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.
Palm Sunday and the Kingdom of God
Transcript
Good morning. Happy Palm Sunday. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We are going to take a break from Genesis to prepare for this week. Today is Palm Sunday, as Matt said, as we've been celebrating this morning, which is the week, the day that Jesus entered into the city of Jerusalem on the week that he was crucified.
So we're going to walk through this in Luke 19, which is on page 512 in your Blue Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, please take one of those home. That is our gift to you, but we'll be on page 512 in the Blue Bibles, Luke 19. This week is called Holy Week or Passion Week because this is when the global church collectively, with the exception of Eastern Orthodoxy, but the rest of the global church pauses to celebrate the week of Easter. The week that we celebrate Jesus' climactic work, everything that has gone into his coming, we celebrate this week. That on Palm Sunday, Jesus enters into the city as we will walk through in the text today.
And then on Thursday, the church celebrates something called Maundy Thursday, which is when we celebrate the Lord's Supper that was practiced, was first instituted on that day, also foot washing. So in groups this week, we're going to celebrate the Lord's Supper and take communion. I know some of you just freaked out. We're not going to do foot washing. We're not going to do that. It has its place.
It has its meaning, but we're just not going to do it in our groups this week. So if you're scared of feet, rest easy. But we are going to take the Lord's Supper in groups this week. And then on Friday, we're going to celebrate Good Friday. And we'd love to do that here, but this space gets rented out every year. So we're going to join Midtown Fellowship downtown to celebrate Good Friday with them.
And then on Sunday, we'll celebrate the resurrection here on Easter Sunday. So go ahead and go to Luke. We'll get to that in a moment. Have you ever been so, you put so much hope in something. You so looked forward to something, and it didn't work out, and you were crushed. Like your hopes, you were left sad and dismayed.
Like I got to see this vividly on display a few weeks ago. If you aren't on Facebook and we're not friends or haven't had this conversation with you yet, I have some exciting news we're expecting. My wife is 17 weeks pregnant, and it was a surprise. But we are very excited about this blessing. This pregnancy in particular has been very, very difficult for her. All of the first trimesters of her pregnancies have been terrible.
She's been sick in all of them. But this one, this one was especially bad. She was sick multiple times a day throughout the first trimester. And there was one food that really got her through, one food that she didn't see again when she ate it, and that was Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A was a godsend to our family that got us through the first trimester. Unfortunately, in Lexington, we live in West Lexington, so we live right near Lexington High School on the back end towards Gilbert.
Unfortunately, the Chick-fil-A in the middle of Lexington, up until a few weeks ago, had been closed down for renovations. So that means that she wanted something that she could eat that she wouldn't be sick again. She had to travel all the way to the other side of Lexington, to where the one is over at Saluda Point, the one by River Bluff. She had to travel that far just to get something that she wouldn't see again. And she was very agitated by this. She was so upset that she wrote Chick-fil-A, a strongly worded email, telling them, you need to build a Chick-fil-A on our side of town.
You will make money. This is foolish. Please, please, please build a Chick-fil-A over here. And then a couple weeks ago, she saw on Facebook. Someone had taken a picture of a sign from a green field across from Lexington High School and said, the sign said, Chick-fil-A coming soon. And she was so excited.
A lot of people were. This went viral for the people that live on this side of Lexington. She got so excited that finally her hopes, her prayers had been answered. She got the kids loaded up in the car. She ran an errand. And then she went over to the field to see the sign in all of its glory.
And it was not there. It was April 1st. It was a mean, cruel April Fool's joke. And she had gotten her hopes up so much and just crushed. I called her. I was like, are you okay?
And she's like, I'm not okay. She was very, very angry. We do this. We put hope in things. Small things like this. But throughout our lives, we put hope in things.
Maybe you really hoped to get in a specific college, a specific grad school. And you were waiting for the letter to come. And you were waiting for the big package to arrive. And all of a sudden, the small letter came. And you didn't get in. Maybe it was a job that you were putting hope in, that you interviewed for, that you thought you were going to get, or a promotion that you thought that you were going to land and you got passed over.
