Ascension (Acts 1:6-11)
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Easter (1 Peter 1:3-5)
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Holy Week (John 12:20-26)
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Transcript
Happy Palm Sunday we are taking a break from Exodus feels like we're in the thick of the Ten Commandments it's been a lot it's been a lot to digest and we said you know what let's take three weeks to just celebrate this Holy Week to celebrate Palm Sunday today and the Triumph and entry into the City and we're going to be in the Gospel of John chapter 12 verses 20-26 we're going to look at a story that directly follows the triumphant entry and celebrate Palm Sunday.
Today and then we'll have good Friday which we would love to see you here for Good Friday for our worship night and then Easter Sunday and then we're even going to spend one extra week celebrating the season we're going to have we're going to look at the Ascension the week after uh Easter so three weeks to give us a little bit of a break from Exodus and celebrate uh this season's we'll be in John chapter 12 verses 20-26 the text will be on the screen in the Gospel of John there is this building anticipation.
For when Christ is going to complete his work there's this phrasing that Jesus says my hour has not yet come the hour has not yet come my hour has not yet come there's this building anticipation for the hour to come as you read the Gospel of John and then he rides into the city on Palm Sunday and he is celebrated like a king the people chant Hosanna Hosanna this is shades of of the of of a Messianic King who is coming in to save us and they were expecting this uh this political revolution that.
Jesus was going to breathe not bring not realizing that he was actually coming to save them from their sins and there's this joyous time as Jesus triumphly enters into the city treating him like a king and then directly after that story we get this story right here which only shows up in in the Gospel of John and we're going to see as we walk through this how this uh is a celebration of the ultimate work of Christ and really a celebration of the Gospel and we get to really.
Look at this and celebrate what Jesus has done for us and then following that there's kind of two two costs that Jesus gives to his people that if he's giving up his life this is what he expects in return so we're just gonna take a moment and celebrate that and celebrate the good news of the Gospel in our lives as we walk through this we're going to be starting in verse 20. I'll read it I'll pray and then we'll walk this together in.
Verse 20 it says now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks so these came to Philip who was from bethsaida and Galilee and asked him sir we wish to see Jesus Philip went and told Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus and Jesus answered them the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified truly truly I say to you unless a grain of wheat falls into the Earth and dies it remains alone.
But if it dies it Bears much fruit whoever loves his life loses it whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life if anyone serves me he must follow me and where I am there will my servant be also if anyone serves me the father will honor him let's pray thank you Jesus that you came and thank you for your work and I pray that you would help us receive your word this morning that you'd open our ears and our hearts to receive it and that we would celebrate and worship who you are with glad and generous hearts and we would respond in faith and In Worship and repentance and delighting.
In who you are as the God who saves thank you Jesus amen all right so this story follows right after okay Jesus rides into the city like a king verse 19 into verse 20. okay I know exactly when this story happens after the triumphant entry but this is the next story and it's significant verse 20 it says now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks now the word for Greeks there and the original Greek text is helenace.
So Greeks is what the ESV chooses because we're not really familiar with that term hellenists but the hellenists were not just Greeks they were just Greco-Roman background they were non-jewish Gentiles who were very much in Greco-Roman culture and it says that they're in town for the feast to worship at the feast which means from the context is that they seem to be as the biblical New Testament category would call them God fears these are non-jewish Gentiles that have abandoned Greco-Roman religion and the gods of greco-rominism and have seen.
God is the God of the Jews is the one true God but they're not Jewish they're Outsiders but if they're here to worship at the feast like they're they absolutely seem like God fears it's something the people that actually have abandoned their former ways and trust this is the one true God and they no doubt have heard of Jesus Jesus is a celebrity in the land at this point by the time he goes to the Cross everyone knows who Jesus is in the land of Israel and he came in like a king people chanting Hosanna Hosanna these Greeks probably either would have been there to.
