Easter
Transcript
Good morning. Happy Easter. Happy Resurrection Sunday. The tomb is open and his body is gone. We get to celebrate and live in that reality. We got to open with some scripture readings that talk about the different accounts of when Jesus was alive, when he came alive, when he was resurrected.
Today we get to look at 1 Peter 1, verses 3-5, which highlights the reality that we live in because of that event. So you can go ahead and flip there. It's going to be on page 588 in your blue Bibles that are around you. If you don't have a Bible at home, please take that. That is our gift to you. We want you to be able to have a Bible that you can read.
But we're going to be in 1 Peter today. Friday, some of us got to join our sister church, Midtown Downtown, to be a part of a Good Friday service, celebrating that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. And then there's this little bit of a cliffhanger between Friday and Sunday. Hope hanging in the balance. What's going to happen next? And like all good stories, it reels us in, anticipating what's going to happen next.
Think back to other stories that do this in Frozen, which I have two little ones at home and one on the way. Frozen is going to be a staple in our household. We watch Frozen at the very end when Anna is like frozen into a block of ice. And there's this moment where you're waiting to see what's going to happen next. Is this it? Is she going to come back?
It's the moment in Harry Potter and the final one where Hagrid is holding Harry Potter's limp body. And you're wondering what is going to happen as it reels you in. It's in the dark night rises when Batman takes the bat helicopter, the bomb out of the city over the ocean and then explodes. And you're wondering what's going to happen. Any genre of story, it does this. It's like a sleepless in Seattle where, is he going to sleep?
Is he, you know, cliffhangers and rom-coms. It's like whatever your brand of story, we love cliffhangers. And I think the reason why we love to be drawn in like that is because we are made in the image of a God who is a master storyteller. That the whole story of the universe, of the world, starts in Genesis. And it's one big story that we live in, that we are a part of. That in Genesis, God creates the world and everything in it from nothing.
And he calls it good. And then he creates in the world a garden called Eden. This is the original OGE heaven. This is the place where he puts Adam and Eve. And it's good. And his relationship with Adam and Eve and humanity is good.
And everything's going well. And then in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve sin against God. Satan comes into the garden in the form of a serpent. And causes them to question God's word. And they believe the word of Satan over God. And they sin against God.
Rebelling against Him. And that brings sin into the world. It fractures every aspect of creation, including humanity. And then God comes down. He pronounces what's going to happen now that humanity is broken. Now that they have brought sin into the world.
And he makes a declaration in Genesis 3. He says, one day, he talks to Eve. One day down the line, a seed of Eve. One descendant will come from you. And when he comes, Satan will strike his heel. But ultimately, he will crush the head of the serpent.
And that is the declaration that one day Jesus is going to come. And the rest of the Old Testament is this anticipation. This build up. This tension that's building in the story. As we see the brokenness of humanity on display. We've been in Genesis for like the last nine months.
And there's so much sin and brokenness. And the rest of the Old Testament is just like that. And throughout all the brokenness, there are these declarations. These prophecies that are pointing forward to a Messiah that is going to come. And then in the New Testament, Jesus comes. He comes and he starts to live a life of goodness, of righteousness, of perfection.
And then we got to celebrate last week on Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, that Jesus comes into the city. And he comes in the city to die. And on Good Friday, we celebrate that he died in our place on the cross for our sins. And there's this cliffhanger, this tension that's building to see what's going to happen next. We have to join the disciples and the early followers of Jesus, waiting to see what's going to happen. And on Sunday, Jesus rises.
He conquers death. He steps out of the tomb. And nothing is ever going to be the same. History is going to be changed. And 1 Peter 1, these few verses that we're going to be in today highlight that reality that we get to live in. What the resurrection changes for us.
So we're going to be in 1 Peter and we're going to see one clear thing as we walk through it. That what Jesus accomplished for us in the gospel is good news. And it is guaranteed by God. That what Jesus accomplished for us in the gospel is good news. And it's guaranteed by God. So if you are a Christian, as we go through this, this morning, this is the hope we get to celebrate.
The reality that we live in. And if you're not a Christian, we're very glad you're here this morning. But I want to make one thing very clear. We believe this story. We believe this good news. And our hope is that you would believe this too.
Let me pray and then we'll jump in. God, thank you so much that the tomb is empty. That we get to live in the reality of the resurrection. God, I pray that you would open our eyes to see how good that news is. And that it is guaranteed because of what you did. In Jesus' name, amen.
