Loved to Death and Back: Why You Should Care about a 2,000 Year Old Empty Tomb (John 20:1-18) | Pastor PJ Berner

We live in an information saturated society.

Uh, there are an average of about 330 billion with a b

email sent every single day.

You're like, that's my inbox.

I've got all 333 billion of them.

Some of you have the badge that probably reads a number close to that

sitting on your phones right now.

And the rest of us, uh, Twitch because of that, because you

don't clear out your, your emails.

Three 30 billion emails every single day.

2.5

billion Facebook posts, 3.5

billion Snapchat snaps, 24 billion text messages, 500 million tweets posted.

That's a lot of information.

Most of it totally pointless.

Uh, most of it is, is completely meaningless.

I wonder if you ever get information fatigue.

I.

Where you just feel like there's so much information bombarding

you on a daily basis that you're sitting there thinking to yourself,

man, I just, I, I'm done with it.

I just wanna turn it all off.

The danger in living in such an info heavy age is just that information

fatigue that can cause us to miss the really important stuff that gets lost

in, in all of the other 330 billion emails that get sent every day.

Have you ever thrown out a check with the junk mail?

Because you got it confused.

There was just so much, and, and you, you ended up just tossing

it all in the trash and later on you're going, wait, wait a minute.

Where did that check go?

And, and you realize, oh man, I, I, I threw something

valuable out with the junk.

Well, this morning I wanna suggest to you that you've got an opportunity

to hear the most important information you will ever know.

And, and, and I'm, I'm glad we're here this morning and, and I hope

and pray that your devices, your phones, your things like that are,

are, are silenced off, put away.

Because this is information that that needs to not get lost amongst all

of the other junk that's out there.

It's not information that comes from, from my brain, my mind, my intellect.

It's information that comes from God's word, and it is undoubtedly the most

significant and important information you could ever, ever, ever know or hear.

Church.

I'm gonna ask you to do a job this morning.

Your job this morning here is to listen.

And to follow along and to track with the word of God.

And in the end, to decide what are you gonna do about Jesus?

What are you gonna do about Jesus?

Some of you here have already made that decision.

You've surrendered your life and faith and repentance to Jesus as your Lord

and Savior, and you're here to, to celebrate your resurrected savior.

And this morning can be an encouragement to you, I hope, and I pray.

And.

To go back over the, the, the crucial elements of our faith,

the foundation of our faith, the very basis of why we gather.

The thing that Paul said, if this isn't here, then we're just wasting our time.

And so Christians this morning is, is for us to be encouraged

as we look at this account from John's Gospel in John chapter 20.

John 20 · chapter mention

But I also wanna address you here this morning, who may only

darken the doors twice a year.

Maybe you're here because you've got a family member who invited you and you're

kind enough that you didn't wanna say no.

And so you're here, but you'd really rather be anywhere else.

Maybe you're here this morning and, and you would say, man,

I, I, I am not a, a Christian.

I'm a Hindu, I'm a Muslim, I'm a Buddhist, I'm an atheist.

I wanna suggest to you that this morning is for you as well, in, in fact, what you

will hear this morning is more important than any other shred of information

you have ever heard before, ever known.

What you're gonna hear this morning is truth In contrast to the countless other

books that are written out there that claim to have the corner on truth, the

Bible truly does unapologetically have the corner on truth, and it's all based upon

what we're gonna look at this morning, which is an empty tomb in arisen Savior.

So take your Bibles and open up to John Chapter 20.

John 20 · chapter mention

John chapter 20.

John 20 · chapter mention

Here we come to the empty tomb, which is again the crux of Christianity.

The, the cross is immensely significant, but without the empty

tomb, the cross does nothing.

The empty tomb is the validation of the payment made on the cross.

The, the empty tomb is, is God's stamp on the receipt in your life,

in my life, as Christians saying payment accepted credit applied.

The empty tomb is the validation that says that Jesus was truly the sinless

one, and death could not help hold him because the wages of sin is death.

And if there is no sin, then death has no claim.

And so we come to John's gospel in John chapter 20, and it says this in verse one.

John 20 · chapter mention

Now, on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while

it was still dark and saw the stone had been taken away from the tomb.

So the scene here is such that this is now Sunday morning.

Jesus was crucified on a Friday night, the day of preparation, the day of preparation

for the Sabbath, which was Saturday.

And so all day Saturday, Jesus has laid in the tomb, wrapped in the

burial cloths, prepared initially by Joseph Ofia and Nicodemus.

