Sermon

Easter Sunday 2026 - Come and See

Presence Church Teachings

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  1. I want to begin by asking you if you've ever had that moment

  2. where you've been at home and maybe it's like a quiet evening,

  3. but then suddenly you hear like a loud boom somewhere in the

  4. neighborhood. And I'm not fucking like a door

  5. slam or anything like that. I'm talking like a deep, like

  6. bone rattling. How shaking.

  7. What on earth was that sort of boom?

  8. Anyone had that experience before?

  9. And instantly, you stop what you're doing.

  10. You look around. You know, if it's me and Susan,

  11. we're looking at each other. And like, what on earth was

  12. that? Was that like a firework?

  13. Was that like my neighbor Derek's trash can?

  14. Like, what on earth just happened?

  15. OK. And then what do you do next?

  16. You you don't stay put. You venture outside out into the

  17. front. And you look around, like, what

  18. on earth was that? But you're not alone.

  19. Who else is outside with you? All your neighbors.

  20. And you kind of look at each other like, how did you hear

  21. that? They're like, yeah, what was

  22. that? You, you guys know the

  23. experience. Anyone, anyone in the room.

  24. OK, a few of you, 3 of you. But you guys get you get the

  25. boys. This happens to all of us.

  26. And then you don't go there, right?

  27. Maybe you don't find the answer. And So what do you do?

  28. You go online, the community Facebook groups, and no one hear

  29. that boom on the Northwest side. I can hear, right.

  30. Some people are like, it's nothing.

  31. Other people are like, you know, it's an alien invasion.

  32. There's no in between, right? It's either one or the other.

  33. And at this point it's like a meme, this idea of like a

  34. neighborhood boom. Take a look.

  35. There's even this neighborhood boom posting decision charge

  36. somebody made and it all goes it all basically goes to the very

  37. end, which says mind your business.

  38. Do not post about it, right? Like you don't need to post

  39. about every boom in the neighborhood.

  40. Why? Well, it's because most booms,

  41. they're, they're nothing. They, they don't matter, They're

  42. inconsequential. They don't actually change

  43. anything. And so for a lot of us,

  44. honestly, we don't even bother going outside.

  45. Maybe you hear it, you shrug it off, you move on, right.

  46. The general consensus is if you hear a boom, you just basically

  47. say nothing. To see here, folks, head back to

  48. bed or head back to that show you're watching, or head back to

  49. your phone and scrolling or back to your busy work routine or

  50. whatever. So often we're too busy to

  51. investigate. We're too distracted to

  52. investigate or just too preoccupied.

  53. And so it wasn't times we're we're quick to dismiss the boom,

  54. thinking it's nothing special, right?

  55. We forget about it. And honestly, I think part of

  56. this because we, we would prefer it not to be aliens, right?

  57. We would prefer it to be a simple, anthropological,

  58. tangible explanation. After all, we are rational,

  59. evolved people even when our world is rocked outside of us.

  60. And today, I want to just say this every once in a while,

  61. every once in a while, there's a, there's a boom that you

  62. shouldn't ignore. Every once in a while there's a

  63. boom that's so significant and so earth shattering and life

  64. changing that it's worth investigating. 2000 years ago

  65. there was an undeniable boom that went off in human history

  66. and and the reverberation in the echoes of that boom have still

  67. been felt and seen even to this day.

  68. And the boom was the life and the death and the alleged

  69. resurrection of Jesus Christ. That was the boom.

  70. Here's the thing. Every credible historian,

  71. whether they believe in God, don't believe in God, whether

  72. they're atheist, agnostic, whatever, every credible

  73. historian believes a few things about Jesus Christ.

  74. Number one, they believe that Jesus of Nazareth actually

  75. existed, that he was a real person.

  76. Number 2, they believe that he went around preaching about what

  77. was called the Kingdom of God #3 they know and believe that he

  78. was crucified under Pontius Pilate, under Rome.

  79. And finally #4 we all know that Christianity grew after his

  80. death. That is his apparent of

  81. followers were claiming that he was alive.

