there. Sarah, by the way, welcome to all you Zoom folks. If there are Zoom people out there, you know your names. We’re making our uh technical people do a lot of extra work this morning. So, thank you for everything you’re doing for us. So, this morning is the one day that if if you go to church, guaranteed the message is going to be about the resurrection. Most every Sunday, we always try to talk about the gospel because it’s the nuclear core of our Christianity, of our faith. And without the gospel, our religion or any religion will end up drifting into just a weak, limpid kind of moralism. And all moralism can say to us is that this is the behavior that’s prescribed. Do that. This is the behavior that’s prohibited. Don’t do that. And go take that flat, lifeless religion and let it run, or more likely, let it just ruin your lives. I mean, the gospel is infinitely richer than moralism. And when we speak the gospel to one another, and we try to do that on a weekly basis in our songs, in our prayers, in our messages, we tend to focus on the cross, on the death of Christ on our behalf, accomplishing the forgiveness of our sins. And the resurrection, it’s not quite an afterthought, but generally it receives far less attention than the cross does. pastor named Sam Albury writes that many Christians while believing in the resurrection and rehearsing that belief every Easter Sunday then effectively stick it back in the drawer for the rest of the year because they’re at a loss as to know what to do with it. And I suspect that he’s mostly right about that. And when we do speak of the resurrection on Easter Sunday, we often focus on the historical evidence to prove that it actually happened. Historical evidence that I think is powerful and persuasive. I mean, the empty tomb uh doesn’t really have a plausible explanation outside of the resurrection of the body of Christ and the changed lives of the disciples suddenly going from these fearful hiding uh men to being bold proclaimers after the resurrection or the worldview of Jewish people suddenly shifting overnight. They had no way of understanding, no desire to believe in a single resurrection of a single individual in the middle of time. After that, things would go on mostly the same as they were before. Yet, their worldview changed practically overnight, told that at least several hundred people saw the resurrected Christ over the course of six weeks or so. And those eyewitness accounts, these are people who you knew would never lie to you. Your parents, your children, your friends, and your neighbors. And so thousands of people just began to believe in the resurrected Christ. So as a historical fact, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is very plausible. But if that’s all we do with the resurrection, just reaffirm for one another every Easter that it actually happened, I think we’re missing out on and we’re underplaying the significance of the resurrection as a great source of power in our lives. You know, Paul wrote Philippians chapter 3 and he reviewed the worthlessness of his life when he was just a zealous Pharisee, uh, trying to live a very moralistic life and trying to get near to God. And then everything changed when he found that God would give him a righteousness, not based on on his lawkeeping, but simply based on faith. And through Christ, he gained that righteousness. And uh, and it was it seemed so so wonderful and so easy. He didn’t have that sandpaper feel of his religious performance. And then having been given that righteousness through faith, Paul says how much he wants to now know Christ and know the power of his resurrection. That’s really an interesting thing for him to say, isn’t it? Because he’s saying the resurrection is not to be viewed simply as a historical fact. Rather, it’s a means or it’s a conduit to transformation or power. So somehow the resurrection opens something up for us. It’s preceded by the death of Christ, but it’s not completed by the death of Christ. And maybe the best way for us to think of it is, you know, we’re in a jail cell on death row and we’re condemned people and our sins and our crimes against God. We can’t appeal those. We’re guilty. We’re not wrongfully accused or convicted. Then through the death of Christ on the cross, God declared us exonerated and innocent. And then our guards were required to come to us and open our cell doors and process us out and give us civilian clothes to wear and hand back our little packet of belongings and open the main gate so we can leave. And the great 18th century Christian Methodist hymnwriter Charles Wesley, he had this this great imaginative salvation verse in one of his si his hymns where he says, “Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature’s night. Then God came. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke and my dungeon was flamed with light. My chains fell off. My heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed thee. And through Christ’s death on the cross, it’s like we’re allowed to come out of the dungeon, but we’ve been incarcerated a long time. We’re not sure exactly how to live on the outside. And we need the resurrection power to animate all the changes and the transformation and the adjustments we’re going to have to make. So, the resurrection ushers us into a future that takes us beyond just the unlocking of the jail cell. So, it’s one thing to rise and go forth as unchanged Christians, but to know what to do and to have the power to do it, to live it out. That’s where the resurrection becomes compellingly important and directional in our lives. It inaugurates the future in a way that the death and the cross of Christ alone does not. So, only the death plus the resurrection opens the future for us. A future that’s filled with the presence and the glory and the power and the mercy of God. Now, we know the beginning of our Bible displays this world where God and people could live and move and talk and walk with uh with God together. But when man and woman sinned and they gummed up the way the world was supposed to work, they were forced to leave the garden, go out into a world of thorns and thistles and frustrating work and pain and childbirth and uh strained relationships between husbands and wives. They didn’t leave the garden voluntarily. It says they were driven out by God and prevented from re-entering by angelic beings known as cherubam who stood guard and there was a flaming sword that was turned in all directions uh to prevent the man and woman from finding their way back in and finding their way to the tree of life. And to modern ears that sounds very fantastical. It’s all too real though when we realize that our way back to the presence of God was blocked by justice. Justice was what was blocking our return to glory. Read a book recently by Paul uh Kalani. He wrote a book. It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist entitled When Breath Becomes Air and received great literary honors despite the fact that it was left unfinished. The author passed away uh prior to its completion. The epilogue was finished by his widowed wife. Paul Kolani was only 37 years old when he died of lung cancer in March of 2015. Been a very high achiever, valadictorian of his high school class. He went to Stanford University, received advanced degrees in English literature, human biology, and from there he went on to Cambridge School of Medicine at Yale, returned to Stanford for his residency in neurosurgery, neuroscience. And it was during his res residency that this 35-year-old non-smoker was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, cancer that took his life in a little under two years time. And it was over the course of those two years that he wrote his book detailing his transition from being a brain surgeon who often spoke with patients and their families about prognosis and life expecties to now being the patient fully medically aware of how grave his condition was. He writes of his family’s journey with him, his wife and little baby daughter that they had following his diagnosis, wondering if she had ever lived long enough to have any memory of her father. He also writes of his stumbling return to faith. His parents were of South Indian origin and Paul Kelani had grown up in a home he describes as devoutly Christian where prayer scripture reading were a nightly ritual. But he says like most scientific types he just developed a scientific worldview that seemed complete in itself. And he says it didn’t need any outmoded concepts like souls or God or bearded white men in robes. and he spent a good chunk of his 20s just trying to build a mental frame to support uh his views as an ironclad atheist. Problem was though, he he realized that if he banished God from the world, it would seem inevitable to him that he would also have to banish things like love and hate and meaning. If as he believed there was no scientific basis for God, then he was obligated uh to conclude that it also provided no basis for meaning and life didn’t have any. And that wasn’t very satisfactory for him. And during his illness, he began to inch his way back toward faith. He writes of one crystalline spring morning, the third Sunday of Lent, went to church with his uh with his wife and his parents who were visiting for the weekend. And he says that he returned at that point or then to the central values of Christianity. He returned the ideas of sacrifice of redemption of forgiveness because he found those central values so compelling concerning God. He wasn’t sure about how to commit himself. He says he had nothing definitive to say about who God might be or or what he was like. and he didn’t feel that revelation alone, the Bible, was sufficient to uh convince people of reason like himself. Concerning Christ, he says he saw a great tension between uh justice and mercy in the Bible, between the Old Testament and the New Testament. So he wrote, “The New Testament says you can never be good enough. Goodness is a thing. You can never live up to it. The main message of Jesus, I believed, is that mercy trumps justice every time. Now, Paul