You'll remember those were the two that took him down from the cross,

wrapped him in the cloths in 75 pounds of spices as it records in John 19,

and then they laid him in Joseph's tomb and rolled the stone across.

Now the job of preparing him for Intunement intunement was not yet.

Accomplished.

And so that's why Mary and and Mark's gospel actually reports that it wasn't

just Mary Magdalene, but it was also Mary, the mother of James and Ome.

That's why they come to the tomb, bringing more spices.

They're there to finish the job.

But it says, when Mary came to the tomb, she saw that the stone

had been taken away from the tomb.

So verse two, she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one

whom Jesus loved, and said to them, they've taken the Lord out of the tomb,

and we don't know where they've laid him.

So here you have Mary who sees the stone rolled away and sees

enough inside the tomb to realize that the body's not there anymore.

Her.

And so she runs back to Simon Peter and to the disciple whom Jesus loved.

That's John, that's our author.

Uh, John referred to himself as the one whom Jesus loved, and, and,

and that wasn't a measure of, of pride or arrogance on his part.

That's John doing that because John was overwhelmed by the

reality that Jesus would love him.

And so John was saying, this is the most significant thing.

The most important thing about me is the fact that Jesus loves me.

And so when John wrote about himself in his gospel, he said,

I'm the one whom Jesus loved.

And so Mary runs to James to, to Peter rather, and to John, and

she tells him what she thinks.

At that point, they've taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we

don't know where they've laid him.

Verse three.

So Peter went out with the other disciple that is with John, and

they were going toward the tomb, both of them running together.

Just picture this for a moment, if you will, Peter and John running through

the streets of Jerusalem, trying to get outside the city to get to the

garden where the tomb was nearby.

Gha, where Jesus had been crucified.

They're sprinting, they're running and, and John makes the subtle point here that

he was a little bit faster than Peter was.

He says they, they were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter,

which I love that John writes that because John was writing his gospel, probably

80 to 90 ad Peter's been dead for 20 years, so this is an extra shot at Peter.

Like Peter's not even there to be able to defend himself with John at this point.

John's like I was faster, just, just trust me.

I was faster.

Anyways, verse five, John gets there and it says, in stooping in to look.

He saw the grave clothes, the linen claws lying there, but John did not go in.

But here comes Peter, the, the disciple with the foot shaped mouth, the disciple

who just acts before he thinks who chopped off mount his ear in the garden.

And Peter just flies by John and goes in the tomb.

'cause he wants to get a front row, first person, look at what is going on.

And so Peter gets into the tomb and what does he find?

He finds indeed, yes.

The linen claws lying there.

And also John notes the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not

lying with the other linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself.

Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first John also

went in and saw and believed for as yet they did not to this point.

Before this, they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead.

Then the disciples, those two went back to their homes.

I think John includes, our author, includes this note about the face cloth

being folded up neatly there because he's showing us that there was at least

some tangible evidence there to point to the reality of the resurrection.

Because if these had just been grave robbers, if these had just been people

nefariously acting to desecrate the body of Christ, th they're not gonna

take the facecloth and fold it up neatly and set it to the side, they're

gonna find the facecloth jumbled up with all the rest of the cloths.

But John sees the face cloth.

Peter sees the face cloth, and John at least believes three people

in our text come to an empty tomb and all three of them have to do

something with the empty tomb Church.

All of us likewise have to come to an empty tomb this morning and decide

what to do with the empty tomb.

Point number one is just that this morning it's this, decide what to do.

About an empty tomb.

Mary and Peter and John, none of them went to the tomb expecting to find it empty.

Why?

Because dead people don't come back to life.

It doesn't happen.

If you go to a graveyard today, a cemetery today, you can stand there all day long.

You're not gonna see anybody come up out of the ground.

In fact, for the disciples, the only person they had known

or seen come out of a tomb.

Was Lazarus and he came outta the tomb because Jesus called him outta the tomb.

Well, what do you do when Jesus is the one in the tomb?

And so they're going there defeated, they're going there, broken, they're

going there, realizing this is over, and, and we've lost all hope.

And what they do is they come and they find instead an empty tomb.

There are times that we will encounter evidence that forces us to act.

Uh, back in California, my wife and I lived in a house that was built

back in the, the seventies and, and, uh, it was one of those homes

that you're like, I'm pretty sure there's lead paint and it's vested

us in here, but it's something that's affordable and so we're gonna rent it.

That house had a lot of water damage.

Anywhere you looked, you'd look at the ceiling and, and you'd

see that the brown discoloration on the ceiling or, or whatever.

