Easter Sunday 2021

Well, welcome to Christ the Redeemer.

We're excited you're here with us this morning.

So uh happy Easter.

Uh I also like to say happy Blazer Sunday for me.

If uh I haven't a blazer, something horrible happened in life, or something wonderful happened in life.

And today, this morning is one of those wonderful blazer days.

And so uh we are so glad you're here with us.

Maybe you're part of our church and you're here.

Maybe you're online, you're you're you're watching.

We're so excited you're here.

Maybe um you haven't been to church in a really long time, given the past year, and uh today's your first time back in church, and so excited you're here.

Now, we know also possibly you're here through family, um, and perhaps you're here through family and you want to be here, or perhaps you're uh here's family and you kind of got roped in, right?

And you're just here.

Um, but we're glad either way.

We're happy you're here either way.

What we love to say to everybody, including myself, every single week is we're more broken than we originally thought.

We're more sinful than we originally thought, but we're more loved by God than we could dare to dream.

That's just the thing we keep saying in our church over and over again.

It's the good news for me, it's the good news for you.

So we're gonna pick up this story about Jesus' death and resurrection in Luke chapter 24 this morning.

Luke 24 · chapter mention

So Jesus was crucified on Friday, and then here comes a group of women back to the tomb.

So they would expect to see the tomb sealed shut with a big old stone that they wouldn't be able to move, and some soldiers guarding it.

But they get a different scene.

Luke chapter 24, verse 2.

Luke 24:2

They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.

In their fright, the women bowed down their faces to the ground.

But the men said to them, Why do you look for the living among the dead?

He is not here, but has risen.

Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.

Let's pray quickly before we get into the sermon.

God, we come before you, and at the same moment we're so astonished and joyful of this victory.

And at the same time, it can be quite hard to believe in the resurrection.

There can be parts of our hearts that are held back with disbelief.

And we just come before you honestly to say that that is that's real in us, that disbelief.

And we need you.

We need you to help our unbelief.

God, as we look at this story, we pray that your grace, your faithfulness, your goodness, your sufficiency would break through into all of our insufficiency, inability, doubt, and disbelief.

That we might move in a new life that is found only in you.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Two years ago, a group of my guy friends, we went out to Yellowstone to hike and hang out and be there together.

And many of you know I'm an absolute national park nerd.

And so we were out there and we were doing some exploring, and we one day we went on a hike, and on the hike, we hiked through a little section where a forest fire had come through, which was pretty incredible because the fire, it was maybe a year old or so, and so what we had was you still had the ash on the ground, and then you had you know some trees still up, some a lot of the trees had fallen over, but the trees that were up were just kind of pencils at this point.

And then what you could see was you could start to see just the new birth, like just little green popping up through all that ash.

And so for me, um, I did what I always do is you know, I just nerded out on forest fires, you know, as soon as I got back to the house.

Uh, whatever is rattling around in my brain come nighttime, that's what I'm gonna get on my phone and and nerd out on it.

So I learned that in 1988, maybe you know this, I didn't know this, in 1988, the largest forest fire ever came through Yellowstone, burned 800,000 acres, 36% of the park.

Here's a picture of the fire back in 88.

We spent$120 million trying to contain that, and here's some firefighters that are trying to contain that fire.

Now, what's interesting is this it looked like all devastation, right?

I mean, you look at this, it just looks like all devastation.

Back in the 1960s, we actually, as a society, we believed, we believed that forest fires were devastation for forests.

And then, sure enough, we began to learn something else was going on in the, like in the death.

Something was going on in the death.

Because as the trees burn, they actually reseed the forest.

And then as that ash settles into the to the soil, it actually gives nutrients to the soil.

So we declared something dead and over.

And God's creation was only beginning in that process.

And of course, the forests in Yellowstone grew back even healthier than they were before.

You can see a picture here of the new growth forest, and the last picture here, I kind of imagine this is me as an old guy, and I'm telling Christy to take pictures of me while I'm staring at trees.