Alright, so 1 Peter, the first few verses. The intro, he says, hi, I'm Peter. I'm writing to you. Alright, grace and peace. And then he jumps in. Verse 3.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's got an exclamation point at the end. He is amped. He is excited. He has good news that he's getting ready to celebrate. He wants to stop and praise God.
And I love what verse 3 does. Because he gets really excited. And it reels you in a little bit. Because it makes you want to ask, well, why, Peter? Why are you so excited? Why are you praising God?
It would be like if I came in from a long day at work. And I walk through the door. And my wife sees me. Which, this doesn't normally happen. But if I dropped my bags and just went, woo!
And just got really excited. She'd be thrown off. And she'd say, okay, that's nice. Why? Why did you come in and startle everyone? Why are you so excited?
My daughter does this. She'll come in and she'll come into the room where I'm working. She'll go, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy. And she'll be tugging at me. And I look at her and I say, please, don't bother me. Get out of the room.
I need to work. Close the door on the way out. No. Most of the time. Most of the time I'm like, what is it, baby girl? And she's like, daddy, I love you.
I'm like, oh, girl. She's three. She's got curly hair. She's cute. Also, sometimes she's got something else to say after that that she really wants. But it reels me in.
When someone gets excited, you want to know why. And that's what Peter is doing here. He is reeling us in as he's praising God. So why, Peter? Why are you praising God? And he gets into it.
He says, according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Whoa. Okay. That's a lot. And that's just three verses. So what we're going to do is we're going to unpack that because he just said a whole bunch and we're going to see why this is such good news.
So he starts off in that first verse. We'll take it chunk by chunk. He says, according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And in that, we see the statement. We see the cause. We see the why behind all of it.
It's at the center. It's the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. That is the why. That is the cause behind the hope that Peter is so joyously celebrating because the resurrection changes everything. We celebrated the cross on Good Friday that he covered our sins, but the full work is not complete until he walks out of the tomb. When Jesus rises on Easter Sunday, he makes a way for all of us to partake in the promises of the gospel, the good news.
And it is good news, but we really can't understand how good this news is until we understand and appreciate what it is that Jesus saves us from, what he rescues us from. And to understand that, you've got to go back to the beginning of the verse when he says, according to his great mercy, we need to ask why we need mercy in the first place. And when we do that, we get to see why we need mercy, and that's the bad news part of this story. But until we understand that, we can appreciate how good the good news is. There are two reasons we need, two overarching reasons that we need mercy, and there are reasons of what happened at the fall when Adam and Eve sinned against God.
We need mercy because our relationship with God was broken at the garden. That we lost God. And a second overarching reason is that we lost a place with Him. We lost Eden. We lost heaven. And for those two reasons, we need mercy.
So I want to walk through really quickly some reasons why our relationship is fractured with God and some reasons why we need mercy. The first reason we need mercy is because we were dead in sin. That outside of the hope of the resurrection, that is all of us in that state, dead in sin. Ephesians 2.1 says that you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. That is spiritual deadness, which means we lack the capacity to love God. We lack the capacity to truly love and serve others.
We are spiritually dead. When Adam and Eve sinned against God, they brought the spiritual deadness into the world and they pass it on to everyone who came after them. We have spiritual deadness and the problem is that we don't think it's that big of a deal. We underplay how big of a deal that is. We think it's just kind of a flesh wound. One of my earliest memories, one of the earliest comedies I ever got to see, silly comedies, was Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
And I vividly remember the first scene that I just belly laughed at. And it's the scene where King Arthur goes and fights the knight who's standing in his way. And they draw swords and they start clanking swords. And then King Arthur finds an area and he cuts his arm off. And as a seven-year-old, like it's kind of gruesome to watch. But it's obviously silly because he starts bleeding and he's like, no, I'm good.
And he's like, no, you must concede. You must concede. He's like, no. And they keep fighting and they clank swords again. And then he cuts his other arm off and he is armless, bleeding. And he goes, it's just a flesh wound.
It's just a flesh wound. And then it gets more and more absurd as he cuts his leg off. And then he cuts his other leg off. And the guy still wants to fight him. He wants to bite him. And it's actually a pretty absurd picture.
Of us as well. Because we think sin's not a big deal. It is mortal. We have been mortally wounded. It is a very big deal. We are spiritually dead.
