Easter // It's Too Good to be True

chapter 24 this morning, luke, chapter number 24.

And a few years ago there was a movie that came out.

It was called Unbroken.

Any of you guys see the Unbroken movie.

Okay, some of y'all saw that one.

That was a good one.

It was about a guy named Louis Zamperini.

Louis Zamperini, he was an athlete Olympic athlete actually in the 1930s, and there was a little event that happened.

You may have heard of it.

It's called World War II and he went from being an Olympic athlete to joining the Army Air Corps and while he was flying over the Pacific Ocean the unthinkable happened His plane crashed.

Good news, he survived.

Bad news things are going to get a whole lot worse.

He was at sea, stranded for 47 days, fighting starvation, the storms, freezing nights everything that you could imagine that would go along with well being stranded in the ocean.

Good news is he actually got rescued in the ocean.

Bad news is he got rescued by the bad guys and he got sent to a place called Execution Island.

Anybody want to take any guesses what execution island was known for?

Executions?

Thank you, it was known for execution there's.

Some of you are like am I allowed to talk in church?

Yes, you are, it's okay, all right.

There he went to execution island and he was tortured and beaten and interrogated.

In fact, his family thought that he was dead.

They even planned a funeral for him as if he had died.

And he was on Execution Island and he was a POW for two years.

Thankfully, he was finally rescued and years after the event, a guy named Ray Johnston was interviewing him and was asking a question that you probably are thinking hearing his story, or, if you watch the movie, you probably thought of it How'd you make it?

How do you survive that?

Why didn't you just give up?

Give up, and Louis Zamperini said in a word it was hope.

Hope allowed him to survive.

Now, I don't know what brought you here this morning to Easter at First Christian Church.

Maybe you were bribed to come, or you were dragged here, somebody guilted you into coming, or maybe it's your yearly pilgrimage to a church building on Easter, or maybe, or maybe, or maybe somebody was like, hey, you want to go out for brunch on Easter.

You were like, yes, let's go, and you ended up here somehow.

I don't know what brought you here, but here's what I know.

All of us can't really live without hope.

In fact, we were hardwired to be hope-finding people.

Now, a lot of times when we think of hope, we think of wishful thinking, like I hope when I get home this person won't be.

We think of hope, we think of wishful thinking Like I hope when I get home this person won't be in one of those moods.

We think, we think, we think I hope I wish that my sports team will make the playoffs.

I see you Warriors fans, I know you.

Okay, some of y'all are thinking you go through a drive-thru.

You're going to pick up some food on the way home.

You're like I hope the drive-thru line won't be very long If you go to In-N-Out, you can just give up on that one.

Okay, we think of like, wishful thinking, like I wish this is going to happen.

But Christian hope is not wishful thinking.

But Christian hope is not wishful thinking.

It's a confident expectation.

Christian hope is not wishful thinking.

It's a confident expectation.

It's the hope that you need, it's the hope that you want.

It's the hope that you're actually hardwired to have.

If you imagine what your life would look like if you lived every single day with a confident expectation, a life that was not riddled with fear or anxiety or worry or stress, some of y'all are thinking, bro, come back to the real world.

There's no way you can live a life that way.

But the event of Easter shows us that it's possible.

The event of Easter shows us that confident expectation is possible, because hope is not a circumstance.

Hope is a person and his name is Jesus, and I want to show you how you can live with this confident expectation.

We got to go back 2,000 years to the city of Jerusalem, the first Easter.

Now, this Easter, I got to say it didn't start with like pretty Easter dresses, it didn't start with joy and happiness and the Easter bunny, or let's go take a photo booth, let's go take a picture of the photo booth.

There's no photo booths on the first Easter.

You know, the first Easter actually started, maybe in a place that, emotionally, that maybe you're currently at or maybe you've been before a place of pain, a place of darkness, a place of brokenness, a place where there's more questions than there is answers and you can't see up from down.

That is how the first Easter started.

And then, well, something happened that changed the course of history, something that well seems too good to be true, and I want us to see it today in Luke 24.

And if you're ready for the word, would you say amen.

It says on the first day of the week, first day of the week.

Somebody tell me what's the first day of the week?

