Passion - Resurrection

Go closer to you God and be able to be in a relationship with you. God, you are a provider. You are a counselor. There's so many things that it's hard to break a down into words.

That you would speak through John this evening as he brings forth a message from your word. You know, great. Alright. Hey, we are finishing up a series today called Passion where we just have looked at the week of Jesus from start, from when he entered Jerusalem, where people were praising his name all the way last week to the crucifixion.

And I just wanted to say thank you so much for those of you who last week just kind of emailed me throughout the week, just saying, talking about last week's message about what does somebody need to know to be saved. I'm glad that it was able to clarify a lot for many of you. And so that's just been really, really exciting for me just to see that. At least when I do prepare these things and study God's word that it's actually being used to, it incurs the body.

So that was really exciting to just see how the Spirit's been moving. We're going to see a series called Passion ends today with a resurrection of Jesus. And the reason why we're doing that today is why because it's Easter people. It is so exciting that this is the day that we get to celebrate what Jesus has done by rising from the dead now.

Immersive hell, we celebrate that every day. But we make a special mention of that today. But I was thinking about Easter and all the reasons why I love this weekend. This is not the most important reason why I love Easter, but it is up there on my top five minutes this.

Every Easter time, Easter weekend, they play Star Wars a new hope religiously on television. You know that? Every Easter, they just put it on repeat. It is one of those movies that for some reason is tied up with this idea of resurrection, new life.

And if you think about it because it is the greatest story time put in film ever, Star Wars. I mean, think about it, there are so many illusions in Star Wars to rebirth, to resurrection. You look at Darth Vader, right? Some of you guys are young.

I hope you guys have seen a new hope. Thank you. Okay, good. Just making sure.

Okay. Because sometimes I talk about things and you're like, I have no idea what you're talking about. Like what is a CD player? You know, like it's a thing, guys.

Anyways, Star Wars, you have Darth Vader, right? And he is corrupted by the dark side. And then through sacrificing himself, he comes to the light side. He is resurrected from the dead self that he was and comes back as.

And again, you see it over again. I was thinking about Harry Potter, right? Hold this and that spoiler for some of you, but Harry Potter, right? What does he do?

He sacrifices himself. And what happens? He raises from the dead. And then I was thinking about this one.

This is an oldie, but a goodie. Some of you may not have seen this, but the Matrix. You guys remember the Matrix, right? Yeah, that was a solid count of Reeves.

And what happens in the last movie of that trilogy? He sacrifices himself. He kind of goes in the position of a cross and he gets taken up by the Matrix. And that is how the movies end.

We are fascinated, especially in film with this idea of sacrifice that leads to resurrection or to new life. And the reason why I think that, the reason why I think we all love those types of movies and entertainment is I think deep down, that's what we're all looking for. We're all looking for that hope or that new life when circumstances and life get crazy when we don't know what's going on. We are just looking for that shred of hope.

And if I can just give one more nerdy, just kind of analogy before I move on. I think about the scene at the very beginning of a new hope. I watched it today because it was on TV. And you see Princess Leia giving the message, you know, to RTT2 and it's going to Obi-Wan Kenobi.

And she says, please Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope. You remember that iconic phrase? Well, I want to leave you with this, that when we leave here, I want you to be thinking about Jesus being our only hope. That we can put hope in everything in this world, in relationships, in finances.

We can put hope in other people. We even put hope in ourselves. But one thing I know is true. People are going to hurt us.

Eventually, we're going to lose a job that we didn't think we were going to lose. And if you look in the mirror, the person who probably lies to you the most and puts you down the most is actually yourself. And so what I want to show us this evening is that Jesus really is the only hope that will never fail us. But what's different about our story today from the stories that I just mentioned is I believe that this story is an historical account of at least an empty tomb.

So I want to separate this for one moment from religiosity, okay? So let's separate it from our belief as Christians and just ask a question. What is historical about this event that happened on Easter? Historically, we can prove through eyewitness accounts, some other censuses and some of that kind of stuff that there was a man named Jesus.