Maybe it was a boy or a girl, someone that you were hoping that you might have a chance with. And then finally, you put yourself out there. And they rejected you and your hopes were crushed. And we do this. We do this every four years at election cycle. Some candidate stands up, makes a bunch of promises.
People get their hopes up. And they never live up to it. We do this because we are people made in the image of God, which means we bear his image. And we are people created with longing and hope. To hope in God. And what we do is, is we hope and long in other things.
We find replacements for that. And when they don't work out, we're crushed. We're going to see this on display today as we walk through this story. We're going to see this with the disciples as they are so hopeful and the people as they're so hopeful as Jesus enters into the city. So we're going to be in Luke 19.
Let me pray. And then we'll drive in. God, thank you so much that we get to celebrate this time every year that you came and the work that you did for us. God, I pray that you would help us see this story for what it is and what it points to for us. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so before we jump into the text, I want to do a little bit of background.
We haven't, we've been in Genesis, so I want to do some background of how we got to this story. But also, it's important to understand the cultural expectations that the people have when Jesus entered into the city. So for three years leading up to this, Jesus has been ministering to the whole nation of Israel. He is a celebrity. Everybody knows who Jesus is. He has his disciples.
He has crowds and followers that follow him. Everyone, he's a celebrity. He can't go anywhere without crowds coming out. He's healed hundreds. He's raised the dead. He's fed thousands with just five loaves and two fish.
He's done all these great miracles. And everyone knows who he is. There's this big expectation. And as he's doing his work, there are some promises from the Old Testament that people are looking at and saying, I think this might be the one. There are messianic promises, promises that point to the Messiah. Messiah.
And the Messiah in the Old Testament was someone who was going to come and save the people. A hero. Even a king who would come and rescue the people. And the people are looking at Jesus and his work. And they're looking at these Old Testament promises. And they're thinking, this I think is the one.
These promises were vivid. They believed in them. They hoped in them. So much so that in the decades leading up to Jesus, there were other people that claimed to be the Messiah that they put hope in. These false messiahs would come up. They would have disciples just like Jesus would.
They'd have crowds. They'd teach people. But their goal was to overthrow the Roman government. You see, in their context, the Roman government controlled the land of Israel. And the people of God hated this. They hated it.
I mean, we've spent some time in Genesis. We've seen all that went into the promise of them getting the promised land. And to see that this was controlled, this land that was promised to their ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to see this promised land controlled by a pagan nation like the Romans, they hated it. And these messiahs would raise up and they would get the people excited and they would attempt to overthrow the Roman government. And then they would fail. And they would end up on crosses, which is the punishment for a rebel, an insurrectionist, someone who is treasonous.
And there's this longing that a messiah is going to come. But they're looking at Jesus and Jesus feels different. He's reforming all these miracles. He's doing things like Elijah the prophet, like Elisha, like Moses did in the Old Testament. He seems to be the one that is going to come and free the people. So when Jesus shows up to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, here's a little bit of what they were expecting.
That he would ride into the city triumphantly. He would come down and he would start to perform signs and miracles like he's done throughout the land. And then he would start to overthrow the Roman government. He would take Jerusalem. And then almost like Braveheart, village by village, they'd start to take the whole land of Israel, town by town, village by village, from south of Jerusalem to the north in Galilee. Jesus, the hope was, he would take the land back.
He would kick the Romans out. And it wasn't just that he was going to get the land back. The hope, if you look at the promises of the Old Testament, if this was going to be global, that Jesus was going to take over the whole world, which to them was the whole Roman Empire that spread across the globe, and that Jesus would rule and reign from Jerusalem over all of the world. All of this hope and expectation was built in to this Palm Sunday 2,000 years ago. It is the reason, as we're going to look at this, that he was so celebrated like a king on Sunday. And it's part of the reason why he was crucified like a rebel on a Friday.
