In Paradise...With Me...Today

Thank you very much, Sue.

The passage which has just been read to us is a distressing passage.

For the believer in Christ, it is disturbing.

It is upsetting.

At least if we could read it as though we were hearing it for the very first time.

It may seem like an unusual passage to be read on Easter Sunday morning.

It's actually the very last portion of this text that I want to be focusing on, but that leads directly into the resurrection.

But the resurrection, the victory, is set against the context of this sad, melancholy, disturbing account.

Here we have Jesus who apparently was so beaten and tortured in the events leading up to it that he couldn't even bear the weight of the cross upon his own shoulders, and so someone had to carry it for him.

This Jesus, who was mourned and lamented by the women who were following along, and there is a sense of lament here, a sense of melancholy, a sense of sorrow.

And as they are expressing that, Jesus turns to them and says, Don't weep for me, weep for yourself.

And if you read what it says there, it's actually pretty disturbing.

As a result of sin, there's a time that is coming of great tribulation and anguish and pain.

And it would be better not even to have been born to experience that.

And so he turns the tables and he gives this dark picture of that which is to come.

Were it not for what he is about to do, everything, everything, everything would be lost.

Jesus on the cross, and the soldiers at his feet gambling for the meager last garment he has.

What a picture that is.

The soldiers who had reviled him and scorned him, made fun of him, the crowd that had spat upon him, the crown of thorns, an ironic, cynical kind of thing.

Yeah, you're a king, will you wear this crown, a crown of thorns?

And of course, the crowd, the soldiers, the people, they joined in this dark, melancholy, sad, shocking kind of display of actions and attitudes relative to Christ.

It is a disturbing reality.

And in the midst of this, God breaks in.

There's a foreshadowing of that in Psalm 30, verse 11, that points us in the right direction.

Psalms 30:11

An Easter anticipating text, a gospel proclaiming, preparing text.

You turn my mourning into dancing and my sorrow into great joy.

Psalm 30, verse 11.

Psalms 30:11

You turn my morning into dancing and sorrow into joy.

Good Friday melancholy and lament prepares the believer for the victory and the dramatic up from the grave he arose reality of Easter.

And ultimately in this passage, the end of it in verse 43, once one of the term criminals experiences a change of heart, just as many here no doubt have done, and many more perhaps must too.

After this change of heart, there is this call, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

And Jesus turns to this criminal who at the last moment has turned to him and says, Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.

In paradise, with me today.

That great promise that breaks through and transforms all of the melancholy, the sorrow, the lament, the unfairness of all that has happened.

Would you pray with me as we turn to these words and a reflection on this?

Heavenly Father, our hearts are dull by nature.

Our ears don't listen well.

We are inclined to be distracted by a thousand other things.

Lord, I pray that by your grace, and if it happens, it will be your doing and not ours.

Give us this morning ears that listen.

Open our eyes, that we can see the reality of who Christ is and who we are.

Heavenly Father, unless you do that work in our heart, then we'll have just gone to church.

Father, I pray, in contrast, that we would hear who you are and see who you are and worship you.

And that glorious promise, today you will be with me in paradise.

Father, we need you.

We don't just need Luke's words.

We certainly don't just need Walt's words.

We need you.

And we need to hear you speak.

So speak to us, I pray, in Christ's name.

Amen.

Well, as I was thinking about this passage in the events of Holy Week, a couple of things struck me, but most of all was the relative silence of Jesus, especially in these last hours.

There is a loud silence on the part of Jesus when he is on the cross.

And it's not because he could not speak.

But there is this remarkable contrast, a contrast of all the talking that he had done for three years.

He had gone about, he had spoken to crowds of thousands, he had met with given individuals, he had taken his disciples aside and had mentored and talked and taught them many, many words.

But now, on the cross, there is a loud silence.

In the week that led up to this, there is much that Jesus says in that final week, but now he is silent.

In the time period that's comes that will come between the resurrection and his ascension, Jesus will be very busy and will be speaking again.

But there's practically no red ink in this passage.

Some of you have red letter Bibles.

I'm not a fan of red letter Bibles, it's one of my quirks, because it gives the impression that the words of Jesus are more important than the rest of God's words.

I'm just stubborn enough, rebellious enough to say, I'm not going to buy a red letter Bible.

I have no problem if you do.

But in the in the from Christ, the portrayal of Christ on the cross, there is very little red ink spilt.

Just seven times does he say something.