We need to treat it with a seriousness to understand our state outside of the hope of the resurrection. We are spiritually dead. The second reason we need mercy is because we are hopeless outside of it. There was no hope in the world until Jesus walked out of the tomb. Hopeless. Hopeless.
Hopeless. Like in any story that you've seen. Hopeless like the end of the last Avengers movie in Infinity Wars when Thanos retires from his genocide. And everyone is just kind of waiting and watching. What in the world is going to happen? I mean this is an utterly hopeless scene.
What is going to happen next? If you like sports. Hopeless like last year when the Cavs went on to take the Warriors on. I know some of y'all are big LeBron fans. He is great. The Warriors were way better.
They had the best backcourt in NBA history. That matchup was absolutely hopeless. We have seen stories of hopelessness. Examples of hopelessness. And none of them even come close to describing our state outside of the hope of the resurrection. And the reason that we are so hopeless is that we have no shot at saving ourselves.
Ephesians 2.8 says, For it's by grace you've been saved through faith. It's not of your own doing. Not a result of works. We have no shot. There's no amount of good works. Good living.
Righteous deeds. There is nothing that you can do to fix our state. We are hopeless outside of the hope of the resurrection. I mean the Bible describes this outside of Christ as enemies. Foolish. Lost.
And it keeps going. That we are hopeless. We are dead. And the third reason we need mercy is because we are guilty. That we are guilty of sin. And the book of Romans in the New Testament says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
The Romans 6 says for the wages of sin. What we earn because of our sin is death. Colossians in the New Testament says we have stored up this record of debt that stands against us with its legal demands. Which is death. We stand guilty outside of the hope of the resurrection. And the reason it uses that legal courtroom language is to make us understand we have sinned against a holy and perfect God.
And because of that we are guilty. So we're dead in sin. We're hopeless. We're guilty. I'll give you one more. We are in darkness.
That outside of the resurrection the world is left in darkness. Ephesians says that we are darkened in our minds. That we are children of darkness. If you keep reading 1 Peter you're going to see that we are called out of darkness. That Jesus teaches that humanity dwells in darkness. It is the kind of darkness if you've ever been in a room that you're not familiar with and you cannot find the light.
There's this feeling of fear and angst. And that is what humanity is left in. We are left outside of the hope of the resurrection in a room looking for a light that does not exist. Left in darkness. Now you might be wondering man you just said a whole bunch of bad stuff.
It's Easter. This is supposed to be joyous. And you're kind of saying all this with a smile. It's kind of throwing us off a little bit. The reason why we can say look at all of this that we need a mercy for and we can say it as Christians with a smile. It's because there's an English theologian.
He said it this way. He said it's always darkest before the dawn. It's always darkest before the dawn. You may have heard that in pop culture. It goes back to an English theologian. And the point that he is getting at is it is always darkest before the dawn.
And the world was in darkness and hopelessness before Jesus walks out of the tomb. But on that Easter morning dawn breaks through. Hope and light and love and God's glory come bursting through in a big way when Jesus walks out of the tomb. He makes a way for us. And we get to celebrate that as Christians. We get to celebrate as we read these stories this morning.
When the women show up to the tomb and they see that the tomb is empty. We get a glimmer of hope entering the world. When you read on and you read that Mary Magdalene is frantically searching for Jesus. That she can't find him. And she finds someone she thinks is the gardener and says, Who has taken my Savior? And it's Jesus.
And he says, Mary. And when she hears his name, we get another glimmer of hope and light that has entered the world. We see the disciples who look at the resurrected and risen Savior. And he declares them, peace be with you. We get to see that hope has come. That because of the resurrection, we have a hope in Christ.
So once you understand why we need mercy, it makes the goodness of how good the gospel is. It makes it so good and real. To what he has accomplished for us. So he says, according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So now that we understand why we need mercy, we get to see what Peter is getting at.
He says, you need to be born again. Made alive. What he is drawing on is the language that Jesus uses in John 3. When Nicodemus comes to Jesus and says, you're a great teacher. And Jesus says, all right. And he starts to teach him.
And he says, unless you are born again, you will not see the kingdom of God. And then in Nicodemus, he's kind of left struggling. He's like, he tries to figure out the physiological impossibilities of someone going up to their mother's womb again and being born. And he starts trying to flesh that out and it's not working. And Jesus cuts to the middle of that and says, no, no, no. You need to be spiritually reborn.
You need life. You're dead in sin. You need to be spiritually reborn. That is what Peter is getting at. That is what we get to celebrate as Christians. That when you believe in Jesus, he makes you alive.