It is Sunday, I'm sorry.

So Sunday, first day of the week, sunday, very early in the morning, very early in the morning.

How many of you are morning people?

Morning people?

Okay, we are praying for all of you.

We're praying for all of you Very early in the morning.

How many of you here's a little test how many of you, this morning, you hit the snooze button at least one time?

Okay, okay, some of y'all are lying, okay, first day this is Sunday, it's early in the morning.

They this is some women they came to the tomb this is the tomb of Jesus, that's right Bringing the spices they had prepared.

Now, these ladies brought spices.

These weren't cooking spices.

They weren't bringing garlic to have a little dinner or something.

These were spices that were used to have a little dinner or something.

These were spices that were used to preserve a dead body.

These ladies came to this tomb for closure for the most painful, one of the most painful, if not the most painful and traumatic event of their life life.

They went to this tomb with spices to preserve this dead body, nobody thought that they were going to find an empty grave.

Nobody had a countdown on their phone and they were like, okay, in two days and 10 minutes Jesus is going to resurrect.

They didn't walk to the tomb when they weren't like, hey, you brought the balloons and confetti right, because Jesus is coming out in 30 minutes.

Oh, did you remember the welcome back Jesus sign?

Did you get that one?

Nobody expected nobody.

Not his friends.

You guys like that.

That was a pastor joke.

Okay, sorry, I attempted to.

Not his friends, not his family.

Nobody thought that when they went to the tomb they wouldn't find him.

But that is exactly what they found.

It says in verse 2, they found the stone rolled away from the tomb.

I want to show you a picture that shows what is believed to be the tomb of Jesus.

We don't know for sure that's this place, but there's overwhelming evidence that shows what is believed to be the tomb of Jesus.

We don't know for sure that's this place, but there's overwhelming evidence that shows it was either there or it was near there in the city of Jerusalem.

They go to this place and they find the stone rolled away and they did what you would have done in verse 3.

They went in, but they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

While they were perplexed about this, they were perplexed.

Put yourself in their shoes.

You'd be perplexed too.

You go to the grave of a loved one to get closure.

You go to the grave of a loved one to honor them and they're not there.

They're perplexed.

That's exactly how you would be.

They were perplexed.

Suddenly, two men we know this is angels from other gospel accounts two men stood by them in dazzling clothes.

Verse 5 says so.

The women were terrified and bowed down to the ground.

Hey guys, this is like a big event happening here.

You go to the grave.

Jesus is not there.

You see two angels.

You're like they're terrified.

And this is what the angel said why are you looking for the living among the dead?

Are you looking for the living among the dead?

Verse 6, he is not here, but he has risen.

Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee, saying it is necessary that the Son of man be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and rise on the third day.

Jesus actually said this would happen.

He predicted this.

Now, maybe you're in the room and you're not yet a Jesus follower, maybe you're not a Jesus person at all, maybe you are completely indifferent towards faith and maybe you're like, hey, that's for you, that's not for me.

Or maybe you're just like I don't need a crutch to live my life like all you people.

Or maybe you would identify as spiritual and you're like I'm not really.

I'm more in the spirituals.

I want to talk to you for a second, because there's something that you need to know about Christianity Is that Christianity is not based on a set of morals.

Christianity is not based on a set of new insights into life.

In other words, I can choose this path, or this path, or the Christian path.

Christianity is not based on a set of teachings.

Christianity is based on the fact that a man was dead and he walked out of the grave.

That's what Christianity is based on.

A man predicted his own death and resurrected from the grave, and I want to say something politically incorrect but biblically correct because I love you enough to say this is that what separates Jesus and Christianity from every other religion and every other religious leader is that the tomb of Jesus is empty and the tombs of every religious leader in time past is still full.

That's what separates the two.

Yeah, you can clap for that.

That's what separates the two.

And you can go and visit the tomb of all these religious leaders, and there are millions of people that do it every year.

They make their pilgrimage there and the body, or the bones or the tooth in some cases, is still there, like just the tooth.

People go and visit it.

When you go to Jerusalem, you will find an empty grave.

There's this guy.

He was super smart.

He was super intelligent way smarter than me, I mean most people are and this guy was.

