When you're a kid, did you ever have that place that you just weren't supposed to be? Now, wasn't that so that you didn't belong there, but you weren't supposed to be there? And sometimes it was mentioned and known and sometimes it was just kind of a question that you might have. When I was a kid, one of those places was my grandparents' bedroom.
My mom's side of the family is my grandparents' bedroom. It's kind of weird though because on my dad's side of the family, my grandparents' bedroom was like my sister's a nice playroom. My grandmother had toys under the bed. It was just for us.
Like she went to let our cousins play, they know that's chad and patent stuff. It's under there. We'd watch, when we got older, we'd watch movies in there. Because like my little sister would want something little and I'd want to watch something like not little.
And there's a TV and a VCR in there. I mean, they live in this triple wide trailer in South Mississippi and they had the bathroom with the Jacuzzi Jet Tub. It seems like come standard and triple wide trailers in the early 90s. It was like the best thing in the world.
I promise y'all, their closet in that bedroom was the size of a one-car garage. Like it was just huge. It was bigger than my dorm room when I got to college. And so it's kind of weird.
Like in Mississippi, those grandparents, like that bedroom was just kind of wide open. But my Texas family, it wasn't. My grandfather was a shift worker. He worked at Lone Star Steel.
And up until he retired, I was like in middle school. And so he started shift work. There was aluminum foil from the 70s. There was still on the windows.
They had a window unit in that bedroom, even though there was central air and heat in the house. Because my grandfather liked to sleep in an ice cave. And the light was always off. And so it was like, I was never even told not to go in there.
I just knew I'm not supposed to be in there. I remember I'd walk past it as a kid going to the back of the house and I'd like step into the room for a second. I'd step out. I felt like I was doing something like I shouldn't be doing.
But it was like, I just, I wasn't supposed to be there. There was a divide that kind of like the light off like formed. It's like, that space isn't for you. This is Eastern.
This is the day that we celebrate when spaces were made open to us. When there was a divide that was broken in many different ways. And how that divide that Christ bridged for us affects us still to this day. So we're going to talk about Easter today.
We're going to talk really about what Easter does for us. We're going to look at the thing that Christ action brings to us and how he healed that broken divide that we had. So we're going to go to the typical Easter text. Matthew chapter 28, if you have your Bibles, you can open to it.
If not, there's two ways you can read. You'll be on the screens behind me or if you go to my family. There's a place that says message notes and you can click on that and read there. Let's read this story together.
Matthew 28, we're going to read one through ten. Now, after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came back and rolled the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, his clothing, wide as snow.
And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the woman, do not be afraid for I know that you seek Jesus who is crucified. He is not here for he has risen, he said. Come and see the place where he lay.
Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead. And behold, he's going before you to Galilee. And there you will see him. See, I've told you that a party quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and rained to tell his disciples.
And behold, Jesus met them and said greetings. And they came up to cold of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee.
And there they will see me. Now, we typically like to think of Easter morning being this quiet and serene time. For those of you who have small children, you can argue with me very well against that point. How calm was your house this morning?
And when we read this story, we kind of have like this picture. It's almost like a beginning of like a Disney cartoon. But when we read this, we realized it was kind of a little different. Since these women came up to the tomb, and then Angel appeared in an earthquake happened in his tomb rolled back and the Roman guards that were there and they weren't there.
Nice. It's not like when I was a kid, like our church Easter plays, and you just have like the two tallest seventh graders in the Roman soldier costume. We had to pull the skirt up to like right here to make it short enough. The shorts hurt some below.
No. They never asked me to ever fit the armor very well. But we think this is not calm. And Matthew actually kind of expands his story out with this earthquake business because in Scripture, when we see earthquakes happen, and it's a somewhat normal thing, but when we see an earthquake happen, it typically means that God is here.