And, and, and there were a lot of them that we looked at and were

like, that's probably been there for the last four or five decades.

It's, it's easily seen four presidents since, uh, that that leak happened.

But then there were other times, because it was an old house, we would

be there and we would notice that there was new evidence of water damage.

That is evidence that requires an action.

We're not gonna look at the, the new evidence of, of water damage and think

to ourselves, oh, isn't that nice?

Look, there's, there's a leak and move on with our life.

There are things that we encounter in life that require us to do something

with that, that information, that knowledge, that that evidence.

And the cross and the empty tomb specifically.

The empty tomb is something that requires us to do something with this evidence.

I, I understand not everybody believes in the empty tomb.

In fact, here's an atheist.

I, I watched a YouTube video from this person earlier this week, and he

said this, it, it stretches credulity the ability to believe, to believe

that the most amazing miracle in history witnessed by hundreds would

go completely unmentioned by all contemporary writers and leave no trace.

In the historical record, outside the late biased secondhand accounts written

by early Christians with a vested interest in promoting belief in Jesus' divinity.

Okay, that statement reveals more about this man's worldview

than it does provide a rational argument against the resurrection.

He calls the accounts that we have late biased secondhand account.

Uh, that would be these Matthew, mark, Luke, and John.

There's strong evidence that these four gospels were all written before

the end of the first century ad Jesus, we believe, was crucified

somewhere between 30 and 33 ad.

And so if you look at the dates on the screen, you'll see Matthew 50 to

70, mark 50 to 70, Luke 60 to 62 in.

In fact, we could even argue Mark earlier, because Mark has purportedly

the, the, uh, the, the writer for Peter that when we read the gospel of Mark,

we're actually reading Peter's account of what took place in Jesus' life.

Well, Peter was martyred under the noonan persecution in the sixties ad so we

can bump markup even earlier as well.

So we're dealing with a, a matter of at most 20 to 30 years between the

events of the cross and the empty tomb and the writing of these gospels.

And, and that factors in for quite a few reasons.

And one of the reasons being, uh, these were being produced and written

during the time when there were plenty of eyewitnesses around that could

have said, none of this happened.

We're gonna get into more of that in just a moment.

But besides these four gospels, we also have Paul's testimony in one

Corinthians chapter 15, where he says, I delivered to you of first importance.

What I also received, that Christ Jesus died on the cross for our sins in

accordance with the scriptures that he was buried in accordance with the scriptures,

and that he rose again three to days later in accordance with the scriptures.

When Paul says, I delivered to you, that which I received, and then he

quotes that it's likely an early.

Church Creed dating from about one to five years post Resurrection, that Paul is

delivering this C Credle statement in one Corinthians chapter 15, that includes the

confession of the resurrection of Jesus.

Even the critics that are not friends of Christianity will at least admit that

Jesus Christ was a historical figure.

There is no more, at least amongst most scholars that are credible today,

there's no more denying, and I'm not just talking Christian scholars here.

I'm talking those that are not believers as well.

There there's really no denying anymore the historicity of the man, Jesus Christ.

Here's Albert Schweitzer, a historical critic of the New Testament.

He's not a friend of of Christ.

He is not a follower of Jesus.

He writes this, it must be admitted of Jesus.

That there are few characters of antiquity about whom we possess so much

indubitably, historical information of whom we have so many authentic discourses.

Y'all.

This is not a Christian writing this and he's saying of Jesus.

He's one of the most well attested historical figures that has ever lived.

Another man, also not a friend of Jesus, Bart Airman.

Bart Airman says this, the claim that Jesus was made up falters on every ground.

Listen, Bart Airman would love to be able to say to us, Jesus Christ was made up.

And so these men are admitting the historicity of Jesus.

Part of the reason for that is because there is sources.

There are sources outside of the biblical accounts that point

to the historicity of Jesus.

Josephus was a Jewish historian and he was writing in the first

Century ad and mentions Christ and the Crucifixion and Pontius Pilate.

You've got, besides Joseph Josephus, you've got Pliny, the younger first

century Roman politician, Pliny the younger references, Christ's

followers worshiping him as a God.

Besides Pliny, the younger, you've got Tacitus, again, a first century historian.

This time a Roman historian.

Tacitus refers also to Jesus's crucifixion.

You've got a man named Thais who is a first century Greek historian.

Dallas describes strange happenings in Judea on the date of Jesus's crucifixion.

He was in the region of Judea and reports that there were strange

events, strange happenings with the weather and the atmosphere.