See that they certainly would have heard about it because the whole city is abuzz the Rival of Jesus expecting what is this great prophet going to do and like many others they want to see Jesus in verse 21 it says so these came to Philip who was from bethsaida and Galilee and asked him sir we wish to see Jesus Philip went and told Andrew Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus so they they want to see Jesus but you can tell from the text they they can't there's some type of barrier that keeps them that they're going to fill up one of his followers to.
See if they can have access to Jesus now it's very possible the reason they can't is because at this moment Jesus might be teaching in one of the inner Temple courts so you have the temple and you have these Courtyards the three inner Temple courts are only for Jews and those who have been circumcised and then there's an outer court it's called the court of the Gentiles and that's where they could be as close they could get to the temple so it's very possible that we don't know.
If it's clear from the text that they are in the outer Temple courts Jesus was doing some teaching in the temple courts but they can't get to him and they wish to see him whatever the case we we don't know for sure they can't get to Jesus they go to Philip and I said we wish to see Jesus and here's what's peculiar about this story we don't know if they actually see Jesus that's the text doesn't tell us like it doesn't say that he met with them it's possible that he did it's possible that he didn't.
But in John's Gospel that's not what he's trying to focus on here he's not focusing on their meeting he is focusing on their request right next to how Jesus responds to this request and that's what's significant here 23 and Jesus answered them the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified Now's the Time this anticipation has been building my hour has not yet come the hour has not yet come the hour has not yet come John 2 4 John 7 30 John 8 20.
There's this theme of the hour has not yet come then Jesus triumphantly enters into the city as they chant Hosanna Hosanna what is he going to do next these hellenists want to see Jesus and in response to that he says the hour has come the son of mans be glorified what does he mean by that well he means Glory by Death the arrows come to be glorified by death it says in verse 24 truly truly Jesus says truly truly I say to you unless a grain of wheat falls into the Earth and dies it remains alone.
But if it dies it Bears much fruit the hour has come for Jesus to die and in just a few days on Good Friday he is going to the Cross now most of us aren't from the Midwest so that grain reference may be lost on our ears because we don't grow grain down here but it would not be lost on them what he is teaching there that a seed from the grain is growing and it's alive and is a part of the grain stalk the sheep.
And then it when it falls off it's lost its life source and it dies but when it goes into the ground and the rains come it will be reborn to something brand new and Jesus is referring to that as a way of speaking about his death and answering Gentile Outsiders like that you cannot miss the significance because what he is pointing to is the Pinnacle work of redemption that all of redemption history has been moving to this point where his hours come the Scriptures have been awaiting.
For the hour to come all the way back in Genesis when Adam and Eve sinned against God and broke Fellowship by trusting the word of the serpent in that moment when the curse of sin is being told by God that sin is going to corrupt every aspect of creation we get what theologians call the proto-evangelion that's a fancy Latin way of saying the first Declaration of the Gospel where he says one day one day the seed of Eve is going to come and he is going to crush the head of the serpent the one day someone is coming in the line of eve and he's going to crush the work of evil.
And then later on in Genesis in chapter 22 as Abraham is being called we see that God has chosen of specific people a specific tribe and he says in your Offspring shall all the all the nations of the earth be blessed that one day the seed of Eve is going to come through you Abraham and through you this seed of redemption is going to bless the Nations and then we've been in Exodus we've been walking through the law and we see that Israel was called to follow the law.
But we know that they cannot follow the law we know they break Commandments over and over and over again and then even Moses prophesies in Deuteronomy 18 he says I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers there is this growing expectation that someone is going to come from amongst our people the hour is going to come where this is going to get fixed and at the right time Jesus comes and he fulfills the Old Testament law by about banging it perfectly.
And then he heals the sick and he feeds the hungry he performs Miracles he raises the dead as we saw last week in the fourth Commandment he challenges the religious establishment and they're misrepresenting the heart of God he's going to establish a new people and then the time has come for him to die and after this statement in just a few days is going to be arrested it's going to be arrested and then I'll be ashamed and he'll be beaten and I'll be flogged he'll be mocked and his flesh will be torn apart and they will force a crown of thorns on his head and they will put a wooden cross on his mangled back.