  82. Now these are these are not up for debate.

  83. These are just like historic known facts.

  84. These this is the reality in which we live.

  85. But the claim of the early Christians and the claim of

  86. Christians today is this, that between 3:00 and 4:00, between

  87. the moment when he was crucified and between that moment where

  88. Christianity started to explode, the claim is that Jesus of

  89. Nazareth actually came back from the dead in bodily form.

  90. Now, that was controversial at the time, right?

  91. And by the way, it's still controversial even today.

  92. But the fact that matter is this every single part of Jesus life

  93. was controversial from his birth that we celebrate around

  94. Christmas time to his death and Easter even today.

  95. Every part of it was was ripe with controversy.

  96. People trying to figure out who this person was.

  97. And one of the on the ways we know about Jesus was through the

  98. gospel writers. They sort of wrote a sort of

  99. biography to help us understand the history and events of Jesus

  100. Christ. So for instance, one of those

  101. his name was John. John in his sort of biography of

  102. gospel, he makes these claims that he says this about Jesus.

  103. He says that Jesus was quote God's chosen 1.

  104. He says things like that Jesus was the Messiah, Messiah,

  105. meaning he was like the Israelites, chosen people, our

  106. chosen person that would save them and rescue them out of out

  107. of death and defeat and elevate them.

  108. John calls Jesus a rabbi, which is another word for a teacher.

  109. Rabbis at the time would go around and they would, they

  110. would invite students to come and follow them to learn their

  111. way and take on their teaching and then reproduce their

  112. teaching to others and teach others the same.

  113. So he would take on these sort of apprentices as a rabbi.

  114. And we see early on in the Gospel of John that Jesus was

  115. going around and he was asking these apprentices, the

  116. disciples, to follow him. And so here in this passage in

  117. John 143, we see what happens next.

  118. Verse 43 says the next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee.

  119. Finding Philip, he said to him, Follow me.

  120. Was it the two words rabbis would say to people when they

  121. invite them to come disciple under them, follow me.

  122. Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethesda.

  123. So Philip found Nathaniel and he told them.

  124. So Philip receives the invitation, Come follow me.

  125. Then Philip goes and finds Nathaniel and this is what he

  126. says to him. He says we have found the one

  127. Moses wrote about in the Law and about whom the prophets also

  128. wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

  129. So Philip is making a radical claim.

  130. He's saying, Nathaniel, we we found the guy.

  131. We found the chosen one, the one that we've been waiting for, the

  132. one that our people have been hearing about since we were

  133. young kids, the ones that found in the Scripture, you know, the

  134. the Messiah, the chosen 1, the Savior, we got him.

  135. He's here, but it's from a town called Nazareth.

  136. And so I love Nathaniel's reply here, verse 46, Nazareth, can

  137. anything good come from there? You see, Nazareth at the time

  138. and this was sort of like a like a backwater town, maybe a

  139. population of like 500 people. And largely it was like pretty

  140. despised. This was not a good place to be

  141. from. And So what he's saying,

  142. Nazareth, can anything good come from there?

  143. We don't have a great modern parallel to that.

  144. It maybe be like saying someone great came from like Corning IA

  145. or something, you know, I mean, has anyone ever heard of Corning

  146. IA, by the way? OK, if you have to put your

  147. hands down, you're going against my point, right?

  148. Corning IA, right you, you might hear Corning and be like

  149. Corning. I would have like grow a lot of

  150. corn there. You know, that's kind of the

  151. attitude when it comes to a Nazareth.

  152. The fun fact, Johnny Carson's from from Corning, IA.

  153. Did you guys know that? Where are my baby boomers in the

  154. house? Make some noise for Johnny

  155. Carson. That wasn't very much noise, but

  156. that's OK. That's OK.

  157. Evidently great things can come from humble beginnings.

  158. And Jesus, it says in Scripture that he would be despised.

  159. He wouldn't come with fanfare and he wouldn't come with

  160. notoriety. In fact, he'd come as a servant

  161. of all. He'd come lowly as a baby of all

  162. things. And So what we see here with

  163. with Nathaniel is like a very human instinctual response to

  164. Jesus coming from Nazareth. He he meets him with just

  165. skepticism, you know, like really, You sure about that?

  166. I think skepticism and for honest cynicism, jadedness,

  167. that's kind of the air we breathe today.

  168. Would you agree? Especially as millennials, my

  169. generation, right? Like it is it is our default

  170. language to just be cynical and skeptical and to question

  171. everything. And I get it.

  172. Like that's a human reaction. So maybe for some of you here

  173. today, like you're like at the end there, you're like Jesus

  174. back from the dead, really. Like the Christians are the ones

  175. who have all, all of life figured out, know the truth.