He lived almost a little over 2,000 years ago. He preached pretty amazing and light-changing morality in the culture. We know that he was beaten and he was crucified to a cross. And even the governor himself, the guy who sent him to death, believed that Jesus was innocent.

And we know that he was dead when he got off the cross. And we know that three days later, his body disappeared. And none of those statements that I mentioned something about Christians believing he's the Son of God or anything like that. We're going to get to that.

But I want to just show us on the very beginning that historically that this event happened. His body has disappeared. And so what I want us to do is I want to look at what are the options, what is plausible for his body disappearing. And I hope that today you leave knowing that there is hope in Jesus, the Son of God who actually did rise from the dead.

So here's how we're going to look at it today. We're going to be looking at it really in three standpoints. For those who may be here who are skeptical of the resurrection, I'm glad that you're here. And one of the things that we like to do at this church is meet questions on that people have.

And it's not a place where you should be afraid to ask questions. So the first part to me addressing some of those questions, then I want us to look at how does the passage we're going to read portray Jesus? How does it describe Jesus? And then lastly, I'm going to talk about what that really means for us, for those of us who have put our faith into what Jesus has done and in his resurrection.

So if you open up your Bibles, John, Chapter 20, John, Chapter 20, if you don't have a Bible, that's okay. You can either find it on your smartphone or we'll have the passages up here for you on the screen. So you don't have to worry. But we do have we do have Bibles in the pew as well.

John, Chapter 20, that's in the New Testament. And so if you go to about three-fourths of the way through the Bible, you should see somewhere around there, the name John, in verse 20, verse 1. Now, on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So just stop right there for a second.

Let me just set the picture. You had this burial ground and you had this massive, massive stone that weighed a ton. That it would take multiple centurions, right? Multiple military to move this stone out of the way to keep grave, you know, grave thieves and all that kind of stuff out.

So there's massive stone that's sitting there. Verse 2. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciples, the one whom Jesus loved and said to them, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb. And we did not know where they have laid him.

So Peter went out with the other disciples and they were going to the tomb. Both of them are running together, but the other disciples outran Peter and reached the tomb. If you like to write in your Bible, I would highlight that phrase right there. The other disciples reached the tomb first and we'll talk about it in a second.

And stooping to look in, he saw the linen clothes lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb. He saw the linen clothes lying there in the face cloth which had been put on Jesus's head, not lying with the linen clothes. But folded up in place by itself.

Then the other disciple had reached the tomb first. Also went in and he saw and believed, for as yet they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead. Verse 10. Then the disciples went back to their homes.

Verse 11. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. And as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain and the one at the head and one at the feet.

And they said to her, woman, why are you weeping? She said to them, they have taken away my Lord. And I do not know where they have laid him. Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing.

But she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, woman, why are you weeping? Who are you seeking? Supposing him to be the gardener.

She said to him, sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away. Verse 16. Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned and said to him in her mayic.

Rabinai, which means teacher. All right, so it's a lot of text. Let me just set the stage for what's happening. Mary runs to the tomb in the morning, probably trying to make sure everything's okay.

And the tomb is open. The stone has been rolled away. This tomb that takes multiple military men to push out has been pushed away. She looks in.

She doesn't see anybody in there. So she runs to get Peter and this other disciple. Right. And this other disciple and Peter come to the grave, come to the tomb, come to this garden where this tomb is, and they look in and they see the the cloth laying there and then they leave and then Mary still crying.

Jesus appears. She thinks it's the gardener and then Jesus says Mary. So that's kind of all that's happened in that in that section of text. And here's why I want to first look at this in this portion that the resurrection centers around eyewitness accounts, the empty tomb has eyewitness accounts.

We know this by a couple of things that we look through history. So this is not just with this text. But when you're going to historical texts, when you're going to manuscripts and trying to figure out if it's an eye. Witness account or not.

You look for certain aspects to see if it was forged or if it's an actual real event. One of the things that they look for and we look for is the comical element. I love this. So I hope you follow this with me for a second.