During Jesus' crucifixion, you have Lucian.

Lucian was a second century Greek rhetorician.

A satirist, and he says that Jesus died on the cross.

And then you've got a man named Celsius who was a second

century Greek philosopher.

Who speaks of Jesus as a miracle worker.

And so y'all, this is why it's, it doesn't hold water for you to sit

here this morning and say, well, Jesus is just a fairytale character.

He's made up.

People don't believe that with any degree of academic integrity

anymore, the testimony to the historicity of Jesus is well intact.

The question simply becomes, what do we do with the empty tomb?

And as Christians, maybe we need to ask it, do we need to fight this battle?

Is it worth it?

And I would say.

The apostle Paul would say 100% yes.

He writes this in one Corinthians 15 verses 12 all the way through 19.

Uh, 12 through 15.

First, he says, now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead,

how can some of you say There's no resurrection of the dead?

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ

has been raised in Our preaching is vain and your faith is vain.

We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God, that

he raised Christ whom he did not raise.

If it is true that the dead are not raised.

For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.

And here's the kicker.

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile.

You're wasting your time and you're still in your sins.

And those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

If in Christ we have hope in this life, only we of all people are most

to be pitied, do we have to hold fast to the resurrection of Jesus?

100%, absolutely.

Yes.

It is a non-negotiable for us to look at the empty tomb and come to terms with it.

But maybe you're there this morning, you're saying, I,

I do pity you Christians.

Maybe you look at us and you shake your heads that we would believe

and, and, and believe and hold fast to a book that's equally as

old and outdated as these beliefs.

You wonder why we would choose to give up Sunday mornings and adhere to a set of

morals that the rest of the world looks at as outdated, that the world would

say we've evolved beyond those things.

If that's you this morning, I, I just invite you to just track with me.

Just track with me for just a moment.

And Christians, let's remember why the empty tomb is, is

reliable and trustworthy.

There, there are some realities that virtually, again, all scholars

will hold fast to a man named Gary Habermas is one of the leading

scholars on the resurrection.

He examined 1400 critical scholars, again, not 1400 pastors, not 1400,

uh, little old ladies from church.

1400 critical scholars.

He consulted and came up with a a list of facts that are agreed

upon by these 1400 scholars.

Okay?

Number one, Jesus died by crucifixion.

Scholars will admit and agree with that.

They'll look back to TAUs.

They'll look back to Josephus, and they'll acknowledge, yes, okay.

Jesus Christ was a historical figure that was indeed crucified.

Number two, that he was buried in a tomb following his death.

That's referenced again by Josephus.

Number three, that that tomb, that Jesus was buried and was indeed discovered

to be empty shortly after his burial.

That's a, a fact that is known and admitted because

the body was never produced.

Whether you wanna believe in this or not, you have to come to terms

with the fact that nobody has ever said, here's the body of Jesus.

Number four, his followers had experiences that they believed were

appearances of the resurrected Jesus.

That there are people that say, we saw Jesus risen from the dead.

Scholars will agree that his followers.

Purported and admitted and said they saw Jesus resurrected from the dead.

They may not believe that they did see them, but they believe that his

followers purported that they saw them.

Number five, these lives of these disciples, these followers were radically

transformed due to these circumstances.

In fact, many of his original followers died for their eyewitness claims of

having seen the resurrected Christ.

And you may say, okay, but there are plenty of people who

are religious fanatics that will die for their faith today.

True.

They will die for what they have been taught, die for what they

believe, but they're not dying for their eyewitness accounts.

And that separates things.

When the sword is put to the neck and said, recant, and you know that

what you're promoting is alive, eventually you're gonna tap out.

They died horrific deaths, many of them for their accounts of having

seen the resurrected, correct.

Six.

The resurrection emerged very early in church history as a tenet of Christianity.

In fact it, it emerged concurrent with the church.

You read the book of Acts, and the Book of Acts is all about the

witnesses that went out and they were witnessing to the resurrected Christ.

And so there wasn't a gap between the founding of the church and when the

resurrection emerged as a core doctrine.

Seventh, the launch point for the message of the resurrection

of Jesus was Jerusalem, where all of these things took place.

If you're gonna launch a religion based on a fact that you know is

not true, why launch it in the place that's teaming with eyewitnesses?

And so the fact that they launched from Jerusalem, where plenty of people

could have said, this is the tomb roll, the stone, there's the body.

Or it could have said this didn't happen, and yet it launches from

Jerusalem and explodes on the scene.