  176. Like Christians of all people who belongs to I go to church

  177. and take bread and juice about it may be very strange to you

  178. and you may have that very natural reaction of skepticism.

  179. I get it. And we're so glad you're here.

  180. OK, and so this is the response of Philip.

  181. He gets it. There's skepticism.

  182. This is his response. Verse 46, Philip says this, he

  183. says come and see. Check it out for yourself.

  184. Come and see this Jesus. You decide for yourself that he

  185. is the one he claims to actually be.

  186. And what this is, is this is a call to investigate the claims

  187. that are being made about this Jesus.

  188. This isn't the only time that people were invited to

  189. investigate this man who claimed to be God.

  190. There was this moment in John chapter 4 where Jesus is at a

    John 4 chapter mention

  191. well, at a water well, and this woman approaches him.

  192. This is at noon. And so she's out there by

  193. herself. And Jesus does something really

  194. scandalous. He strikes up a conversation

  195. with her, something he probably shouldn't have done being in a,

  196. you know, Jewish male talking to a Samaritan woman.

  197. There's like all sorts of dynamics to play here.

  198. But anyway, he takes the time for this woman.

  199. And what he essentially for this woman, what he essentially does

  200. is he starts to read her diary. You know, he starts to tell her

  201. everything that she's ever done. And he starts to kind of just

  202. like read her past and he starts to recall the things that she's

  203. done with with men and the sad things that have have likely

  204. been done to her by men. And he takes this moment of

  205. compassion and interest in this woman to reveal to her in this

  206. moment, one-on-one, that he is indeed the Messiah.

  207. And he does a supernaturally feminology shouldn't have had.

  208. And this woman is so convinced that she runs and she tells her

  209. whole city, her whole town, that she has potentially found the

  210. Messiah. And what are her words?

  211. Very similar to what we just read, John 4/29.

  212. She says, come see a man who told me everything I ever did.

  213. And then she asked this question.

  214. Could this be the Messiah? She's not even quite sure,

  215. right? All she knows is that she had an

  216. encounter with this man Jesus. This man, Jesus said things he

  217. shouldn't have known and he had compassion on her.

  218. He, he revealed himself to be the Messiah.

  219. She's not foolish here, but all she knows is she had an

  220. encounter. I wonder if there's some of you

  221. in the room who have had an encounter with God before in the

  222. past. Maybe it was a moment where you

  223. need the protection and he, he came in and swept in

  224. supernaturally. Maybe it was a moment where you

  225. didn't know how you're going to make ends meet and all of a

  226. sudden he showed up for you. Maybe it was a moment in a

  227. church like this or maybe at a youth camp.

  228. Maybe it was just a time of of like severe distress and

  229. desperation is so you just kind of threw up a Hail Mary prayer

  230. and say, God, I don't know if you're real, but I need you now.

  231. And maybe for some of you, you've had an experience with

  232. Jesus, but maybe you haven't even realized that was who you

  233. had an encounter with. Maybe he didn't realize he was

  234. the Messiah. Maybe the invitation for you is

  235. to explore a little bit further. This woman said, come and see.

  236. Could it be? Is it possible her encounter

  237. with Jesus leads to an invitation to investigate?

  238. Come check it out. One more story where someone's

  239. invited to come and see. This takes place on Resurrection

  240. Sunday, the very first Easter. And So what we see is that

  241. there's a group of women who had been following Jesus and that

  242. this, by the way, was also controversial.

  243. Nobody dignified and gave value to women like Jesus, especially

  244. during this time and age where women were not valued.

  245. It's a very patriarchal as a society in 1st century Judaism.

  246. And yet Jesus like constantly was the cycling women, taking

  247. time for them on and on. And there was this group of

  248. faithful women who watched him be crucified, watch the horrors

  249. that took place, and they were absolutely defeated, His

  250. disciples. And their minds have lost, like,

  251. because they put their faith that Jesus was actually going to

  252. be the savior. But saviors don't usually end up

  253. crucified, hanging from a cross. Saviors are usually mighty,

  254. They're powerful, they reign, they rule, and they kick the bad

  255. guys out. And so the disciples of the men

  256. are hiding in fear, and yet the women are approaching the tomb.

  257. And so here's what happens next. Here's what happens next.

  258. Matthew 28 after the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the

  259. week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the

  260. tomb. There was a violent earthquake

  261. for an Angel of the Lord came down from heaven and going to

  262. the tomb, rollback the stone and sat on it.

