Raised Up

He took those sins into the grave. He who knew no sin bore our sin and took it into death. So sin and death are united in that moment. And guess what happened? Three days later when Christ rose from the grave, he defeated and conquered sin and death all at the same time. So all of the sins of those who entrust themselves of g which of Jesus are dead and buried right there on that day. So God's way is not spelled d o based on what you can do. It's spelled d o n e based on what Jesus Christ has done. Remember on the cross, among his final words Jesus said, it is finished. [00:46:35] (38 seconds)  #ItIsFinished

Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth was buried, died and buried, rose from the dead, and is seated, my friends, at the right hand of God the father. One time, a Muslim man from Africa committed his life to Christ, his parents were absolutely aghast that he would do such a thing. And so his answer to them, he said, listen, suppose you were going down the road and it suddenly forked in two directions and you didn't know which way to go, which way was the right way to go. And at the fork were two men. One was dead and the other was alive. Who would you commit your life to? [00:47:54] (43 seconds)  #ChooseTheLiving

Zoe is the word right here for living hope. Living. Zoe. It means it refers to the very life of God himself. The life of God and life with God. Living hope. In fact, this week on the podcast, we are gonna go further into what does it what does living hope mean? What does it look like? How does it work? That's what we're gonna get into. But basically, here's what we're trying to say. When you think of Easter, Easter is not about proof of life after death. Easter is about proof of life in Christ. [00:56:20] (36 seconds)  #LivingHopeZoe

This letter written by Paul to the Corinthians is dated no less than about twenty two to twenty five years after the events of the resurrection. That's not stuff of myth and legend that was written two centuries later. Uh-uh. In fact, for many of us, that would be like talking about 09/11. This is within living memory. We can go verify all this stuff. So Paul is basically saying, hey, you gotta understand, this is a fact of history, that Jesus died, was buried, and rose from the dead. [00:41:16] (31 seconds)  #ResurrectionIsHistory

And I just wanna say this to you, my friend. No one will ever love you like Jesus loves you. No one will ever stick with you like Jesus will stick with you, thick and thin, good and bad. He knows every dumb thing you're gonna do and he still loves you. He knows every stupid decision you're gonna make and he still wants you to be his own. And Jesus came into this world to defeat Sinodea. He did not come into this world so that you could be religious, or so that you could just check boxes and and call it good, or so that you could work a balancing of scales. He didn't come for that. He came to give us life and hope. [01:05:06] (45 seconds)  #JesusUnfailingLove

Jesus left an empty tomb to fill an empty heart. Jesus left an empty tomb to fill an empty heart. Now I love to hear your voices, so help me out everybody. I need to hear your voice. True or false? Everybody fears death. True or false? It's true. You look at the list of people's fears, you know, there's a lot of stuff that's always common, but number one every time is death. We fear death. All of us. I kind of I relate with the comedians. I'm not afraid to die. I just don't wanna be there when it happens. [00:34:05] (33 seconds)  #DeathIsNotFinal

Friends, in our culture, we speak of hope, we often speak about uncertainty. I hope so. I'm hoping. Hopefully. Why do we hedge our hopes? Here's why. Because we've experienced so many empty promises. We just hedge our hopes. There's some of you here today, even the word hope is like, yeah, right. I get it. But listen, in in the scriptures, hope is about certainty. It's about certainty in the faithfulness of Jesus. It's about certainty in the faithfulness of Jesus Christ and his reliability. In fact, let me let me show you what I mean. [00:53:17] (35 seconds)  #HopeIsCertainty

And so I just wanna say this to my friends here today. What are you gonna do? What's your plan? Because the reality is our time on this earth is not like a clock. It's not just running on. Your time on this earth and mine is like an hourglass. It's running out. And every single day, we set our tent one day closer to eternity. And one day, you are going to be the next one to step out of this world and into the next. Then what? Then what? [01:04:01] (33 seconds)  #HourglassLife

And so I took that claw and I put it in my pocket. And I carried that claw around because I thought that by having the claw, the parakeet's gonna need the claw, the parakeet would come back. So I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, did the parakeet ever come back? Yes or no? No. Not at all. And after a few days, I had to face the reality, death was final. And so, I gave Pinky the parakeet a good Christian burial. Friends, according to scripture, death does not have the final word. Jesus does. [00:39:29] (48 seconds)  #JesusHasFinalWord

And when God comes into your life, he wants to bring his forgiveness. He wants to bring new life through his spirit. He wants to bring a whole new purpose. He wants to bring all new hope. And there are many of us here today, you are familiar with churchianity, but you do not know this hope. And our prayer for you today is that you would move beyond knowing things about Jesus to actually experiencing the risen Christ for yourself. [00:37:01] (25 seconds)  #ExperienceTheRisenChrist