He actually was a teacher at Oxford University in England.

Me, I mean, most people are.

This guy was.

He actually was a teacher at Oxford University in England.

His name was CS Lewis, and CS Lewis man, he was an atheist.

He was like you, jesus.

People like you guys do that.

I'm too smart for that.

He started asking hard questions of life that he just couldn't get answers for, real hard questions maybe that you've thought about.

He started studying the historical accuracy, the historical event of the resurrection and CS Lewis upon this overwhelming evidence, upon the only way to get rational answers to the deepest questions of life is from the Christian faith.

He turned his life over to Jesus.

He put his faith and trust in Jesus and decided to follow him and upon reflecting back on Christianity and Jesus later on in his life, this is what CS Lewis says about Christianity.

He says Christianity, if false, is of no importance and if true, of infinite importance.

The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

If it's false, if Jesus didn't resurrect from the dead, then we're just wasting our time here.

I mean, we could just all be at Babs right now having some breakfast.

You know what I'm saying.

But if it's true, if Jesus resurrected from the grave, it's actually of infinite importance.

And here's why Because, all right, our eternity is at stake, based on what we do with Jesus.

And the angels reminded these women in Luke, chapter 24, that Jesus had predicted that he was going to do this three separate times just in the book of Luke.

Luke 24 · chapter mention

And when the angels said this, look what happened to the ladies in verse 8.

It says they remembered his words.

You ever forget something and then somebody tells you something you're like oh, I remember that.

They remembered.

He said this Returning from the tomb.

They reported all these things to the 11 and to all the rest.

Who were the ladies?

I love how it mentions them Mary Magdalene, joanna, mary, the mother of James, and the other women with them were telling the apostles these things.

And check out the response to the apostles.

These are the closest friends of Jesus, the closest followers of him.

Check out their response.

These words seemed like nonsense to them, would it not seem like nonsense to you?

They didn't believe the women Verse 12, though.

Peter, however, I love me some, peter, guys.

Peter.

He got up and he ran to the tomb and when he stooped to look in, he saw only the linen cloths.

So he went away.

What's that next word?

He went away amazed.

Amazed at what had happened.

This is unbelievable.

This is too good to be true.

And with this, christianity began to spread like rapid fire.

Not in a city hundreds of miles away where all this could be fabricated and they could say, oh yeah, this guy resurrected.

They couldn't verify it.

No, it began to spread like rapid fire in the very city where Jesus resurrected, where people could go and verify the empty tomb.

And 2,000 years later, today, over a billion people are gathering in a house of worship remembering and celebrating this event worldwide.

Why?

Because it's too good to be true.

Here's what you need to know.

It's too good to be true because this is what it shows.

It shows that hope is available, no matter what your circumstances in your life.

I'm talking to some people that have some heavy circumstances.

I'm talking to some people that walked in here with some really heavy things on them.

I'm talking to some people that don't know how they're going to go forward.

I want you to know that Easter shows us that hope is available, no matter what your circumstance is, because it shows that in Jesus is found the hope and the life that all of us long for.

There's a football player you may have heard of him.

He was pretty good.

His name was Tom Brady.

Guys heard of this guy, Tom Brady.

I mean, you know he's not quite Joe Montana, but he's pretty good, tom Brady.

After he won his third Super Bowl, he was doing this interview.

He was sitting down with somebody and they were asking him questions.

It was actually 60 minutes.

I don't know if you guys ever watched that show and he had this moment of honesty and vulnerability that was so powerful about his life and where he was.

This is what he says and I want to read the quote directly why do I have three Super Bowl rings this is after he won his third one and still think there's something greater out there for me?

I mean maybe a lot of people would say, hey, man, this is what it is.

I reached my goal, my dream, me.

I think, god, it's got to be more than this.

I mean, this isn't, this can't be all it's cracked up to be.

I mean, I've done it, I'm 27.

What else is there for me?

Think about who this is coming from.

This is a guy that's got more money than any of us.

He's got more fame than any of us and I don't want to offend the dudes out here, but this is a guy that's better looking than any of us.

Ladies don't say anything, okay, and this is what he says.

He's like this is it?

There's got to be more.

This is a guy that's accomplished it all and he knows there's something more.

