CBFC Easter Service 2026

Stealing you away.

Death tried to keep inside of the grave.

He enemy thought, he tried, but he lost.

You cannot be stopped.

When we cry for freedom, you tore down the walls.

The weight of our burns, you carry it all.

Our fears and our failures ain't dead on the cross.

You cannot be stopped.

Moving dancers, break of jades.

Jesus is driver over the grave.

See Hallelujah.

Battle is one.

Nothing stand against our God.

Stand on your feet.

Shut up, you pray.

Awesome now.

You cannot miss that.

Break her jade.

Jesus is trying.

Over the craves.

See hallelujah.

Battle is one.

Nothing can stay.

I can't stop.

See that again.

Jesus is trying.

Over the craves.

See hallelujah.

Battle is one.

Nothing can stand.

I can stop you.

There is nothing.

There is nothing.

There's nothing that can stop our God.

There's nothing that can stop our God.

There is nothing.

There is nothing.

There's nothing that can stop I got.

There's nothing that can stop my God.

There's nothing that can stop my God.

There is nothing.

I think it's dead.

I can start God.

Jesus is trying.

Oh my gray.

Sing hallelujah.

Battle is one.

I think it's dead.

Sing hallelujah.

Battle is one.

Against that God.

Amen, church.

Let's give him a shot of praise.

Breaks the power.

So much stronger.

The king of a boy.

Then I'm one day.

The king of a bunch.

This is a belly bug.

That you take my bread.

That you feel my heart.

Just I stay on.

All that you've done for me.

Who brings that chaos?

Who brings our chaos?

Back into order.

Who makes the awful?

That game of boy.

That's King of Boy.

Who's the nation?

Which does the justice?

That's like this time.

All of its brilliant.

This is amazing, great.

This is a very love.

That you take my bread.

That you fail my club.

Let down your life.

That I would be dead.

Oh Jesus, I sing for all that you've done for me.

Worthy is the king who conquered the gray.

Worthy is the lamb who slay.

Oh, this is amazing, gray.

That would take my bed.

That would be my done for me.

When that was rest.

So free washes over me.

You have made me new now life, kins with you.

You have made us new now life, kins with you.

My shame was less.

You have made us noon now alive.

We can twelve our Savior displayed on a criminal's cross.

Darkness rejoiced as though heaven had rose.

Come to the song of all the beat.

Winter was that was your best.

Till that stroke was moved for good.

For the land had conquered death, and the dead rose from their church, and the angel stood in awe, with souls of home who would come to the Father Rose.

Shall not be shall not wait.

Is this a good one?

Lord, it is only by your grace and by your goodness, Lord, by the life, the work, the death, and resurrection of your Son that we are gathered here today, praising your name, Lord, freely fellowshipping, Lord, and in sweet, sweet communion with you.

Lord, we thank you for that gift, Lord, and we we pray that as you have been with us here through this time of worship through song, Lord, you would continue with us throughout this service.

Lord, you would continue with Daniel as he shares your word, Lord.

Help the words from his lips be not his own, but yours, God.

And help them to fall on a fertile soil, Lord, ready to be changed and renewed by the truth of the glorious resurrection, God.

And help us to leave this place a better reflection of you, and help us to show that to those around us.

We pray these things in your holy and precious name.

Amen.

Please receive it.

There we go.

Thank you, no one worship team.

Good morning.

Happy Resurrection Sunday.

He has risen.

He is risen indeed.

My name is Mike Roll.

I'm an elder here at Community Bible Fellowship Church.

If you are uh visiting us here today, we're delighted that you can celebrate uh the Lord's resurrection with us.

I got a few announcements that we'll go through, and then uh we'll get uh rolling with the service.

Uh there's a game night coming up this uh two Fridays from now, April 17th.

Um fellowship here um at the church.

Uh so look out for that.

And uh the following Sunday will be our uh monthly potlock, April 19th.

And then uh there will also be a ladies' lunch in on May 2nd.

Uh more information uh I'm sure to follow in the coming weeks.

Um before I call Daniel up, I'd like to would like to share just a uh a brief uh meditation from uh Tony Renke on uh the resurrection.

But what now of his of his passion?

What of his excruciating agony at Golgotha?

Yes, as C.S.

Lewis says, the dawning of this resurrection age will turn even the agony into a glory.

Now joy has triumphed over sorrow.