Eighth, the disciples shifted their day of worship away from the Sabbath.

These are Jews, right?

The Old Testament command.

Honor the Sabbath, keep the Sabbath holy.

What would cause them to shift the Sabbath from Saturday to now celebrating

it on Sunday, other than they were remembering the day that Christ rose

from the dead and walked out the grave.

Ninth, Jesus brother James, his own brother, his half brother

James, went from a skeptic, one who rejected Christ to a disciple after

he believed and saw the risen Jesus.

And then finally, Paul, the Apostle Paul was converted after

an experience in which he reported having seen the resurrected Jesus.

These are are facts that scholars will agree upon.

The question is, what do we do with them?

What's the conclusion?

How do we interpret the evidence?

And so this morning, I wanna suggest to you to decide what

to do about the empty tomb.

And the thing that I believe makes the most sense is that

the tomb was empty because Jesus walked out never to enter again.

And if you say, well, that's preposterous.

Nobody rises from the dead, I would give that to you.

But nobody is like Jesus, the God man, perfectly sinless, died on the

cross for your sins and rose again.

From the gray, there's other things that we could look at, like

the rapid growth of the church.

It begins with a, a small band of uneducated men and women and begins

to explode so much so that it draws the ire and the persecution from Rome.

Or how about the fact that if this was an invented story, as we've seen

in John's gospel, the first people to the tomb were a group of women.

And in this time, the testimony of women was not admissible in the courts.

And so if you're inventing something, you're not gonna

invent something where the first eyewitnesses are a group of women.

You're gonna have the, the, the, the men show up because their

witnesses gonna hold more weight.

Or how do we deal with the fact that Peter goes from denying Jesus three times in

that courtyard outside of Caiaphas home?

To standing up in front of the Jews in Acts chapter two saying this, Jesus, you

crucified by the hands of lawless men.

Repent and believe in him.

How do we account from why?

Why Saul of Tarsus would go from persecuting and killing Christians to

planting churches and discipling them?

Something significant happened with the empty tomb, and the evidence

stacks up in favor of the fact that Jesus walked out never to enter again.

And so this morning I wanna invite you to decide what to do about the empty tomb.

The resurrection is not a myth, but reliable, historical, verifiable fact.

Peter and John go away believing, but what about Mary?

Pick back up in the text in verse 11.

Verse 11 says, but Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept, she

stooped and looked into the tomb and she saw two angels in white sitting

where the body of Jesus had laid one at the head and one at the feet.

And they said to her woman, why are you weeping?

And she said to them, they have taken away my Lord, and I don't

know where they've laid him.

Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she

did not know that it was Jesus.

Jesus said to her woman, why are you weeping?

Whom are you seeking?

Supposing him to be the gardener?

She said to him, sir, if you've carried him away, tell me where you've laid

him, and I will come and take him away.

I love that John includes this for us.

God is a patient God.

Not everybody is like Peter and John when it comes to the gospel, when

it comes to God, when it comes to Christianity, when it comes to Jesus.

There are plenty of people just like Mary, plenty of people who struggle to

wrap their minds around and believe in the empty tomb, in the resurrected Jesus.

And so I love that John puts this here.

I.

Because Mary comes and, and she's weeping.

She's been crying probably since she ran back to get Peter and John, and now she

comes back, 'cause Peter and John have already left and she makes her way back

and she stoops and looks inside the tomb.

And there's these two angels that are there.

And notice in the text that they're there for Mary, because they weren't

there for Peter and John, they're there for Mary to meet her, inner

her sorrow, to meet her in her grief.

And they say, why are you weeping?

And Mary says, they've taken away my Lord and I don't know where they've laid him.

Same message that she told to Peter and John, a, a, a.

And then she turns around and there's a man that's standing

there and it's Jesus, John tells us, but she doesn't recognize him.

There could be a couple reasons for that.

If Mary had gone down into the tomb at this point, she would've been

below the the level of the ground.

So looking back out from the tomb, she would've been looking up.

And so perhaps she would've only seen Jesus from the

chest down at at this point.

That's a possibility.

Otherwise, if she hasn't gone into the tomb, she's bleary-eyed from

weeping over the fact that Jesus has been stolen, that the body is gone.

Her beloved rabbi, her beloved teacher.

She doesn't know where they've taken the body.

And so maybe perhaps she's so bleary eyed, she can't make

out who it is standing there.

And I would suggest to you third, she wasn't expecting to see him in her eyes.

In her mind, Jesus is dead.