They wanted Jesus to be someone he was not. They had a hope for redemption that was not his plan. But ultimately, God is going to use all of this to bring about his rescue plan. So that is all the expectation that was built in to Palm Sunday. Let's jump into verse 28.
And when he had said these things, he went on ahead going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near Bethphage and Bethany at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of his disciples. All right, so Jesus has been teaching in village to village, getting closer to the city. And now he's right before the city. Geographically, here's Jerusalem. Here's the Mount of Olives.
On the other side is Bethphage and Bethany. So he's getting closer. The people in the city are starting to get excited. They're starting to get stirred up at his arrival. So Jesus is going to prepare for his arrival.
He says, go ahead. And he sends his disciples. And this is what he says. He says, he sent two of his disciples, verse 30, saying, Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied up, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, why are you untying it?
You shall say this, the Lord has need of it. So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. So he says, go to the village and bring me a colt, a colt that no one has ridden. Now we know a colt is either a baby horse or it's a baby young donkey. And we know from the context of the other gospels that what he is referring to is a young donkey. He says, go, bring me this young donkey.
And as Isaac alluded to in his reading, why wouldn't you choose a horse? If you were going to be a king that rides into a city, they were thinking he was going to come in and overthrow the Romans. Why wouldn't you choose a horse? Like a king who is on top of the hill looking down into the city, rears the horse up, rides in. That's a power play. That would really demonstrate military force.
But he doesn't. No, he chooses a humble donkey, which is so picturesque of Jesus' entire life. He came into this world humble as a babe and a stable. His whole ministry has been one of humility and that is how he is going to end this. So, he tells him to choose a humble donkey. What we're going to see as we work through this is that as he's doing these things, he's also fulfilling prophecies in the Old Testament.
He fulfills Zechariah 9.9 that says, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. Righteous and having salvation is he. Humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt the full of a donkey. So, he fulfills this.
He tells them to go. And it goes down exactly how he predicted. Verse 33. And it says, And as they were untying the colt, its owner said to them, Why are you untying the colt? And they said, The Lord has need of it. And they brought it to Jesus.
And throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. So, it goes down like he said it would. They bring the young donkey. They throw their cloaks on it. This is a sign of submission. They're submitting to Jesus.
They're saying, We are following you into the city. We've got your back. And then it begins. Verse 36. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. And he was drawing near.
Already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. All right. So, I really want us to picture this scene together. Years ago, I got to go on a Maymester to Israel. I got to do like three weeks there, going throughout the land, doing some studies.
And I got to spend five days in Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem, it's important to understand the geography of what this would look like. So, I got a picture. This is Jerusalem. This is taken from the city. That is the Mount of Olives that sits behind Jerusalem.
So, it was a little bit bigger back in the day. That mountain has been slowly starting to erode. But you see how it sits above the city. All right. So, second picture. I took this picture from top of the Mount of Olives.
And it's looking down into the city. You see that golden dome. That is called the Dome of the Rock. That is the third holiest site in Islam. When the Islamic expansion happened and they took Jerusalem, they built that mosque right on top of where the temple used to be. So, I want you to look at that and picture a much bigger temple would have been sitting there.
The entrance to the temple would have been there. And this is why this is important. Jesus is sitting on top of the Mount of Olives. The people are at the base of this valley. They're right before the temple. And they are celebrating His coming.
They're celebrating His entry. And Jesus is looking down into the temple. That's important because to the people, He's getting ready to... He's riding directly into the temple. We know He goes into the temple. And that's where He turns over tables.
But they're seeing this. And there's this expectation that Jesus is coming into the city. He's coming into the temple. This is the place of religious power. This is the place where He's going to set up His throne. Where He's going to rule.
Where He's going to reign from. They were expecting this military victory to come in. They are missing it. They're missing it because they're not seeing it. It is symbolic. He's looking down in the temple.
The place where sacrifices are offered day and night for the sins of the people. He is going to be the final sacrifice that fulfills that entire system. There's this entire expectation. But there's this disconnect. They see Him triumphant like a king. But they fail to see what's really happening here.