And this is why Because Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, says that God has put eternity into our hearts, and we could put it this way that there is a God-shaped, a God-sized hole in everybody's heart that cannot be filled with anything else.

Ecclesiastes 3 · chapter mention

Now you can try.

In fact, a lot of us here have tried.

You can try to fill it.

You can get the next job, you can get the next paycheck, you can get the next job, you can get the next paycheck, you can get the next, whatever it is that you're pursuing after.

And Tom Brady would be like guys, I got it all.

And the reason being is because there's a longing in our hearts for God, whether we have identified that or not.

And this is why God, the Father, sent his son Jesus to this earth so that he could die on the cross for our sins.

Because we are not good people in need of changing some things.

We are spiritually dead sinners in need of a savior, because he is the only hope for redemption and for forgiveness of our sins.

And when Jesus resurrected from the grave, it validated everything that he said.

So this is what that means.

That means that you can have a confident expectation that you can live your life without shame and without guilt.

This is what that means that when your life feels out of control, you can have a confident expectation that God is still in control.

This is what that means is that you can be in a place where you're like man I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills.

I don't know how things are going to happen.

We have a God that is a providing God.

You might be in a place where you're like man, I'm trying to find myself.

I don't know my identity, I don't know what I am.

Jesus says you are valuable.

Jesus says you are valuable.

Jesus says that you are loved and accepted and made known and you don't have to perform for an identity.

You can rest in the life-giving identity that Jesus gives you.

And what the resurrection of Jesus says is this is every word that he said, every promise that he made.

It was made true and validated at the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This is invalidated at the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This is, this is and this is why it's almost too good to be true.

And second of all and this is something that some of you really need to hear is it's almost too good to be true because one day there will be no more sad days.

The Apostle Paul called the resurrection of Jesus the first fruits of the new creation, a taste of what is to come.

Now, back in the day he was referring to, it was a farming reference and they would totally understand what he was talking about Us, not so much because we're in a different time period, but what would happen is when farmers would plant seeds and they would have crops.

They wouldn't really exactly know what was going to come.

They didn't know how good the soil was.

They didn't know how good the seed was going to come.

They didn't know how good the soil was.

They didn't know how good the seed was going to be.

They didn't know any of that.

So they just planted a bunch of crops and hoped.

Something happened.

And when the first fruits would come, when, like, the first crops would be coming up, it would be a sign of what is to come.

It would be a sign of everything else that was going to happen.

With the crops, it was an indication of what the rest of the crop would be Now.

With the crops, it was an indication of what the rest of the crop would be Now when Jesus resurrected from the grave.

When he resurrected from the grave, it was an indication of what was going to happen.

So we'll put it this way when we think about death, for a lot of us it can be scary.

In fact, some of you have experienced this recently.

It's a scary thing.

You've lost a loved one.

But the resurrection of Jesus shows us that if we turn from our sin and put our faith in Christ, that death is just a doorway into resurrected life and death is just a doorway into eternal life.

That's what it is.

It's a doorway, it's a step into eternal life, it's a step into heaven.

And this is what it looks like in Revelation, chapter 21.

Revelation 21 · chapter mention

It gives us a little bit of what heaven's going to be like.

It says he will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more.

Grief, crying, pain will be no more Because the previous thing have passed away that one day God is going to take away.

There will be no more cancer, there will be no more pain, there will be no more tears.

God will remove the curse of death entirely.

He will undo every injustice.

He will heal every heart and the resurrection, every heart, every hurt.

The resurrection of Jesus is too good to be true because it shows one day this is coming, like one day a new creation is coming.

We don't have to sit here and grieve without hope, because the resurrection shows us that the best really is yet to come.

It really is, and some of you in the room right now and some of you in the room right now.

You might be at a place where you're just kind of I don't know about all this.

You might be at a place in your life where you're maybe looking for some hope.

Maybe you're a follower of Jesus and you're just at a place where it's like I just don't know.

Guys, the resurrection shows that every sad day will be gone one day.

It shows that hope is not based on a circumstance, and I want to kind of illustrate this.

If you've been around here for a while, you guys know I like to use visual illustrations, right?

Just because I kind of like nerd out a little bit.

