Jesus: The Resurrection and the Life

in the hurt and what you know is that this world is broken that's what funerals do they signify the world's not right something's wrong something's amiss you're disoriented we are made for life we're made for relationship we're made to connect with one another and when we go to a funeral we realize i'm not going to see this person anymore and so what it does is it just it's this reminder like this stinks this is awful and this doesn't feel right [00:01:57]

there's no consciousness I actually found out this is what Jehovah's Witnesses believes I was surprised by that they say they're Christian they see in Revelation 144 ,000 will be with God in the throne room and so they say for the lucky hundred and forty four thousand they get heaven for the rest of the billions of people who have walked this earth nothingness you go to sleep and you never experience anything I thought that was interesting but this isn't a new idea of nothingness it actually goes all the way back to Jesus time in the Bible there's a group of Jews called the Sadducees and the Sadducees had arguments with the Pharisees they too believed that after death there was no resurrection there was no life there was no consciousness [00:05:36]

the resurrection and the life the one who believes in me will live even though they die and whoever lives by believing in me will never die jesus makes really two really powerful statements here he says i am the resurrection and essentially i am the life and we have to tease them apart into two separate things because they have two incredibly different and powerful meanings the first when he says i am the resurrection he's saying i am the source of the resurrection power [00:14:15]

going to be a resurrection and all of God's saints are going to rise to new life and he's saying I am that power you see there was an incredible power of God on the very first day of all creation where God spoke and this creative act is that heaven and earth was formed and we know in the book of John Jesus was there everything that was formed was formed through him and nothing was formed apart from him but now Jesus is saying there's going to be a new creation there is this resurrection where everything is restored everything is fixed and I'm the one who brings that together [00:15:33]

But if there is life beyond the grave, if there's meaning beyond your life, your 89 to your 100 years here, if how you live and what you do yields rewards in heaven, if the way you pour into other people ultimately gives them an eternal future with God, where the angels are going to rejoice and sing and praise, then what you do today and the here and the now makes a huge difference for eternity. [00:17:06]

God's kingdom, we have the opportunity to usher it in, not in its fullest form, not to completion. We understand there's a lot of brokenness here, but we have the opportunity to bring light to the darkness around us when we follow Jesus. We have the opportunity to show people a way of living that they don't know and they don't understand, that is attractive, that they look at it and they think, I want that. Why is my life not like that? I want that joy. I want that peace. I want that contentment. [00:18:57]

And we only get that. If we understand that Jesus gives us life for today, we aren't meant to just be a bunch of somber, mourning Christians. Oh, my sin is so terrible. I'm an awful person. Beat myself up every single day to keep myself humble. Like we live in victory over sin, death, shame, so that we can experience the fullness of life that Jesus wants us to experience. And we can bring that to other people. Your life matters. Your life matters for today. [00:20:05]

with all these people who've been out to mourn and know that Lazarus has been dead for four days and now he's alive and yet some people's hearts were so hard they still couldn't see Jesus for who he was so Lazarus had the second chance at life but what it really ultimately points to like I said it's Jesus resurrection and what that it does is it shows us what our own resurrection is gonna look like you see when we read in the Gospels what happens after Jesus died on the cross and raised us to new life he's got a new resurrected body [00:22:22]

we were not made for death we've already covered that we know how it crept into our destiny as an intruder a snake in Genesis chapter 3 who brought sin and death into this world I love the final part and we know who has defeated it in 1st Corinthians 15 Paul writes Oh death where is your victory Oh death where is your sting those words can only be penned when you know that death is not the final word because the resurrection power gives you a hope for something better something beyond something that we need to dream about [00:30:27]

an excitement for the future we need to not just think like okay I know that when I die I go to heaven but we have to dream like God this is going to be incredible when I get there they're gonna be Africans and Asians white black red yellow they're all precious in his sight Jesus loves the little children of the world and we're gonna be singing together but it's gonna be more than a giant worship service we're gonna live a life on a restored earth [00:32:22]

God has a super abundance, right? We read about abundant life. His super abundance goes beyond the boundary of this life. It reaches to the next. As he tells us at the very end of that passage, those who believe in Jesus will never die. We have to understand when a person dies, guys, to most of the world, they say, that's a goodbye. Maybe I'll see you as a butterfly or a cardinal. But we as Christians understand it as a see you later. [00:33:37]

If you have never received this message I am telling you today, I encourage you, make the decision to put your faith and your trust in God. In Jesus, he explains what happens after death better than any of the other religions or belief systems of this world. And he's calling every single one of us to say, I believe and I'm gonna follow. [00:34:20]