Easter Changes Everything

Music.

Resurrection of Jesus does. It brings hope, life, and purpose to all who believe.

So wherever you're listening from, take a deep breath, open your heart,

and let's lean into the life-changing truth of Easter.

And now, here's Pastor Jeff.

Amen. What an incredible morning of worship so far.

Thank you, worship team, for doing that, Lisa, for leading them.

Just feel the, you can sense the Holy Spirit is here and He's active and He's

moving and He wants to move in the rest of the service and in your hearts and lives.

Before we jump into the message, I do want to say thank you to our incredible

team of volunteers and especially all those who helped make breakfast this morning.

Can we just say, show some love for them?

Man, there's nothing like caribou followed by chocolate chip pancakes. I'm just saying.

I know I'm probably going to lull some of you to sleep because those Chocolate

chip pancakes are heavy right now, and they're just sitting in your stomach.

And Easter dinner is coming soon. But I am so glad of the fact that Easter changes everything.

Easter changes everything. History books tell us that the fall of the Roman

Empire in 476 AD was one of the most influential events in history.

As ancient Roman dominance ended, it led to Europe splitting into smaller kingdoms

and eventually becoming countries that would emerge,

influencing the political and cultural landscape of what we call Europe.

Another event that changed the world forever was the invention of the printing press.

Let's see how many history students are out there. How many know who invented the printing press?

Oh, right there. Say it loud.

And Gutenberg, is that what you said? He's shaking his head.

We'll give you the bonus points. I don't know. That is correct.

Yes. And that was in 1440.

And with it came the spread of information like never before.

The books were now accessible to everyday men and women.

And it began to fuel movements like the Renaissance and the Reformation.

Fast forward to the 1700s. There was the American Revolution,

which pioneered ideas of democracy and government and inspired revolutions and

reformed movements globally.

There was the French Revolution, which overturned centuries-old monarchies in

France and political reformation, which spread all throughout Europe.

Of course, we can't overlook the things that happened in the early 1900s with the World Wars,

the Cold War, which shaped global alliances and NATO, and it led to conflicts

like the Korean War and the Vietnam War,

as well as spurring on the race for technology, for arms, and for space programs.

Who remembers the fall of the Berlin Wall? Come on, I know some of you. All right.

The Berlin Wall, and I can still hear President Reagan saying,

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

Incredible events from history. Most recently, the 9-11 attacks,

which took so many lives, and it changed us forever.

And it actually triggered the U.S.-led war on terror and began to shift security

and foreign policy and international relations.

And then I think our grandkids someday in their textbooks and their history

books, I think one of the pages or chapters will be COVID-19.

COVID-19. 11.

I like math. COVID-19, it changed the world for all of us, didn't it?

Everything changed. It disrupted a global economy, and it put stress on our

health systems, and day-to-day life just was something we never could have imagined it being.

Working from home, remote school learning, and all the kids are like,

I want to do that. That sounds great. I don't know. I don't want to do that.

Church online became something that almost every church would have to jump into. to.

But as we look through the pages of history, I don't believe that any of these

compare to the event which took place on Easter morning 2,000 years ago when

Jesus Christ rose from the grave on the third day,

just as he said he would.

And we're here today because of the fact that Easter changes everything.

If you have your Bibles with you this morning, I want to invite you to turn

with me to the book of Luke.

And we're going to be in chapter 24 this morning, verses 1 through 12.

And we're going to read the true account that took place that resurrection morning.

And then I want to leave with you just three ways that the resurrection changed

everything in my life, as well as for the lives of many others who have called

on his name for salvation.

And at Generations Church, we want our services to be three things.

We want them to be real. We want them to be relevant. We want them to be relational.

It's great to have deep knowledge and I want that deep knowledge,

but if we don't apply it, then it does us no good.

And so I wanna just give you three things this morning, how my life has been

changed by the resurrection.

Before we jump into Luke 24, would you pray with me?

Father, we gather together in your holy name.

Each person that's here, before time began, you appointed that they would be

here to hear your words, to experience your presence.

God, I pray that you would speak through the word, speak through me,

and that you would take away any distraction.