And they will send him up the hill of Golgotha or they will nail him to a cross and they will raise him in shame most likely naked and exposed and he will slowly suffocate to death to atone for the sins of man and to purchase a people for himself and then like a grain of wheat he'll be placed in the earth in a borrowed man's tomb and the seed of our Redemption will be placed in the earth as we wait as we wait.
For death to meet its conqueror and then on the first Easter morning he rises and he defeats the power of death so that Hellenist so that Outsiders so that outcasts can finally have access to Christ so that there might not be any bear they won't have to go to Philip they won't have to go to anyone they have access to Jesus because through his death and his resurrection they now have access to Christ the hour has come and you will get to experience life with.
God forever you will get access to God the Father through Christ the son by the power of the Holy Spirit that ultimately what we see here is when the text tells us when Jesus says it remains alone but if it dies it Bears much fruit that ultimately the fruit of his Redemption is us that's every Outsider that did not know Christ who finally trusted in Christ and that now that we bear the fruit of righteousness that he provides within us like that that is the fruit of redemption.
So that response to a bunch of Greek hellst who want to see Jesus it previews the whole mission of God and Jesus answered them the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified truly truly I say to you unless a grain of wheat falls into the Earth and dies it remains alone but if it dies it Bears much fruit our hero is tipping his hand to where this is going but in just a few days he's going to die on the cross.
So that every tribe and every nation every tongue can experience God forever now the cost of redemption is his life is believing and what he has done for us following that Jesus gives a cost a cost that we bring to the table and the next two verses these two costs that he's going to outline are unbelievably important the first is your life and the second is your service so let's look at that first one in verse 25 he says whoever loves his life loses it and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it.
For eternal life what a provocative thing to say what a powerful thing the challenge us in I mean a lot of times people think of Jesus and he's they have this picture that he's just this wise Sage you as children tugging at him and he's picking them up and Swinging them around and that is our God that is Jesus but that's not the only picture of our Jesus he's a prophet and he drops prophetic truth bombs like this that mess us up he is absolutely attacking our approach to this life here on Earth.
And when he says lose in the original language in the Greek lose often means also destroy or ruin the idea here it's not just losing your life but destroying your life ruining your life if you want to ruin your life love it be about maximizing pleasure having your best life now cling to this life and you're ultimately going to lose what is truly important life with God if you love your life you will lose it you cannot have both you cannot have.
Jesus and this life is a one of the best scenes and what I would argue is the best Indiana Jones movie the Last Crusade Jenna some of you might think that's controversial we can have the argument about Raiders The Last Arc and all that stuff as long as you don't say the Crystal Skull movie which was nowhere in the stratosphere of the Last Crusade but in the Last Crusade the very end when they've been seeking the Holy Grail this treasure and in the end.
When they finally have it and the whole tomb begins to shake and this earthquake happens and it falls out of the hands of that lady and the chasm divides the the Holy Grail this treasure and her and she falls and then Indiana Jones grabs her and she's off the she's off hanging off the cliff about to fall into the abyss but she sees that treasure she sees that Holy Grail that means eternity it means life all the things that in this story it means and she sees it and she begins to reach.
For it and he's like no take my hand I can't hold you can't hold you in you grab this take my hand and she can't help herself she wants the treasure so bad and then she slips through his hands and falls into the abyss and dies and then the whole earthquake shakes it again shakes and then Indiana Jones Falls and he falls in the exact same situation but this time Sean Connery is there his dad it grabs him by the hands and Indiana Jones has the exact same Temptation he sees the Holy Grail he's it's with an Arms Reach he's just he just tries to reach he wants it and Sean Connery looks at Harrison.
Ford and he says Indiana Let It Go Let It Go you you're gonna die if you do this don't do this take my hand and he's the hero and he makes the right choice but that's us y'all that we see this life and what it has to offer and we think if we that if I cling to this life I can get pleasure and joy but we got one hand on Jesus and one hand on this life and thinking we can have both.