There's comedy here. Normally, if you were trying to betray or trying to tell people, hey, Jesus has risen from the dead, you wouldn't add in other details that aren't necessary to the story. But we see some comedy here. First of all, we see that Peter and his other disciple.

And if you look back at verse 20, it says the one whom Jesus loved. John, the writer of this gospel calls himself that all the time. He says, yeah, I'm the disciple that Jesus loves. And look what he says about himself.

He says that him and Peter went out with it. So Peter went out with the other disciple and they were running together. Look at this. But the other disciple outran Peter.

You get that though. So John is like, bro, we race and I totally beat him. And if you don't get that, I'm going to add it again at the end of the text. Right.

We started again. He says, remember the one who reached the tomb first? I'm that dude. I am this guy.

And what's even funnier is that when he's describing this himself as the one who Jesus loved with the other disciple, he says that even though he got to the tomb first, he was scared to go in. He looked in but didn't go in because he was scared. He waited for Simon Peter to get there. He's like, bro, you go first.

All right. And then as soon as Peter went in, then he peaked in and that's when he went in. And then I bought a he takes credit here. He says, he says the other disciple who reached the tomb first also went in.

But guess who's the one who saw him believe first? I did. I'm the one who Jesus loved. I believe first.

You see, how does a comical element that you could talk about the resurrection of Jesus without that little detail. And so we believe that this is evidence that it is an eyewitness, something that actually happened. But that not just that. The second thing is this.

He appears to a woman. So look at Jesus appears to a woman first. He appears to Mary. If you were trying to make a legend or create a myth in culture about Jesus rising from the dead, you would not go to a woman first.

In the first century, a woman's testimony was worthless. Absolutely worthless. And in a minute, how many women you had saying the exact same thing? Your testimony is not valid in court.

So if you're trying to create a myth, why would you go to a woman first? You would appear to men first. And so we see these little details that make us think, okay, is this an eyewitness account? The fact that despised women whose testimony are deemed worthless were the chief witnesses to the fact that there's an empty tomb can only be explained that this is an actual event that took place.

And historians will agree with that. Now, look at this next one. The mass revealed. It's not in our text.

But over the next couple chapters in John in the beginning of Acts, Jesus would have appeared for 40 days to over 500 people. So there's two elements here to this story that we have to understand. Okay, what happened with the empty tomb? What are the options for an empty tomb?

What could have happened? But then we also have to ask the question, okay, well, what happened with these people saying Jesus? So what we look at is, okay, let's just separate ourselves from your religiosity again. Okay.

And let's just look at this historically. We have a council people running down that they saw Jesus. That's historical. Whether they happened or not, we have to just understand that people didn't make these claims that they saw Jesus.

And then lastly, what we see is this, that our biblical evidence or historical documents conferred that there was an empty tomb as well. The Jews, especially the Pharisees, remember the ones who put Jesus on the cross? The ones that were jealous and envious of him. So they killed him.

They in there to know it's just a shortly after this talk about a stolen body theory that they believe someone stole the body. What's funny is, is that what they were doing, they were giving evidence that there was no body. So historically, there is no body in that in that tomb three days later. So the question is then what happened to the body?

I feel like I'm on CSI. What happened to the body? Right. I've always wanted to say that.

But here's the, so let's look at this. What are some options then for the empty tomb? Well, the first one is this, the Pharisees stole the body. Here's why this is not likely.

Well, and they put out a statement in the todoth that there was an empty tomb. If the ones who wanted to kill this Christian revolution, this Christ following revolution, right, if they wanted to kill this belief system that believed that Jesus rose from the dead, what would you do? You produce a body. If you stole the body, you would show it to the world and say, no, they idiots.

But they couldn't. They didn't know where the body. So that one we can exiting off. That is not plausible.

Second thing is this. Well, what about the disciples? The disciples stole the body. Well, that's a little more intriguing.

Maybe the disciples stole the body and created this myth that Jesus rose from the dead. And here's what I would just say for this one. If you look at the stories that we have, what did the disciples do when Jesus died on the cross? Did they go to his defense?