I pray that you would change us to be more and more like your son,

Jesus. It's what we desire.

We love you. Thank you for Easter. Thank you for what it represents.

Thank you for the resurrection. In Jesus' name, amen.

Follow along, Luke 24. If you don't have a Bible, it'll be on the screen up there for you.

It says this, On the first day of the week, very early in the morning,

They came to the tomb bringing the spices they had prepared.

See, they knew that he was dead and he was in the tomb.

But when they got there, they found the stone rolled away from the tomb.

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

While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men stood by them in dazzling clothes.

So the women were terrified and bowed down to the ground and said,

Why are you looking for the living among the dead? Asked the man.

He is not here, but he has risen.

Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee, saying,

It is necessary that the Son of Man be betrayed into the hands of sinful men,

to be crucified and rise on the third day.

And they remembered his words. They remembered.

Returning from the tomb, they reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.

Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them

were telling the apostles these things.

But these words seemed like nonsense to them, and they did not believe the women.

Peter, I love this, however, got up and he ran to the tomb. When he stopped

to look in, he saw only the linen clothes.

So he went away amazed at what had happened.

What an incredible scene we find here in the Gospels.

And in the time we have, I want to give you these three simple ways Easter changes everything.

Number one, because of Easter, I am fully forgiven.

I'm fully forgiven because of Easter.

It's the greatest news that anyone could ever hear.

Because of my sin, I was headed to a very real place called hell.

But my sin was paid for by the cross and the resurrection.

This is how Colossians describes it in chapter two, verse 13 to 14.

It says, when you were dead in your sins, see, I wasn't just sinful.

Man, I was spiritually dead.

I was dead in my sins. And then it says, and in the uncircumcision of your flesh.

God made you alive with Christ, and he forgave us all our sins.

Isn't that a good statement? He forgave us all our sins.

You with me this morning? He's forgiven all our sins.

Having canceled the charges of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us

and condemned us, he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.

That's incredible good news.

The Bible tells us that we were dead in our sins, not just in sin.

We were in sin with no hope of life.

But when we accept Christ as our Savior, God makes us alive in Christ.

It says he forgave us all of our sins.

We had a debt that we could never pay, never pay. We were headed to hell.

And that's why Jesus came, to cancel the debt by paying our price.

And he paid the price for my sin and for your sin on the cross,

canceling the charges of illegal indebtedness, which condemned me to hell.

He took it away as it was nailed to the cross.

Romans 4.25 says, he was delivered over to death for our sins.

And was raised to life for our justification.

I love that word, justification, and here's what it means.

Because I've accepted Christ in my life, God looks at me through the blood of

Jesus, and instead of when he looks at me, he sees my filthiness and my awfulness

and all my sinful actions.

He looks at me justified, just as if I've never sinned.

He doesn't hold us. He doesn't hold that sin against us if it's underneath the

blood, just as if we've never sinned.

Imagine standing in a courtroom.

You've been sentenced to death.

You've stood there. You've pleaded guilty to the judge. You've pleaded guilty before the court.

You did it hands down.

And you're about to be sentenced to death. But instead, the judge does something

that no other judge has ever done.

He stands up from his desk behind his desk, and he takes off his robe.

And he comes down, and he says to you, I will take your place.

I will take your death penalty because I love you. And that's what Jesus did.

And Easter is that moment when the gavel falls and declares it's paid in full.

Your sin has been paid in full.

You don't have to earn forgiveness. You can't.

You simply receive it. You accept it. It's a free gift.

Some of you, some of us, some of you, you've gone through life and you're trying so hard to attain.

If I'm just better, maybe by the end when I die, maybe I'll get to stand before

God and there'll be a scale and he'll put all my good stuff on one side and

all my bad stuff on the other.

And hopefully it'll weigh itself out and God will let me in.

But that's not how it works.

It's a free gift that you have to accept.

And once we accept it, it's beautiful. Isaiah says this in Isaiah chapter one, verse 18.

Though your sins be like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.

Though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.

Those filthy, ugly sins that are hidden in the deepest parts of our closet that

we don't want anyone to know about.

Those sins in private, those sins in our minds, every single sin gone.