He brings us to life. So what do you need to do to be born again? Faith. Faith, and as we see in this passage and others, faith that God gives us and causes us to be born again. God is the active one bringing us to life. So what are you going to be born again to?
You get to be born again to a living hope. To a living hope right now. That once you believe in Jesus and you are made alive, you get to partake in a living hope. And that is a restored relationship with God now and for eternity. That you get a living hope right now that you get to partake in. And one of the ways I love seeing folks in our church grab hold of this living hope, and live in this living hope, is in our community groups.
Our community groups are just smaller groups of our church family that journey through life together. That eat meals together. And they walk through good seasons and bad, but applying the gospel in all of it. And I love our community groups because I get to see people grab hold of this living hope. In a few different ways I get to see this. I get to see people that realize that once you are made new, once you believe in Jesus, you are no longer a slave to sin.
That that's why you needed mercy. You're no longer a slave to sin, but you are made free and you belong to Christ. When people in groups, when I start to fully realize this, that I no longer have to obey the flesh. I no longer have to obey sin and the sinful nature that I have. I have freedom because of the resurrection. Another way I get to see this is when people realize they have access to God.
They can, when they start to realize that you can talk to the Creator God. The God who is over all things. You have access to Him in prayer and He listens. The God of the universe listens and desires us to come to Him in prayer. I see it when people find access to God in His Word and they grow closer and find nearness to Him in growing and knowing more of who He is. And I get to see it another way.
We call this gospel fluency. When people in groups start to realize that the gospel, this good news that we're celebrating this morning, applies to every aspect of life. To being a father and a mother. To being a son and a daughter. To being a friend, a neighbor, a co-worker, an employer. That it all, the gospel applies to all of it.
And this living hope starts to take over. And we start to, as the Bible says, conform to the image of Christ. That means we're growing to be more like Him. That's the living hope that we get to take hold in. That's what we get to draw from. That's the hope of the resurrection that gives us a living hope.
We get a restored relationship with God, which was lost in Eden. A second big way that we get to see this is not just that we get a restored relationship with God. God is that we get heaven back. And the way that Peter describes this is we get an inheritance. He says, according to His great mercy, He's caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. To an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you.
Y'all, that means we get eternity back. The resurrection gives us the opportunity to partake in this undefiled, imperishable inheritance. That we get, as the Bible describes it, heaven. We get heaven again. But I think there's two reasons that we, us in our culture, that we actually don't buy into this.
I think there's two reasons that we don't buy into the idea of heaven. I think the first one is that we think life right now is really good. And that this is the best possible life that you can have. There's so many things that have been written, so many things that have been said about living your best life right now. That this is the best possible existence. And there's a theological term for believing that earth is better than heaven.
Stupid. It is a dumb idea. This life right now, there are good things that we can enjoy. We as Christians have been given good things. I love my wife. I love my kids.
I love a good steak. I love music. These are good gifts that God has given me. But as a Christian, we understand that those things point to the giver. And ultimately, they are a shadow. They are a glimpse of the much better things that await in this inheritance that God has given us in heaven.
That this life right now is not the best possible existence. There is one that awaits us. I think that's the first reason why we don't buy into this. I think there's another reason. I think we have very poor pictures of heaven. We got some bad pictures of what heaven looks like.
Do you think of commercials and movies and TV shows would describe what heaven is like? It's usually this disembodied experience floating in the clouds with wings. And it's boring. It's absolutely, utterly boring. Usually it's pitted against in some movies. Like everything is fun on earth.
And then there's heaven. It's a bad picture. And we need to update our pictures to understand how good this inheritance is. How good heaven is. C.S. Lewis is the author of the Chronicles of Narnia.
He's also written. He's a Christian philosopher that has written a bunch of things. He had a letter once that he wrote describing what heaven was like. And I want to walk through this quote because he does it so poetically. And it's helpful for us to see. He says, The symbols under which heaven is presented to us are a dinner party, a wedding, a city, and a concert.
Those are the pictures that we get in heaven. Not this disembodied experience of just nothingness. No, it is. We get some vivid pictures in the Bible that show us. We get a dinner party. And I want you to think of the best dinner party that you've ever been to.
Not the kind of dinner party where everyone just kind of just mailed it in. And someone brought Little Caesars. And someone brought leftovers. Which happens. It happens sometimes in our groups. We're tired.
