Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 17, 2022 | Easter Sunday

Transcript

April 17, 2022 | Easter Sunday · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Happy Easter, everybody! You all look so wonderful in the outfits mom picked out for you.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: You look great.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um so apparently there's going to be about three billion dollars that's spent over this weekend just on candy, right?
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the bad news behind all of that is that a good portion of it is going to peeps.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how many of you, how many of you uh dislike peeps, right?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just generalizing that was everybody.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then how many of you, by show of hands, are wrong?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you like peeps?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, thank you for being honest.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm convinced that nobody is just in the middle of the road on peeps.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's sort of a Stockholm syndrome thing that we've been faced with.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, what's kind of funny about the Easter holiday is that, you know, we we have all of these attachments to it.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um and some of them are are fun and harmless.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, yesterday as a church, we set like 4,000 Easter eggs out on the front lawn, and there was, I think they were gone in like two minutes and 40 seconds, literally.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so, I mean, there's a lot of those kinds of things that are wonderful, but what we have to be careful of is that the bunnies and the eggs and things like that, the pastel colors, don't take us away from the real meaning behind Easter.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: See, Easter is, if you really can think of it, if we're talking about the resurrection of Jesus, it's the epicenter of the Christian faith.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Every single thing that we believe and we put our faith in as Christians sort of looks back to the resurrection event as both the most important moment in history, as God was sort of stamping his seal of approval, was giving a promise to the entire world of a savior, of salvation, but we also look forward to this time where there will be another resurrection.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it sort of takes these two ideas.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: It takes the salvation that comes now for those who are living in this broken world, and it also looks forward to a future where we see that God has given us hope to exit this broken world.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the part of the good news and the bad news.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: See, when you really think about it, we live in a broken world.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to go very far in our news to see that sort of thing.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: We live in a broken world, and the bad news is that we live in a broken world, and it's breaking more every single day.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: This bad news that we have, it is sort of coming out every single place that we look.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Internationally, nationally.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: You look within our communities, within our homes, within our own hearts, we are broken people.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that brokenness, the Bible calls it sin.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: We love to rebel against God.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: We love to turn against him, we love to sort of show him that we are the lords of our own life instead of him.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem that comes through that is it's not the way that God designed the world to run.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you've got a cool 7.9 billion people who are running in the opposite direction of God, the world doesn't look the way that it should.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so the bad news is that we are living in this broken world.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the second part is that it is breaking more every day because the hope to fix that world, to fix our world that we share, cannot be found in the world around us.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: You can't look to anywhere in this world, to any sort of politics, any sort of person.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can't look to, you know, the comfort of wealth, you can't look to the security of relationships or fame and success, you can't look to any of the sorts of things that we would build on in our lives to say that it's going to rescue us from this world.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: But thankfully that God did not leave us in that space.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: See, there's also good news, right?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: This good news is that the gospel is God's plan to save this broken world.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you might not know this, but the gospel in Greek is actually good news.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, that's what it means.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: The gospel means good news.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so this gospel that God has given to us is his way that he is going to restore the entire world.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a plan to fix the brokenness.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a plan both now to rescue people spiritually from their brokenness and their sin.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also a plan for the future that we can have hope in.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: That is what is missing in so many things is the anxiety and the stress of the world can often make us feel like we don't have hope about the future.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's one guy in the Bible, well, there's a lot of guys in the Bible that could speak into this and women too, but there's a man in the Bible that wrote a good portion of the New Testament.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: His name was Paul.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps more than anybody else could speak into the reality of living in the bad news world and the good news.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: See, Paul was not always his name, that was sort of his Christian name.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: His name previously was Saul.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And Saul's job during the time of Jesus' ministry when he was around and shortly afterwards was he was arresting Christians.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the first martyr for the Christian faith, if you will, outside of Jesus, was a man named Stephen.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: He was stoned by the ruling council who were so angry that he was telling people about the good news, and Saul was there holding the cloaks of people who needed to take them off to stone Stephen.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so this man, Saul at the time, ends up getting a transformative experience.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus himself appears to Paul, changing his entire life and showing him what it looks like to move from the broken world that is killing the good news and to accept it.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, Paul becomes the greatest evangelist the world had ever seen.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in Paul's many letters to the different churches that he planted over in Europe and East Asia or West Asia, Paul wrote one to a church in a place called Corinth.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And in 1 Corinthians 15, verses 1 through 8, Paul gives a message to those who are captivated by the good news, but living in the broken world, kind of like we are.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And in verses 1 through 2, he speaks to them.