No, they ran. They fled. And then three days later, we have a council them going back to their old jobs. Nobody believed Jesus was going to rise from the dead.

They weren't interested in creating a myth. They weren't interested in stealing the body because they were just afraid of their own life. They were afraid that people were going to recognize them and they were going to say, hey, weren't you with Jesus? And they were going to go after them.

Also, it doesn't make sense as this. It's that oftentimes people will die for something. They believe to be true, even though it may not be true. But no one dies for something they know not to be true.

Let me put like this. Some people ask me, well, what about? Let's just say the person who believes that their cause is just. So they're going to be willing to die for their cause.

Yeah, if they believe their cause is true, they will go and die. But how about you stealing the body of Jesus and then you being put up for martyrdom and whipping and beating? At some point, you're going to crack and you're going to tell the truth. What's crazy is we, none of the disciples and none of the martyrs that we have that would have may have been involved in this, give up spilled the beans, right?

They don't give up information. The idea that the disciples would steal the body and then die for something. They know to be a lie. It doesn't happen in history.

It doesn't happen in other cases. And so while it may be plausible, it's highly unlikely because you don't die for something you know that you fabricated. Especially when you have multiple people that no one spills the beans. Like it's highly unlikely that this is an actual plausible explanation for the body being gone.

Now let's look at this. The next one. How about this? Jesus wasn't really dead.

A lot of people said Jesus wasn't dead. He got off the cross. He went into the tomb. His wounds healed up slightly enough for him to be able to unwrap himself, fold his head covering, push of massive stone out of the way and then walk out and peer to everybody.

But here's why we have medical evidence that he was dead. That John helps us out here. But I want to read you a medical report done by a board of physicians who've looked at Jesus's wounds. And looked at Roman crucifixion.

And it's going to tell you what happens in crucifixion. And that is literally impossible for someone to get off the cross and not be dead. Jesus and Nazareth underwent Jewish and Roman trials. So he was swogged and sentenced to death by crucifixion.

The scorching that took place created lacerations and extreme blood loss. So much so that he went into hyperbolic shock, which is evidence that he was too weak to carry the cross to the place he was going to be crucified. Now that the sight of the crucifixions, his wrists were nailed to the cross. Now and also his feet.

This effect of the crucifixion was to interfere with normal respiration patterns. Accordingly, Jesus results death results primarily from shock and exhaustion. Jesus's death was ensured by the thrust of a soldier spear into his side. Modern medical interpretation of the historical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead when taken down the cross.

Jesus experienced hours of limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint wrenching cramps, intermediate partial expissiation, searing pain where tissue is torn from his lacerated back. So what he's describing here is a process of crucifixion. The nail your hands and nail your feet. And in order for you to breathe, you have to push down on the pressure point where they've nailed your feet just to reach up and breathe.

And every time you do that on your open and bloodied back, splinters from the cross, not like they take their time to make this look nice, right? This is rough wood that's going in and out of your back causing more pain and more blood. He says remarkably, one of his cries, his fifth cry is Iverse. And this is from the heart pumping heavy, mixed blood into the tissue that he is literally exhausted and dehydrated.

His body is working overtime just to make up for everything. Then he says the body is of Jesus is in extremes and he can feel the death coming. And he actually says it is finished. And when he does that, he presses up one more time to say, Father, into your hands.

I commend I commit my spirit in order to Sabbath, which should not be for fame. The Jews asked that the condemned men be taken down, but what normally would happen in crucifixion, they would break your legs so that they know that you could not reach up and actually breathe. So they would break your legs and allow you to just, you know, suffocate to death on the cross. But because it was a Sabbath, they asked for an other option and that is for a spirit to be shoved into your ribs.

And so they shoved spears into their ribs and what John tells us is blood and water flowed out. The medical examination suggests here that the heart was filled with water and pus. And that is a result of post-mortem evidence. When you get to that point, your body can never recover.

Not only that, those types of situations, those types of bruising, those types of open wounds, those types of extreme pain. You ever wonder we got the word excruciating from it's from this, it's from crucifixion. This type, if you were put into a tomb that was not sanitized, right? You would not have lasted, you would not have lived.