And so she meets Jesus and, and what I love here is that Jesus doesn't

look at Mary and say, Mary, why can't you be like Peter and John?

Jesus doesn't look at Mary and be like, Mary, why are you so dense?

Jesus looks at Mary and lovingly, patiently, he says,

woman, why are you weeping?

Whom are you seeking?

Question.

Did Jesus know why she was crying and who she was seeking?

Absolutely he did.

But in his patience, in his love, Jesus is meeting Mary where she's at, and he's

drawing her patiently into the realization of who it is that stands in front of her.

Church.

God does that with us.

God delights to do that with the unbeliever.

God delights to be patient with each and every one of us.

And if we are honest with ourselves, every single person in this room,

whether you've been a believer for decades or you have never thought about

becoming a Christian, you have been a recipient and a beneficiary of the

patience of a loving and kind God, and that patience is there for a purpose.

Second point this morning, along those lines is that realize the

purpose of God's patience towards you.

Realize the purpose of God's patience towards you.

Mary's weeping, she's doubtful, she's skeptical, she's in fact unbelieving

at this point, and Jesus is so tender and patient with his interaction

with her woman, why are you weeping?

Whom are you seeking?

If you're a parent, you can appreciate patience, right?

If you're a child, you should appreciate patience.

No matter where you are this morning, Christian or not.

Again, you have benefited from the patience of God more than you know,

your unbelief, your sin, your doubt.

All of this God has overlooked to this point in time being patient with you

to bring you to this moment, to bring you here this morning to ask yourself,

what are you going to do with Jesus?

Christian this morning.

God's patience is meant to lead you into a deeper devotion to him, to be reminded

that he's still patient with our doubts.

He's still patient with our fears.

He's still patient with our anxieties.

He's still patient with us as we sin and, and just like the father in

the garden when Adam had sinned, was walking in the garden and called out.

Adam, where are you?

Did God know where Adam was in that moment?

Yeah.

But what was he doing?

He was beckoning Adam out into the place that Adam needed to

be, which is into confession, into the light, into repentance.

And God patiently does that.

Still today with us, Christians patiently beckons us into repentance.

Beck beckons us into a deeper love, a deeper devotion to him.

And so as Christians, we can appreciate the patience of the Lord.

But if you're here this morning and you are not a Christian, I want to talk to

you again specifically about this idea.

That God has been patient with you to this point in time, and he's been patient with

you to this point in time for a purpose.

Romans chapter two, verse four.

Paul says this of God.

Paul says, do you presume upon the riches of his kindness and his forbearance

and his patience, not knowing that that kindness, God's kindness is

meant to lead you to repentance?

Or Peter says in second Peter chapter three, verse nine, this, he says, the

Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise.

That is his promise to return.

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but

is patient towards you, not wishing that any should re should perish.

Notice that and read that again, that God does not wish that any should perish.

So if you were here this morning as somebody who would say, I'm not a

Christian, God does not want you to leave this morning in that same position.

That the desire of God this morning for you and his patience to this point in

your life has been fully met and fully intended to bring you today to the point

of repenting from your sins and putting your trust in Jesus so that you will leave

this morning as one that will not perish.

He does not wish that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

If you're here this morning and you would say, I, I'm, I'm not a Christian.

God has been patient with you to bring you to this moment today.

To decide today what to do about Jesus, what to do with the empty

tomb, and what to do with God's patience for you this morning.

There is no straddling the fence.

There's no kicking a can.

Further down a road, you may not live to fully walk.

There's no neutral when it comes to the God of Christianity.

In Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, there is either

surrender or there's animosity.

And this morning, the message for you is that Jesus Christ died on

the cross for your sins so that you can be forgiven by a holy God.

And he's risen from the dead this morning so that you can live with him forever.

And so I'm asking you this morning, and I don't know who you are, but I

trust in a room like this that there are those in this room who have not

yet surrendered their lives to Christ.

I'm asking you this morning, will you realize that the patience

of God has brought you here this morning to do just that?

To believe in Jesus.

You say, what all?

What else do I have to do?

What, what do I have to bring to the table?

Nothing.

You have to believe that Jesus Christ, 2000 years ago, died on the cross

for your sins so that your payment has been paid by him so that God

could declare you righteous with his righteousness so that you no, no, no

longer are are guilty for your sins.

That 2000 years ago, Jesus died on the cross for your sin so

that you can be forgiven and that he rose again from the dead.

What we celebrate this morning so that you will one day also

rise to live with him forever.

That's what his patience is calling you to this morning.