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: He's talking to Christians, the gospel I preach to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold to the message that I preach to you, unless you believed in vain.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: See, Paul wants them to see that there is this past, this present, and this future component to the gospel.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: For those who have heard the gospel in the past, they have received it.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's an active thing that needed to be done, an intentional decision.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can sort of think of it like if you have, you know, your delivery driver drops a package off at your house and they ring the doorbell.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us don't like going to the door to meet them, so we let them leave it outside.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is saying there is a truly a life-changing gift that was given to you.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Something that not only affects your life, but has affected the lives of every single person that has lived and will live.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, for those of you who he was speaking to, he says, you received that gift.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: You took it in, you accepted it, you heard the good news and did not just think of it as a fact of your life, but you took it in, and then he says you stand on it.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: You use it as a foundation, you build upon it.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes something that changes your life and is not just a fact that you reference whenever Easter comes around.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: He says, No, man, you you have heard the gospel, you've received it, you've accepted it, you know it.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's an intentional decision, and now you're standing on the truth of that gospel.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're saying, not that I've tried to invest in a bunch of different ideas for how the world can be saved, but this one, the one about Jesus, this is the one that I know is going to change the world.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've put everything into that.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: But then Paul also says that you are being saved.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: He uses language that sort of stands in the breach, in the two places in between.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You are being saved right now for every single sin you have committed, past, present, and future, your entire sin, all of your rebellion, everything you've done against God, if you've trusted in Jesus as your Savior, you've been forgiven.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: But also there's a future hope here.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: We are not left without hope because God's plan was for the entire world and was for eternity, is for eternity.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul says, for those of you who know what it means to accept the gift, you know that you have hope now to live in this broken world and hope for the future where it won't be broken any longer.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Paul also, though, wants to make sure that everybody that he's speaking to understands what it takes to trust in Jesus, what it takes to hear the good news and accept it.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: As he goes on in verses three through four, he says, and I passed on to you, as most important, what I've also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried and he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is saying, speaking to an audience that's about 20 years past when Jesus has had resurrected, he's saying, I want you to understand for those of you who weren't there to see it for yourself, that Jesus really did die for your sins.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: That God Himself took on flesh and paid the punishment that we deserved.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus did not just die, he died for your sins.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's true for us today as well.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus died for the sins of the entire world.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says the proof of it was that he was put in a tomb.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you were here with us for our Good Friday services, you know that we finished our evening just looking at the filled tomb, saying, yes, there's a greater part that comes on Easter, the hope and the truth of the resurrection.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: But also that there's just a component there where we say God laid in that tomb for three days.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: The centurions who were instructed to stand outside the tomb under penalty of death, if anybody were to come and break through the seal on that heavy, heavy stone, that they would be put to death as well.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't want any of Jesus' disciples doing a like weekend at Bernie's reenactment.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: You guys weren't ready for that.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it was so important.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: He was so important that the truth of Jesus was understood.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then Paul gets to the third part.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: He says, yes, and also according to the scriptures.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Prophecies of hundreds and hundreds of years old, and and hundreds of them saying that Jesus was going to come, saying that he was going to die for humanity, saying that he would rise again, Jesus fulfilled those things.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: That is what we celebrate on Easter, not peeps, never peeps.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is that we are celebrating the resurrection of our Savior.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Here's why, if I can get down to the base level of it, that is so amazing.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's because when Jesus rose from the dead, not only was it the greatest miracle that had ever been done, but it was truly God saying that he was defeating death.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: You might not realize it, but death is the thing that we're all going to experience.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Death is the thing that is going to take every single one of us.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: We all have an expiration date.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're all going to pass through that door.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus did as well.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: But God gave hope, saying that death is not the final frontier, rather, that eternity with God, living with Him is.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's the true hope of the gospel, which is saying that we don't trust in a dead God.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: We trust in one who is living and hears us and wants to have a relationship with us.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul says though, he says, I know though there are some of you who don't believe me right now.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of somebody rising from the dead is far-fetched.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: They were just putting on a magic act.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul's speaking to these people in verses five through eight.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, he appeared to Cephas or Peter, then to the twelve, the rest of the disciples.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers and sisters at one time.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: What he means by that is in the twenty years since the resurrection, a few of them have died.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Then he appeared to James, Jesus' brother, then to all the apostles, last of all, as to one born at the wrong time, he also appeared to me.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: I find myself feeling a little bit like Paul in that very last line because what Paul is saying there is he says, I recognize that I come from that broken world.