  263. I love that picture, by the way, of like an Angel just like

  264. sitting on top of the rolled away stone, right?

  265. It's like God's original flex. I think it's pretty cool #3

  266. Verse 3. His appearance was like

  267. lightning and his clothes were white as snow.

  268. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like

  269. dead men. So a little bit of context.

  270. When someone passed away during this time, they would carve

  271. rocks or carve tombs into the side of like rock faces.

  272. So they'd be little caverns where they could walk in.

  273. They could lay the body on a bench.

  274. And then what they'd often do is they would roll or push a very

  275. large stone over the covering of the tomb.

  276. And then they would seal it maybe with clay or rocks in

  277. order that animals obviously wouldn't get in and, and

  278. desecrate the body. But in this case with Jesus, we

  279. read from the Gospel accounts that Rome took an extra step.

  280. They they not only sealed it with a Roman seal, but then they

  281. also stationed guards to protect it.

  282. And the story of the resurrection says that an Angel

  283. appeared. The the soldiers kind of get

  284. knocked out and then the Angel speaks to the women in verse 5.

  285. The Angel said to the women, do not be afraid for I know that

  286. you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.

  287. He's not here. He has risen just as he said one

  288. more time, these words come and see the place where he lay that

  289. invitation three times overcome ANC.

  290. And so the women, they do, they look, they see that the tomb in

  291. fact was empty. This stone was somehow

  292. miraculously rolled away where Jesus should have been.

  293. He is no longer. So what do they do?

  294. They start spreading the news like wildfire that he is alive.

  295. There's a flurry of investigation that happened to

  296. this point. The disciples are riddled with

  297. doubts. They even say it's nonsense.

  298. They're like, they don't get it right.

  299. Dead people don't come back, back from the dead.

  300. But the women are persistent. They say no, no, no, just look,

  301. right. If I were to try and convince

  302. you guys that there was an elephant right outside of those

  303. windows, right? And I was like, guys, really?

  304. I'm serious. There's an elephant right

  305. outside those windows. And you guys were like, no, we

  306. don't believe it now, probably not by now.

  307. And I'm like, no, really, there is an elephant right out there.

  308. What would I tell you to do next?

  309. I would say no, look outside and see the elephant people.

  310. It's right there that we don't actually have an elephant thing.

  311. Ankeny would not allow that. But you get the point, right?

  312. The very next thing I would do, as I would say, come and

  313. investigate for yourself. You don't have to just take my

  314. word for it. You just have to turn and look.

  315. And that is what the women are doing here.

  316. They're saying, and the Angel is encouraging.

  317. Come and see that the tomb is in fact, empty.

  318. Just look. Just look.

  319. A Yale historian, his name was a Jarasloff Pelican.

  320. He wrote it this way, he said. Regardless of what Eddie Owen

  321. may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has

  322. been the dominant figure in the history of the Western culture

  323. for almost 20 centuries. If it were possible, with some

  324. sort of super magnet to pull out of the history every scrap of

  325. metal bearing at least a trace of his name, how much would be

  326. left? This is the mark that Jesus has

  327. had on history. In other words, there was this

  328. massive earth shattering boom 2000 years ago and everyone's

  329. been trying to explain it ever since.

  330. And really what it comes down to is there's there's two competing

  331. narratives when it comes to this Jesus and what actually happened

  332. after he was crucified under Rome 2 competing narratives.

  333. The first narrative is this that Jesus was normal.

  334. Jesus was normal. They, you know, skeptics might

  335. agree, yes, he was real. Yes, he was crucified.

  336. Yes, he died, but the only reason that Christianity started

  337. to spread was because of mass hallucination or the disciples

  338. were trying to come up with some sort of conspiracy.

  339. They wanted to believe he was alive.

  340. Or maybe he's a myth or some legend began to form over a

  341. period of time that sometimes happens in history, right?

  342. And so narrative #1 basically says, hey, no need to go on

  343. Facebook and post about it. Nothing to see here.

  344. Go back to bed, folks, we're good.

  345. But then there's a second narrative, and the second

  346. narrative is not that Jesus was normal.

  347. The second narrative that competes with is this Jesus was

  348. supernatural. Jesus was supernatural.