Jesus is saying you can't have both that if you try to cling to this life you're going to lose it you're going to ruin it don't do this ultimately Jesus wants us for himself and clinging to him is our only hope you cannot have this life and everything that it offers in comparison to Christ who offers so much more Jesus says if you love this life you're going to lose it but if you want to save your life he says you need to hate your life in this world try selling that on a t-shirt in the Etsy Marketplace Bedazzled as a provocative thing to say you need to hate this life hate is a very.
Strong word and it's also a nuanced word my my children when they were my oldest when they were three and four they would use the word hate that hear us use it and they would use it we would say don't say hate because three and four years old they weren't ready for that word they want them going in the preschool saying I hate you to a kid that took their toys like this is not no you're not ready for that word.
But that put in their mind that this was a naughty word like it was a bad word so now they're a little bit older and we've said hate and they'll say don't say hey it's a bad word and I said well it's not I've had to explain to them we've told you early on this is a word that wasn't for you but now you're getting older and you're getting a little bit of wisdom and learning the English language and now we're teaching them the hate actually is a Biblical word we're supposed to hate sin we're supposed to hate evil we're supposed to hate Injustice and I'm trying to teach that.
But it's a nuanced word and Jesus is clearly nuancing his use of the word hate here and really hate is an opposition to love here and he's doing something with that word Jesus is not literally saying you need to hate this life in the same way like he's not saying you should hate your job and hate your wife and your husband or your friends you should hate your kids you should hate your family you should hate everything you've got he's not saying it literally like that.
But while he's not using that word literally he certainly means it very seriously and how he's using hate here and the way that it's being used on opposite in the opposite of love is that you should so love Christ that you should so love the things of God love Jesus love his people love what is good that your love in comparison to the world that your approach would look like hatred of the world indifference to the world I love how one commentator puts it he says people whose priorities are right have such an attitude of love.
For the things of God that all interest in the Affairs of this life appear by comparison as hatred let me read that again people whose priorities are right have such an attitude of love for the things of God that all interest in the Affairs of this life appear by comparison as hatred that you would so love God and the things of God by comparison look like hatred you know a lot of folks don't know this the restaurant that sells the most T-bone steaks in the world is Waffle House it's Waffle House Awful Waffle Wahoo they sell the most T-bone steaks and you might think by that logic.
If you've never had a steak well if they sell the most they must be the best and you go to Waffle House the first time and you need to stay and you'd be like oh this is what it means to have a steak and you'd be so wrong you'd be so utterly mistaken you'll know a wonderful place to get a steak Raz Bradley's house as Bradley is one of our pastors and he makes wonderful steaks he makes the steak called pecania it's the steak you get at a Brazilian steakhouse that's just.
So good he makes even what uh it's called wagyu steaks okay it's fancy Japanese beef and he makes these steaks and they're so good and y'all it's one thing I love about Raz he's so hospitable he would love for every one of you to come to his house and have Wagyu steak in fact I think you should today he's out there doing security for us or whatever it's called safety for us I would love for you to go and ask him I want to come to your house and have wagyu beef make me this glorious steak.
Because once you put that in your mouth you will experience what true steak is supposed to be and you would look at Waffle House and go I hate that I don't want that I'm never eating that again because you've actually experienced what ultimately is good God wants to ruin your taste for this world by his great love he wants to ruin your taste for this world he wants you to taste and see but the Lord is good blessed is the man who takes refuge in him Psalm 34 he wants you to taste of him.
See that he's ultimately as we say all the time so much better than everything else because he is what a prayer what a prayer to pray Lord ruin my love for the ruin it because I want you and I want you alone because what he offers it is so much greater we should invite God to ruin our love for this world Jesus wants that for us that we'd so deeply love God the thanks of God that our approach to this world would be no it's not even close.
So that's the first thing it costs your life and your approach this life and the second cost is your service your service in verse 26 he says if anyone serves me he must follow me and where I am there will my servant be also if anyone serves me the father will honor him one of the problems of American Christianity is that faith in Christian faith is treated like a mere function of your life that it's a social aspect of your life as.
