#Resurrection Hope

Good morning. My name is Chuck.

I'm one of the leaders here. In fact, I'm married to the

delightful Taran who you saw in the green earlier on.

And it's it's fantastic to see you.

And we're going to open up the Bible together now.

If you've got a Bible with you, now is the moment to produce it.

If you don't have one, that's fine.

The words are going to come up on the screen.

It just occurred to me to say, by the way, I was, I've met a

whole bunch of people already today who like, this isn't your

normal church. Maybe you don't even go to

church at all. And you're probably thinking,

oh, like, I feel a bit awkward. Everyone else here knows what

they're doing. And, and I like, I'm not used to

this, actually. What you probably don't know is

that there are loads of people in this room who don't normally

come to church And, and that's the same every single week.

And we have people exploring faith, pursuing Jesus, trying to

figure out what this whole thing is about every single week.

And so you'd be welcome to come any week and you wouldn't feel

out of place. That's exactly the kind of

church we're trying to be. We want to be the kind of church

where it's like it makes sense for people who don't normally do

church. And so if that's you, I'd love

to meet you afterwards. Come to the Connect lounge

through the doors on the left or just come next week and we can

meet you that next week instead. We always say like, don't judge

us on one week. That would be silly.

Just like, come for like six weeks and then decide whether or

not you want to be part of this church.

We'd love you to do that. OK, I'm going to open up the

Bible. Now.

Let's pray. And Lord, we are just so excited

to be celebrating Easter, your resurrection.

And we pray that as we open the Scriptures together this

morning, by your Spirit, you'd be causing them to burn within

us. We just open up our hearts.

We open up our lives, we open up our minds to you, and we invite

you to speak by your word and your Spirit.

Amen. Amen.

Well, a few years ago when we were living in Scotland, we, we

had our garage converted and, and so whilst the builders were

like nailing things and laying bricks and whatever they were

doing, me and Taron went off to go and try and find some

flooring. And so we, we went to a bunch of

different flooring shops and then we went to this one shop.

And, you know, when you meet someone who's just so passionate

about their job, you know, and so this guy was the most

passionate guy you could ever imagine on the subject of

flooring. He said, can I help you?

And we were like, well, we're just looking for some flooring.

He said, no, no, no, no, never apologize for looking at

flooring. You know, don't you're not just

looking for flooring. You're looking for flooring

today. And then he was like, well, what

kind of flooring do you want? Do you want laminate flooring?

Do you want vinyl flooring? Do you want engineered wood

flooring? Do you want solid wood flooring?

Well, I don't know. And so he was showing us all

these different things. And eventually we found

something that we thought might look all right.

And he said, right now I'm going to give you a sample.

He said, I'm only going to give you this sample if you promised

to do 2 things. And we were like, OK, we

promise. The two things are #1 He said, I

want you to go home. I want you to examine the

quality of the flooring. We were like, OK, we promised to

examine the quality of the floor.

Promise #2 He said, I want you to take this piece of flooring

and wherever you're going to lay it in your house, I want you to

put it on the floor. And then I want you to, like,

kneel down next to it. And I want you to just get your

eyes as close as possible to the flooring and then just look

across the flooring. Just imagine, just looking

across this sample, that the whole floor is covered with your

sample. And we were like, yeah, OK, we

promise. Might not have meant it, you

know, but it's like, and anyway, you might be wondering what the

point is. The point is that Jesus

resurrection, the resurrection that we are enjoying examining,

celebrating today is a sample resurrection, right?

We are examining the quality of this resurrection because it

really matters to us. In fact, the apostle Paul said

in Philippians chapter 3 verse 20, he said, but our citizenship

Philippians 3:20

is in heaven and we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the

Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables him to bring

everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies

so that they'll be like his glorious body.

In other words, we're enjoying and celebrating Jesus

resurrection because one day it's going to be ours.