  349. We would say, how could it be a hallucination?

  350. It's not common for mass hallucination to take place at

  351. the same time. From a psychological perspective

  352. it likely wasn't a conspiracy because yes people have died for

  353. things they believed it was true.

  354. But why would all of Jesus disciples willingly go to their

  355. death without recanting their faith if they hadn't actually

  356. seen him raised from the dead? It doesn't make any sense.

  357. All of the 11 historically were willing to say you know what,

  358. you can just kill me because I know what I saw.

  359. What do you do with that? It likely wasn't a conspiracy

  360. because why would the gospel writers have women be the

  361. primary witnesses of the resurrection at a time when

  362. women had no legal right to be testimonies or or to testify?

  363. Doesn't make any sense. Why would they have the

  364. disciples be the ones who are cowardly in the story and hiding

  365. behind locked doors? If it was just a myth, how is it

  366. possible that even months to a few years after there a creed

  367. began to form that solidified the very simple facts that says

  368. that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to scriptures,

  369. that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day

  370. according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas into

  371. the 12? In other words, myths don't form

  372. that quickly. How is it that Roman crucifixion

  373. was foretold hundreds of years before it was even invented by

  374. the psalmist? And how do we explain what what

  375. Jesus himself said in Matthew 17?

  376. And he said, the Son of Man is going to be delivered into the

  377. hands of men, They will kill him, and on the third day he

  378. will be raised to life. This is what Jesus himself said

  379. would take place. And then we believe it came

  380. true. So the question for us is that

  381. with these two competing narratives, what if?

  382. What if #2 is true? What if it's all true?

  383. What if Jesus was in fact supernatural and raised from the

  384. dead? Just this last month in March,

  385. there was another boom in history.

  386. This boom took place in Ohio. You probably heard the story.

  387. Basically, windows rattled from the boom and explosion.

  388. It sounded like an explosion took place and what people

  389. realized in Ohio was that a 7 ton asteroid had ripped in from

  390. outer space into our reality and it made impact, scattering all

  391. over. In other words, the boom was

  392. caused from something not from this world coming into our world

  393. and making an impact. Now, if you were in Ohio at this

  394. time where this meteorite came and crashed landed in your

  395. state, it would be pretty silly to ignore that it ever happened,

  396. would you agree? Like it'd be pretty silly to be

  397. like, I had nothing to see here, just ignore it.

  398. Like everything's fine. Probably nothing happened,

  399. right? That would be ridiculous.

  400. And I would argue this and as lovingly and gracefully as I

  401. can. And I realized there's lots of

  402. different people from all sorts of different perspectives in the

  403. room. But I would argue this like it

  404. would be really silly to just ignore the facts about Jesus

  405. life and the facts that are presented before us.

  406. It'd be really, really silly to ignore that there was something

  407. that took place. And I'm not saying that all of

  408. the reasons I gave makes it absolutely foolproof, absolutely

  409. provable. My only point is this.

  410. It's plausible. It's very, very plausible and

  411. it's worth investigating. New Testament expert NT right,

  412. puts it this way. The proposal that Jesus was

  413. bodily raised from the dead possesses unrivaled power to

  414. explain the historical data at the heart of early Christianity.

  415. In other words, she's saying there is a there is a puzzle and

  416. we have a lot of the different pieces about what happened 2000

  417. years ago. We can see a lot of the picture.

  418. What he's saying is that the missing piece, the missing piece

  419. that fits perfectly to explain it all, is that Jesus actually

  420. rose from the dead. This is an expert in the New

  421. Testament saying this two different narratives competing

  422. in narrative #2 changes everything.

  423. If narrative #2 is true that Jesus is indeed supernatural, it

  424. has radical implications for how you and I should live.

  425. This means that everything that he says is actually trustworthy.

  426. It's trustworthy. So what did Jesus say?

  427. Well, he said a lot and some of it was pretty radical, pretty

  428. out there. Jesus said something like this

  429. in John 14-6. Jesus answered, he said, check

  430. this out. Jesus said, I am the way, I am

  431. the truth, and I am the life. No one comes to the Father

  432. except through me. Now that is a radical and bold

  433. claim for an individual to make. Would you agree?

  434. No one gets to God except for me.

  435. No one gets to eternal life after you die except through me.

  436. But this is the claim that Jesus made.

  437. He claimed to be the only way to God.

  438. Pastor John Tyson points out that this differentiates him

  439. from all of the other ways and things that are pointing to all

  440. sorts of different options out there.