But they're celebrating Him like a king. One of the things we learn from the other Gospels while we call it Palm Sunday. Is they break off palm branches. And they set them before Jesus. And palm branches are a national Jewish symbol. It's picturesque of when David would come into the city on a military victory.
And they'd have palm branches. This is all a picture of He is coming into the city. He's going to overthrow the Romans. They shout, Hosanna! Hosanna! Which is a joyous celebration.
A joyous exclamation. We know from the Messianic Psalms what Hosanna means literally is save us. Save us now. They are joyously declaring, This is the king. Come into the city and save us. This fulfills Psalm 118 that says, Save us, we pray, O Lord.
O Lord, we pray, give us success. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord. That is the picture that is happening here as the Savior King rides into the city. They just can't see the other part of the prophecies. The Messianic Prophesis pointed to a Savior King, but it also pointed to one who would suffer.
That suffering was the path to kingship. But all they can see is king. All they can see is save us. They can't see the full picture. They have their minds set, hear this, on an earthly kingdom. That's what their hope is.
It's an earthly kingdom. And on Palm Sunday, they have rightfully declared, Jesus is the king of the Jews. The disciples, the people, are excited. But then we get a foretaste of what's to come. Verse 39, And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.
So the Pharisees are part of the religious leadership that helps rule the country. They are priests that help rule the country along with another group that makes up a council called the Sanhedrin. It's a council of religious leaders. And the Pharisees represent a big portion of the Sanhedrin. They're the ones that keep the country in order. They're the religious leaders.
And it's long before this, they'd already began to plot to kill Jesus. When Jesus comes on the scene and starts teaching and starts performing his miracles, it's not how they expected. It's not how they wanted. They do not like him. They are looking for an opportunity to kill him. And they just got a picture.
They just got something they can cling to as people are shouting, Hosanna, Hosanna. As they are declaring his kingship, they're finding some ammunition. And they look at him. And I want you to feel the venom and the arrogance of what they say to him. They say, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. Don't just silence the worship, the praise that is due to you because you are the God of the universe.
Don't just silence that praise. You need to correct your disciples. They are wrong. They need to be corrected. It's ridiculous. Part of me, when I look at this, I'm like, Jesus could easily just rightfully and justifiably so just do a Thanos snap in a minute and then the Pharisees just evaporate off screen.
Like that, that, he'd be justified in doing so. But he doesn't. This is how he responds. He says, Yeah, the disciples, these people, they could be silent. But if they're silent, the very rocks will sing my praises.
And what he just said was, is that, yes, the people could stop. But creation, that praises the Creator, will still praise me. He just said, I'm going to get my praise because I am God. And you had to know, the Pharisees' jaws just hit the floor. Because what he just said to them was crazy. I mean, see it a little bit from their perspective.
He just said something. Crazy. He just said he was God. I mean, if Matt came up here and led worship, and he started playing, and all of a sudden, he started belting out words. All the songs we sing to Jesus, he started, he like rudely pasted his name on the PowerPoint, and tried to get us to all sing praises to Matt. We would yank him off stage.
He's a big guy. It would take three of us. But we'd get him off. Because that's crazy. It would be crazy to say that if you're not God. But Jesus is God.
And he's fulfilling Psalm 66, 4 that says, All the earth worships you and sings praises to you. They sing praises to your name. And this is why when people say that Jesus doesn't believe that he's God, doesn't say that he's God, it's like you aren't reading the same Bible. Over and over, he's making declarations that he is God. C.S. Lewis says he's either a liar, a lunatic, crazy, or he sings he's God.
You can't say he's just a good teacher. He is saying he is God. And it is that truth that makes the rest of this week so baffling. That Jesus is God. If he wanted to, he could take the city in a moment. He could overturn the entire establishment.
But he doesn't. No, he does. He goes into the city. And he teaches his disciples. He teaches the crowds. As the wolves start to close in on him.