But the danger is, and I have to do the full diligence here to to remind you

that his patience is not an unending patience, and his patience may run out.

In Romans two, five, right after saying that his patience is meant to lead you

to repentance, Paul said this, but if you have a hard and imp penitent, a heart be

warned for, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's

righteous judgment will be revealed.

There's a day coming when God's righteous judgment will be revealed

against the lost, and if you have not bowed the knee at that point

it will be too late and in second.

Peter three verse 10, right after saying that God does not wish

that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

He talks about this same day, he says, but the day of the Lord will come and it will

come like a thief, and the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly

bodies will be burned up and dissolved.

And the earth and the works done on will be exposed.

So what that means is today is the day of salvation.

Not tomorrow, not when you're older.

Not next time, not next Easter today.

Today is the day to do business with God.

Today is the day to have this transaction between you and God.

As you sit here this morning, if you are not a follower of Jesus, can I tell you,

you are here this morning not to be in the cross hairs of his wrath, but to be in the

cross hairs of his grace and his mercy.

By hearing that you can repent from your sins and trust Jesus and have all of your

sins forgiven, past, present, and future, and you can leave this morning, know that

you will rise again to live with Jesus.

And that that is the offer here this morning by God for you and

his patience has brought you to this point for that purpose.

Charles Spurgeon, an old pastor, said this, no one in hell can say,

I came to Christ and he rejected me.

Come to Christ this morning today.

Make it today.

Stop saying it's gonna be later.

Stop coming up with the excuses as to why not surrender to Christ

today, be reconciled to God today.

I love his patience towards Mary because he's been patient

like that towards all of us.

Look at verse 16.

Look, Jesus said to her, Mary, and she turned and said to him, an

Aramaic rabbi, which means teacher.

And Jesus said to her, do not clinging to me for I have not yet ascended

to the Father, but go to my what?

What's the next word there?

Go to my.

My brothers, who are the brothers?

They're the ones that abandoned him.

They're the ones that weren't there at the cross.

This is Peter, who denied him three times.

Talk about a patient, God.

He says, go to my brothers.

Go to my brothers and tell them I'm ascending.

My father, your fa and your Father.

To my God and your God.

And Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I've seen the Lord, and

that he had said these things to her.

I love how Jesus reveals himself to Mary.

It's different, the road to AMAs.

Jesus encounters the two disciples and they don't know who he is, right?

He walks up to them, why so glum chums.

And they're going, don't you know Jesus, that Jesus was crucified?

Don't you get that?

And Jesus launches into one of the greatest sermons ever preached, where

he goes through the whole Old Testament, says, look at all the things that

that prophesied about my crucifixion.

And that's how he reveals himself to those two on the road to Emmaus.

But what does he do for Mary?

He speaks her name,

y'all.

The God of Christianity is a personal God.

The God of Christianity is a God who knows every name in this room.

The God of Christianity is Jesus who looks at Mary, one

of his most devoted followers.

Jesus had earlier cast out seven demons from Mary.

And she had pledged her life to follow Jesus.

From that point forward, she was at the cross as Jesus hung dying,

and here she is in the garden tomb.

She doesn't recognize him, and Jesus in love and compassion moves towards

her and speaks her name and it's hearing that name, a name that she

had heard him speak time and time and time before that the light bulb goes

off from Mary and she knows who he is.

Mary.

And she turns and she says, rabbi, teacher, Lord, the gospel of John says

in in John chapter 10, verse four, Jesus says that when he is brought

John 10 · chapter mention

out his own, he goes before him.

And the she follow him for they know his voice.

And here we see that with Mary.

He knows.

She knows his voice, but right before that it says they know his voice

because he calls his own sheep by name.

And that's what Jesus does here with Mary and in church.

Here's what I wanna encourage you with.

If you're in Christ, you have responded because God has called you by name.

And if you're here this morning and you're not in Christ, I wanna let

you know this morning that God is beckoning you this morning by name.

I may not know your name.

But the God of this universe knows your name.

Jesus knows your name, and he wants to make sure that your name

is gonna be in the Lamb's book of life before all is said and done.

And I want you to know this morning that you can guarantee that that's

reality before you walk out those doors.

Third and final point this morning is this.

Don't leave without your name in the Lamb's book of life.

Don't leave without your name.

In the Lamb's book of life, there was a song back in the nineties.

Uh, that was super popular.

I used to sing it in the church, and, and I think the, the intention is there.

I think it goes a little bit too far.

The, the line of the song that the chorus was like this.

I'm not gonna sing it for you.

