Easter: Jesus Conquers Death, Restores Paradise

And the king yells out, wait. Wait. And he walks into the center. And while his daughter's crunched over, he comes over her like this. And he says, hit her. And the person going to whip says, I I cannot hit her without hitting you. And he says, hit her. And the king takes every lash that his daughter deserved, and his daughter goes free. This is the good news of Jesus Christ. That when he died on that cross, he died because he loved you. [01:12:19] (42 seconds)  #KingTookTheLashes

if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Saved from what? Sin and death. And for those who do die, when we die, actually that death in Jesus Christ becomes the door that I walk through to get welcomed back into paradise. That's why the Bible says that those who are absent from the body are with the Lord. They're with the Lord. And Jesus, this is the blessed hope of the church, the blessed hope of becoming a Christian. [01:08:12] (45 seconds)  #SavedThroughFaith

Sin, my choice to defy God, my choice to say you're wrong, I'm right, good is evil, and evil is good, is the gateway to the experience of death. It's why it's in our world because no person is perfect. No person lives sinless, not one. We all experience it. It is the now, the nature of the planet of what it means to be human is to die. But the Bible poses a question It flips the whole thing on its head. What happens when a sinless man dies? [00:59:09] (38 seconds)  #SinLeadsToDeath

God had an interesting plan. See, the wages of sin is death and that means that death is only experienced when somebody sins. When somebody goes their own way in defiance, that is when death is experienced. But what would happen if a human never sinned? And what would happen if a human who never sinned died? What would happen if somebody broke the code? See, humanity can never do it. We can never do it. I can never do it. You can never do it. No one can do it. Not one person. [00:59:47] (38 seconds)  #GodBecameHuman

So, god looked at the humanity who could never do it and he said to himself, humanity can't do it but I can. I'll do it. So, god became a human. This is the unique story of the Bible. It's so different than any other religion. No one else does this. No one else. All the gods in the Bible or in in history, all these gods are they're above. They don't demonstrate servant leadership. They're all above. They're all so much better. Grovel at my feet, humans. Praise my name. [01:01:19] (36 seconds)  #DeceivedIntoDeath

See, the Bible's pointing to this reality that paradise is a choice. People always ask, why did god put the tree there? Because paradise is a choice. That's the point. You can choose it. You can choose to receive it or you can choose to reject it. It's a choice. It's choice. Here's the thing about biblical paradise. Is it's always under threat? It's true. It's always under threat and what happens in this garden and most of a lot of us know the story, maybe you don't. [00:52:33] (34 seconds)  #ChoosingOurOwnWay

And it's built in. Why? Because at the beginning, we were designed for the tree of life, not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But we partook of the wrong tree. We ate it. We took it and we do this every single day. When we do what? Call God a liar and believe evil is good and good is evil. Every single day we do this. When we believe God doesn't have his good intention, when we believe that through the through him, through Jesus, it's not the way to paradise, but through my own way, through my knowledge of good and evil, my knowledge of right and wrong. [00:56:04] (35 seconds)  #GreatestDeception

It's true. What do we see in this? How many of us hear these things? We see good and evil in the bible and what we have what happens and actually the bible prophesies this is that it would be flipped on its head and the world will call evil good and good evil. Why? Because they've been deceived into believing God is a liar. And it all started in that moment. It's just this greatest deception. Deceived into believing God is a liar and that the one rule God gave in the garden was the one was the thing that would keep them back from the actual paradise. [00:53:46] (28 seconds)  #ChasingImmortality