Gone, made pure and clean because of the blood of Jesus.

That's why when we sing songs on Sunday, man, I don't get it.

When I look around, sometimes I go to other churches and I go to different events

and people are like, there's great worship.

And we're singing about the fact that I've had a life or a death sentence and I've been freed.

Man, I'm going to run. I'm going to jump. I'm going to dance. I'm going to sing.

I'm not going to stand there with my hands in my pocket looking like I just lost my favorite puppy.

We have a reason to rejoice because we've been set free.

You have a reason to rejoice.

Easter changes everything because I am fully forgiven. Hallelujah.

Not just this, but number two, I now have a living hope.

First Peter says this, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

That's Peter's response to this message. Praise. I'm going to praise him.

I'm going to worship him. I'm going to give him my everything.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Why? Because in his great mercy,

he's given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus

Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish,

spoil, or fade.

This inheritance is kept in heaven for you.

Man, what an incredibly powerful passage. as Peter starts ascribing praise to

God because of his great mercy.

And as I walk through life, I can't help but live in continual praise to God

for the gift of Jesus Christ.

Why? Because God had incredible mercy on us, on me.

Jesus stepped into my place. Jesus took my sins on the cross.

And so here in 1 Peter, we see that the resurrection gives us two things.

The first thing that Peter says is that we are given new birth into living hope.

We're given new birth into a living hope. Maybe you've heard that phrase, born again, right?

A lot of Christians will say, I've been born again.

That's, you know, where does this come from? Actually comes from John when Jesus

was talking to a religious leader named Nicodemus.

And Nicodemus comes to him at night because he didn't want anyone to see him talking to Jesus.

And this is what he said. Jesus said, very truly, I tell you,

no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.

How can someone be born when they are old? Nicodemus asked.

I mean, he'd never heard this. He'd never heard anyone in the temple say,

hey, hey, you must be born again.

He never heard that. What does that mean? He literally says,

surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb to be born.

And Jesus answered, very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of

God unless they are born of water, physical birth, and the spirit.

Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the spirit gives birth to spirit.

And then he says, you should not be surprised at my saying you must be born again.

Because of Easter and the resurrection, you can make the decision this morning

to accept this free gift of salvation and you can be born again.

It's what I want to offer you.

So the first part we see is that we are born again. But the second part says

that we are born into what?

We are born into a living hope.

It's not a pointless dead hope. It's not like knowing that, oh,

man, I love the Minnesota Vikings.

I love the twins. I think the Vikings have a better chance of going to the Super

Bowl this year than they've ever had.

My twins are like at the bottom. They're doing awful.

It's not like my living hope is, man, I hope the twins win the World Series this year.

It's not something that, you know, I just wish for.

No, it's an absolute, it's an absolute.

Our living hope refers to our ability to live, and this is important,

live with a competent expectation of the promises that God has in store for us.

It's not something that we hope to attain.

It's a promise that's been given that we receive.

We're able to live confident that we are in Christ, confident knowing where

my eternal destination is.

We're confident that God has all of these things in store for us.

John 11, Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes

in me will live even though they die.

And whoever lives by believing in me will never die.

Yes, we are going to die a physical death. So far, batting a thousand.

Everyone that's been born before us will die or has died.

The Bible says we die once and then we face judgment.

That's not my words. That's God's word.

But for those of you who have accepted Christ, when you leave your physical

earthly body, Paul actually says he celebrates death.

And he says, you've been born going from this earthly tent into a new heavenly one.

It's, you never die. You're more alive, Paul says, when you leave this earthly

body than when you're in it.

Listen to what one commentary says about this verse.

It said, in this profound statement, Jesus makes one of his well-known I am

declarations, identifying himself as the source of both resurrection and life.

In saying I am the resurrection, Jesus asserts that he has power over life and death.

He is not merely a teacher pointing towards resurrection.

He embodies it. As the life he offers, not only future life,

but a quality of life that begins in the present for those who believe in him now.

That's what I said earlier. When you come to Christ, you are able to live in

a way that you weren't before.

And when the hard times come, which they will, you have a confidence and you

have peace and you have joy in spite of the situation that you walk through.