Day finally has dominion over night.

Light has thrashed against darkness.

Christ, through death, has destroyed the one who had the power of death, and death is swallowed up in victory.

Easter now has become our annual dress rehearsal for the great coming day.

When our perishable bodies put on in the imperishable, when the mortal finally puts on immortality, when we join in the triumph song with the prophets and the apostles, O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?

Just as rehearsing the details of Jesus' final days leading up to the cross prepares us for the fiery trial coming on us, so also Easter readies us for the triumph that will follow.

Easter is our foretaste of divine glory.

Christ has been raised.

Day is no longer fading into black, but night is awakening to the brightness.

Darkness is not suffocating the sun, but light is chasing away the shadows.

Sin is not winning, but death is swallowed up in victory.

Let's pray.

Father God, we thank you for this day.

Lord, thank you for just the opportunity that we have to come here to worship you, Lord, uh, just to meditate and uh just to praise your resurrection, Lord.

We thank you for everything that this day means, Lord, that uh death has been swallowed up in victory.

Lord, we thank you for just the immeasurable sacrifice that your son gave for us on the cross.

Uh we just thank you, Lord, that um that the grave was not the final answer, Lord, but rather your resurrection had the last word.

Uh Lord, as we uh move forward for this service, we just lift up Daniel to you and just pray that you be with him, Lord.

Uh pray that uh you would just restore our hearts and our affections towards you and just the glory of your Son and his resurrection.

Uh in your name, Lord Jesus, we pray.

Amen.

At this time the children may be dismissed.

Let's do that one more time.

He is risen.

Yeah.

He is risen indeed.

Amen.

And good morning again.

Welcome to Community Bible Fellowship Church.

I'm glad that you are here.

I know that for some of you, coming here today may have been a real act of courage.

So whether this is your first time here or if you would consider this your church family, I just want to thank you for being here.

I want to thank the the people in the overflow room and all those who have smushed close uncomfortably to strangers.

Thank you for being with us this morning, and welcome in the name of the risen Lord Jesus as we begin to hear from his word in Isaiah 25.

It's uh It's not lost on me that many of us have have come in here today with very um different attitudes or mixed feelings about Easter, right?

Easter is it's supposed to be a time of celebration and the joy of life and resurrection, a time of excitement and family and eggs for some reason, and like terrible candies that even I as a candy addict can't fathom that people actually enjoy.

But we know that it's a it's meant to be a time of joy.

Easter is meant to be joyful.

But why?

Like why how does a a poor Jewish carpenter walking out of a tomb 2000 years ago, as incredible as that is, how does that affect me?

Because yeah, it's a it's a a nice ending to the whole crucifixion story, but I live a long way away from that story.

And the story I'm a part of is still a mess.

Jesus got up from the grave, he's risen, he's risen indeed, and the world is still broken.

It kind of seems that for for all the joy that Easter is meant to bring, it also has a way of quietly exposing how broken our world still is.

Jesus is risen, and the world is still broken.

I mean, how many of us have come in here today dressed nicely in our Sunday best with our pastel Easter colours?

Covering up what's really underneath, which is a a continual aching of the loss of loved ones and the stress of work and the anxiety of cancer diagnoses, and the bitterness of strained marriages, and the loneliness of lost ones, and just the hardships of life weighing continuously on our shoulders.

It's true that Jesus is risen, and it's true, the world is still broken, and we feel it.

Today I I want us to get a glimpse into what Jesus' resurrection accomplishes for his people, what is yet to come, not just an empty tomb somewhere in Jerusalem, but the resurrection of the world itself.

And we get this glimpse way back in Isaiah 25, a prophecy from 700 years before Christ Jesus walked on this earth, showing us a picture of what his resurrection would bring about.

So if you have a copy of God's Word or would like to stand with us, I invite you to stand now if you're able, to hear and to honor the reading of God's Word.

Beginning in verse 6.

The Word of God reads as follows.

On this mountain, the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine, the best of meats and the finest of wines.

On this mountain, he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations, he will swallow up death forever.

The sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces.

He will remove his people's disgrace from all the earth.

The Lord has spoken.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Pray with me now if you will.

Lord Jesus, you have spoken.

Draw near to us by your Holy Spirit.

May my words now be a channel of your grace and your holy presence to your people here in Redhill this morning.

That you would be glorified in our hearts.