That's probably what I'll be doing at that point.

So here's the point.

How many times have you thought the story was over?

Right?

Like your story?

Right?

Like joy was over, or peace was over.

Or maybe peace was, excuse me, peace was like for somebody else.

Like it, like, oh, peace can be for him or her, but I don't know if that actually, like I don't know if that kind of healing or like wholeness could be for me.

Right?

Just only despair, only ash.

You didn't see a way out, and then the stones rolled away.

And maybe it's not in a day, right, or a month or a year, right?

But in time the stones rolled away and the new forest grows.

I had a friend say to me this week, she said, I'm starting to trust the pattern.

Ashes to beauty, death to life.

I'm starting to trust the pattern.

A few points to guide us as we contemplate this victory in the new life that we celebrate today.

Here's point number one.

The resurrection gives us the promise of redeemed, not advice to redo.

I saw this picture on Instagram this week and it just made me laugh out loud.

Right?

You can do it.

Let me just offend you this morning and free you.

Right?

I can offend you and free you in the same exact moment with this picture.

Like you can install a toilet, okay?

Or maybe you're like you're you're really smart, you went to Harvard, and you can do a merger and acquisition.

Let's even give you that, okay?

There's some stuff you can't do.

Right?

And that's gonna offend your human pride and desire to self-improve.

But man, does it free you if you're really at the bottom of the hole.

Or you've been there, or you'll be there.

Because you might be able to install that toilet, but you can't heal your own heart.

You can't work your way out of your own guilt.

You can't work your way into a right, secure, forever relationship with God.

You can't forgive your own sins.

Right?

You can't hold it all together.

And this is when you realize you're at the bottom of the hole.

You need somebody, you need God to come to you.

Not you working toward him or advice how to get better.

We don't need a redo.

We don't need a redo.

We need to be redeemed.

And Jesus is not more advice, although he gives us wonderful advice on how to live.

Jesus, primarily the core of our faith, what we're doing this morning is about redeemed by his work.

A full welcome, a pursuit of him to us.

The story of Christ's death and resurrection, what's going on in the context of this passage, is Passover.

That's what's going on for the Jewish people.

If you remember the story back in Exodus, the people of Israel are enslaved in Egypt, crying out to God, save us, save us, save us.

And finally, God comes and speaks to them and says, Here's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna come through in my justice over sin and enslavement.

It's just gonna come through, it is gonna wipe people out.

But if you slaughter a lamb and take the blood of that lamb and put it on the doorpost, I will pass and take you over.

Pass over.

And so the people did that, and those people were saved, and they're delivered out of the bondage of slavery.

And so a ritual begins.

We see through the entirety of the Old Testament of sacrificing an animal, a lamb, bull, goat, to atone for their sins.

The blood of the lamb was used for the payment of the sin rather than the people themselves.

You go, oh, it's so barbaric.

It's like we still do it, right?

Like you sacrifice yourself, like trying to get good enough, get good enough, get good enough.

Then maybe God loves me, or they live me, or I'll love myself, or condemn yourself enough, it works both ways, or condemn yourself enough, belittle yourself enough, then maybe that's enough payment for your sin.

And there's one problem to all of that.

It's endless, it doesn't stop.

There's no end to it.

You do it your whole life.

But all of this leads us to Jesus.

Hebrews 9 12.

He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

Hebrews 10, 4.

For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

This week I learned about an artist, James Tussaud.

He's a French artist back in the 1800s.

He painted hundreds of pictures of Jesus' life.

He traveled, for 10 years, he traveled from France to the Holy Land, painted 350 pieces of art on the life of Christ.

This is the one entitled, What Our Lord Saw from the Cross.

All right, so this is a picture.

You have to put yourself in Jesus' place up on the cross, looking out.

You can see Jesus' feet there at the bottom, Mary Magdalene there at his feet, Mother Mary's out there in sorrow and in anguish.