But when we really own it. I want you to think of a dinner party where everyone owned their aspect of the meal. They really creatively took time to craft a meal. And then you show up. And it's not just boxed wine. Like someone brought some $18 bottles of wine for people to enjoy.
It's not just Natty Light. It's craft beer. And it's friends. And it's people that you enjoy. And you get to enjoy this meal together. Those dinner parties pale in comparison to the dinner party that is described.
The inheritance in heaven. That we get life together in a way that is completely indescribable now. But we get to fully realize later. He calls it a wedding. Because the New Testament gives pictures of heaven being a wedding. I know that some of you just thought.
Oh, I don't like weddings. weddings. Listen. The reason you don't like weddings is because you haven't been to a good one. I'm not talking about weddings that, you know, the ceremony drags out for two hours. And the guy who preaches does it for like, you know, an hour and some change. And they've got like 18 ways to commemorate their love.
Which I'm not against. Like sand ceremonies are cool. But when you combine it with like 10 different things. Everyone's like, I'm hungry. Let's do this thing.
Seal it. Let's go. And then you get the reception. And it's bland food. And it's just dull. And the host isn't.
I mean, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a ceremony that is succinct. And good. And beautiful. And in celebration of the gospel. And love.
And then you get to the ceremony. Or you get to the reception. And the reception is killer. The food is great. The meat is never dry. One of the things I love at weddings is when someone goes all out and gets endless shrimp cocktail.
I'm not talking about like a martini glass with five. I'm talking about you have. There's like a whole setup. You can go and get endless amounts of shrimp cocktail. And you got to strategize how not to get judged as you go back and forth, back and forth. I'm talking about food that is great.
Cake that is not dry. Music that is great. Whether it's a band or a killer DJ. The hosts are great. The speeches are wonderful. It's a celebration of love.
Those are like the white whale of weddings that show up once every five to ten years. And they are exciting. And they are good. And they pale in comparison to what the Bible calls the final wedding feast. That one day Jesus is going to come back to the earth. He's going to make all things new.
And in heaven there's going to be reunification with Jesus and the church. It's going to be a final wedding feast. And it is going to be a celebration unlike any other that lasts for eternity. We need to update our pictures. He calls it a city. And that city picture comes from the end of the Bible.
One of the final pictures we get of heaven is not heaven in the air. It's heaven coming down to earth. And they call it the New Jerusalem, the city of God. Where God is at the center. And He is giving lights and glory. And His glory is spreading all over the city.
And we get to partake in it. It's a city that is unlike any city here on earth. There's no more hurt. There's no more pain. There's no more suffering. There's no more struggle.
There's eternal rest in God who sits at the center of the city. And even more, we get a picture attached to that. That we won't just have these broken bodies. That we will have a future resurrection. Because Jesus first rose, we get a resurrection. That we get to be with new, eternal, glorified bodies in the city of God.
And if you suffer with any type of chronic pain, any type of sickness, any type of illness. If you've watched family or friends that have died of cancer. That hope is beautiful. That is the hope that we wait for. That one day in the city of God, we will have fully resurrected new and glorified bodies. And the last picture that C.S.
Lewis gives is a concert. That it is going to be a concert. Months ago, I got to go see Mumford & Sons. Which is kind of a British folk band. It's one of my favorite bands. And this is the second time I got to see them.
And I have this ranking of shows, of live shows and concerts in my head. And that one jumped out of top. It was awesome. It was great music. It was well done. There were 10,000 people singing and celebrating.
There was this buzz. There was this feeling. If you're a Christian, you've been in a situation where you've worshipped. And you felt that feeling of God working in you. All the concerts, all the worship that you could ever have here on earth. Pale in comparison to when in heaven we get to worship God.
Eternally. Forever. We need our pictures updated. Because heaven and its inheritance is so much better. He closes out the quote. He says, Think of yourself just as a seed patiently waiting in the earth.
Waiting to come up a flower in the gardener's good time. Up into the real world. The real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, look back upon from there, will be only a drowsy half waking. We are here in the land of dreams. And the picture for us now is that we are underneath the surface.
We are in the soil. And for those of us that are Christians, those of us that believe in the power of the resurrection, we are waiting. But there are others that have not trusted in this hope. And they think this is the best life. This is the best possible experience that you could ever have. And C.S.
Lewis says, It's a drowsy half waking. Because we are longing for the day when we rise. When we come through the surface and we get to experience God forever and eternity. And he says, When you look back on your former life, it will be a drowsy half waking. We get an inheritance. And the reason we get it is because Jesus walked out of the grave.