We pray this in your name, Lord, and for your glory.

Amen.

Well, we saw in Isaiah 53 on Good Friday a few days ago, for those of you who were here, that Isaiah prophesies of the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Read until the end of the chapter, and you'll see that it's ultimately about the resurrection of Jesus, prophesied hundreds of years before he was born.

But here in chapter 25, Isaiah focuses not just on the death and resurrection of Christ, but on what these things would accomplish, what their ultimate end is.

See, the Bible teaches that the resurrection of Jesus is not just some bare fact of history, not just a one-off, but that it is a continuing thing that is pointing to something that affects everything.

The metaphor that Paul uses in the New Testament is that Christ being raised from the dead is the first fruits of the resurrection.

The first fruits in the ancient world for the um agrarian people of that day were the crops, the initial crops of a harvest, that would show that more is on the way.

A greater harvest is about to come.

And then sometime last week, you would have seen a single bud begin to blossom.

And now go outside after the service or look out the windows, and you'll see the whole tree is bursting forth with thousands of blossoms filled with new life and vibrant color of spring.

If you know how spring works, then you would know from that first blossom that much more is about to come.

And that's what the New Testament is sort of saying about Jesus.

It's like Jesus' resurrection is the first magnolia blossom on an otherwise lifeless tree, indicating that a new season is here.

A new age has begun, and the whole world is about to burst forth with new, vibrant, glorious life.

And what Isaiah is doing here in chapter 25 is giving us a glimpse into the ultimate new life that Jesus' resurrection is bringing about not just a hidden spiritual renewal now, but full, absolute, spiritual, physical, worldwide, all-encompassing renewal of a new creation, a new earth.

So yes, the world is still broken, painfully broken.

But there is a blossom on the tree, and it's telling us that more is coming.

Something is yet to happen.

There is a an empty tomb in Jerusalem, and it tells us that more is yet to come.

And I really don't think that Jesus wants us to miss this this morning.

So he has painted this picture of a tree in full bloom, in a sense, way back in Isaiah 25, to show us the glorious, vibrant new life that he, by his resurrection, will bring about.

So we get in this this picture of you and Jesus' ultimate resurrection over three main enemies.

Despair, disgrace, and death.

Despair, disgrace, and death.

And we're going to use those three as a sort of roadmap as we traverse the terrain of Isaiah 25 and see in it the fruit of Jesus' resurrection that is yet to come for those who are in Christ.

So first despair, then disgrace, and then finally we'll conclude with death.

The first enemy of this broken world that Jesus' resurrection confronts is despair.

We see this in verse 6.

Look at verse 6 if you have your Bibles open.

It says, On this mountain, the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine, the best of meats, and the finest of wines.

Now, as hungry as this verse may make you, um, it's not ultimately about food.

It may not be um evident exactly what it's about.

Man, it's really kind of down out there.

Beautiful spring day to start our Easter Sunday.

Isaiah is not primarily giving us a menu here.

He's giving us a message, a symbol, and he's using this feast imagery.

Um feasting and and wine and scripture are some of the Bible's richest symbols, actually, for joy.

For blessing and abundance, and restored life with God, the fountain of all joy.

Way back in Genesis, at the beginning of the story of the Bible, humanity was designed and intended to ascend the mountain of Eden and feast with God, to eat from the tree of life at the top.

And in Exodus 24, Moses and the elders climb Mount Sinai as representatives of all of God's people to feast with God at the summit of the mountain.

Even just a few weeks ago in 1 Samuel, we saw how Saul is anointed king, as the first king of Israel, and the first thing he does is climb up Mount Bethel to eat in communion with God as a priest at the top.

All throughout the Bible, feasting is used as a symbol of friendship and fellowship and blessing and joy.

Particularly in communion with God, the source of all true joy.

And wine is similar.

Psalm 104 says, God gives wine to gladden the heart of man.

Proverbs.

Don't be an alcoholic.

I'm I'm just reading what the Bible says.

Proverbs associates wine with celebration, with abundance and blessing.

Ecclesiastes says that eating and drinking are gifts from God's hand for the delight of his people.

They're symbols of joy and blessing from God.

And it's for this reason that Jacob, as far back as Genesis, prophesied.

That the coming of the Messiah would be marked by an abundance of wine.