How many of you are weary today?

How many are struggling today?

How many need to know that there is joy outside of my current situation?

We all do. Jesus says, I am life. I am life.

He came to give life. John 10 says, the thief comes only to steal and kill and

destroy. But I have come that they may have life and have it to the full or have it abundantly.

While the thief brings destruction, Jesus offers life.

I don't know about you, but I want to live a life of experiencing God's blessing,

experience the goodness of God, the faithfulness of God.

I want his hand upon my life.

Now hear me. It doesn't mean that everything is sunshine and rainbows and roses and it's all good. No.

It looks like living life every day in relationship with God.

That's the abundant life.

Living in relationship with God brings contentment. It brings hope. It brings strength.

It brings peace and joy.

I want that. I want to be able to live in relationship with Jesus because I

know it offers contentment.

It offers hope and strength and peace and joy for today.

And despite the heaviness of what life may throw at you, you can live an abundant

life because of the living hope that resides in us.

I got to be honest. I don't think

I would be here today if I didn't have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

I would have given up years ago.

I would have gave up. I wouldn't be here if I didn't have Christ.

And I know some of you, you're walking through some really hard things,

financial issues or relational issues or both.

There's a lot of things. There's a lot of hard things that we walk through,

but you can have joy and you can have peace and you can have contentment while

you walk through the storm of life, if you do life with Jesus.

So Peter says, because of the resurrection, you can have a new birth and you

can have this living hope.

But secondly, he says, there is an eternal inheritance reserved for you in heaven.

Peter says the result of being born again is imperishable, undefiled, unfading.

It never fades away.

Our inheritance in heaven will never fade away and it's being kept there for you.

That word kept signifies a divine safeguarding.

Peter says that your inheritance, your salvation is protected by God himself,

which ensures that it's secure.

It's available to all believers. And once you've truly been born again,

you cannot lose your salvation. It's being kept and protected by God himself.

If you're born again, you have a living hope and you have an eternal inheritance.

So Easter changes everything because I'm fully forgiven. I have a living hope

and thoroughly because now he's given me a purpose. I have a purpose.

Before Jesus left this earth, he spoke to his followers and he said,

as the father has sent me, I am now sending you.

And with that, he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit.

When you come to Christ, he places a new spirit in you. He places his Holy Spirit with inside you.

And he convicts us.

He gives us strength. He gives us peace. He gives us joy.

That's where it comes from. It's not that anything is good of me.

There's nothing good in me.

It's all from him. and when you come to Christ, you've been given a new purpose,

and you've been empowered by the Holy Spirit.

God gives you a new purpose and he begins transforming your identity and he

begins calling you into a deeper relationship with himself.

He doesn't just forgive you. He invites you to live with a new meaning and a new purpose.

And here's what that looks like. You now have a new identity.

You're new. You're a child of God. You're loved. You're chosen. You're accepted.

You don't ever have to wonder, does anyone love me? Or am I good enough?

No, you're loved. You're chosen. You're accepted.

And as you grow more and more in your relationship with him,

it changes even how you begin to see yourself.

Your self-worth will go up when you surrender your life to Christ.

Because it's not based on you, it's based on him.

You begin living for his glory instead of your own.

Instead of living for ourselves and chasing the desires that we yearn for.

His purpose now becomes my purpose. And we begin reflecting God's love and God's

grace and God's truth into the world wherever he's placed you.

And then you'll begin sharing the gospel.

God gives us each gifts.

The gospel just means the good news that God so loved the world.

That your sins can be forgiven. That you can have new life. That you can have

joy. That you can have peace.

And as Christians, God calls us to experience those things. To experience this new life.

God calls us to be part of his mission by pointing others to Christ.

And sharing his hope and sharing your story, your testimony.

You may think that you don't have this great, big, huge testimony.

I once was this awful thing and now I'm fine.

Everyone's got a testimony. Everyone's got a story. Everyone's got a way.

If you've accepted Christ, you have a way that God has come into your life and

helped you or changed you or made you cuss less.

God's doing something in your heart and in your life.

The best witness for someone is a changed life. It's your story.

Then you begin serving others.