And so it's worth examining the quality of it to see what it's

going to be like. But also it's worth just

imagining just kneeling down at his resurrection and looking

across his resurrection and imagining the whole earth filled

covered with people who have also been raised from the dead.

Right. Just thinking about Revelation 7

where it talks about there before me was a great multitude

that no one could count from every nation, tribe, people and

language standing before the throne and and before the Lamb.

They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches

in their hands. And they cried out in a loud

voice. Salvation belongs to our God who

sits on the throne and to the Lamb.

And so my point is that what we're celebrating today is that

Jesus is very dead body in a cold tomb in the Middle East

2000 years ago was just the sample of what we're going to

enjoy across the face of the earth for every single one of us

available to us that we could enjoy a life after death.

And So what I want to look at this morning really briefly is

like, what is the nature of our hope?

What does it look like for there to be a resurrection?

What does it look like for the possibility of each one of us

being raised from the dead? And we're going to do that by

looking at this incredibly powerful picture of resurrection

that comes in the book of Ezekiel.

So Ezekiel chapter 37, if you've got your Bible with you, Ezekiel

Ezekiel 37 · chapter mention

is a prophet in the Old Testament who is prophesying at

one of the lowest points in the whole of the Bible history,

right? So, so throughout the Old

Testament, God has been pursuing his people with grace.

Throughout the Old Testament, the people of God are

consistently turning away from God and he keeps forgiving them.

He keeps being gracious to them. He keeps like bringing his word

to them and trying to gather them back.

And eventually he says, well, listen, this is what you

actually deserve. And his justice means that

eventually he says, OK, I'm going to give you over to what

you really deserve. And the Babylonians come and

they come to Jerusalem. They besiege the city and they

take, they ransack the city of Jerusalem.

And they take God's people out of Jerusalem, out of the

promised land, and they take them out into the the nation of

Babylon. And so this is like the lowest

point in the whole of the biblical history.

And into that context of of real sadness and desperation, the

prophet Ezekiel begins to speak about hope and about the

possibility that the fortunes of the people of God could turn.

And so that's Ezekiel 37. And just as we're reading it,

you just have to understand, whenever we read Old Testament

prophecy, we're reading in three different ways.

First of all, we're reading, what did this mean to those

people at that time? And clearly this is a message of

hope to a people who in exile in Babylon.

But also we're reading it like, what does it mean to us today?

What is God's word to us today? And then also finally we're

reading it like when Jesus comes in his glory and he finishes

every job that is unfinished, what will it mean then?

OK, so they're three different ways, but but what does it mean

for us today? Ezekiel 37 reading from verse

one, it says this. The hand of the Lord was on me,

and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in

the middle of a valley. It was full of bones.

He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many

bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very

dry. He asked me, Son of man, can

these bones live? I said, Sovereign Lord, you

alone know. Then he said to me, prophecy to

these bones, and say to them, dry bones, hear the word of the

Lord. This is what the sovereign Lord

says to these bones. I will make breath enter you,

and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and

make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin.

I'll put breath in you, and you will come to life.

Then you will know that I am the Lord.

So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I was

prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones

came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh

appeared on them, and skin covered them, but there was no

breath in them. Then he said to me, Prophecy to

the breath prophecy, Son of Man, and say to it, This is what the

Sovereign Lord says, Come breath from the four winds, and breathe

into these slain, that they may live.

So I prophesied as he commanded, and breath entered them.

They came to life and stood up on their feet a vast army.

Amazing picture of not just one resurrection, but whole army

full of people being resurrected.

So what is the nature of our hope as Christians when it comes

to resurrection? Well, first of all, resurrection

is never beyond hope. There is always hope.

This picture that Ezekiel paints is of a battlefield, right?

So there's a valley and there are bodies everywhere.

And these bodies aren't just like a bit unwell, you know,

like, oh, bless them. They're feeling a bit under the

weather, you know, because these are dead bodies.

