Easter Sunday 2017

So a few months ago, I watched the movie, the Steve Jobs movie.

I think it's called Steve Jobs is the title of the movie.

And if you remember him, he was the founder of Apple and he was meticulous, right?

I mean, he wore the same outfit over and over and over and over and over again.

And he was just obsessed with efficiency and design and perfection.

He was brutal, brutal to work with.

He wasn't my kind of guy.

He wasn't the kind of guy I would want to work with.

And so I'm kind of watching the movie and I'm going like, the movie's enjoyable, but I don't know if I like you.

I actually don't like you at all.

That's kind of my opinion of him.

Eventually he's kicked out of his own company.

If you remember his story and the story of Apple, he's kicked out of his own company and it's over.

He's over.

He's out.

He's on the out.

He's not coming back in.

It's over.

And then the movie kind of goes along and he he just works his way back in.

Like he just works his way back in.

And I find myself, I'm watching this.

I don't like him.

Don't like this guy.

And yet I'm loving this.

Like I'm loving what's going on here.

And he gets his way back into Apple, right?

And then the iPod comes out, and that was amazing, right?

Because we all had, or a lot of us had those huge notebooks of CDs, you know, in our passenger seat, you know, flipping those.

I mean, texting is dangerous.

I mean, that notebook was dangerous.

That's what was dangerous.

You put it in your lap and you're finding best hits of Deaf Leopard, and that's in the very back, but you want it, you want it, and so you're going for it.

You know, and all of that.

We'd spend all that time loading our CDs.

We spent all the time loading the CDs into our computer and plugged the iPod up, and all of that was on that little red tape.

It was amazing, amazing.

And then the wheel came out on the iPod, and then the touch screen, and then the iPhone and the iPad, and the iPad mini, all of that, right?

All of that.

And I'm watching it and I don't like the guy.

I do not like him.

I don't like him.

Too brutal.

Don't like that.

I don't like him, but I'm loving this story.

I'm loving the story.

Because at least for me, I love a resurrection.

I just love it.

I love it.

I love, I love when it's the 15th round and Drago has been pummeling Rocky, and you think Rocky's dead, but somehow his legs are still working.

There's no way, and then all of a sudden Rocky comes back and he wins.

Or Martha Stewart.

She was in jail.

I don't know if you remember this.

She what sweet Martha was in jail.

We don't even care, do we?

Sweet Martha thinks she comes back out.

Resurrection.

New life.

Backstreet boys.

They are in Vegas right now with a show.

And so I don't know what's going on in your life.

I don't know how hopeless it feels that you can think about the Backstreet Boys.

Because there had to have been a period in their life where they thought nothing will ever come back for us.

And look, look, it happens.

It happens.

Resurrection! Resurrection.

And we feel it at times, right?

We feel this.

We feel like new life and peace, just an impossibility for me.

We all love these resurrection stories.

And we're wondering, where is the new life for me?

Where is that at?

And so it's Easter, Easter morning, and you remember the story, and Sam read it for us, and Jesus was killed on Friday, a political move by Rome, a power move by the Jewish authorities.

And then three days later, and we read that we read this in Luke 24, the women who are close to Jesus, they're coming back to the grave where Jesus was buried.

And these women were hurt.

I mean, they were broken.

This was, they loved him, and he was going to make everything better.

And now he's dead, and they're distraught and they're grieving.

So let's reread verses 2 through 7.

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.

Okay, it's a strange, strange scene, strange scene.

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

Rightfully so, I think all of us, we would just fall out at this point.

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?

Like you remember that?

He was telling you a lot of stuff.

Verse 7, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and on the third day rise.

So let's break this down.

Let's break this down into four points about love this morning.

So point number one, God is love.

God is love.

1 John.

St.

John wrote that in 1 John.

God is love.

That is the ark of the scriptures.

I'm not talking about let's look at a like narrowed into like a battle in the Old Testament, and you go, I don't know about that.

No, I'm talking about the ark, the story of the scriptures is God is love.

We could spend a year on it.

We could we'll spend our lives on that, okay?

I understand, but we'll be succinct this morning.

Point number two love is of God.

Love is of God.

Love is not God.