God is doing something. What he's doing is a big deal and everything's going to be different now after this. So we see earthquakes happen at key times in the point of the scripture and they always indicate that God's presence is here and doing something in a dramatically different way from what you might expect. In fact, Matthew is he's telling us this story.
He's using his earthquake to kind of help us realize that this is a little bit bigger. If we go to the previous chapter and it's kind of funny, Matthew does like some Bible time travel a little bit with us. In Matthew 27, when he talks about the death of Jesus, he actually puts a little bit of this morning in that story. And I want us to read that to kind of get a bigger idea of what's going on around and what's going on with us now.
But Matthew 27, verses 51 through 53, this is what it says, and behold, the curtain of the temple was torn into from top to bottom and the earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs were also open and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection. This is where Matthew kind of does his time travel bit. They go into the holy city and appeared to many.
Okay. So, I'm going to talk about the temple being broken up in zombies. That sounds normal, right? I mean, I'll put a little zombie in an Easter basket this morning.
Did you know that they were there? You know, this weird stuff, right? I mean, this doesn't sound normal. But what if I told you that missing out on the weird stuff might mean us missing out on the best stuff?
These three things are going on that Matthew make sure that we know we're part of this story. You know, he talks about this is the earthquake and you know we talked about earthquakes already, but what's interesting is earthquakes are kind of a known phenomenon in the holy lander in Judea or Palestine or Israel or whatever you want to call it. It's almost like we got, you know, like if you live in South California, you're expecting earthquakes because we know there's a fault line that's right there. I mean, the Jordan Rift Valley is where two plates connect for the Mediterranean and one of the Asian plates connect.
Earthquakes are known events in this part of the world. And what's interesting is we can look at the seismological data and the history and Roman writings that can we know that there was an earthquake in Jerusalem between 30 and 33 AD. It's highly localized. It's interesting that we look at the biblical scholars and historians say is they date the death and resurrection Jesus Christ between 30 and 33 AD.
Like this phenomenon is noted, this phenomenon is part of the historical record. But we also think about the fact that the way Matthew's talking about this, he's using very specific language. He's not talking about science. He's talking about things being ripped and being torn open.
He's talking about things being exposed. He also, there's the whole zombie bit and I read as much as I could find these last few weeks about this. And I can tell you is nobody, none of the biblical commentators want to touch this. They're all like, this is weird.
Nobody else who wants to talk about this doesn't show up anywhere else. We kind of don't know what to do with this. But the one point they all agree on is that what this shows is the resurrection doesn't just apply to Jesus, it applies to those who were called holy by God. And they leave it right there.
It's like, okay, boom, I'm walking away from this right now. And this last bit, they're talking about this veil being torn out in the temple where the holy of holies was this place where the Jewish people believe God dwelt, where his physical presence was that there was a giant curtain that covered it because only one person was allowed in there. Like this whole, I'm just not supposed to be in there saying like you're not supposed to be back there. One guy is, he has to do a bunch of stuff where he goes back there.
Scripture tells us that Christ died at the time of the evening sacrifice and everyone who's doing their temple service was in there. This veil is torn from top to bottom. All the priests would have seen this and the reality of what this means is what was once kept hidden, what was once kept secret. This only belongs to a very small handful of people, typically one alive at a time in the entire world is now exposed and is offered and given to everyone.
The presence of God was once the belonging of one person. The presence of God is now open to everyone. Matthew puts that story in the middle of this resurrection story. This broken divide is the Jewish people up until this point in time.
They've been a do this, don't do that relationship with God. With this veil being torn open, it's now a relationship of, hey, I want you to come here and see me. Things are going to be very, very different. The inside of these weird things that we find, you and I can find one of the, if not the most important part of the resurrection story that we need to keep in front of us every day.
It's the big part about this broken divide being healed. The presence of God is now open to us. It's now accessible to us. The presence of God is now a thing that we should expect.
Now you hear people say on Easter Sunday that Christ has died and how Christ has changed us. Christ healed that broken divide. That broken divide was our sin. It was just our sin as individuals and the sin of humanity that we have.