John the evangelist, he's in anguish, the centurion, he looks like maybe he made a mistake.

The men on the horses look satisfied.

And then the crowd is there just watching, just to watch.

Not coming to save him, not coming to worship him or thank him.

And then in the middle of the picture, in the middle of that background, you see a tomb with the door open.

And it's Tussault's way of saying, this isn't the end of the story.

In 1894, in the Paris Salon, 270 of Tussault's works hung up and were exhibited.

And it was described that men were coming through and reverently taking off their hats.

Women were coming through, kneeling down at the front of these paintings and weeping.

Now, why?

Why?

Not because it's a pat on the back and like, oh, you are so great, and here's some advice for you to go do.

No, they're doing that because they see they're at the bottom of a hole, and this work of God for them is his pursuit of love of them at the bottom of the hole.

It's a proclamation of you can't do it.

It's us under that bridge where we just get stopped.

We need a rescue.

We can't control enough or be enough or earn enough.

There's not enough enoughness inside of me or you.

We need God's grace to come toward us.

And these men and women in Paris in 1894 weeping in these paintings, they understood something.

What they understood was is God so loved the world, meant God so loves you.

On Thursday, at the Last Supper, where Jesus washes his disciples' feet, even the traitor amongst them.

He says, as I have loved you.

That's how you're going to do any of this.

Loving other people, as I have loved you.

You gotta know this love.

On the cross, he looks out at that crowd and he says, forgive them.

Forgive them.

They don't know what they're doing.

It's finished.

He says, It's finished.

This word's finished for them.

And then after the resurrection, when he finds his disciples hauled up in fear, he says, Peace be with you.

His love, his word, our peace.

Point number two is this we receive our victory over sin and death.

That's how the victory comes.

We receive our victory over sin and death and into secure forgiveness and righteousness.

It's a receiving posture that we have.

Yesterday morning, I woke up incredibly stressed.

I mean, this morning's pretty stressful.

Like to wake up on this is Super Bowl Sunday for a preacher, right?

I mean, it's Easter.

I mean, this is it.

Doesn't get bigger.

Big Sunday, Blazer Sunday is what's going on this morning.

Yesterday morning, though, I woke up just as stressed.

I coach my little girl's under 10 girls' soccer team.

And I, there's nothing more stressful in my life right now.

There's a lot of stuff going on in my life right now.

There's nothing legitimately more stressful in my life right now than game morning.

I wake up, I am so amped up about player positions, rotation, my strategy, who's gonna play where, when.

You know, I've started to notice, you know, one girl she gets a little winded halfway through the quarter.

Maybe I can kind of like trade out.

I'm going over it and over it and over.

It's our first season.

We're playing U 10, most of them are eight years old.

You can imagine what that's like.

We're 0-3.

We're coming into this fourth game yesterday morning, and you just gotta prepare your, I just gotta prepare myself for these games and like emotionally to be a somewhat of a nice human being.

We get to the field, the other team, you ten, you ten, the other team is stretching.

Okay, let me just fill you in.

We're lucky to get to the field.

We're working on double knots, on the shoes.

That's where we're at.

They're stretching before the game.

And I look at the assistant coach Chris, I look at him, I said, Do you see what's going on over there?

He said, Yeah, they're in a circle.

They practice, they have time to practice stretching, they're in a unified circle stretching, and we're this is this is not gonna go well.

You know, a U-10 team stretching before a game.

The game starts, we st we start playing pretty good.

Like the ball's over midfield.

Like if you've watched a little kid soccer, and you know what that feels like.

Sometimes you just like, if we get over midfield, I'm gonna count that as a goal.

But like we were we were moving the ball down.

We were actually getting near the one time we got near their goal.

And it's a little pack, right?

You've seen little kids soccer, a little pack, and the ball, it just squirts out to the left, just kind of just rolls out to the left.

And that little girl who's playing goalie, she was out of position.