A sum total of fifty-one words spoken from the cross, seven statements.

The first, when he prays for forgiveness.

Not forgiveness for him.

We're to pray for forgiveness, but he had no need to pray for forgiveness.

He said, Father, forgive them who have no idea what they are doing to me and all of these horrible events and the indignities of it all, and the mocking and the cursing and the ridicule and the scorn and the rejection of their Savior.

Father, forgive them.

They don't get it, they don't understand what they're doing.

Strong, loud words in a period of relative silence.

The second word spoken from the cross is our text today, where he turns to the criminal who's had a change of heart and he says, Truly I say to you, you shall be with me today in paradise.

The third word spoken in this time period was to Mary, and then to John, the beloved disciple, Woman, Mary, behold your son.

And he takes John and says, From now on, this is your mother and this is your son.

He cares for the nearest and dearest, even from the cross.

The fourth at penetrating, at haunting.

And if it doesn't haunt you, then it ought to.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And if you understand that, you're way beyond any of the rest of us.

That the eternal Father would separate himself from the eternal Son.

There had never been an instant since the beginning of eternity, and eternity has no beginning and it has no end.

Jesus the Son had never been separated from the Father, and now He says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And we can come up with theological answers that the Scriptures give us, but the anguish, the anguish of that ought to impact us.

The fifth word spoken from the cross, truly one word, translated into English, is two, I thirst.

Thirsty.

The sixth, also one word.

Tatalistai, it is finished.

One word, it is finished.

And then the seventh, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

Fifty-one words from the cross, seven of the most profound sayings ever spoken.

Any one of them would have easily fit within the 140 characters of a contemporary tweet.

I thought originally they would all fit, but I counted the letters actually, and it doesn't fit in one tweet.

Perhaps more significant seven tweets from Jesus.

Well, what I notice with this is not only the loud silence on the part of Jesus, but the incredible ridicule and rejection on the part of his people around him.

And the the scriptures, this last account, all the time there's talking about the crowds mocking him and abusing him, the soldiers doing the same, the religious leaders doing the same.

Everywhere there is this scorn, this ridicule, a mocking scorn that even came from the two men next to him.

Verse 39, one of the criminals who was hanged railed at him, saying, Are you not the Christ?

Save yourself, save us, that's been well captured in some contemporary paraphrases with something like, uh, sure, you're the Messiah, are you?

Prove it by saving yourself and us too while you're at it.

The message says, Some Savior you are.

This is from the criminal who was next to him.

And as we will see, uh even the one who eventually had a change of heart while he was on the cross had joined in, had joined in.

Everywhere, this ridicule, this mocking, this humiliation.

And if that doesn't get to us, then we ought to just have another holy week or something like that, maybe this week.

And just allow what's going on here to penetrate both your head and your heart and your emotions.

In the face of such blasphemy, Jesus was absolutely silent.

What what divine restraint.

How long-suffering Jesus was with those around him in his day, how long-suffering he is with us, as our hearts at times are cold and we hold him off and we don't value him for who he is.

This was all predicted hundreds of years before by Isaiah the prophet, that great messianic chapter, Isaiah 53, verse 7.

Isaiah 53:7

He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth like a lamb that was led to the slaughter, like a sheep that before his shears is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

And that same, that same psalm goes on and gives this prophecy about the suffering Savior.

He was wounded for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.

The Lord laid upon him the iniquity of us all, the chastisement and the just the judgment of God on sin, he bore for us.

He, the suffering servant, bore and bled and died on the cross.

He did not deserve it.

We did.

He got what he did not deserve.

What we did deserve, he got, what we do not deserve, we get.

In a nutshell, that's the glory and the mystery of the gospel.

What I'm really interested in thinking with you about is this one of the two criminals who was next to him on a cross, one on his right, one on his left, criminal A, criminal B.

One of those started out, started out just like the other.

In the parallel passages in Matthew and Mark's gospel, it's crystal clear that both of the criminals initially joined in the cursing and the mocking and the scorning and the rejection of Christ.

Mark 15, 32, those, plural, those criminals, both of them who were crucified with him, also reviled him.

Matthew 27, 44, the robbers, plural, in other words, both of them who were crucified with him reviled him in the same way.

So that's the way these six hours on the cross, from by Jewish reckoning, the third hour to the ninth hour, or our way of reckoning time, from roughly nine in the morning till roughly three in the afternoon.

It began with criminal A and Criminal B of the same mind, saying the same kinds of things, having the same attitude towards Jesus.