See, love has God as its source.

We're getting philosophical.

Love has God as its source, but God does not have love as his source.

But rather, love is the expression of God for us to know.

So now we can think about the cross.

I'm gonna get us, I'm gonna eventually get us to the empty tomb.

Now we can think about the cross, point number three.

No greater love is this than a man should lay down his life for another.

So that's straight from John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

Jesus, incarnate God, the face of God, hangs vulnerably on a cross for us.

And that's all about our sin and our shame and the condemnation.

All is put upon him.

We're always trying to sacrifice ourselves for all those things, right?

Just keep sacrificing yourself, sacrifice yourself, sacrifice.

And God says, No, no, no, I will come into your mess, I will sacrifice myself and take that upon myself.

That's how much I love you.

I'll do that, I'll sacrifice myself, and I will give to you my righteousness.

And this is a picture of what God thinks about you.

And all of us think about this all the time.

All of us think about love all the time because we all want to be loved.

We all want to be loved, and it's whether my wife loves me or my husband loves me, or that girl in the eighth grade, her name was Kristen Looney, she had long brown hair, that is her real name, and does she love me?

Or the guy in accounting.

And our heart just putters away at the thought, the thought, the thought that another person could accept me and approve of me and want me, like really want me as I am, you know, to stamp, to stamp us with validation.

But deeper than that, what we're wondering is like, would could that go into our failure?

Like before we get all prettied up in the morning and dressed up.

Could it go there?

Like, what about my shame?

Could you handle that?

Could you love me in that place?

Man, we'd live for that thought.

People move across the world for that thought.

And all of this is human romantic love, and it's a taste.

It is a taste of something deeper.

That God sees us before we get all fancied up.

And he sees our sin, he sees our shame, and he says, I'll take it.

I'll take it.

That will not be the last word for you.

And the thing is, is this is where the freedom is.

It's because we're constantly trying to get God to approve of us, or somebody to approve of us, of our, with our achievement in the world, or achievement and our self-righteousness within religious life, and we're constantly trying to use all these different things.

And it's just it's us sacrificing ourselves more and more and more.

But God sees us before all of it.

And he says, Man, I love that girl.

I love that boy.

Now, listen to this quote.

I read it to this quote this week, and it's from The Guardian, an article in 2015.

So The Guardian's a secular magazine, 2015, and the title of the article is Christianity is for losers.

And now this is gonna get us to the empty tomb.

I said we're gonna get, you know, God is love, love is love is of God, no greater love is this than a man should lay down his life for another.

That was point number three, and now we're we're getting to the resurrection.

Christianity is for losers.

The Christian story, like the best sort of terrifying psychoanalysis, strips you down to nothing in order for you to face yourself anew.

For it turns out that losers are not despised or rejected, not ultimately.

In fact, losers can discover something about themselves that winners cannot ever appreciate, that they are loved and wanted simply because of who they are, not because of what they achieve.

This is revealed precisely at the greatest point of dejection.

The resurrection is not a conjuring trick with bones, it is a revelation that love is stronger than death, that human worth is not indexed to worldly success.

So point number four.

But the God of victorious love abides in you.

And new life comes from that and abiding in that deep love.

And you know what?

It won't make your junky, stressful job go away.

It won't.

Or your kids to become perfect, they won't.

Or you won't make you become perfect.

It won't make your mom less passive-aggressive.

Or you or me.

It doesn't mean you're gonna be perfectly happy.

It doesn't mean even you're gonna be good.

It doesn't even mean everything in your life's gonna become healed and everything's wonderful.

That's not what it means.

What it means is that there's victory over all of those realities being the thing that justifies you.

That the empty tomb is the word over you, not the collection of how you're doing and all these other realms of life.

I went for a walk in the woods this week for two hours without my phone.

You done that?

Have you done that recently?

I had not.

I have not done that recently.

And so I said, I get there.

I said, I'm gonna leave my phone in the car.

And so I get into the woods, I just start walking in, and it's about every fifth step.

You know what I'm talking about, right?

Little pat.

Make sure where's it at?

You know, look like that's usually that's you know, keys, phone, wallet.

Guys, you know what I'm talking about.