And so this is not an option. Jesus was dead when he came off the cross. Well, how about this? Jesus never existed.

He's just a myth. I won't spend any time on this just because most, and I would not say all, of scholarship, whether they are Christian or not Christian, affirm that Jesus lived. As I said, it's historical evidence that Jesus lived. He did amazing things.

He taught amazing things. He died and innocent man. He went into a tomb and disappeared three days later. And so we can't, that's not an option that Jesus never existed.

And last, it was all hallucination. And here's the problem with this. This only deals with the latter half, the people who saw Jesus. It doesn't mention that people thinking it's a hallucination and seeing Jesus doesn't solve a problem.

Well, where did the body go? And so with this hallucination, we have a couple things here. First, there's too many witnesses for this to be true. 500 saw Jesus together at one time in one place.

So all people, 500 people at the same time are having the exact same hallucination. That's difficult to do. The hallucinations normally only last a few seconds or minutes, rarely hours. And yet this one lasted for 40 days straight.

Never in medical history has anything like this been understood or been, been, we've seen then hallucinations here was interesting. It would have happened in the city, Jerusalem. So the most prominent city where he was teaching and he was murdered, he decides to show himself and to walk among his people for 40 days. So it doesn't make sense.

If you're trying to start a revolution, you're trying to start a myth and you're trying to get people to know, you would not do it in the city that two, three days earlier were telling you to, hey, crucify this guy. We saw him die. You wouldn't do that if there was nobody, if there was no resurrected Jesus. You would go out to the fringes and start some myth over here and eventually would make its way over.

And so this is not plausible that this hallucination would have actually happened. These are the leading options for the empty tomb besides Jesus rising from the dead. But I want to give you another option. It's the option that I believe.

If there is, and this is my presupposition, if there is a miracle working God, as the Bible teaches us and what we can see in creation, then is the resurrection really that impossible? So think about this. If God, if there is, let's just say there's a higher power that can create the universe. Don't you think that God has the power to raise someone from the dead?

When we look in scripture, we see Jesus doing amazing things. We see him feeding the 5,000. We see him healing other people. Even see Jesus rising someone from the dead.

If the God of the Bible is true and he does work miracles and he does do these things, is it really that impossible to believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead? And I would say no. It's quite possible. And actually, what's interesting here is that if Jesus, if he did not rise from the dead, then Jesus is actually the greatest fraud.

Why would we hail? Why would we love? Why would we support a man who taught all these things, claimed to be the Son of God, and then died? He would have been lying to people.

See at this point, we have to make a crucial distinction about Jesus. Either he is a liar, either he professed all this stuff and he was just getting paper fools. You know, like, you know, either he was doing something like that, or he's a lunatic. Maybe he thought he really was the Son of God and he was just crazy.

If you pick those two options and you see that's what I believe about Jesus, and we cannot hold that Jesus was the righteous person, that he was a good person, swaying different people, different ways, telling people different morality and all this other stuff. He can't say that he was a good person if he is making this stuff up. He's lying to a bunch of people to get power, to get control. So either he's a liar, he's a lunatic, or he is who he said he was.

He is the Son of God. John tells us he is the way, the truth, and the life. He tells us that if you want to see God, you have to look at me. If you want to have a relationship with God, you have to go through my sacrifice on the cross.

And I believe if you believe in the supernatural, then this is probably the most plausible explanation. If you don't take this explanation then there is no plausible reasoning for what happened to the body. Three days went by, his body was gone. Can't be the disciples, can't be the Pharisees, can't be the never existed, because he rose from the dead.

Now that we've looked at that, let's look at what this passage teaches us about Jesus. Look at verse 11. It teaches us first that Jesus is the true gardener, the Mary stood weeping outside. She supposed him to be the gardener, what's happening here.

So back in Genesis, you guys remember Genesis at the very beginning of the Bible, God creates the whole entire world, and this is why I bring up the miracle working in creation. God creates the whole entire world, and he creates it perfectly. Guys, he created it perfectly. So those fights you have with your roommates, those fights you have with your family, those fights you have to be happy with your spouses, they don't happen.