Kelani was no theologian. He didn’t claim to be one. He was a dying young man who had intellectually dismissed God, and he was inching his way back toward faith. If he’d have time, I don’t know how he would have finished his book. And maybe he would have maybe he would have altered that line, “Mercy trumps justice every time.” Something a little more in line with what James 2:13 says when it says, “Mercy triumphs over not justice, but it triumphs over judgment.” subtle difference, but vital difference. Because if mercy could somehow triumph over justice, then there wouldn’t have been any need for Jesus to ever come to earth. If God could have just waved off his passion for justice to favor mercy, no sacrifice would ever have been required. But if both justice and mercy remain integral to God’s character, to who he is, if being just is a necessary part of being God, then a way needed to be found for God still judge sin according to his holy standards, but offer us mercy at the same time. Of course, we know that’s the whole entire point of Jesus suffering and death. His death satisfied the justice requirements of God. But through his wonderful mercy, we could be saved and we could be raised on the coattails of Jesus suffering. So his death on our place, it provides payment for our debt of sin. And then the resurrection, as one fellow puts it, it’s like God signing off on that payment or signing off on that transaction. Only when the father raises the son from the dead is the transaction completed. Paul quite clear in Romans 4:25 where it states that Jesus was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. So without the resurrection, salvation would be very incomplete for all of us. Now equally astounding though in a spiritual yet very very real sense, we were lifted up with Jesus in his resurrection through faith. Somehow we’ve already been resurrected as well quite mystically and miraculously. But both Colossians and Ephesians affirm this for us. It says in Colossians 3:1, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth.” And you look at Ephesians chapter 2. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you’ve been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. telling us that uh when Jesus was raised from the dead, he took us with him and he gave us this all access pass into God’s eternal presence and glory. And our resurrection is not just something in the future. Somehow it’s part of a Christian’s present reality. So in a spiritual sense, we’ve raised, we’re seated in heavenly places. That surely opens up our lives to all kinds of possibilities, gives us access to the glory of God and to the power of God. So along with Paul who says I want to know Jesus and the power of his resurrection. It’s like Paul’s saying uh let’s experiment together. Let’s live our lives uh anticipating the kind of resources that God might make available to us. We’re already seated with him in the heavenly places. So let’s find out what that has to offer us. I want to know him and the power of his resurrection makes the resurrection so much more than an afterthought. so much more than something we just tack on to the cross to give it a happy ending. So the resurrection can’t be minimized in our minds if it opens those kind of possibilities up for us. Richard Dawkins, famous evolutionary biologist, atheist writer. He wrote the book the God delusion. He was in a bait a debate with John Lennox, mathematician, bioethicist, also a scientist, committed Christian. And John Lennox mentioned the resurrection of Jesus as being just a key to Christian belief. To which Dawkins very dismissively replied, “We come down to the resurrection of Jesus. It’s so petty. It’s so trivial. It’s so local. It’s so earthbound. It’s so unworthy of the universe.” And I suppose that if the resurrection never happened, what what he’s saying is right. It’s of no consequence whatsoever. But if it did happen, it’s not petty and it’s not trivial and it’s not local and it’s not earthbound. Resurrection is more like the key to the universe. It’s not unworthy of the universe. And it it unlocks at least four things I think in our lives as we’ve mentioned. First, it unlocks the transaction of salvation, the assurance of forgiveness. Second thing, it it unlocks our transformation and gives us an ability to grow and be transformed and significantly change in our lives. Third, it gives us hope for the future. First Peter 1:3 says that we’re born into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So we can live our lives leaning forward and not feel thwarted and halted by current circumstances. And fourth, the resurrection just opens up an urgent mission for us in the present. Death and resurrection doesn’t just secure our individual salvation and open the way up for us to go to heaven when we die. If we’re already seated in the heavenlies, then we get to be aligned with God’s redemptive purposes right now in the years and the hours we have left on earth. Author and theologian Michael Horton says he grew up in very fundamentalist Christian