He conquered death. The resurrection won the war with sin. It seals the victory. And in every victory, there are spoils of victory. And God earned those spoils. And he shares them with his people.
And we get to partake in that spoil. And part of that is the inheritance. That is longly awaiting us. The resurrection gives us a living hope, a restored relationship with God right now. It gives us the hope of eternity and an inheritance with him. And then we see that it is guaranteed by God.
He closes out and he says, Who by God's power are being guarded through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. When you trust in Jesus and the hope of the resurrection, God guarantees all the benefits. He secures them. That no one is going to rob them from you. You can live in the peace that your inheritance is secure. And one of the, when you think about secure places, one of the most, really the pinnacle examples of security is Fort Knox.
People say, Man, this place is guarded up like Fort Knox. And what they mean is, is that it's the most guarded place in the world because Fort Knox is this secure facility where no one can get in or out. And it's guarded by this military base, the most powerful military fighting force in the world. And that security pales in comparison to how God guards our inheritance. The God who created all things and holds them in his hand says, I've got your inheritance. It's guarded.
So how does that work? Let me explain how that works. God teaches that it's through faith. The faith that God gives us and the mercy that causes us to be made new, that faith secures it. And you might think, but wait a second, what about the seasons where I'm struggling? What about the seasons where I'm in doubt?
What about the seasons where I'm struggling with sin, where I seem to be running away? Are you saying that it's on me to sustain it? It's on me? No. No, because the picture is that God gives us faith. He makes us new.
He is the active one. And this is how he seals it. In Ephesians 1, he says, In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, hear this, we're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it. That when you believe in Jesus, you are made new, and God comes to dwell in you, and he guards that inheritance. He secures it. The resurrection opens our eyes to the hope that we have in Christ.
God sets up inside of us and lives and reigns and guards this inheritance and will never, ever let his people go. We will carry home. The resurrection guarantees that hope. That what Jesus accomplished for us in the gospel is good news. And it is guaranteed by God. What an amazing thing that we get to celebrate this Easter morning.
All of it. That we were once dead in sin. That we were once hopeless. That we were once in darkness. And then God brings us to life through faith. And he restores what was broken in Eden, what was broken in the fall.
We get God again. We get this living hope. That he secures for us an inheritance. We get heaven again. And he guarantees it. He says, I am going to carry you home.
This is going to happen. That's the power of the resurrection. When Jesus walks out of the tomb, all of this, becomes available to us. And we as Christians, we get to celebrate that hope today. We get to worship. We get to sing.
We get to be glad. Because that hope was won for us that first Easter morning 2,000 years ago. But here's the deal. Some of you have not believed this. For some of you, this is not the hope that you have experienced. And the reality is, is that you are wandering hopeless in the dark.
And I would say that God has brought you here this morning that you might hear this. You can have this. Through faith, you can have this living hope in all of the riches that come with it. That you can have this inheritance that's so beautifully displayed in the gospel. that right now, you are underneath the surface. You are living a half-waking, poor version of what is to come. And our hope is, is that God would open your eyes and you would see that there's a better life.
And that life is found in Christ. And our hope this morning is that you would believe. That you would trust in Jesus. That means believing that He lived the perfect life that you could never live. that He died the death on the cross that we deserve to die because we are guilty of sin. And that when He walked out of the tomb, He made a way for you to have a new life in Christ. The 2 Corinthians says, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old is gone and the new has come. And we want that for you. We want you to be made new. That's believing and that's repenting of sin. That's turning from sin and turning to Jesus. That's the hope we want for you.
We want you to respond like the disciples who dropped the life they had and followed Jesus. No more life on your terms, but life on God's. We want this living hope. We want this inheritance for you. And our hope today is that you would respond. That you would believe.
And that you would see the hope that we celebrate. That Jesus accomplished for us. What He accomplishes in the Gospel is good news. Good news that we get to celebrate for eternity because it is guaranteed by God. A band is going to come up and the first way that we're going to celebrate this this morning is we're going to come to the Lord's table. We're going to take communion.
We celebrate communion because on the night that Jesus was betrayed, He took the bread and He broke it. And He said, this is my body that was broken for you. And He took the cup, which is the cup of the new covenant. He said, this is my blood that was shed for you. That often as you eat and drink this, you proclaim my death until I return. And as Christians living on this side of the resurrection, we hang on that last part until He returns.