It's not the do's and don'ts part of this, but it's the fact that because we were not clean, we could not have access to this presence of God. Only what is holy can be with the holy. Christ, his sacrifice has cleansed us and made us holy. This veil being torn is huge.
It's us. It's God saying, you know, this whole sacrificial system did not work. It didn't work because humanity is not capable of creating their own holiness. No matter how hard you and I try, we cannot make ourselves holy.
We can't do it for ourselves, no matter how good we are, but Jesus came and he died to make us holy, to put us back in the proper place that we were supposed to be. That proper place is inside and with the presence of God. This allows us to stand before God with clear hearts and with a clear conscience that his sacrifice was big enough because in great breaking, you and I can find great healing. We just want to be a scripture to you this morning from book of Hebrews chapter 10.
It talks about this. It talks about what Jesus has done for us. It talks about this place and this relationship with the presence of God we have. This is what it says from chapter 10.
And so do your brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter Heaven's most holy place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain and into the most holy place. And since we have a great high priest who rules over God's house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts, fully trusting Him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ's blood to make us clean and our bodies have been washed with pure water.
In great breaking, we find great healing. AWS TOSER says this, God's highest desire is that every one of his children should so love and adore him that we are continuously in his presence in spirit and in truth. So let me ask you this question. This is the one I've been asking myself these last few weeks thinking about this.
What if by us neglecting this gift of the presence of God that Jesus gave us, that we are guilty and actually neglecting the very purpose and power of the resurrection? Now, for so much of my life, I view the presence of God as this addendum. It's that appetizer that you can kind of order. I can feel you at the time for it, you have the extra money.
Yeah, let's get those fried pickles. So what if this is the thing that he gave us, where we were once unable to interact with the presence of God, we now are able to interact with that presence. And if we choose not to, we're actually missing the whole point. So nobody likes to miss out on anything.
You might have to miss out. Anybody think missing out is fun? They had this thing called FOMO now, fear of missing out. They've heard FOMO before.
It's why we're so tethered to these things so much. What's missing about missing out means? A lot of times when you miss out, you have regret, right? Because you missed out on this.
This could have been really cool. This would have been awesome. Like to miss out on something means we had to be in proximity to it, right? Like we had to have some connections, some relationship, some ability.
There's something that made it could have been. With that, it's great regret. Also part of missing out, it hurts because it's what could have been. And think about where do you go, when are you in the space where you think about what could have been?
I know a lot of times I wake up in the middle of the night. I got to get back to sleep quick because I don't like the middle of the night because middle of the night for your head goes to places that shouldn't go to. One place of mine goes to is, man, what if? What if?
You start running things through your head, you know, missing out hurts because you feel like something would have been better about your life. The last part of missing out that's just so tough is that it slipped through your fingers. Wouldn't you hate to have the regret that something that you knew and you feel could have changed everything and it slipped right through your fingers? You touched it.
You had the ability to hold on to it for some reason you couldn't. What if I'm missing out on the presence of God? We're actually missing out on the whole point of the resurrection. With great breaking, we find great healing.
So my grandfather, my grandparents in Texas, who's bedroom I never went in because I just could tell I'm not supposed to be there. They died a while back. And I remember after my grandfather's funeral, he died after my grandmother. And then you have the family meal at the house.
Everybody comes and brings food. We had that. And then I took my grandfather's car out for a drive. That was really interesting.
I think the exact words my uncle used was Chad went and blew the carbon out. But I come back to the house and my mom and my uncle were there and they say, hey, listen, we need to go clean out your grandfather's bedroom, your grandparent's bedroom. Because there's all these suspicions. There's war bonds stuck inside of books or a paint can with a thousand dollars buried in the backyard.
We never found any of that. We found like 18 model T battery boxes. But so we go to my grandparent's room. We turn the light on.