Uh, crucified, laid behind a stone.

You lived to die, rejected and alone like a rose trampled on the ground.

You took the fall and thought of me.

What's the next two lines?

Those of you es Christians.

Above all, above all.

Eh, wrong.

The, the reason why that goes too far is that Jesus wasn't on the

cross thinking of us above all, but it doesn't mean that he was on the

cross not thinking of us at all.

Hebrew says that Jesus despised the shame and endured the cross for

the joy that was set before him.

Isaiah says in Isaiah 53 that part of the joy that was set before him

was his knowledge that he would make many to be accounted righteous.

In other words, part of the joy of the cross was Jesus, knowing that

you would be forgiven because of the work that he was doing on the cross.

So he wasn't thinking of you above all, but it doesn't mean that he

wasn't thinking of you at all.

He was.

And this morning I'm telling you that he's here becking you, calling

you by your name to follow him.

John ten three.

Again, the sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name.

Jesus died for Mary Magdalene and for Peter, and for John, and for Philip,

and for James, and for Paul, and for Timothy, and for you and for me.

We have a God who knows us so well.

He knows the number of hairs on our head.

That's Luke 12 seven.

God knows the number of hairs on your head.

It's easier math for some than others.

It's not fair.

I apologize for that.

He not only knows that he knows the number of days that we're gonna live.

Psalm 1 39 verse 16.

Psalm 1 39 verse 16.

It says, God knows the number of days you are gonna live.

Let me just be honest with us and blunt with us.

Krishna doesn't know you.

Buddha doesn't know you.

Muhammad doesn't know you.

Allah doesn't know you.

Your favorite YouTube atheist doesn't know you, but the God of the

known universe knows you by name.

He created you.

And this morning he's beckoning you personally and calling you this

morning to come to faith in Jesus.

Listen, y'all, my call may be general, but God's call is personal.

He's calling you to leave off sin and shame, and guilt, and the

futility of pursuing satisfaction in this world and come to find peace.

And forgiveness and hope and true satisfaction in the only place that it

can be found, and that is in surrender to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

And the offer is there this morning.

It's open, it's free, it's yours if you'll repent from your sins

and put your trust in Jesus.

Amen.

Jesus wants you to leave knowing your name is in the book of life and not

gonna be in the book of judgment.

Undoubtedly, the Bible tells me.

So he wants you to deal with the empty tomb.

He wants you to realize the purpose of his patience, and he wants you to do all

of that and come to the realization that if you repent from your sins and put

your trust in Jesus, then you will know him as your personal Lord and Savior.

And in the end, your name will be in the Book of life.

And we know that from scripture.

It's the book of life that will be the arbiter.

Between an eternity with the Lord or an eternity in hell in the

presence of his wrath and judgment.

And rather than sitting here going, well, that doesn't seem like a kind God.

I want you to see the kindness of God is that the offer is free to anyone and

everyone to say, come believe in Jesus.

Repent from your sins and put your, your trust in him.

The only thing keeping you from heaven this morning is you

and I just want why.

For what?

We have a resurrected savior who loved you to the point of dying on the cross for

your sins, and he has risen from the dead.

The body's not there for 2000 years.

Plenty of people who hate God have been looking for the body of Jesus.

Guess what?

They found nothing.

'cause he's not there.

Why do you look for the, the living among the dead?

He has risen just as he told you.

And so if you're here this morning and you have not come to Christ, if

you have not done that, why not today

after the service and I'm about to wrap up here, I'll be in the back

and Pastor Rod will be in the back.

I, I, if you wanna do business with Jesus, come find one of us.

I, I will gladly stop whatever I'm doing and have that conversation with you.

Because this is the most important information.

Uh, you're about to step in tomorrow, again to all 330 billion emails and 24

billion texts, and, and you're about to step into all the noise of the world.

And this will be a blip on the radar unless today becomes that day, today

becomes that day where you become born again because you repent from

your sins and you put your trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

And so I'm pleading with you.

I'm beckoning you today.

Be reconciled to God,

be reconciled to God.

He delights to save, and he says in His word, today is the day of salvation.

And I fully believe that today is the day of salvation.

By the nature of the fact that you're here today, God has put you in the path

of the gospel to repent and believe.

And so lay aside whatever your objection is

and be born again today.

The only thing keeping you from heaven this morning is you.

For those that are saved, those that are in Christ, this is

the greatest news that we know.

This is still the greatest information we could ever hear, and it's the

information that he has risen.

He has risen deed.

Will you stand with me as I pray?