There's perfect relationships in this creation. Everything's perfect. Our relationship with God is perfect. Our relationship with one another is perfect.

Even the relationship with us and our surroundings and the environment is perfect. Everything is perfect. And yet in one quick moment, Adam decides to sin against God. He says, you know God, I think I know what's best for me and my family, and I don't think you know what's really best for us.

And so the eat of this tree, rebelling against God. It doesn't really matter what the rebellion was or what the fruit was, what cares about that. What matters is this, that humanity decided that they knew what was better than God. And from that moment, all of us can say that we are sons of Adam.

We are born with that rebellion, rebelling against God. Saying, you know what God, I think I knew what's better for my life than what you have for my life. I think I know what's better. I think my process is better than what you have instilled for us.

I think my way is better than your way. And that type of rebellion started coming through humanity. But before it spread, and as soon as this happened without him and Eve, God tells them that he is going to send a Savior. He is going to send somebody who is going to restore that relationship between man and God.

What's beautiful about this, he actually says, you know what, Satan, the one who started all this rebellion to turn humans against God, that Satan, he is going to bruise Jesus's heel, but Jesus is going to crush his head. What is here is that he is telling us that the Savior is going to die, but it's not going to be the end of it. It's when Jesus rose from the dead, he rose and showed victory over death, crushing Satan's head. And here's the beautiful picture of this.

It is a garden where humanity first fell, but it is a garden where Jesus would prove that he has life over death. It is a garden. Let me just read you this, Isaac Ambrose is a phenomenal writer. He says this, because a garden was a place where we fell, therefore, Christ made a choice of a garden to begin the greatest work of redemption.

In the first garden was the beginnings of all evil, but in this garden was the beginning of our restitution, our restoration from all evils. In the first garden was overthrown by Satan, but in this garden the second Adam, Jesus overcame. Satan himself was overcome by Jesus. In the first garden sin was contracted, and now we are indebted by our sins to God, but in this garden sin was paid for by the great and precious blood of Jesus.

In the first garden man, he was betrayed by the eating of the fruit, but in this garden Christ, which swept out his blood for us. In the first garden death, first made his entrance into the world, but in this garden life enters to restore us from death to life. Jesus concludes his sufferings in the garden to show that he accomplished all that Adam failed to accomplish. It is not only a garden that Jesus begins the work of redemption, but it is a garden that Jesus finished the work of redemption.

Jesus, the one who is buried and raised in a garden. The whole point of Mary thinking that Jesus is the gardener is to bring us back to Genesis. It's a beautiful illustration, a beautiful picture that what was promised in Genesis chapter 3 has now come to fruition in Jesus. Jesus Christ, Christ, meaning the Savior, the Messiah, he has finally come, and he looks to be like a gardener.

The one who, instead of cultivating the land, cultivates our hearts, makes us ready for our relationship with God. He is the gardener who gives us the fruit of the Spirit to allow us to enjoy this life and to use our giftings to better the world. He is the gardener that works in our life to bring about this beautiful transformation inside of us. That's who the gardener is.

He's not only the true gardener, what I want to show you here is this, that Jesus is also personal. In verse 16, how he just says her name. He says Mary. He says her name, it's personal.

Jesus didn't decide to reveal himself right away to thousands of people. He says, you know what, I'm going to reveal myself to Mary and the disciples, a small group at first. Why? Because Christianity and what Christ has done for us has never been about instituting a religion.

What Christ did was never to be, I want you to establish this thing called church where you have to have your nonprofit status. You have this list of stuff that the churches have to do. He says, I want us to have this thing. This is how you got to do this.

Jesus never said any of that. All Jesus said was, I want you to find life and have it abundantly. You find that with me. It's not about establishing a religion, it's about instituting a relationship.

Following Jesus is about a relationship. If you're sitting here and you think, well, my religion, what I believe about Jesus has always been, well, I need to do this. I need to do this. I need to do this.