  441. Socrates pointed to reason as the way, Buddha pointed to a

  442. path, Moses pointed to Allah, Muhammad pointed to Allah,

  443. Joseph Smith pointed to a new church.

  444. Secular humanism points to itself, and hedonism points to

  445. pleasure as the way. But Jesus comes in and Jesus

  446. says it's me, it's me, it's always been me, it's always been

  447. about me. It's not a system, it's not a

  448. path, it's not a teaching, it's not an idea, it's not an

  449. institution, It's me. He claims that the truth and

  450. salvation is found in him. It's found in a person.

  451. It's not on a person you can know.

  452. And so that's why he's called the Son of man.

  453. He calls, he's called the Messiah, he's called the Christ,

  454. He's called the Son of God, the Lord, the I am.

  455. And Jesus says I am the bread, the light, the door, the

  456. shepherd, the resurrection, and the vine.

  457. Jesus says it's me, come and see the church.

  458. Our world is full of people trying to convince you that they

  459. know the way. Politicians trying to tell you

  460. convince you that they know the way.

  461. Influencers on social media, I know the way.

  462. Follow me. The algorithm is trying to sway

  463. you one way or the other. Marketers trying to get your

  464. money are trying to sway you. Everyone is convinced and

  465. everyone's trying to persuade you that they have the way.

  466. And Jesus, I believe, is the only one who proved that he is

  467. the way. And he says that he has the keys

  468. to life, that he, he can unlock the Kingdom for you, you know,

  469. lock the way they got. And so when Jesus came, he was

  470. spreading the good news of what's called the Kingdom.

  471. It's the idea that that God's rule and reign could be here on

  472. earth now, that it's not just about heaven when you die, but

  473. it's about what he's doing here on earth as well.

  474. So that's why we say as a church that we want to see Ankeny as it

  475. is in heaven. Our prayer is that we would see

  476. the earth around us look more and more like heaven.

  477. Right Again says Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of

  478. God's new project, not to snatch people away from earth to

  479. heaven, but to colonize earth with the life of heaven.

  480. And so the good news is this. The good news is this, that you

  481. and I can participate in the Kingdom with Jesus.

  482. How do we do that? Scripture says we do that by

  483. repenting of our sins, by saying, you know what?

  484. The the way I've been living all the wrong that I've done.

  485. I, I am, I am giving up on that. I am sorry for that.

  486. And it's it's instead turning away from our sins, making the

  487. change of mind that leads to a change of direction.

  488. Instead putting your faith in what Jesus did on the cross for

  489. you and for me. The gospel writers are clear

  490. that the reason that Jesus died was because our sin had a debt

  491. and Jesus was the one who was willing to pay that debt.

  492. And because God is perfectly holy, and because he's perfectly

  493. good, there was distance between that holy God and a sinful

  494. people, that each of us has gone our own way.

  495. All of us have fallen short of the glory of God.

  496. And the good news of Easter is that because Jesus was willing

  497. to go to the cross, if we actually put our trust in that,

  498. we put our faith and bet our lives on till we choose to

  499. follow him. The good news is that that gap

  500. between God and us is closed, that God reconciles us back to

  501. himself. That is the good news.

  502. When we repent and turn and and put our faith and trust in God

  503. and we choose to follow Jesus, we now have access to the

  504. Kingdom and everything that God is doing here, both now and for

  505. eternity. After we die, we become children

  506. of God, we become people of love, our sins are forgiven and

  507. we move from death to life. This is the claim of the gospel.

  508. This is the good news. And so once again, Ohio, there

  509. was a man named Jeff Makos. When the meteorite ripped

  510. through the sky and it broke the sound barrier, Jeff says.

  511. I heard it and I felt it. And he tells the story about how

  512. he had a dream, and in the dream he saw where he could find the

  513. meteorite pieces. So what does he do?

  514. He went out and investigated. He went to the exact spot that

  515. he had the dream about. He looked down and there he saw

  516. a crater and found a massive baseball sized piece of

  517. meteorite, exactly what he'd been looking for.

  518. And the question I want to ask about Jeff is what if he had

  519. ignored the boom? What if he'd ignored the dream?