How do we know that God forgives those who trust Jesus? Because he raised him from the dead to vindicate Jesus is the promised Messiah who would deal with our sins and defeat death. And in him, we have forgiveness and new life through his spirit. That's the promise of Easter, my friends. Every major figure in world history has died and been buried and is still buried. In fact, you know, Buddha died in April. He's still buried. You can go to the site and see his grave. Muhammad died in AD six thirty two. He's still buried. You can make a pilgrimage to that site. [00:47:13] (41 seconds)  #ResurrectionVindicatesJesus

And so what did God do? In his great love and great mercy, even in the face of our failures Do you have any failures? Even in the face of your failures, even great failures, God's approach to you is mercy. And in his mercy, he made a promise. He would send one who would come and defeat sin and defeat death. That promised one is Jesus Christ. So we see it right here in our passage. In fact, if you look in verse three, you'll see the first fact I wanna draw your attention to. It says that Christ died for our sins. So Christ died for our sins. [00:42:58] (41 seconds)  #ChristDiedForOurSins

Friends, according to scripture, Easter is not a matter of colored eggs and candy. It's a matter of life and death. Now here's the honest truth. One day, I will be the next person to die. One day, you will be the next person to die. Here's the question for today. Then what? We've been praying for you. Our team has been praying for every single person, every single seat. We've been praying that this Easter, this gathering, on this day, you would leave with God's answer to that question, then what? [00:33:20] (38 seconds)  #EasterIsLifeAndDeath

One day a college student was talking to an older wiser man and the college student was kind of boasting about his future. And so he said to the older wiser man, say, I'm getting my degree. And the wiser man was like, awesome. Then what? And the college student was like, well, I'm I'm gonna start a business. And the older man was like, awesome. Well, then what? The college student's like, well, I'm you know, work real hard and make a lot of money and just build, build, and build. And the older wiser man was like, awesome. Then what? He's like, I don't know. Grow older and retire someday and live off all that money that I built. And the older wiser man was like, awesome. Then what? [01:05:50] (50 seconds)  #BeyondSuccess

Reality of death is all around us. It's everywhere. In fact, the stats on death are pretty solid. One out of every one people will die. In fact, it's pretty safe to say, ain't none of us getting out of here alive. I mean, I didn't talk about this room here today. That would be pretty weird, wouldn't it? It's all about this earth. None of us are getting out of here alive. Death is a reality, but death is also a finality. [00:38:22] (30 seconds)  #DeathIsCertain

We all fear death. Every single one of them. In fact, we fear death so much that we kinda joke about it. Think about the way that we talk about those who have departed. We always speak in euphemisms, you know, he kicked the bucket or, you know, she's taking a dirt nap or he's gone into the fertilizer business or he's become a root inspector or she joined the choir invisible, or according to the late Robin Williams, he's blinking for an exceptionally long period of time. The honest truth is we fear death, and so we joke about it because it's really scary. [00:34:38] (41 seconds)  #FearOfDeath

Easter, friends, in our culture has become a matter of colored eggs and candy. In our culture, Easter is about spring. It's about spring colors. It's about eggs and candy. But the reality is when you look into scripture listen, friends. When you look into the scripture, Easter is not a matter of colored eggs and candy. It's a matter of life and death. I heard about a young pastor who was asked to do a funeral for a homeless man who died leaving behind no friends and family. And all he was given was a piece of paper saying, this is where you need to be. So he drove out to do this funeral at a cemetery and turns out it was way out in the country, so he got lost on his way. [00:31:39] (41 seconds)  #EasterBeyondEggs

Basically, BIOS looks like this. You get up every day, you go somewhere, maybe school, work, something and you do stuff. And then later on, you come back home and then maybe you eat something and stare at a screen and then you go to bed. And next day, you repeat, repeat, repeat. That's that's physical existence. Now the reality is there are many of us here who are alive, but to be honest, from a biblical perspective, you're just existing. Here's a question. Then what? Two words for life in Greek. First one's bios. We all got that. The second one is zoe. [00:55:46] (35 seconds)  #ChooseZoeNotBios

I will never forget my first experience with the finality of death. I was just a little boy and my mom bought me a parakeet and my sister had a cat. Oh, you see where this is going? I didn't see where it was going. One day, I come home from school, and I go in the back door, and I see the cage open. I see, you know, feathers everywhere and I see the cat sitting in the corner going. I rushed over to the cage, I rifled through the feathers looking for my parakeet and all I found was the claw, the whole claw. [00:38:52] (37 seconds)  #ParakeetMoment