I don't know the woman's rhythm there, but keys, phone, wallet, keys, phone, wallet.

It's like every five steps.

You just I felt like I felt like I felt like I didn't have pants on.

I kept tapping.

I kept tapping, where is it at?

And then all these fears, all these anxieties, just like I thought about like immediate, I'm in there, I'm like, what if a tree falls on me?

How am I gonna call?

Who am I gonna call?

How's this gonna work out?

Because I've been on this trail a lot, and usually it's about two people per hour that I see on this one trail in Kennesaw Park, about two people per hour.

And so I figure out if a tree falls on me, I'm there for 30 minutes.

That's what I figure out.

I have to come to grip, I have to come to grips with this.

This is my anxiety.

So usually I can cover it up with a podcast, right?

Just put it in, another podcast, another song, but all this anxiety comes up is I'm not covering it all up.

And the what if the tree falls on me and I reconcile that, I get comfortable with that, and then I start to think about are there bears in Kennesaw Park?

I'm not making this up, I'm not making it up.

And I'm pretty sure there's not bears in Kennesaw Park, but I also don't know because I've never I've never Googled it.

And I can't Google it now because I don't have my phone.

You see the problem.

You see the problem.

And so I have to let that one go.

Maybe there is, maybe there's not.

I'm not sure.

Gotta let it go.

But then the urge just to look things up starts.

What's the name of the gremlin in that movie?

What is the name of the gremlin?

Gizmo.

Somebody said it.

Very good.

That's right, gizmo.

But I w I wondered that for a while because I couldn't look it up.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Like we're just we're covering all this anxiety inside of us.

And I keep walking, dealing with all this, keep walking, and then this memory, just a memory from 10 years ago, 12 years ago, maybe 12 years ago, comes comes over me.

Where I I had I had publicly failed at something in business.

And I had frustrated a lot of people.

And a lot of people were angry at me.

And it wasn't gonna go away like in a couple hours, it was gonna last for a little bit of time.

Man, I just I felt all of that again.

That shame.

And you know, the voice I heard was um not you had you you failed.

The voice was the voice of shame.

The voice of shame is you are a failure.

That's what shame is.

And I heard that you are a failure.

And so I just walked to that death voice for a little bit, which is the old Adam.

That's the old Adam, right?

To get you to live out of fear and shame, to motivate your life out of that.

And I realized, like, wow, what is that?

Where did that come?

Where did that come from?

What is that?

Wow, that's still in me.

That still motivates me.

Wow, that's something I need to bring to the Lord.

I mean, that's something important there.

And then I also remembered something else about that first day when that started.

That first day, I had I had called Christy on my way home and said, hey, here's what's going on.

It's not pretty.

And I get home, I walk straight in, and I get on the bed, and I ball up, and I start to weep.

And Christy comes into the bedroom and she crawls up on the bed and she curls up behind me, and she wraps me up, and she just wept over me.

Right?

There's a taste of sacred love.

That's the taste, that's the taste, that's the human taste.

Though you fail, I love you.

The final word, the final word is not the word of shame, and it's not the word of death, it's not the cross.

It's the empty tomb.

That love is victorious.

See, the default voice in your life is usually not the good one.

It's not.

That's why we have to keep hearing the gospel.

That's why you have to keep preaching it to yourself over and over and over again.

The default voice is usually the old Adam motivating you out of fear and shame.

It talks a lot about your weight.

Talks a lot about your position and your bank account and your where you're at in the social realm and how your life means anything.

And I'll talk to you a lot about that.

But the final word, the defining word, the justifying word over your life is a word of grace.

It is the gift of the cross and the empty tomb.

It is the sacred, victorious love over you, victory over death that was accomplished by Jesus' death and resurrection for you.

So, you, my brothers and sisters, you are free.

You are free indeed to live life and the resurrection.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that your work for us is enough.

And that you died on the cross for our sin, and we live, we live, we live in your righteousness, not our own.

And that the tomb is empty.

A statement in history for us to look to and to know the face of God alive.

Love is the final word over us and in us.

Would you help us, help us, give us greater trust to rest ourselves at the core of who we are, and this deep love that you have for us, redeeming, resurrecting, love.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.