympathize with our weaknesses.
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Jesus doesn't just call you out of a crowd.
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He calls you by name. He is not a way, a truth, and a
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life. Jesus Christ is the way, the
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truth, the life, and no one gets to heaven except through Him.
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There's no other hope. That's it.
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That's all we got to hang our lives on.
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Our eternity hangs in the balance of what will you do with
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the empty tomb? Will you believe in who Jesus is
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and what he has done so that your tears would turn to
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triumph? Would you see him clearly?
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Would you hear his voice loud and clear personally in your
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life? It is not whether or not
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somebody else has heard him personally.
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If your mom or your dad, your grandma, your grandpa, your
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brother, your sister, your cousin, your friend, No, no, no.
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What will you do with the tears that you have?
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Will you bring them to Jesus? Say, Jesus, I have no hope for
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my sin. I have no hope for the suffering
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in this world apart from you and your grace and your power.
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The Bible says that Jesus Christ keeps our tears in a bottle.
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That's how personal He is. Finally, tears turn to triumph,
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and we'll see in the text when He ascends and I go boldly.
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It's not just when He speaks, not just when he appears, but
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when he ascends and I go bully. Look how the story wraps up.
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Jesus said to her, do not cling to me, for I have not yet
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ascended to the Father. More on that in a second, but go
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to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father, and
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your father to my God and your God.
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Mary Magdalene does what he says.
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She went and announced, she proclaimed, she shouted to the
26:33
disciples I have seen the Lord and that he had said these
26:39
things to her. Jesus is not the first person in
26:43
history to resurrect. We got Lazarus, we got Gyrus's
26:46
daughter. Like he did some miracles,
26:48
right? He had authority over it.
26:50
The thing that separates Jesus isn't just the fact that he
26:53
resurrected. Jesus dies on a cross for us,
26:58
bloody cross. He resurrects by the power of
27:02
the of God empty tomb, but he goes to the Father never to die
27:10
again. Nobody else has that.
27:14
The ascension is his coronation as King of Kings and Lord of
27:18
Lords. It is not merely that he
27:20
conquered death, it's that he truly conquered death forever.
27:24
Which gives you and I hope that guess what, we when we die, we
27:28
don't have to have the fear of dying again.
27:29
Because guess what? We will be alive just as he is
27:33
alive. We will be made new, just as He
27:36
is made new that the New Jerusalem.
27:39
When He comes back and step and sets forth His plan that He had
27:43
for all time, that guess what? The people who've called on Him
27:46
by name, who have called on his blood for salvation, who have
27:48
believed in the empty tomb and its powerful lives, guess what?
27:51
They will ascend in glory with Him.
27:53
They will live, never to die again, just as He did.
27:57
The ascension is so powerful because it's what separates
28:00
Jesus from every other human being in history.
28:02
It's what demonstrates the coronation that God looked at
28:05
him and said this is exactly why I said he was.
28:09
It's the receipt that we can take in, cash in and say He is
28:13
exactly who the Bible teaches him to be.
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And you don't have to look at the Bible to know that Jesus was
28:20
real. You can look outside or you can
28:22
look at like, Roman historians and they will tell you that
28:25
something happened in the Middle East with a man named Jesus.
28:27
He definitely died on a cross. The thing that the world is
28:30
perplexed by, the thing that historians couldn't make sense
28:33
of is this. Was it an empty tomb?
28:36
And did he go to heaven afterwards?
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And the Bible makes it abundantly clear that's what he
28:42
did next. He hangs out on earth for 40
28:45
days, goes to a room and like shocks all his disciples that
28:49
he's alive. Next he makes some fish tacos
28:54
with them on the beach. Then he like tells them what he
28:58
what? Hey, here's some Archie wars
28:59
Before I go. He explains to some people like,
29:02
hey, here's the Bible. He has this chat walking with
29:05
them on the road one day Jesus Christ is not going back to the
29:12
grave. He ascended to the right hand of
29:16
the Father. He has gone to the throne.
29:19
If you want to know who to put your hope and brokenness in,
29:23
guess what? I'm going with the guy who
29:25
looked at a grave and said, yeah, I'm not going back there.
29:28
The one who has authority over death because he has the words
29:31
of life. If that guy has the power over
29:33
life and death, then he certainly has the power over me.
29:36
And so I'm going to listen to him because his grave is empty.
29:40
Listen to me. Buddha is dead.
29:45
He's not getting back up. Muhammad is dead.
29:51
Joseph Smith remains dead. There is only one who is risen
29:56
and reigning, and his name is Jesus Christ.
29:59
There is no other. That is it.
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He did not come to make bad people good.
30:05
He came to make dead people alive.
30:08
Listen to me. That is the only hope you have.
30:11
That's all you've got if you want to experience the life that
30:16
God wanted to give you from the very start.
30:19
It is not going to be found in anyone or anything else, any
30:22
other philosophy, any other religion.
30:24
There is one way, one truth, one life, and he is alive right now.
30:30
That's what we're celebrating this Easter.
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That's what we put our hope in. You guys can clap.
30:34
Go ahead. We're going to clap, Clap.
30:39
And because he's alive and ascended, he is on the loose.
30:44
Like Easter makes Jesus dangerous.
30:47
He's not trapped somewhere. He's out there making a
30:50
difference, taking back the world, prevailing against the
30:55
gates of hell. And he's looking for you.
31:00
He is looking for you so that you could go boldly and tell
31:05
others about what he has done. He has found a way in every
31:10
single generation to thrill hearts.
31:15
In today's coronation Day, we get to celebrate what He has
31:19
done. We get to like Mary, come to the
31:23
tomb with tears and leave with a testimony, the story of what God
31:27
has done. That's why Christians, that's
31:29
why we continue to share. It's what it's what happens.