But then something happened in the heart of Criminal B.

No names given.

We could fill in our own names.

Walt and Jane, Fred and Sally, our own names.

Deserving what they got.

Jesus not deserving what he got.

But they both started out in the same way, and then there was something.

Something that happened.

It's not really explained anywhere.

You know, when God started working in Criminal B's heart, why is it that we by God's grace have a change of heart?

Well, it's by God's grace.

There's nothing within us that causes that change.

But God is at work and something happens.

We don't know exactly what it is.

Perhaps it was the striking consonance between Jesus' silence and Isaiah 53, because these two men were Jews.

They weren't good Jews.

There is no such thing as a good Jew, as we will see.

There is no such thing as a good human being.

But they were Jews, they were well taught.

Robbers though they were, well-taught people can be sinners as well.

In any case, they knew Isaiah 53, and maybe there was something where God began to stir in criminal B, something that he had heard in his past that was being fulfilled before his very eye, like a sheep being led to slaughter, like a lamb sacrificed, not guilty.

But in the heart of one of the thieves, something began to change.

I don't know why and how exactly God works in our lives.

Do you?

Do you have it figured out?

I sure don't.

I can tell you a story of a young, obnoxious, arrogant jerk 1967 spring, in my fraternity room.

Something happened.

There were some things leading up to it.

In our liberal Presbyterian church, a guy came to work with us high school kids, and I had a Bible.

When I graduated from high school, I had not made a commitment to Christ.

Somehow or another, my folks asked me what I wanted for high school graduation, and instead of a Mustang, I wouldn't have gotten that anyway, all I wanted was a Bible.

Two years later, that work which God was doing came to fruition, but something was going on.

I wonder if there's something going on in hearts around here.

I know many of you, there's been a profound change of heart, but you can't explain how that happens.

We don't know our hearts very well.

We don't understand ourselves.

We certainly don't understand people, other people, but believe me, we do not understand the mysterious ways of God.

We know some things about how God often works from the scriptures, but the inner working to change the heart of criminal B or obnoxious jerk Walt or many of you, how that happened, that's that's somehow or another hidden to us.

We often don't understand God's ways.

And we don't have to.

There's a blindness, there's a hardness of heart.

And unless that blindness is graciously and sovereignly removed by God, then we continue to be oblivious or to be obnoxious or to hold God off at a distance and not see who He is and not see who we ourselves are.

I saw it.

How about you?

You may not be able to point back to a day, that's not the point.

But the fact of the matter is, at some point, as In our spiritual journey, as we come to faith in Christ, we cross over from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the light.

Sometimes we think we know a date and even write it down in April 1967, Bloomington, Illinois.

That doesn't explain what God was doing.

But there is a work of God, a work of God to take away spiritual blindness and to soften a hard and resistant heart.

That was happening in criminal B, criminal number two.

Has that happened in your heart and life?

Is that happening now?

You see, the picture of this criminal and what happened in the six hours someplace along there on the cross next to Jesus is a paradigm.

It's a picture.

It's an illustration.

It's a striking portrayal of the fact that God changes us, changes our heart.

What happens is three things.

We begin to see Jesus differently, we begin to see ourselves differently, and we turn to Jesus for mercy.

This man began to see Jesus differently than he did a few hours before.

He no longer identified himself with criminal A over here, because he says, he turns to criminal A and he says, Don't you fear God?

He rebukes him, according to verse 40, don't you fear God, since you're under the same sentence of condemnation, and we deserve it, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds, but this man has done nothing.

He begins to recognize that the one that he was rejecting and refusing, that there he sees him in a whole different light.

He could no longer ridicule and oppose and reject.

God works in a strange and mysterious way within us.

Don't try to figure it out, just respond.

He works in a strange and mysterious way to give us a different picture of who Jesus is.

He removes the blindness.

C.S.

Lewis famously said in his book Mere Christianity, talking about what happens when people are confronted, truly and honestly confronted with the gospel.

C.S.

Lewis says, referring to Jesus, that there's some choices that a person has to make.

A man who was merely a man and said the things that Jesus said would not have been a great moral teacher.

Now, most people have some respect for Jesus, the great teacher, also for Mahatna Gandhi and for Mother Teresa and for various other people.

But Jesus could not just be a great moral teacher.

He would either be a lunatic, C.S.

Lewis says, on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg, a good British expression from the 1940s and 50s, somebody who's crazy thinks he's a poached egg.