You begin using your spiritual gifts and your talents. And you begin making

chocolate chip pancakes at church.

You begin serving people. You begin wanting to volunteer. You begin to want

to do life with the people in this room.

And as we live in relationship with Jesus more and more every day,

we finally begin to see ourselves growing in Christ-likeness.

We're growing to look more and more and more like Christ.

Instead of speaking down at people, we try with all of our hearts to build people up.

Instead of holding grudges, we try to offer forgiveness.

Instead of holding content for people, we try to love them no matter how difficult

it might be, no matter how hard it is.

Now we begin to walk in humility and in obedience.

We're going to close in just a minute, and I hope you guys have an amazing rest

of your day. Wish it were a little sunny out.

Music.

Right about his old testimony and his new testimony, it would be the Apostle Paul.

He was the worst of the worst, but he found new purpose.

And here's what he said, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, if you've accepted that free gift,

the old is gone, the new is here, and this is from God, who reconciled us to

himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

Our job is now to bring people to Christ. That's what God's purpose for our life is.

That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's

sins against them anymore.

And he has committed us, he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

We are therefore Christ's ambassadors as though God were making his appeal through us.

So we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.

And I can't help but think in a room this size that there are some of us that

need to reconcile not just earthly relationships, but we need to reconcile our

relationship with Jesus Christ.

Maybe we've accepted him when we were younger, but we've strayed and we've been

chasing our own dreams and our own purposes and our own paths.

And for some of you, the way that Easter will change you forever is that you're

going to give your life to Christ and you're going to say, I'm done chasing my ways.

Now I'm chasing you 100%.

That's what I want for you. That's what I want for my family, what I want for me.

I want to chase after God. I want to be a God chaser.

And so I implore you as your shepherd as your friend as your kid as your.

Music.

Given us forgiveness. You've given us life. You've given us this gift of being

born again into a living hope.

You've given us purpose.

I want to say thank you for giving Jesus to us for everything that we've celebrated

this week from Palm Sunday and the triumphal entry to the harsh reality of the

loneliness of Good Friday,

to the excitement and celebration of resurrection morning.

Thank you that before time began, you loved us and you put in plan this redemption.

If you're in here and you don't have that joy, you don't have that peace,

and you just long to have it.

It comes through surrendering your life to Christ, and it just means this.

I like to say it's as easy as ABC.

You admit that you're a sinner, that you need Jesus Christ,

that you want to accept this free gift from God, that you believe in your heart

that God sent Jesus to die on the cross. He paid your penalty.

He took off his robes of righteousness and he approached you.

And he took your penalty, your death penalty, so that you could live forever.

And then he rose again, conquering death. And then we confess that he is our Lord and Savior.

If that's you, I want to encourage you to just say this prayer.

Father, thank you for sending Jesus to die for me.

I accept your free gift of salvation. I admit that I'm a sinner in need.

I want to be born again.

I believe that you love me and you want to have a relationship with me. You are Lord.

Walk with me in this new life,

If you just prayed that prayer with every eye closed, every head bowed,

would you just slip your hand up so I can just rejoice with you and be excited with you?

Go ahead. Awesome.

Awesome. I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you.

If you just made that decision, here's what I want you to do.

I want you to grab that connection card, put your name on it.

And mark that box. Just check that box that says, I committed my life to Christ today.

I did that. Do it right now. No one's watching.

Because we want to celebrate with you and we want to walk with you on this new journey.

Praise God for the hands that went up in this room. Praise God.

Secondly, if you're here this morning and you've been walking this life and

you have a relationship with Christ, but it's just kind of taken back seed and

you've been the driver of your life,

and you just need to re-surrender your life, re-commit your life to him.

Would you just, in your hearts, do that?

Just do business with him. Surrender your heart, surrender your life and pledge

to him that you're going to live for him.

God, we love you. Thank you for today. We celebrate new life today.

Thank you for those who've raised their hands, that they're committing their hearts to you.

We celebrate, and your word says that when someone comes to find you as their

Savior, that there's a party and a celebration.

And so we celebrate new life in this place today. day. We give you the praise

and glory in Jesus' name.

Amen and amen.