  520. What if he'd stayed asleep and didn't decide to investigate?

  521. And it reminds me of a story found in Matthew 13, which says

  522. the Kingdom of Heaven is like a like a treasure hidden in the

  523. field. And when a man found it, he hid

  524. it again and then hit and his joy, he went and sold all he had

  525. and bought that field. In other words, when you find

  526. something of great worth, it's worth giving up everything you

  527. have in order to claim that thing.

  528. Some events or rooms are worth investigating, no matter how

  529. hard out there they may seem. So I'm going to invite the band

  530. to come forward as we kind of wrap up here.

  531. Jeremiah 2913 says you will seek me and find me when you seek me

  532. with all your heart. The great boom of 2000 years ago

  533. is still reverberating for us today.

  534. In fact, it's growing louder and louder and louder.

  535. And maybe for some of you, you're here today and you're

  536. skeptical and you're saying, can anything good come from

  537. Nazareth? And maybe the invitation for you

  538. today is to move from sleeping to seeking.

  539. The invitation for you is the come and see, maybe first

  540. curious in the room. And maybe you've had an

  541. encounter with God before, but if you're honest, you're not

  542. really living for him. And for you, the invitation is

  543. to move from seeking to believing, to really put your

  544. trust in this Jesus and stop doubting and just believe as

  545. Jesus says. And finally, there's somebody

  546. who has been to church a long time.

  547. Maybe you do believe. You believe you have seen the

  548. risen Christ both real in your life and in the world.

  549. But your invitation today is to move from believing to following

  550. wherever you're at, wherever you're at.

  551. Make a move towards Jesus. Make a move towards Jesus.

  552. The invitation of Jesus was this Come to me all who are weary and

  553. burdened and I will give you rest.

  554. If you need physical rest, go on vacation.

  555. If you need mental rest you can go meditate.

  556. If you need social relational rest, take a weekend by yourself

  557. and binge. You know love is blind or

  558. whatever right? Like those options are out there

  559. for you, but if you're here today and you need rest for your

  560. soul, Jesus says come to me. If you're here today and you

  561. feel like you lack purpose and you're not quite sure what to

  562. do, maybe you're caught in shame and you keep replaying the

  563. things you've done over and over in your mind, or you're just

  564. feeling dark or you're down or whatever it may be.

  565. If you're feeling weighty today and you feel like you need to

  566. rest for your souls, the invitation of Jesus is come to

  567. me. Come to me.

  568. I am the way of truth and life. So if you're not sure what to do

  569. next in life, whether you're not sure what to do financially or

  570. relationally, or maybe your mental health is struggling, or

  571. you're not sure what to do with your future, I, I genuinely

  572. believe this ceramic church. I genuinely believe the next

  573. right step is always moving closer to Jesus.

  574. The closer you can align yourself with the God who

  575. created you and loves you so much, the closer you can get

  576. inside of His will and His plans and His purposes for your life,

  577. the more life seems to just have a way of working itself out.

  578. I'm not saying life is going to become automatically easier.

  579. I don't think that's the case. What I'm saying is that you'll

  580. find that you are aligning yourself with the God of heaven

  581. rather than pushing against him. That's a beautiful place to be.

  582. So Jesus invitation is to come to me.

  583. He is the next right move. He is the next right step.

  584. Come and follow me was the invitation of Jesus to Philip

  585. and it's it's a Nathaniel and it's to you as welcome and

  586. follow me. As a church, we are committed to

  587. witnessing a spirit LED disciple making movement in our churches

  588. and communities. In other words, we're all about

  589. becoming like Jesus together. And so we are inviting you to

  590. come on that journey with us. We don't have it figured out all

  591. the way. We're learning together.

  592. We're having a blast doing it in love and in grace and in mercy.

  593. But we want to see disciples of Jesus become more and more

  594. presence in our communities. We're going to see more and more

  595. people come to Jesus as we close the resurrection.

  596. Accounts are full of movement from disbelief to belief, full

  597. of movement from doubt to decisions, movement from

  598. questioning to clarity. Come and see was the invitation

  599. then, and it still is today. So wherever you're at, make them

  600. move towards Jesus. Move from sleeping to seeking,

  601. Move from seeking to believing, Move from believing to

  602. following. Wherever you're at, this is

  603. God's plan for you from the beginning, that you would be

  604. brought back into relationship with Him, that you would join

  605. the loving family of God, and that you would live for His

  606. Kingdom both in this life and then them into the next.

  607. The invitation of Jesus has come to me.

  608. Follow me.