Then you're missing out on the whole reason you should actually believe in Jesus. You get to have a beautiful relationship with God. I mentioned last week that a lot of people don't follow Jesus because they think that they have to do certain things in order to have a relationship. They have to believe a certain way.

Oh, there's some core tenets of what Jesus has said. This is what you should believe. A lot of people come to the Christianity and say, well, I look at that hypocrite. I don't want to follow the Christianity because I see that hypocrite over there.

Or I don't want to follow Christianity because this church over here did this thing at one time. Or this church over here did this thing at one time. I don't want to follow something like that. I just say this.

You should follow Jesus because of Jesus. You should follow Jesus because of that relationship. Church has failed. Churches mess up.

Churches are not perfect. But Jesus is. And if you want a relationship with the one who will never leave you, if you want a relationship with the one who is going to support you, you want a relationship with the one who really will give you life abundantly. Then that is Jesus.

And what from experience from the people I talk to when they put their faith in Jesus, guess what? The hypocrites disappear. No. Your church is not messing up.

No. But they have joy that they have a relationship with Jesus and now they can be a part of a church. They can be a part of a community of people that is not perfect. They strive together to influence the world.

They're beautiful, beautiful things. Personal. And lastly, it's the Star Wars. Star Wars then.

Jesus is our only hope. Jesus is our hope. Another thing about entertainment and about the dead coming to life is zombies. I love zombie movies.

I watch The Walking Dead for the Wild, but he got a little too gory for me. I can handle it. But here's the deal. We love zombies.

Why? Well, what do zombies do? They're dead, but they're living somehow. They desire.

They talk. They moan. They search after food. They search after their passions and their own desires.

They try to get what they think is going to satisfy them. And this may not be The Walking Dead's case, but I think Disney just came out with a zombie movie, by the way. I don't know if you do that. They did.

It was on. But anyways. I watch a lot of Disney, okay? We got a kid.

But here's the deal. And that one, the zombies know that they're alive. I get this. I'm sharing this with you because I think a lot of times we can live that way.

We can live as zombies thinking that we're alive, thinking that we're desiring the right things, thinking and putting hope into things that we think are going to satisfy us. We may talk like the world. We may act like everybody else. You may even be such an outstanding person that compared to somebody else, you outshine them.

You may be a person in here doesn't have a relationship with Jesus. And you are morally better than another Christian that you know. I've seen a lot of them. But you still may be dead inside.

You may do the right things. You may talk the right way. But Jesus does not care about what you do and what you don't do. He is concerned about your heart.

He is concerned about that relationship that you have with him. He is concerned about making you alive. The question is, are you a dead person sitting here thinking that you're alive? Do you have the relationship with Jesus that is going to give you that hope?

Listen, every other religion and their leaders have claimed some sort of wonderful power or at least a wonderful message. But all of them have died. And all of them are still buried. Jesus is the one who said, you know what?

I'm going to show you that I'm the Messiah by doing these things. I'll show you that I'm the Messiah by doing these miracles. And then I'm going to even prophesy me rising again three times. He says, I'm going to rise three days after I die.

The disciples are clueless. They don't understand. And then three days later he proves that he truly is the Son of God. He is the Messiah because there's an empty tomb.

And then we have witness accounts that Jesus appeared for 40 days until he sent it into heaven. So what does this mean for us? It means this. The God who is all powerful, who even has the power to raise the dead.

This God intimately wants to know you. Just think about that. Why would God have a vested interest in me or in you? But he was so invested that he would send his son Jesus to die across.

So that the punishment that we deserve for rebelling against God now fell on his son who was perfect. So that we can actually have a relationship with God. And what God just tells us in Scripture is, I just want you to worship me. I just want to have a relationship with me where you find joy in the relationship that you have with me.

I want to be a rock. I want to be your hope. I want to be that thing that satisfies you when the world cannot satisfy you. That's what God wants.

That's why he sent Jesus to die on the cross, that he could have a relationship with you. It's a beautiful thing that happened at Easter. Of course with this, David Platt is a pastor and an author. He talks about what happened on the cross and he describes it like this.