He could be a lunatic.

It's possible that he could have been a lunatic.

He would either be a lunatic on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg, or he would be the devil of hell, because he would have known precisely that he was an imposter and was deceiving everyone around him.

You must make your choice.

Either this man was and is the son of God, or else a madman, or something worse.

You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit on him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God.

But let's not come with any patronizing nonsense about him just being a good moral teacher.

He did not leave that option open to us, and he did not intend to.

You see, as we're on a journey and beginning to see who Jesus is, then there's only a limited number of options.

And this man, Criminal B, clearly in this passage saw him in a whole different light and saw him as someone who himself did not deserve what the other two criminals were getting.

And then he turns and he says, Jesus, remember me when you come into the kingdom.

So perhaps you are having to admit that you're coming to see Jesus differently from the way you viewed him in the past.

I hope that's true.

You know, I keep finding Jesus different than I understood him to be a few years ago.

It's like, it's not like we get a perfect picture and we get it all straight.

I know less about God now than I knew 45 years ago.

Because I know more about God.

I understand so much less.

There's so much more that I don't understand.

I don't get him completely.

But God works in our lives and we begin to see Jesus very, very differently.

Perhaps that's part of your experience as well.

The next things that happened here to Criminal B is he saw himself much more for who he was.

When we begin to see God at work and we begin to see who Christ is, then that inherently changes our own image of ourselves.

Notice that he began to, Criminal B, he began to acknowledge the reality of his own spiritual state.

So he said, don't you fear God, you're under the same sentence of condemnation.

And we just, we are justly condemned, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds.

He was beginning to see who he really is in light of who he was beginning to see Jesus to be.

Instead of protesting his innocence, instead of wagging his finger at all the other things and all the hypocrites out there and all the things that they do wrong, you know, this horrible experience, you're wagging your finger at other people, and you see these four fingers wagging back at you.

You begin to realize that you're no different from those people that you're pointing out.

In fact, for me, there's three times as many reasons to be concerned about myself as there one is one of this I'm concerned about the other person.

He begins to see himself differently and make a distinction.

And he began to realize he's getting what he deserves.

That's a pretty sobering thought.

We get what we deserve.

We are guilty, guilty not only before Caesar, but before God.

We may do that now.

But there will come a day in which every knee will bow, and it may be on broken knees and stubbornly have to acknowledge he was right and I was wrong.

No one, no one will be able to raise their fist at God when they stand before him.

Because there is none who is righteous, no, not one, except for God Himself, except for Jesus.

We need to begin to see ourselves correctly.

There's a couple of little brief sentences which I came across that really struck me.

One of them says, There is only one person God has treated worse than he deserved.

And that he is with a capital H.

Jesus.

There's only one person, only one person who was treated worse than they deserve.

And you say, now wait a minute, I'm not as bad as so-and-so.

That's really not the point that you're not as bad as so-and-so.

The wages of sin is death.

We fall short.

There is none who is righteous, no, not one.

And we resist that thought.

We look at relative righteousness.

I'm not as bad as I used to be, or I'm not as bad as that person.

And that may be absolutely true, but relative righteousness is not what is demanded.

A holy God, righteousness.

Jesus never sinned, had no need for punishment, had no need and had no guilt.

And there's only one person who has been treated worse than he deserved.

Jesus.

That's a thought that's worth taking away and pondering about.

It's absolutely true.

Second of all, why do bad things happen to good people?

Well, that only happened once, and he volunteered.

It's a good question.

Why do bad things happen?

It's one of those mysteries.

I had more answers from that the day after I came to faith than I do today.

But the reality is bad things only happen to one good person.

Because there's only one person who is good, who did not deserve it.

Why do bad things happen to good people that only happened once, and he volunteered?

That's the cross, that's the gospel, that's the reality, and that's what Criminal B was coming to understand.

As God begins to work within us, the barriers have to go down.

And we have to recognize woe am I.

I didn't have very much theology the night I came to faith.

But my prayer, I don't even know if theologically trained that I now am.

I'm not even sure I knew enough to get saved.

Just happened that that happened.

All I knew is that I couldn't make it on my own.

And my prayer was really simple.

God, I can't do it alone.

I can't live the kind of life I want to live.

I didn't even realize that God had a different kind of life I wanted to live, but I needed God.

And so God helped me.

Now, there's no way in the world you can convince me that there wasn't a real experience of faith that night.

But at least I had to recognize my own utter inability.