As did Hosea and Amos and Joel and Jeremiah and Isaiah here and elsewhere, not just because Jesus would turn water into wine, but because Jesus came to bring joy to his people.

Jesus is here today to bring joy to his people.

That's what these symbols of feasting and of wine indicate to us.

In the ancient world, where daily life often meant scarcity and hunger and anxiety, things like abundant food and overflowing wine signaled peace and security and divine blessings of joy.

In other words, Isaiah here is painting a picture of joy without despair, abundance without need, rejoicing without end.

Verse 6 is a promise of unending joy for the people of God.

And it is the resurrection of Jesus that secures this for his people.

It is because Jesus was raised from the dead that we who are united to him by faith have the guarantee that we too will soon be resurrected, not just from death to life, but from despair to joy, from the futile, fleeting joys of this world to true lasting satisfaction, from the hopeless distress of this broken world into a life of everlasting gladness.

Isaiah is telling us that God's answer to a despairing, broken world is not a lecture, it's not a command, it's not a self-help plan, it's a feast that he prepares himself as a gift to his people, a gift of delight.

This is why Jesus began his ministry at a wedding feast.

It's why the new creation celebration is described in Revelation 19 as a feast because what Jesus came to do, what his resurrection accomplished is not merely an end to sin, not even merely an end to sorrow, but the beginning, the restoration of true and lasting joy.

So, church, we do not have a God who pretends that the despair of the world isn't real or tells us to figure it out ourselves.

We have a God who has entered the depths of despair himself and has risen victorious over it.

And that's not just joy for Jesus who gets a happy ending to his story.

He's the first blossom on the magnolia.

And his joyful victory over despair means that more is coming for those who are united to him.

And if you have had faith in Christ, then Isaiah tells us something remarkable is promised to you, namely the total transformation of your present suffering into unending delight beyond your wildest dreams.

So are you discouraged this morning?

Do you feel worn down?

Does your world feel empty or lacking something?

Are you hungry for something more to satisfy you?

Well, Jesus isn't telling you you shouldn't feel this way.

He's not saying to fake happiness or hurry your grief along and act cheerful like a good Christian.

He's not asking you to pretend that the world isn't still broken, it is.

What he's saying is that he is resurrected over despair.

And therefore, this is not the end of your story.

Yes, you have been hurt.

You suffer, you're restless and anxious and hungry for something that can satisfy.

And Jesus says, there's a feast, and it can satisfy.

And you will be satisfied at the feast of blessing and delight that is coming to you.

And this is not a denial of present pain.

It's not a command to just cheer up now, it's not a shortcut around grief, but it is a promise.

Your pain will not be forever.

Despair does not have the final word.

Joy does.

Church, the day is coming when every longing in your soul will be satisfied.

And as real and legitimate as your despair may be today, it will not last.

One day the resurrected king will wipe it off the face of the earth for good.

Your hunger for gladness, your thirst for deep and unending delight will be satisfied at the feast of the risen Lord Jesus.

That is his promise from Isaiah 25.

And as though that were not good enough, Jesus here through the prophet Isaiah takes it one step further in verse 8, which says, He will remove his people's disgrace from all the earth.

The Lord has spoken.

This brings us to our second point, disgrace.

See, in Jesus' crucifixion, he entered not only the depths of despair to rise victorious over our suffering, but he entered the depths of disgrace as well to rise victorious over our shame.

Isaiah is prophesying that God would come not just to deal with the guilt of our sin, but the shame that clings to it.

Sin has left the world shattered, and all of us know this brokenness personally.

All of us experience both the causes and effects of sin's hurt.

We're all simultaneously victims and villains in the story of the world's brokenness.

We have hurt others and we have been hurt by others.

And as a result, we all tend to feel this deep sense of disgrace, of shame.

We all feel shame because we've all sinned and we've all been sinned against.

And it's this disgrace in particular that has the power to rewrite and to reshape the narrative of our lives.

Because shame is a rewriter of history, it's a master manipulator, it's a storyteller, and it whispers stories in our minds all day long.

It's the quiet voice that subtly whispers, you're not enough.

And no matter what you do, you never will be.

Or you're invisible.

And no one notices you because there's nothing worth noticing.

Or what happened to you back then, what they did to you.

That was your fault.

You'll never be as pretty as them.

You're not beautiful.

You'll never do anything successful.

You're a burden to those around you, Shane says.

You're a fraud.