I think about 10 times my life is all the light on. And my mom goes like peel off the tin foil and disintegrates because it's 40 years old. And we go in the closet and my uncle's like, so my mom's going to take care of under the bed and one of the dressers and my uncle's going to start cleaning out the closet. And he looks at me and says, hey, listen, you go to the big dresser and your grandfather kept his treasures underneath the drawers.
And so I pull out his drawers and well and behold, there's actually a thin piece of masonite separating each layer and like a two inch gap. And there was all sorts of stuff under there. There was this collection he had of he was in the Navy in World War II. And there's a collection of zip-o-lighters where he had etched every landing that he made during the island hopping campaign.
And there's pictures of he had five brothers. They're all in the Navy or the Marines in World War II. And every time that many brothers they see each other sooner or later, Tiffany on R&R, he'd have a picture of him and his brothers. When he came back from the war, he opened up a garage.
This is I have a regret right here. This is one. And he had two receipt pads from his regret from his garage under the doors. And one was completely blank and one was stilled out.
And I just grabbed a few sheets of each instead of just taking both of them. I regret not having the full pads of those. But you see how much the transmission changed costs in 1949. It will make you mad.
And stuff he was a scout master for 35 years. So it patches from things and pictures of his boys. And there was the names from cars, what name it was. All these sorts of these treasures.
And I learned more about him in 30 minutes cleaning out underneath those drawers than I learned in 30 years. Because I was invited to come into this space. I was invited to come in. I completely belonged.
And I was absolutely supposed to be there. And what Jesus has done for us in his life and his death and his resurrection is he takes that holy place, that presence of God that used to be an accessible us. And he says, you need to come in here because this place is yours. And what you need to know, you'll find out inside of here.
And you absolutely 100% belong in this space. And John 14 says, the word became flesh. He made his home among us. And we've seen his glory.
The glory of the Father's one and only Son, his glory, his presence. Through Jesus, we have seen this completely the truthless of God and everything he is. We have this. So friends, what we need to do is we need to make sure that we are looking for it.
That we are spending time. That we're being healed because of it and being healed through it. That we are growing because it's in our life. We're growing because it's us.
We've been given the greatest thing in the world, the presence of the living God. And our eternity as disciples of Jesus Christ is simply a byproduct of this access to the presence of God that we have because what's holy doesn't die. He's adopted us as sons and daughters. And he's made us holy.
And he calls us as own. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for this day. Word thank you for Easter.
For everything it means. For everything it does for us for the way that it changes our life and the life of everyone who's walked across upon this earth. We thank you so much. Should we pray?
Amen. You know, on this day we always celebrate communion because the presence of Christ is given to us for us to come and approach because we've been given that right. We've been given that ability. On the night that Jesus gave himself up for us, he took bread and he gave thanks to God for it.
He gave it to his disciples and he said, take and eat as often as you do this and do this in remembrance of me. He took the cup and he gave thanks to God for it. He gave it to disciples and says, take and drink all of this and do it as often as you did in remembrance of me. In remembrance to reenact to remember to the power of the Holy Spirit to place the past now in our presence.
Fully open and fully accessible. Let's pray together. Holy Father, thank you for this gift in so many ways. Thank you for coming to us and throwing the doors wide open or for breaking barriers and giving yourself to us fully, not just once and not just in the past, but in the present and for us to learn and grow in our faithfulness and to know that you will completely be there in that future with us.
So your Holy and precious name we pray. As our communion servers are coming forward, just kind of a couple of notes. We've got a lot of folks in here today. And so, okay, okay.
The kids are going to go all go through together first. Okay. And back out. Okay.
That will keep the chaos to a minimum. Trust me. Trust me. I'm going to come forward, but this is how we'll take this.
Our servers will be on either side and we're going to come down the middle aisle and then you can take communion and you go back to your seats through the sides. We take by dipping the bread in the cup. You don't have to wait for me to say anything. It'll let this be a time of us with the presence of God.