Now there's so much more that I didn't understand, but that's kind of the minimum.

This man turned to Jesus, and in effect he said, I'm not gonna get into the kingdom without you.

Remember me when you come into your kingdom.

I don't like this.

I find it mildly offensive.

I find it mildly offensive related to you.

I find it highly offensive when I realize it relates to me.

It just happens to be true.

What then happens with this man, criminal B, and it happens to many people, they turn to Jesus for mercy.

Who Christ is, I begin to see who I am.

Woe is me, I am undone.

I can't do it.

And I don't deserve a bloomin' thing.

And so I cry out for that which I do not deserve, and that is mercy.

Mercy.

Mercy is getting what we don't deserve.

We don't talk much more, much anymore about mercy.

There's probably a not so subtle reason.

If we're asking for mercy, then we recognize that we need it.

And yet in our culture, in our society, we really think we can get along pretty much on our own, and even as believers, if we're not careful.

One of my least favorite favorite movies is Braveheart, Mel Gibson movie.

It's a coarse, hard, uh, difficult movie portraying William Wallace, the uh in the late 1200s, a Scottish patriot who rebelled against the oppressors of England in that day.

And he was guilty of treason.

And at the end of the movie, if you've seen it, he's taken in, he's already been been flogged, he's taken in on a cart, and he goes through the crowds, and the people throw garbage at him and spit on his face, and then he's put on the rack, and he is ultimately drawn and uh quartered and hung.

And as it was portrayed in that movie, the crowds were jeering and screaming and reviling.

Actually, that picture portrays quite well the crowds of Jerusalem that day.

One big difference.

William Wallace deserved it.

But what I find so interesting, and it's a haunting, haunting picture in my mind, as he is being racked in public, there is a change that comes over the crowd.

And you've just seen the faces of these men and women and children, and there was vengeance and hatred and scorn, and now somehow or another there's a change.

And there begins to be among the crowd a quiet but increasing call.

Mercy, mercy, mercy, mercy.

Give what he doesn't deserve.

A plea.

Give what he doesn't deserve.

William Wallace did not deserve a thing, and he deserved every, he didn't deserve mercy, he deserved precisely what he got.

Jesus did not deserve what he got.

You deserved what he got.

I deserve what he got.

He bore our sins and the punishment for our sins on the cross.

He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might receive the righteousness of God in him.

And we we we begin to call out, even in our foolish little unformed words, and all I could say was, I can't make it on my own.

And God translated that, I guess, into the reality of I can't stand, I can't be the person you wanted me to be.

Mercy, mercy, mercy.

That's what begins to happen.

Jesus promise then to us the best place, the best person, the best time.

Jesus had already told his followers, and of course now he's going to say, truly, I say to you today, you'll be with me in paradise.

He had already talked about paradise with his followers.

He said, I'm going away and preparing a place for you, and I will come again and take you to be where I am, that you may be with me always.

It's what we normally call heaven.

Heaven is a real place.

It's not just an airy, fairy, ethereal thing.

A real place, heaven ought to always be written with a capital H, just like Grand Forks is written with a capital G and a capital F.

It's a real, honest to goodness place.

I just don't write heaven anymore.

I'm just stubborn, except with a capital letter to remind me it's real.

It's a real place, a real destination.

The term paradise was used in that culture for the origin of it was royalty, a fabulously wealthy king.

The idea was that there was a courtyard or a garden that was prepared, that was walled, that was beautifully appointed, that was luscious, that was quiet, and he, the king, would every once in a while allow one of his subjects to be with him in that paradise, in that beautiful garden, and they would be together and there would be this fellowship.

That's the secular origins of the term paradise, and it portrays God has intended to have a relationship with us from the very beginning.

He walked with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the day, and then paradise was lost as a result of sin.

And then we read in the end of the Bible, Revelation 20 and 21, we read of a new heaven and a new earth, and the heavenly Jerusalem comes down out of heaven and resides on earth, and our Savior will be with us in paradise forever.

He will dwell with them, and they will be his people.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, no mourning, no crying, nor pain.

It's heaven, and it is the best place, and it is offered to those who turn to Jesus and begin to see him because God's at work in a different way.

Begin to see ourselves a different way, and to begin to cry out for mercy.

The best person will be there, and that's Christ.

Truly I say to you, I will be with you.

You will be with me.

There's a lot, an awful lot that the Bible says about heaven, a whole lot more than most people think.