And in fact, they're not just like dead.

They're skeletons. And in fact, they're not just

skeletons, but the bones have been scattered.

And in fact, the bones just haven't been scattered.

They're dry bones. So they've been there for ages.

So vitamin C is not going to help, right?

They're not going to wake up in the morning and think, oh, that

was a heavy night. You know, these, these are dead,

like deader than dead. These are these, these are

utterly beyond hope. The situation is terrible.

But Jesus said, you know, lots of things are impossible for

man, but all things are possible with God.

And these hopeless bones come back to life under the power of

God. And we see that in the Easter

story as well, don't we? There's Jesus.

And Jesus has been brutally tortured to the point where he's

unable to carry his own cross. But that means that he's nearly

dead by the time he even arrives at the cross.

And then he's brutally executed by one of the most barbaric

methods of execution ever invented.

And then a spear is thrust into his side just to make sure that

he's definitely dead. And then his body is tightly

wrapped in burial clothes, and it's placed in a tomb.

And then a stone that weighs as much as a small car is pushed

across the entrance of the tomb. And then this the the stone is

guarded by 16 professional Roman soldiers.

And so the chant of a man like sufficiently recovering after

everything that's happened to him over the previous days, to

the degree that he can unwrap himself from these tightly

wrapped clothes, push away the stone that weighs as much as a

small car, and then sneak past 16 professional Roman soldiers,

is precisely 0 right. It's impossible without the

invention of God, intervention of God.

And the point is it's not possible to be in a state of

death too deep that it is beyond the hope of a resurrection that

is empowered by the Lord God. It reminds me of that moment in

Luke chapter 8 where there's a man there in the region of the

Luke 8 · chapter mention

garrisons and he's, he's like lost his mind.

And people have clearly tried to help him.

They've tried giving him clothes to wear, but he just kind of

tears them off. And they've tried sitting down

with him and they've even tried restraining him.

But this poor man just sits there and cuts himself with

stones and cries out. And he's just like, his

situation is completely beyond hope.

And in fact, the the author Luke, he tells us that this man

has been living among the tombs, which is way more than just a

geographical location, right? It's like this man is living

among the tombs until Jesus comes into his life.

And within moments, this man who's just completely beyond

hope is sitting dressed in his right mind, listening to Jesus

and his teaching. Resurrection is never beyond

hope. So many of us, in so many ways,

we appear to be alive, and yet actually we have areas, parts of

our lives that in a sense, we're living among the tombs.

Friends, you're not beyond hope. You're not beyond hope.

There's always hope. That's the first thing.

The second thing is resurrection is only available from God.

In verse 3, God asks son of man's can these bones live?

Now remember I said to you, these bones are like really

dead. So the answer is what?

No, no, these bones can't live. But suddenly Ezekiel has this

like flash of revelation and he's like, well actually they

could live if you did something about it.

He says, sovereign Lord, you alone.

No, in other words, like God, well, if you decided to, to do

something, then something could really change.

My mum has had problems with her knees for like years.

And we've been saying, mum, you've got to do something about

that. And finally she went to the

doctor and the doctor was like, I can't believe you've been

living with that for so long. And so, you know, she went on a

waiting list and eventually this in the, in the course of the

last year, she's had surgeons take, I don't know, a hacksaw or

something like that to her legs and just chop out her knees and

give her like titanium knees. You can have all kinds of parts

of your body replaced. Did you know that it's also

possible, you know, like you, you might say, well, I don't

really like the effect that age is having on my body.

You know, my face, my nose, my boobs.

Can you say boobs in church? I don't know.

But Tara's like, no, OK, forget I said that.

Anyway, you, you can have, you can have all parts, all kinds of

parts of your body renovated, right?

You can have bits of yourself replaced.

You can have bits of yourself renovated.