circles that missed the idea of the kingdom of God and failed to see the resurrection as the key to the renewal of the world. He says, “When I was growing up, salvation was merely going to heaven when I die. But when he came to understand the real meaning of the resurrection, he says it was liberating to think of Christ as the first fruits of the new creation. And that as we’re united to Jesus in faith, our salvation gets wrapped up in the redemption of the world and and the redemption of people and the redemption of all of creation, he says it makes a big difference in our daily living whether we think it’s all going to burn or whether we think the whole creation longs to be liberated from its bondage and share in the freedom of the children of God. He’s saying that the resurrection just opens up a panorama of new horizons for engaging with God and his purposes in in evangelism, in compassion, in truth, in justice, all of that that we can bring to our world, into our city, our community. God desires that his name be hallowed. Uh meaning it’s well thought of or well regarded in our world. Jesus taught his disciples, pray hallowed be thy name. that God’s name would be well regarded through us and around us in our city. And it happens through evangelism as as more people come to bow their knees to Christ. It happens as we join uh God’s purposes for the poor and the needy and the weak. Ministry that God’s entirely committed to. So the resurrection gives us a very redemptive kind of power and motivation for moving into our world and the lives of others. And it sets the table for a new kind of creation. And we can get aboard that right now in our lives as we go out in that resurrection power. If the resurrection demonstrates God’s commitment to a new world and we’re seated in the heavenlies in a place where we have access to those resources, we can make a real difference in the lives of people right now. And one of the most inspiring people I know who’s using his resurrection power to display God’s grace and redemptive purposes to others is a man named Brian Stevenson. You might be familiar with a little book of his entitled Just Mercy, uh, a story of justice and redemption, also the movie by the same name that came out a few years ago. He’s a Harvard trained lawyer. He’s for many years advocated on those incarcerated in the justice system, many who are poor and marginalized, a surprising number who’ve been wrongfully convicted. and he’s given particular attention to those uh men awaiting and women awaiting execution on death row, sentenced to execution. He’s seen countless cases of horrific injustice, terrible abuse in the justice system, and he’s always sought to make a difference. And he’s a committed Christian who maintains his faith shapes and influences everything he does. He says, “I remember growing up and the preacher would read from the prophet Micah, “What does the Lord require of you? to act justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with your God. That has framed the orientation that I have for work and the kind of life I want to live. And over the last 30 years, incredibly, Stephvenson has won reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 140 wrongfully condemned prisoners on death row. He says, “I’ve advocated on behalf of people who’ve been condemned because I believe that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. And that belief is rooted in my conviction in the gospels. I don’t believe anyone’s beyond hope, beyond redemption. I believe everyone’s life has purpose and meaning and value. That’s why I’m committed to defending basic human rights for everybody. I absolutely could not do what I do without faith, without a belief in the unseen. It’s easy to look away, but if we want mercy, we have to be willing to give mercy. And you don’t give it to just people who you think deserve it. you have to give it to the undeserving. In his book, which details many of his uh encounters with inmates, particularly people on death row, he relates this odd little recollection from his childhood, came to him once when he was speaking with a condemned prisoner who had less than an hour to live before he was to be executed. And Stephvenson had worked really hard to win justice for that man, a man who had been treated unjustly by the system. but he hadn’t been successful. And the prisoner was on the phone and he was thanking Brian for his efforts in trying to save his life. But the inmate was difficult to understand. Says he was stuttering more than usual. He was straining to get his words out. And at that moment, Stevenson remembered something that had occurred 40 years earlier in his life. It was an incident he’d completely forgotten about until that moment. He says, “When I was a boy, my mother took me to church and I was about 10 years old. I was outside of our church with my friends, one of whom had brought a visiting relative to the service. Visiting child was a shy, skinny boy about my height who was clinging to his cousin nervously. And he didn’t say anything as the group