31:31
It's the natural conclusion to seeing a miracle.
31:35
The reaction is easy. When you see something awesome,
31:38
you can't shut up about it. One of the telltale signs that
31:42
you're actually a Christian is that this thing, you can't stop
31:45
talking about it. You can't stop thinking about
31:48
it. It's personal to you.
31:50
It's powerful to you. And because you saw a miracle,
31:53
you want it to go viral. You want everyone to know he
32:01
opened blind eyes. So go boldly.
32:04
You've seen him, you've heard him, you've seen him with your
32:09
now not blind eyes. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ
32:13
and be saved. So what are you going to do
32:18
about your tears? Where we started?
32:21
There's brokenness in the world. There's brokenness in you,
32:24
around you, beside you. Where are you going to put your
32:27
hope in for that? Is it in yourself?
32:30
Is it in someone else? Is it another philosophy?
32:34
I think you'll be spectacularly disappointed in those things,
32:39
but not in Jesus. Wherever you're at today, I want
32:44
to speak to you directly. In fact, you see these cards
32:47
right here, the press dimension we're going to need at the end
32:48
of the service today. These are our Connect with us
32:50
cards. We've been praying for you by
32:57
name. We've been praying for some of
32:59
you and not even knowing your names, but we're asking that you
33:03
would respond to what you've heard today in four different
33:07
ways. And you're going to write in the
33:09
prayer request card one of these 4 letters.
33:10
The 1st is the letter A, which just means this, that you're
33:15
already a Christian. Here's what I mean by that.
33:17
I'm going to ask you write down one of these 4 letters and for
33:20
you to know what you're doing with your tears, whether that
33:23
you're going to turn to God for the triumph over them.
33:26
The first person is somebody who says I'm already Christian.
33:29
You know that Jesus called you by name and you speak for him.
33:33
You live for him. Easter is more than a holiday
33:36
for you. It is the hope of your soul.
33:46
Historical faith says this, that Christ lives, but saving faith
33:51
says this, Christ lives in me. That's what it means to already
33:55
be a Christian. Not just that you go to church,
33:58
not just that you pray prayers, not that just you've thought
34:00
about God a few times or you say you believe in God.
34:03
There's a type of belief that saves, and it's the kind that
34:08
says I'm banking everything on this.
34:12
The bloody cross, the empty tomb, the throne in heaven.
34:18
You're already a Christian. Second category B is somebody
34:22
who wants to begin a relationship with God today.
34:26
You came today with wounds. You came today feeling the
34:30
brokenness of your life, the suffering that you've
34:32
experienced, and you're realizing there's no way out
34:34
except for Jesus. There's no hope for sin, Satan,
34:37
and death except for him. And today you're hearing him
34:42
call you by name. If that's you, I'm going to talk
34:47
to you in just one more moment, but I'm going to tell you how to
34:50
start that relationship with God in just a second.
34:52
The third group is C and it's OK if you're in this group
34:55
considering it's still just because you've heard the gospel
34:58
today doesn't mean you are going to respond today.
35:00
Maybe there's another day for you.
35:01
You just want to consider it more.
35:02
You want to do some more investigation.
35:03
You want to get an AI and start talking to him about, hey, this
35:06
is what he just said real. I don't know how you're going to
35:08
process it. I know this that some of you are
35:09
still in the considering it first, and may I just tell you
35:11
this is a great place to consider whatever your next step
35:14
is with Jesus. If your next step is
35:16
considering, this is a great place to do that.
35:19
It is OK to explore, OK to learn who Jesus is here because we
35:22
want to tell you all about him and what he means for your life.
35:26
In fact, I would just encourage you maybe in your exploration,
35:29
maybe just read this whole book of John this week and I would
35:32
love for you to highlight or to underline when you do that the
35:35
word believe and what you're going to find is in the Gospel
35:40
of John is there's 99 times it says the word believe.
35:44
So I think the 100th time the author John wanted you to be the
35:48
one to say I believe in Jesus Christ.
35:50
Consider it more Finally, maybe you're here and that is OK.
35:54
Welcome to Saint City. It's the D category.
35:56
Don't ever intend to follow Jesus.
36:00
Welcome to Saint City and welcome to Easter, Resurrection
36:02
Sunday. We're a place for skeptics too.
36:05
Skeptics and Saints are welcome here.
36:06
Don't worry about it. But I would ask you one
36:09
question. What are you going to do about
36:12
the empty tomb? The historical reality that a
36:17
man named Jesus came, he died and he went to a grave, and
36:19
there was a bunch of people from that era, from that chapter in
36:22
history who said he walked out of it.
36:26
You got to wrestle with that question.
36:28
I think it's the question with which all of human history
36:31
hinges upon. Come up with an answer that you
36:35
can give your life to. As for me, I think he's risen
36:40
and reigning. If you were in that B category,
36:46
this prayer doesn't save you. But what it does is it's you
36:50
saying, I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and I'm repenting
36:52
of my sins. I'm turning from my life and I'm
36:55
turning to him for triumph. It's you saying, God, I need you
37:00
in my life. It's not the prayer that says
37:03
it's the belief in the trust and who Jesus is that does.
37:06
And I just want to make it as easy as possible for you.
37:08
So would you just pray with me? If that's all of you, join me,
37:11
but the B group especially, pray with me.
37:13
Lord, thank you for conquering death for me so that I could be
37:20
reborn. I am a dead person in need of
37:24
life. Forgive me of all my sin and
37:30
save me from the punishment of it.
37:33
I give my life to you now, My calendar, my budget, my words.
37:41
I give it all to you because you gave everything for me.
37:46
Jesus name, Amen. Amen.
37:49
Would you stand and sing in worship?