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was trying to kill those disciples.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was trying to kill the people that Jesus appeared to.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was trying to kill Jesus.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: But to one who was born, says at the wrong time, God showed his grace to me.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And even though I was an enemy of his, he rescued me.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul does tell them, he says, okay, listen, if you don't believe me who did see Jesus, go and talk to the hundreds of people who did.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Go and listen to their stories.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you're a skeptic and you are sort of disagreeing with the idea that there was one who raised from the dead, the worst thing that you could do is say, hey, go to talk to a whole bunch of people about it.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like if Paul was trying to make this whole story up, he was doing the worst possible plan.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, he says, Hey, go and talk to them.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Go and find them, go listen to their stories, go talk to the Roman centurion who was standing guard at the foot of the cross, seeing the earthquake and the people being raised from the dead when Jesus died and as he cried out, and in that moment came to faith and trusted in his Savior.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Go talk to him or any one of his friends.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: They knew that what had happened was real.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And those who saw Jesus as he had resurrected, they also could tell because they could touch and eat with him.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: He stayed around for 40 days.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says that is a testimony that does not go away quietly.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: So in all of these things, Paul, he's hitting them full force.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Laying it on them, if you will, because he understands the gravity of the situation.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, here's the problem.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: There are some people who are living in the broken world and don't know the good news.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: There are some who live with the bad news every single day of their life and are trying to find hope in things that are not going to bring them hope, trying to find answers in places that are not going to bring them answers, and maybe they've walked down that path and seen how futile it is and seen how hopeless it truly is, and they're searching for an answer.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, I want them to understand what it takes to trust in Jesus and have hope.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: See, my final question for you this morning is that the good news is here, but do you accept it?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: See, we can't we can't overlook what happened, which is that Paul says, those who are at the church in Corinth, they accepted the gift of Jesus.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was not just bestowed upon them, it was not just given to them passively, but they had to take it and they had to stand on it.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul gives a warning, if you recall at the beginning of his passage, he says, make sure that you do not accept it in vain.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: What he means by that is make sure you have good reason to do it.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Not because somebody told you to, not because you just want to fit in with the crowd, but because you know that we live in a broken world and we need Jesus.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: That is what we celebrate on Easter, and that is the promise, that is the good news of God.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when uh I went to a Baptist school, and um, whenever we had the chance to teach at that school, they always made sure that you had to do an altar call, right?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: You had to bring people to the front.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And as the entire crowd just got very nervous, we're not going to do an altar call.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I want everybody to understand, though, that trusting in Jesus is so, so simple.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: It does not take many, many steps.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can pray a prayer, but truly it is just accepting, Lord, you are my Savior.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus, you died on the cross for my sins.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: That was a true death, and you did it intentionally because you loved me.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: God, you are the Lord of my life and not me.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I trust you as that savior.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you rose again, believing that I will have eternal life with you because you have forgiven me of my sins.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: It is so simple, but I can't underscore enough how important it is that we see that it's a decision that has to be made.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because for those who hear the good news and leave it outside, that's a decision as well.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's the worst decision that could possibly be made.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And there are so many people who are living this life, living in a broken world without hope, and who are leaving the truth of the gospel outside.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want everybody to know that on Easter, that is what we celebrate.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: God's promise, saying, My plan is fulfilled in Jesus.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: He has come and he is going to come again.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if we trust in that, we can be saved from the bad news.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is the plan of God, and this is the hope for every single one of us.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: And as a last thing I would say, if anybody does not know Jesus, know that when it comes to Christians and non-Christians, those who have trusted in Jesus and not, one is not better than the other.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that one group has trusted that they need a savior and the other one has said they can do it on their own.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: One is not better than the other, one just has a savior.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that is my prayer for us today.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: That as we go forth, that we would get excited about all of the wonderful things that come with Easter, the eggs and the hunts and the bunnies and all of that stuff, but that we would be able to look at it truly as God's plan of good news.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I am so thankful for an empty tomb.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: God, I am, I pray for everyone here.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, for if they don't know you as their savior, God, that you might turn their hearts and they might be able to see and understand what the good news is that living in a broken world is not going to bring hope.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And God, for those who have trusted in Jesus, who know him as their savior, Lord, that we might stand firm upon the gospel.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: That it's not just something we do once a year, but Lord, it is something that truly changes our entire life and helps us look with hope to the future.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you for that.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you for Easter.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you for your plan and your love for us that we do not deserve.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, it's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.