of us chatted away. I asked him where he was from. And when this child tried to speak, he stumbled horribly. He had a severe speech impediment and he couldn’t get his mouth to cooperate. Couldn’t even say the name of the town where he lived. I’d never seen anyone stutter like that. I thought he must have been joking or playing around, so I laughed. My friend looked at me worriedly, but I didn’t stop laughing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother looking at me with an expression I’d never seen before. It was a mix of horror, anger, and shame. And it was all focused on me. Stopped my laughing instantly. And I’d always felt adored by my mom, so I was unnerved when she called me over. When I got to her, she was very angry. He said, “What are you doing?” What? I I didn’t do Don’t you ever laugh at someone because they can’t get their words out right. Don’t you ever do that. I’m sorry. I was devastated to be reprimanded by my mom so harshly. Mom, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. You should know better, Brian. I’m sorry. I I thought I don’t want to hear it, Brian. There’s no excuse. I’m very disappointed in you. Now, I want you to go back over there and tell that little boy that you’re sorry. Yes, ma’am. Then I want you to give that little boy a hug. Huh? Then I want you to tell him that you love him. I looked up at her and to my horror saw that she was dead serious. I’d reacted as apologetically as I possibly could, but this was way too much. Mom, I can’t go over there and tell that boy I love him. People will, and she gave me that look again. I somberly return turned to my group of friends. They had seen my mother scolding me. I could tell they were all staring at me. I went up to little boy who’d struggled to speak. Look, man, I’m sorry. And I was genuinely apologetic for laughing, deeply regretful the situation I was in. Looked over at my mother, who was still staring at me, and I I lunged at the boy to give him a very awkward hug. I think I startled him by grabbing him like that. But when he realized I was trying to hug him, his body relaxed. He hugged me back. My friends looked at me oddly as I spoke. Uh, also, I love you. and I tried to say it as insincerely as I could get away with and I half smiled as I spoke. I was still hugging the boy so he couldn’t see this disingenuous look on my face. Made me feel uh less weird to smile like it was a joke. But then the boy hugged me tighter and he whispered in my ear and he spoke flawlessly without a stutter without hesitation, I love you too. There’s such tenderness and earnestness in his voice. I thought I would start crying. And after relating that story, just an odd little story that he brings up in his book, he says, uh, and remember it came to him as he was speaking to a stuttering man who had less than an hour to live. Ryan Stevenson makes the point that he’s not doing what he’s doing out of some sense of obligation. Uh, he’s not giving his life to people who are broken by mental illness and poverty and racism and disease and drugs and alcohol and pride and fear and anger just out of some sense of obligation. He quotes 2 Corinthians 12 which talks about being strong in Christ when we are weak. And he says,”I do what I do because I’m broken too.” Being close to suffering, death, executions, and cruel punishments, it didn’t just illuminate the brokenness of others in moment of anguish and heartbreak. It exposed my own brokenness. That’s why I think he confesses that little childhood incident of his own brokenness and his own just obtuseness toward that child. He says,”I really believe that because sometimes it’s in brokenness we appreciate what it means to be fully human. We begin to appreciate what mercy and grace can do to create restoration, to create wholeness and healing. That’s the beautiful thing about faith. It’s what continues to sustain me. I think we should not run away from the brokenness we see in people. We should have open hearts, be willing to provide mercy, share grace and love because that’s what Jesus calls us to do. That’s just the voice of a man who’s living out of the resurrection, out of the place where he’s already seated in the heavenlies. He’s already been transported there by Christ. And through the resurrection, he knows that he’s been forgiven. His salvation transactions complete. It’s changing him. It’s transforming him. It’s remaking him. Gives him hope for himself. Gives him all kinds of hope for other people. And then he’s actively participating in the kind of renewal of creation and the renewal of people that the resurrection of Jesus inaugurated. So that’s why we really need to contemplate the resurrection much more than just on Easter Sunday. Paul said it’s a conduit to our ongoing power and he wanted more of it so that he could minister more effectively to others. So our task is just to recognize our current place in the heavenlies this morning and seek to draw from those same reservoirs of power, compassion, redemption, renewal that Jesus has made available to us. Let’s go to prayer.