And then on Thursday night, they come from, like cowards in the night, they arrest Jesus and drag him before the Sanhedrin, before this religious council. And he lets them. The God of the universe lets them. And they drag him before this council. And they need a charge to bring him before, to bring him before Pontius Pilate, to have him executed. And you know what charge they charge Jesus with?
Blasphemy. Using, defaming the name of the Lord. Let that irony sink in. They charge the God of the universe with blasphemy. And Jesus doesn't defend himself. They let him take him before Pontius Pilate.
They bring him before Pontius Pilate. He's the Roman governor at the time. He's the one that can really carry out this execution. They can kind of wash their hands and give them to him. And they tell him about this charge of blasphemy. But Pontius Pilate doesn't care.
That's a religious matter. It's a religious dispute. The Roman government doesn't believe in your God. We don't care what you are saying. So they need to say something else.
And they take what was so celebrated on Sunday. His kingship. And they come to Pontius Pilate and they say, He says that he's the king. He's trying to undermine the rule of Caesar. Are you going to let this play? And what's happening here is a political play.
The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, needs the religious leaders, needs the Sanhedrin to keep the people in check. We know from history his governorship is being questioned at this point. That he can't keep this nation under control. So when they make this claim, he's got a really tough decision to make. And while all of this is happening, you have to wonder, where are all the people that so celebrated his kingship on Sunday? Where are the people that shouted, Hosanna!
Hosanna! Who brought palm branches out? Where are the disciples who have abandoned him? All but one. And the one who's there, we don't see anywhere where he's offering a defense. Where are they?
As Jesus is left before this kangaroo court, this disgrace of justice. And Pontius Pilate gives in. As the Pharisees change the city's chant of Hosanna! Hosanna! To crucify him! Crucify him!
And they take Jesus, and I want you to see some of the pictures here of how they mock his kingship. They take a crown of thorns, of long desert thorns, they force it on his head to mock him. The king of the universe to mock him. They take a purple robe, which is a robe of royalty, and they put it on his back that has been torn to bits, and they rip it off to cause further pain, and they put it on him to mock him. They bow down, and they mock his kingship as he suffers the most brutal punishment that the Roman government could ever devise. And they get up the hill, and they nail him to a cross, and they put a sign above his head that says, King of the Jews.
They mock the king of the universe, and like a lamb being silently led to the slaughter, as Isaiah says, he is silent. He offers no defense. And on the cross, the Savior King aspect of who he is starts to fully come into play. That on the cross, the debt of sin that the whole world accumulates, that each of us rack up, all of that is paid for by Jesus. For those of us that have trusted in him, our sin is paid for on the cross. We start to see this Savior King.
That in that moment, sinners have the opportunity to be washed clean. Those of us who are dirty in sin, Jesus, through faith, presents us as righteous and clean before God. That the full cup of God's wrath that is being poured out on Jesus in this moment, for those of us who have trusted in him, that wrath that was meant for us because of our sin gets poured out on him. He takes our place. And then this prophecy that we started in Genesis, that one day a seed would come from Eve, Jesus, and the serpent Satan would strike his heel, but ultimately Jesus would crush his head. That's happening right now.
His heel is being crushed. He is suffering for us on the cross. But right now, Jesus is crushing the head of Satan. He is crushing the work of evil and hindering the work of Satan, our Savior King on display on the cross. suffering is the path to this eternal kingdom as it comes to fruition with his death. And in the aftermath of all of this, in the aftermath of his death, Jesus' followers are crushed. Their hopes were so much tied up in Jesus.
They are dismayed. They are mourning. And you've got to ask the question, why? Why are they so dismayed? Why are they in mourning? And that is because they had a misplaced hope.
Their hope was in Jesus and his kingdom and a temporary earthly kingdom. They failed to hear what Jesus was teaching those three years, that this was bigger than that. They heard the prophecies that spoke about him as king, but they ignored the parts that said suffering was the path. And like all the false messiahs who came before Jesus, seeking to establish an earthly kingdom, they don't. They die. And the people are crushed because of it.