You can be refreshed. You know, you can be like, you

could go to a spa and they'll wrap you in, I've never been to

a spa, but they'll wrap you in seaweed or cling film or

something like that. And like, you know, they can

like do that thing where they thread your eyebrows and they

can give you a hot stone massage.

And, you know, yeah, it could be really refreshed.

It's apparently wonderful. Taron and I love a box set.

We, we love to watch Netflix and stuff like that.

And we've watched the, I don't know whether you remember the

series ER, We've watched ER like hundreds of times.

And so I like to think that I basically am nearly a doctor,

like, you know, I know all the language, CBC, Chem 7 central

line rib spreader, you know, like I, I feel like I, I feel

like in an emergency, you know, if they was to say like, is

there a doctor on the plane, I would be like, well, I've seen a

lot of ER. My point is, like in the 21st

century, with all kinds of medicine and therapies, like you

can resuscitate, you can renovate, you can refresh, you

can whatever the all the other things I said were, but God

alone through Jesus Christ can do resurrection.

There's no other. There's no one else you can go

to. You know, I want to say this

like if you're here and you're visiting and you're kind of like

pursuing God or God's pursuing you, or you're like on a,

whatever language you would use to describe like what brings you

here today. Like if you're looking for a

spirituality that works right now, that's great.

And I can tell you, you've come to the right place.

If you want to know real peace in your life right now, if you

want to know joy even in the midst of the hardest of

circumstances, if you want to know a meaning and a purpose, if

you want to connect with your Creator, then you've come

absolutely to the right place. But what I want to say that's

even more important than that is if you're worried about what's

going to happen after you die and you're thinking I would

really like to live after I die, I would really like to live for

eternity. I would really like to know God

for the rest of my, you know, for the rest of eternity.

Then there's literally no point shopping around, right?

I'm really good at shopping around.

In fact, it's like a speciality of mine.

If you need a new TV, I'll find you a new TV.

That is like the best price, the best specification.

Like I've got it nailed. I've got all these different

websites I use and stuff like that.

There's no point shopping around for a resurrection because only

God alone through Jesus Christ can raise you from the dead.

Oh, there you go. Resurrection is only available

from God. And then the third thing is

resurrection is a work of the Holy Spirit.

It's a work of the Holy Spirit. I am, I'm, I'm a very

enthusiastic person who, who, but, but more than that, I, it's

like contagious, you know, when I see somebody else who's really

enthusiastic about something, I sort of catch it.

And so I don't know whether this is you, but like, I could just

watch Wimbledon for about 10 minutes and I'm looking for my

tennis racket under the bed. Does is there anyone else like

that? You think I could do that?

Like I was saying to someone the other day, Friday, I was

speaking to a midwife and like when we had our babies, I was

like, I think I could be a midwife.

Like, I, I just, it's true. It's true.

I just, I just enjoy people's enthusiasm and stuff like that.

It's just kind of contagious. I promise you.

I watch 20 minutes of the Great British Sewing Bee and I got out

the. This is absolutely true.

I got out this sewing machine and I made a cushion.

Yeah. Thank you.

And I, I watched the Great British Bake Off when they were

making cakes using vegetables. Have you seen that, that one

where they, you know, they're using courgettes and beetroot

and carrots and stuff like that and they're making vegetable

cakes. And I was like, I've got some

carrots in the fridge that need using up.

I'm going to make some carrot cake.

And so I, you know, it was grating away making it all and

put it in the oven. And then what came out was a

little bit disappointing, if I'm honest.

Have you, you know, like if you open the boot of your car and

then you lift up that little flap on the bottom and there's

like a spare wheel there, a space saver wheel and it's like

really, really thin, but really, really hard.

That's basically how my carrot cake came out.

You know, I could have used that in an emergency to just, you

know, make my car go down the motorway.

And the reason was because, and this is where I'm going with it.

You're going to enjoy this. I've forgotten the.

Raising agent, do you see? Sorry about that.

Anyway, my point is, God's raising agent, His agent for

raising people is the Holy Spirit.