I don't care about her, I don't care where she was at because what I know is we're gonna get a goal here.

We haven't scored.

We haven't scored the whole season.

We've been skunked.

And I'm not talking one zero, two zero, I'm talking eight, ten.

Like, it's insurance ball squirts out.

Our girl kicks it in.

Did y'all watch the Gonzaga game last night?

Okay?

This guy sucks, he dribbles like half half court, 3.3 seconds, he dribbles down, he hits a bank shot from like half court to win.

That's what happened on that soccer field.

We went nuts.

It was the game wasn't even over.

You would have thought we won the final four.

We are jumping up and down.

The girls come off the field, we are celebrating.

I turned around to the five that aren't playing, they're braiding each other's hair, working on their double knots, and I'm like, we scored.

We scored.

Like this happened.

We didn't know this would happen all season.

This just happened.

They're going nuts.

Here's what's interesting with it, right?

Here's what's interesting is I am proclaiming out we scored.

Libby scored.

That was a little girl who scored.

Libby.

I didn't score.

Right?

It's the same way, like you were at the SDC Championship one team and one time, and your team won, and the game's over, and the coach made a speech, and then the band played your school song, right?

And you're crying.

You you didn't play it down, like you didn't do anything.

You didn't throw a ball or make a block.

You you did nothing.

And you would look at your friend and you would say, We won, right?

Like you're, oh, we won, and you're hugging, you're crying, right?

Why?

It's imputed victory because you're in the family.

That's what we have in the resurrection.

God's victory over sin and death given to us in his grace.

We've done nothing in that free, we've done nothing for this, and we can add nothing back to it.

It is fully sufficient for you to have forgiveness of sins, full righteousness forever, forever his beloved, in a secure relationship.

That's amazing.

We're the family, we're the family let into the stadium to watch somebody else win, and we're given the victory.

Listen to this.

Just after the resurrection, his disciples are afraid, they're holed up, they're ready to walk away.

John 12, 19 through 22.

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked, where the disciples were fear for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, Peace be with you.

When he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.

Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.

Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you.

As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.

So point number three is this resolute peace for your heart is found in God's victory and God's presence.

Both times Jesus shows up and he says, Peace be with you.

Now that's an already but not yet, right?

We say that a lot in our church.

Like, you already have peace and forever peace.

But you're not experiencing that to its fullness right now.

Like, I mean, we all know, we can just, at least my life, I can say my life, it is not like being on the beach in Hawaii after two cocktails.

That is not what my life is like.

It does not feel like that all the time.

So we have peace, but at the same time, we are traveling through a messy, broken world as messy, broken people in relationship with other messy and broken people toward an eternity where we will know this in its fullness.

But our peace today is resolute.

Not because it's us generating it, but because it's in the victory God has given to us.

So even as our life is up and down and we are up and down, we can know something of peace because we know God is for us, pursuing us, and he's with us.

Right?

Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit on them.

So that means God's for us and he's with us.

The very Spirit of God lives inside of us.

So if we put this all together to be astonished by this gift that we have, the victory is won outside of us, imputed to us, so we have peace in that victory.

And then the very Spirit of God, God Himself, lives in us, working in our hearts, helping our unbelief, praise God, and helping us to come alive to the love of God, to no greater peace.

Hallelujah, hallelujah.

He has risen, he has risen.

The victory is his, so the victory is yours.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your grace to us.

Thank you that you are the victor so we can know victory.

Thank you that your work for us is sufficient.

We don't have to add to it.

How freeing it is to say, no, I can't do it all.

There's some things I can't do.

The justifying of my own self and worth and value, the earning of forgiveness and righteousness is something I will always get stuck under the bridge of.

And it will crush me.

And it does crush me.

God, we thank you that you are not a redo, you are a redeemer.

Help our unbelief and help us to trust more in you to know this new life where beauty comes from ashes and life comes from death.

In your powerful redeeming name, we trust and we pray.

Amen.