If that you could put on this Christian faith like a uniform on Sundays only a few times throughout the week and exchange it for whatever setting you're in that Faith Becomes of your function in our social aspect of your life and not what it's supposed to be the guiding Compass of our life that we're meant to be servants and that service is displayed through following him that we be followers of Christ who serve him like that one of the when I'm talking with people in the South about faith and I'm doing evangelism most Christians in the South are going to answer the question are you a Christian they're going to say yes most people are.
Going to claim to be Christians in the south but what I'm asking what I'm looking for what I'm seeking for and someone is not just identifying with Christ not not talking about him as he's just like a part of their life or who they identify with I'm looking for the language of the follower I'm looking for the language of a servant that Jesus they've so loved him and so believe that he is good that it changes the way they live their life they seek to serve Christ do you merely identify with Christ is it merely someone you can put on or put off given the social setting that you're in or are you a servant.
Of Christ because don't miss this he's saying this on the way to the Cross when he says where I am there will my servant be also he's on his way to the Cross as he says that so this service for for some is even unto death which we we at America are so insulated from them we have brothers and sisters across the world who are being persecuted and they take that literally that it may cost their life and serve in Christ there will my servant be also.
But I fear that many Christians in America would not be willing to serve Christ if it meant even having an uncomfortable conversation with a co-worker let alone unto death and he's calling to a deeper service and I feel this that the American part of me wants Comfort it wants it doesn't want suffering for the sake of the Gospel it doesn't want to serve in a way that would make me uncomfortable but a prayer to grow in would be Lord Where You Are there your servant will be also what a prayer to pray where you are.
God is where I want to be are you willing to serve Christ and do whatever he tells you to do that language of servant for us is difficult because we're so far removed from the New Testament world in the context of a servant class where the closest parallel I can think of is military service if you're in the military you belong to the military and your commanding officer says do something you do it you serve wherever he wants you to go or he will are we willing to have that approach to.
God that we'd serve him at a minimum that's going to be the things he tells us to do in the Scriptures at a minimum that's going to be everything from work and prayer and the disciplines all the way down to where is the Holy Spirit leading you what is he leading you to serve where is God at that you need to be at in your service to him I'm growing in as a Christian not sidestepping the Holy Spirit and it's nudging it is leading in my life.
Because there are times where God says I want you to do something and I just go well but I what kind of qualifications do we have for that as opposed to just being someone say okay no God where you are is where I want to be where you want to surf where do you want me to be are you willing to pray boldly and ask the Lord where do you want me to be Lord what do you want me to serve what do you want me to be doing.
For some of you that may be as simple as serving in Kid City or serving as a leader in training or a group leader for some of you that may be stepping in to pastoral Ministry or being a missionary and going to the ends of the Earth but here the costs that he has for us that he costs our life and it cost your service and then don't mess what he says to follow it up with he says if you do this the.
Father will honor him father will honor you which means that if you look at this in the context of the rest of the New Testament that speaks like this that it is good to be motivated to receive honor from God but that's actually a Godly motivation which is weird for for many of us I know it's weird for me it throws me off because it shouldn't I have the I don't know the internal intrinsic value of just serving Christ is it wrong to seek honor from him as.
If in some way we're robbing God of Glory it messes with because we're so we in our Church we so preach and live that we're saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God Alone there's so much of Who We Are and you hear very clearly this isn't for your salvation he's not you're not doing these things unto me to be saved safe being saved by Jesus is by believing in what he has done alone.
But once you are a Christian this is for you and what's being held out for you is in your service to Christ that you'll be honored and you should desire that and C.S Lewis's weight of Glory essay he talks about this he talks about uses the phrase I love it he says the undisguised pleasure in being praised that we should have undisguised pleasure in being praised by God and he Compares us to a dog I don't know somebody like I'm not a dog in comparison to.
God you're much worse but C.S Lewis he talks about us like we're a dog I have a dog her name is Piper she's a big Labradoodle which some of you want to know yes we did name her after John Piper it's a pastoral nerd that's what happened but her name is Piper and when I drive home and I pull up in the driveway and she hears my car pulling up which is impressive because I draw the Prius and it's real quiet and she she hears it she runs to the front of the house she gets on the couch she looks out the out the window she waits.