There are wonderful, unbelievable, fantastic things for us.

I can't possibly go into it.

You'll probably think I'm like a poached egg.

But I think there's a mountain range in heaven that's just got my name on it.

That just resonates with me.

The heavens declaring the glory of God in that mountain range.

And if there's not a mountain range, a literal mountain range for me, there's something that's equivalent because when I'm in the mountains, there is something that stirs my soul and my heart is drawn Godward.

And as good as those mountain ranges, or whatever the divine equivalent will be, they pale in comparison to the best thing that is in heaven.

And the best thing that is in heaven is a person, and that is Jesus.

And he fellowships with us and he walks with us and he talks with us.

Just what the original intent was: fellowship, fellowship, fellowship.

The best person.

We were meant for a relationship.

It's not good to be alone.

That's true about marriage, that's true about human friendships, that's true about parent and children.

There's something, those are, we have deep needs for those things.

But all of those are but a foretaste of that which is to come, of the real relationship that we have been longing for all of our lives.

And so if God gives us a marriage and a happy marriage, then we have a taste of heaven, a little bit of taste of something to come.

But if we try to make our marriage that which fulfills us, when what that is meant for is not to fulfill us, but to draw us towards Christ, then we get ourselves in trouble, or we have children or friends or whatever.

And if we seek to find ultimate satisfaction in those kinds of relationships, they will not last, and they will, they're not meant to last.

They're but a picture of the real relationship for which you were created, for which I was created.

And that's a relationship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the divine community together in paradise, in heaven forever.

And that's what lies before us.

The best person is there.

The person who meets every possible need in our lives.

And the best time.

I just love the way he said it.

He said to him, Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.

You know, it's a good thing he said today because this man didn't have much time left.

I have no idea how much time left I have.

Or you.

I'm not scaring you, I'm not scaring me, it's just a reality.

The death rate is a hundred percent.

One Sunday morning I had a cerebral hemorrhage.

I should have died that morning.

Didn't happen to be my death day.

But I've got a death day waiting for me.

You do too.

Today is really the day, the acceptable day of the Lord.

If God has been working in your life and you know it, then there's no reason to put it off.

Today you can be with him in paradise.

It's a parable, it's a paradigm, it's a picture of what is offered to us.

I came across an old snippet of a poem, and I'll close with this, where the poet writes about a man who died unexpectedly as he was thrown from a horse and trampled under the hooves of the horse.

The poet puts these words in this man's mouth.

Between the stirrup and the ground, in an instant, no longer than it took for him to fall out of the saddle and hit the ground, between the stirrup and the ground, mercy I sought, and mercy I found.

Mercy.

Mercy.

I would urge you, today of all days, seek mercy from God.

Between the stirrup and the ground.

You don't know if you're going to make it home or not.

Why put it on?

Mercy.

Mercy.

Would you pray with me?

Heavenly Father, we know so little of your work in our lives, really.

But I know you have worked deeply and truly in the lives of, no doubt, the vast majority of people here.

And Father, you set us on a journey, and that journey will not be complete until we get to heaven.

But those of us who have trusted you are forever changed.

We're no longer who we were, we're not yet who we will be.

And we long for the day that we will be what we could be and we shall be what we should be.

We long for that.

Our hearts are warm towards you.

And we wrestle with sin and we make all kinds of mistakes and we fail and we disappoint ourselves and we disappoint you.

But mercy we have sought, and mercy we have found through you.

Father, I pray that on this Easter Sunday, those of us who understand what that means would not go away unmoved by your patience and your love and your mercy.

And Father, there's possibly some people here today in whom you are working and they recognize that.

They don't completely understand the ways that you work, but they're not who they were.

They're seeing you differently, they see themselves differently.

And Father, I would simply, without any, without any other motive, just say, Lord, may they seek mercy now and find mercy now in you.

Forgive us our sins.

We recognize our utter desperation and failure, and we turn to you in faith in Christ by the gracious work that you are doing in our lives.

O Lord, be merciful to us sinners.

I pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, let me ask you to stand for the benediction.

On this of all Sundays, I can say with joy and confidence to you, go into the world in peace.

Go into the world in peace.

Have courage.

Hold on to that which is good and honor all men.

Strengthen the fainthearted.

Support the weak.

Help the suffering.

Restore the grieving and comfort the grieving.

Love and serve.

Love and serve Christ.

And may his blessing be upon us.

May his blessing this the Lord's day be upon us.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You're dismissed.