They are left in mourning. And here's the deal. They were right to celebrate Jesus as king. Those shouts of Hosanna, those palm branches were worthy of Jesus. They were correct. They just failed to realize that suffering was the path to an eternal kingdom, not a temporary one.
And in their staggering, in their hopelessness, Easter comes. Jesus rises and he does the one thing that all the other false messiahs failed to do before him. He conquers death and he comes back. And when he does that, he opens their eyes to the bigger kingdom that was always in plan. The eternal kingdom that was always going to come, much bigger than this temporary hope that they had so hoped in. we are just like the disciples because so much of us has so much hope in a temporary kingdom. You know how I know this is true?
Is that we can sing on Sunday Hosanna like we just did. And we can celebrate Jesus as king. We can amen all of it. and then on a Friday in the middle of the week when life hits us we are left hopeless. When the things, when the temporary things, the temporary kingdom that we hope in, that we place stock in, when that crumbles, when that fails, we are left hopeless because we are not trusting in the eternal kingdom that Jesus actually bled and died for. So the question that we are left with are left with is what kingdom are we putting hope in?
Because the reality is there's two kingdoms in this world. There's the kingdom of eternity, the kingdom of God expanding across the globe into eternity and there's this temporary kingdom of this world, of this present age. Which kingdom are we hoping in? Are we building in? Are we longing for? That's the question we're left with.
And if we're honest, some of us see Jesus as king, but really it's on our terms. It's for our kingdoms. It's for the hopes that we put in in this life. I want to walk through a few different ways I think that we do this. And as I do this, I want you to ask yourself, if I don't get blessed in these ways, am I okay? If I don't get blessings here from Jesus, am I really honestly okay?
And the first one is your wallet. is money. I mean, we as Christians, we know that we're not supposed to worship money. We'll say absolutely, no, I don't worship money. But what about the things that money gets us? What about the comforts of this world? Are you really okay if you don't get the things that you've been longing for?
Maybe it's the big truck, maybe it's the second house, maybe it's fill in the blank of what comforts are for you. Am I really okay if I make it to the end of this life and I don't have those comforts? Maybe for you it's status. I feel this myself. I don't like to think of myself as a status person. But I do real estate and I drive a really lame car.
I drive a Prius. And there are times, it's to save money. It's economical and I'm not driving the Prius I can drive my wife's awesome minivan. And I'll go and do some of these showings and I like to think of myself if someone doesn't care about status and certainly doesn't care about cars. I grew up in a family that sold them for a living. But there are moments, y'all, when I get before a client and I have this Prius and they've got a really nice truck and I go, you know what, it'd be really nice to have the status of having a bigger truck.
It'd be fun to drive but it'd be really nice to have that kind of respect. Fill in the blank for you of what money gets you. Are you really okay at the end of the day if you never actually get that level of status? Maybe for you it's not riches but it's not comfort, it's not status but it's security. It's like, am I really going to be okay if I never actually have enough savings? If I never have enough retirement?
Not saying that any of that's wrong but at the end of the day, are you going to be okay if Jesus doesn't blesses this? Because if you are not, you are asking Jesus to bless a temporary kingdom and not putting hope in the eternal kingdom of God. Maybe for you it's not necessarily money, maybe it's work. Like I said in the beginning, some of us put so much identity and hope in a job, in a promotion. When you don't get it, when we get passed over, are you really okay? If you never get your career to the place that you want it to be, are you going to be okay?
Are you going to be left hopeless and crushed? If you never get the validation from an employer, if you never get the validation from clients, are you going to be okay at the end of the day? Is the kingdom of God enough? Are you hoping that Jesus blesses a temporary kingdom? Maybe it's not work, maybe it's relationships. We do this with spouses. that we are doing okay if our spouse is operating in this way, if they are meeting these needs, if they are talking to us like this.
Everything's okay, but when it doesn't happen, we get frustrated. We get entitled. We get angry and we get upset. Are we hoping that Jesus blesses that temporary kingdom? Maybe you're not married, maybe you're thinking about finding someone to marry. Is it possible that you are frustrated, angry, bitter with God because you have not found the quote unquote one?