For me and then when I open the door she's standing in front of it and she's so excited she's got a full body waggle just just going for it just prancing her feet are prancing she just wants to be praised she has she has this uh undisguised pleasure and being praised she seeks that she wants it she wants that type of praise and love and affirmation we we should have that approach to God that in eternity we should have this undisguised pleasure in being praised it does not Rob.
God of Glory for him to honor you I mean think about the language of the parable of the talents and the parable of talents what's the language that Jesus uses the phrase that we long to hear well done good and faithful servant boy oh boy we should long for that type of Honor we should live our Christian lives longing for the day when Jesus says well done good and faithful servant where he bestows that type of on or upon us and we don't know all we don't have great vivid pictures of what that is in the New Testament of what type of Honor that is of the storing up riches in heaven that he speaks.
About we don't have the most vivid pictures of that but if Jesus says it's honor we certainly should believe that and that we shall live our lives in light of them cost your life and it costs your service but boy oh boy you will be honored I so appreciate this brief story in John's Gospel that on his way to Good Friday and on his way to Calvary colonists they just they wish to see Jesus and then we get this response that shows exactly what his work is.
For we see what it's all about that the hour has come where he will go to the cross for us because of his great love for us so that we might have our love for this life ruined by his great love and serve them into eternity and at the end of the week he takes all of our sin to the cross and he walks out of the grave and he makes a way for Outsiders like you and me to experience Our.
God forever many of you have said and expressed the same desires as these Outsiders I wish to see Jesus I wish to see Jesus I want to know him I want to be with him I longed to see him this is how let God ruin your love for this world let him ruin your love for this world serve him with all of your heart so that you might be honored that is the path that he's forging at Calvary as we head into Good Friday and we sing songs about the death of.
Jesus this is what it is for a people that he has purchased for himself that do not love the world but love him deeply and serve him and to Eternity Matt's going to come up and we get to worship and we get to take the Lord's Supper as we remember the good news of the Gospel but on the night that he was betrayed he took he took bread and he took one he took the cup of the New Covenant he took the bread he said this is my body that was broken.
For you he says often as you eat this you remember Jesus death on the cross that we take the cup the cup the New Covenant this is my blood that was shed for you he says that as often as you eat and drink this we get to proclaim the death of Jesus until he returns Christians as you come to the table you'd remember what happened on Good Friday and what Jesus did for us and that the seed of redemption was placed in the Earth and that on Easter mourn he burst forth into life making a way.
For us to experience Jesus into eternity when he says Proclaim my death until I return when he returns all things are made new and that day for those of us that have trusted in Jesus as our only hope and have laid down our lives to follow him and have served him there's an honor that is coming that we can't quite understand but it's very good and we should aim our Christian lives for that day but there are some of you there are some of you that have not actually had your love.
For this world ruined by God you have not tasted and seen that the Lord is good you have not believed in him you have not given up your life to him your life is not in service to him and it's because you don't know him and I so deeply we don't want you to come to this table I wish for you to see Jesus I want you to meet him I want you to know him I want you for the first time to lay down your life friend I want you to pray a prayer that says.
God ruin my love for this world I want you to experience the love that he poured out for us on the cross and say I want you Christ pray a prayer that says ruined for this world so that I might live for you so that you might one day experience the unmerited grace of his honor that he bestows on his people so don't come to the table right now come to Jesus heavenly father I pray that you would help us be.
So captivated by your sacrifice of the crossed it would be so overwhelmed by how you were placed like a seed in the Tomb the Obesity overjoyed by the resurrection we get to celebrate one week from now that we respond in faith that there's anyone here that does not know you I pray that they'd wish to see you and they would give their life to you God ruined their love for this world so that they might love you God there are so many of us who trust you who follow you they want one hand on this life and everything it has to offer and one hand on you.
God I pray that we cling to you ruin our love for this world over and over and over again help us die to ourselves so that we might live to you and service of you and worshiping you For Your Glory.
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.