He says, imagine you were standing in front of a massive dam. Huge. A thousand foot high, a thousand foot wide. It's this massive dam that's just sitting in front of you.

And at one moment you just see it explode open. And you see the torrents of water just rushing towards you. And it is so forceful. You think to yourself, how I ever survived this.

And as it comes straight at you knowing that you have no way of escape, no way of hope. You are so going to die at this moment. The ground in front of you just opens up. Just opens up and swallows every single last drop of water so that you don't even get one drop of water on you.

That's what happened at the cross. The punishment of God was staring at us. It was a dam and it broke open. And the punishment that was supposed to be for us, the rebelling against God, was now swallowed up by the ground.

Like it was just a cup of water. And that's what Jesus did on the cross. He swallowed every last drop of God's punishment for you and I. That's why we celebrate Easter.

We celebrate Easter because Jesus took our place on that cross and took our punishment that we deserved. And now those of us who have put our faith in what Jesus has done, now we can celebrate. That we are no longer far from God, but we are near to Him. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

And you know what he tells us to do now that we've come into relationship? It's really simple. He just says, I want you to love me. I want you to love one another.

I want you to love the world around you, the community. That's what he tells us to do after we have put our faith in Jesus, is love Him, love one another, and love the world. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Let's go ahead and let's bow our heads and close our eyes.

We do a reflection time here at Mercy Hill. And this reflection time is really simple. I just ask questions and pray that maybe just some thought process throughout the sermon and just like to pray for you the best way that I can. Some of you may have come in here and you may have been skeptical.

You may have said, you know, I have questions about Christianity. I have questions about what does someone really need to believe to be saved? Maybe you have questions about the historical Jesus or whether he really rose from the dead. If you're somebody who's skeptical has questions, I don't think you just raise your hand.

Those of you who have questions, I just want you to know that I am available. Those available. I'd love you to sit down and talk with you. Talk with you about why Jesus is the greatest message that we can hope for you to leave.

Nobody answers some of your questions. For some of you, it's maybe you walked in here thinking Jesus was something different. Maybe you thought Jesus was just a good teacher. But you never really understood that Jesus is the Savior.

If that is a revelation to you, if you're sitting here thinking, wow, I cannot believe that Jesus is the Savior and you want to place your faith in Jesus is done on the cross. If that's you, I would like you to raise your hand. I'm going to encourage you that the steps that we take here as a body of Jesus is to help you grow, help you serve, help you love God more for what he has done for you. There's a last group of people in here.

Maybe they grew up knowing Jesus was a Savior. For man over the years they got a zombie syndrome. They've been serving their own desires, their own passions, their own wants. They've been searching after things that they know aren't going to satisfy.

Maybe you even had a little bit of Christianity mixed in. But you know that you have it in the following Jesus. If that's you, I'd like you to raise your hand. For those of you who I just want to encourage you, that the best place for you to be is with other believers growing in your faith.

The best place you can be is serving God. It's also loving your community through service. We get to show that Jesus has done in our lives to the community, to our neighbors. Through love we get to exercise the greatest thing that has ever happened to us and that is the love of Jesus coming into our soul.

Lord, we love you and we're grateful. Thank you to get to celebrate what you have done on the cross. Then you got to get to celebrate your greatness and your goodness at the very Son of God who did not need to leave his kingdom in heaven. He decided to leave it that he could love and save those of us revealing his God.

Father, I know that there's some in this room that don't have a relationship with you. I'm sure that a lot of this stuff seems crazy. Father, I know growing up, I question a lot about your validity. But Father, I'm so grateful that your son came into my life.

I'm grateful that when I was 17, you grasped my heart. It's told me that you love me. You never let go. Father, I am grateful.

Lord, we're grateful for the baptism that's going to be happening after service. That is just evidence of what you have done already inside. Now we get to display to the world. Lord, I pray that more would come into this room.

If I enjoyed it, if I'd hoped it would find peace. If I'd understand it here. I pray that we would see a mighty movement of Jesus' lovers and community servers in this room. Just in my brain.