We do this in relationships, we do this with our own kids. Children are so easy to elevate than the tiny little kings that we worship. that education becomes so important, that how they're raised becomes so important, that following all the correct methods becomes so important. And if this doesn't happen in the way that we hope it is going to play out, we are crushed. We do this with their sports and with their activities that eventually they start doing sports and activities and the schedule that was once centered on on Sundays and community groups and mission and the kingdom of God gets replaced with a whole bunch of other stuff.
And we buy into the kingdom of this world and we sell it to our own kids. We do this with our children, we do this, I'll give you one more, we do this just with standing. Another way of saying standing is power. Two of the disciples did this with Jesus. James and John, there's a story where they come to Jesus and they say, when you set up your kingdom, and when they mean kingdom, they think the temporary kingdom that's going to happen in Jerusalem, when you set up your kingdom, can we set your left and your right? And what they're saying is, can we have positions of power?
And maybe for you that's winning. That life isn't good if I'm not winning. If I'm not being successful. That so much hope is bound up in success that when I'm not having success, what's the point? If I don't have the kind of influence that I need, what is the point of all of this? I could keep going through a long list of things, but ultimately I want you to ask yourself, if you are 75 years old and you don't have blank, fill in the blank for you, are you going to be okay?
Is Jesus really enough? If you don't have that, are you going to be crushed? Are you going to be hopeless like the disciples were when they put so much hope in a temporary kingdom of this world? We kill ourselves for a kingdom that never brings contentment. We serve false kings and idols that were never meant to bring comfort or joy. Church family, we were designed for so much more.
We are just like the disciples. And today for us who are in that spot, that is good news because when Jesus rises on Easter, it changes everything. He opens their eyes to the actual kingdom, the beauty of the kingdom that He had been so, He had been teaching them, He had been calling them to. And you know what I love about Resurrection Sunday? In the Gospel of John, the first words that Jesus says to His disciples, the disciples who abandoned Him, who denied Him, He doesn't come to them and scold them. And the first thing He says to them is, peace be with you.
That is the hope of the Gospel. Yes, we trust in idols. We trust in a temporary kingdom. We fall short. But the good news of the Gospel is that we live this side of the resurrection.
That means we live on this side of hope. That our hope is bound up in the eternal kingdom of God, which is so much better than the temporary kingdom of this world. And we have a so much better King. A King who conquered death, who rode into the city, who became our sacrifice, and on Easter Sunday conquered death with the resurrection so that we could experience the eternal kingdom of God forever. That's the good news of the Gospel, and that's the good news that we get to celebrate as we take the Lord's Supper. The band is going to come up, and we're going to take the Lord's Supper right now.
We're going to take communion and be reminded of what we get to celebrate this week in our groups that on this Thursday, years ago, we celebrate that on the night that Jesus was betrayed, He looked at His disciples, and He took the bread, and He broke it. He said, this is my body that was broken for you. This is going to happen. I'm going to be crushed for you. He took the cup, which is the cup of the new covenant. He said, this is my blood that is going to be shed for you, that as often as you gather, as often as you meet, take this bread, take this wine, and remember my death until I return.
We get to celebrate the good news of the Gospel that Jesus came on a good Friday and died in our place. And as we do that collectively as a church, may we reflect on the tiny kingdoms that we put hope in, coming repentant to the table, repenting of sin, joyously celebrating that we're part of an eternal kingdom. And if you have not trusted in Jesus, our hope for you this week is that you would be confronted by Him. That this Gospel that we so celebrate would become so real to you, that you would see your need of Him. Our hope is that you wouldn't take part in this, but you would take part in the risen Christ.
Let me pray. God, I am thankful that 2,000 years ago you didn't leave us in sin. You came and you bled and you died for us and we get to take that promise right now. God, I pray that you would help those of us who have trusted completely in you repent of believing that temporary kingdoms bring hope when they don't. They bring hopelessness.