In Ezekiel's picture, you know, there's tendons that come on and

muscles and then skin and all of that.

And so these are bodies, but the bodies aren't yet alive until

what? Until the breath comes into

them. And the Hebrew word for breath

is the word ruach, which means which is all trans, also

translated as spirit. And so there are three times in

this short passage where where the Spirit of God, the breath of

God comes into these bodies and suddenly they come to life.

In verse five, I will make breath enter you and you will

come to life. Verse 6, I'll put my breath in

you and you'll come to life. Verse 14 I'll put my spirit in

you and you'll come to life. The way that God brings life out

of death is that He deploys His Spirit, which is the agent of

resuscitation and resurrection. The Spirit that raised Jesus

from the dead is the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is at work

in US. Romans 8 verse 11 says this.

Romans 8:11

And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is

living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also

give life to your mortal body because of his Spirit who lives

in you. You might say, So what?

I'm really pleased that I'm being raised from the dead.

I don't actually really mind how he does it.

I don't care whether it's the Holy Spirit or like bicarbonate

of soda. I'm not that bothered.

Well, the reason is because you already have the Holy Spirit in

your life if you follow Jesus, and so therefore he's already

beginning to raise you from the dead.

I went for a walk with a friend a while ago and he works or

worked in Teen Challenge, which is a Christian drug

rehabilitation place. And, and as we were walking, he

was saying that at that particular time, they had 14 men

staying in this rehab center and they'd done a little exercise

where they added up how many years that between them they've

been living among the Tombs, 224 years of, of their adult lives

have been spent in heroin addiction.

And, and so these guys, 224 years, that's nearly 2,000,000

hours of death. And then the Holy Spirit, they,

they connect with Jesus, the Holy Spirit floods into their

lives. And now they're dressed and in

their right mind. Now they're raised from the dead

now. Now they're experiencing hope in

a way that they'd never experienced before.

And if I had more time, I could, like, parade along the stage,

like all kinds of people in our church family who say, well,

I've known the power of death in my marriage and then the Holy

Spirit intervened. Or I've known the power of death

in my eating disorder, and then the Holy Spirit intervened.

I've known the power of death in my marriage, in my health, in

all kinds of situations in my life, and then the Holy Spirit

intervened. You know, the truth is, we all

want to change something about our lives.

I looked up on Amazon, there are 178,862 books on Amazon with the

words life change in the title. Not even in the description.

178,000 books with life change in the title.

Here are some of them. Super foods. 14 foods to change

your life, change your aura, change your life, change your

underwear, change your life. That's one for the teenagers fun

I love you, I love you Feng shui arranging your furniture to

change your life change your life without getting out of bed

on my favorite one. How to change your entire life

by doing absolutely nothing. We we all want to change our

lives. We all, we all know that there

are things about our lives that need to be changed, but actually

whether they're really changed really comes down to our answers

to two questions. The first question is this, Will

I welcome the power of the Holy Spirit into my life?

And question number 2, will I participate with what the Holy

Spirit is seeking to do in my life?

Right, as, as my conscience is being awakened, as, as, as my

mind is being awakened and the Holy Spirit is doing things in

my heart, my mind, my, my body. Will I be willing and, and will

I be participating in what the Holy Spirit is wanting to do in

my life? OK, I'd love to pray.

And then we're going to baptize some people.

Oh, OK. And so, Lord, I want to pray for

anyone here who doesn't yet know you.

Thank you, God, that you're pursuing them, that you're

drawing near to them. And I want to pray for them that

they would connect with you in a way that changes everything, not

just now, but for all eternity. And for all of us.

Lord, we all want to change. We know that there are aspects

of our lives that just in a sense, we're living among the

teams. We pray God that by your spirit,

the resurrection power of God, the power that raised Jesus from

the dead, would come into our mortal bodies and also raise us

from the dead. Amen.