Actually, I think it's because I'm not the smartest guy.

So when I can see something, it allows me to understand it easier, right?

So it connects with me.

So I have a.

Somebody tell me what is this Sponge?

Right?

Okay, fun.

So I have a sponge.

It's a real sponge.

No, like tricks or anything, right?

Real sponge.

This sponge is supposed to be used to clean things, right?

You can clean dishes, you can clean the counter, you can clean I don't know whatever you want to clean with.

There's all kinds of stuff.

Now, have you ever had a sponge that was on the sink maybe it was kind of hard, kind of dry and you go up into the kitchen and you go to wash the dishes.

You take the sponge, the hard sponge, and what you don't do is you don't just pick it up and immediately start washing the dishes.

You don't do that if it's hard because the design, the design of this sponge, is that it needs to have some water so it can be used how it's designed to be used and it can be effective.

This is what you don't do.

When the sponge is sitting there, you don't say, okay, I need to wash the dishes, so I need some water.

You don't do that.

Now, maybe your kids do that, okay, but what you don't do is you don't go okay, splash a little on this side, splash a little on this side, splash a little on this side, ready to go.

You can do that.

That's what you do.

You turn on the faucet, you put it in water or you douse it in water.

This is why Because the sponge was designed to have water in it so it can be used effectively to its design.

Now here's why I tell you this you were designed to be a person of hope.

That's how you were designed God, hardwired you to be a person of hope.

But the place that you can find hope, jesus tells us, is in John, chapter 4.

John 4 · chapter mention

He says it's in himself, in the living water.

Now, this is what some of us do, this is us, and we're like, ah, life kind of stinks.

Need a little.

Jesus man, give me a little hope.

Bam bam, ah, things kind of stink right now.

Let me shoot up a quick prayer, right?

Bam bam, it's all right, it's good.

But the way that we're only going to experience hope is if we immerse ourselves in the person of Jesus.

And when we immerse ourselves in the person of Jesus and live in the reality of who, and when we immerse ourselves in the person of Jesus and live in the reality of who he says that we are, and live in the reality of his character, we will be people that will be resilient.

We will be the people that will be saturated with hope.

We will be people that, when the night is dark, we still know that our God is alive.

We will be people when everybody says I don't know what's going on, we'll say we have a God that knows what's going on.

When it seems like there's no hope, when it seems like there's no joy, we can say hey guys, I know my Redeemer lives and this is how we can be those people by being saturated and centering our lives on Jesus Christ.

This is how, now, I'm going to invite you this morning, on Easter, to do this.

However, some of you are like, okay, that's like really kind of weird, like what does this even mean?

Some of you in this room, you have never come to a place in your life where you truly put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior.

You've never made the decision to follow him Honestly.

It doesn't matter what your background is.

Jesus will accept you just as you are if you will come to him just as you are.

And this is what I'm going to invite some of you to do To today be the day where you understand that you're a sinner, where you understand that Jesus died for you and you make the decision to turn to him by faith.

And I want all of us to kind of, as we wrap it up, to kind of self-identify with where we are with Jesus, where we are in a relationship with him.

For some of us, like I mentioned just a moment ago a step that we need to take is to decide to follow Jesus.

Maybe you're not yet a Christ follower and today is the day for you.

Today is the day that you decide to follow him.

Maybe some of us in this room, maybe you're a Christ follower, but maybe you've drifted a little bit.

That's where you are and you can be real.

The best place in the world to be real and honest is a church building right Like, come on, maybe you've drifted, maybe you've been looking for hope in all these other things, and today's the day, like I need to go back.

Maybe for some of you, you're not ready to make the decision to be a Christ follower, but you need to consider doing it.

If the resurrection happened, then you have to be intellectually honest enough to at least consider this.

And then for some of us, number four, what I want to encourage you to do you're a Christ follower.

I want you to rejoice that you have this hope.

I want you to rejoice in the fact that hope is not based on your circumstances, but it's based on a person.

I want you to rejoice in the fact that one day there will be no more sad days.

And wherever you are, I want us to identify and I want us to take a step in our faith journey.

Let me pray for everybody this morning.

Let's have our heads bowed.