And sooner or later you're gonna be found out, and people are gonna see you for who you really are.

And if people could see who you are, what you did, what you thought, they wouldn't be able to look at you the same.

They wouldn't love you anymore.

You're unfixable.

You'll always be this way.

You didn't just make a mistake, you are a mistake.

You don't just carry baggage, you are the baggage.

Have you heard that voice?

Disgrace rewrites, reshapes the story of your life quietly and subtly, but relentlessly.

And every one of us has been handed a false narrative by shame.

For many of us, we've we've lived inside that story for so long that even if we once knew that it was false, we've begun to live and believe that it's who we really are.

But church, here's the good news.

Jesus came to rewrite our story.

And my prayer for all of us this morning is that we would come to believe the story that Jesus tells, the story that Jesus has written for us, not the story of shame, not the lies of disgrace, that we would find ourselves living within Jesus' story, not our own.

Because it is in the life, the death, and especially the resurrection of Jesus that we have hope for our sin, our brokenness, and our shame.

See, Jesus was crucified, which was a horrific, brutal, excruciatingly painful process.

But the Bible's emphasis isn't actually on the physical pain of Jesus.

The Bible places the spotlight more on his shame.

He was rejected and abandoned and lied about and mocked and condemned and spit on and stripped naked and publicly humiliated and laughed at and taunted.

Jesus didn't just take on our guilt on the cross, he took on the shame that closely clings to it.

The crucifixion of Christ is not just about physical pain, it's about humiliation and rejection and isolation.

And so everything that shame whispers to us, you're despicable, ugly, worthless, unlovable.

Jesus heard not just as subtle whispers in his heart, but as taunting shouts from a crowd of people who once called him their friend.

So Jesus isn't just aware of your shame, he has actually entered it.

He descended to the darkest depths, not just of sin and death and judgment, but of shame, so that when he got up three days later, he gained victory, not just over sin, death, or judgment, but over shame.

And what Isaiah is pointing to us here is that for those who belonged to Jesus by faith, it wasn't just Jesus that died on that cross.

It was you and all of your shame.

And so it wasn't just Jesus that walked out of that tomb, leaving shame in the grave.

It was you.

And one day soon, Isaiah promises us the disgrace will be totally removed, not just from our record before God, but from our own hearts and from the world itself.

And we will rise.

You, if you have trusted in Christ, will rise victorious, revealed in glory, leaving all of your shame in the grave.

It will be removed from all the earth, Isaiah says.

A few years ago, I was I was sitting in a class the last day of school with my professor, a like a very distinguished scholar, sitting at his desk weeping.

And he was telling us of a friend of his and his wife's who had been deeply hurt as a young girl by a man, a family friend.

And he explained how she lived in the despair and disgrace of that, of what had been done to her for over seven decades before passing away, unhealed, still broken.

But she had trusted in Christ.

And so through tears, tears of joy, I think, my professor told us this.

I wrote it down.

He said, I don't know fully how, but I do know that one day she will rise with Jesus as a beautiful display case of his greatness, and all of her shame will be newly revealed as glory.

And church, I don't fully understand it either.

But the promise of Jesus in Isaiah 25, accomplished at the resurrection of Christ, is that every ounce of disgrace, every voice spoken against you from the world or Satan or from within, every single trace of shame over what you've done or what's been done to you will soon be silenced forever and transformed into glory, transformed into honor, and you will rise with Christ as a beautiful display case of his greatness.

That is the promise of Christ for you who have trusted in him.

Jesus has risen victorious over the enemy of despair, and he has risen victorious over the enemy of death.

But there is a final enemy.

They come wrapped in burial shrouds as though they themselves are facing death.

And what Isaiah is drawing our attention to here is the dreadful reality that all peoples, all nations, everyone in the world lives under the shroud of death that hangs over us like a dark cloud every day of our lives.

Every life is infected and corrupted and cut short by the ruthless sting of death.

And along the way it takes our loved ones and it brings us through a thousand deaths of our own as we grieve their loss.

And as much as we may prefer to try to rejoice in the reality of heaven and celebrate the lives of our loved ones rather than mourning their deaths, many of us also can't help but acknowledge the reality that death, unlike anything else, is indescribably painful.

Unbearably confusing, and for many of us, unshakably terrifying.

Regardless of how our society tries to normalize the reality of death, so we don't have to think about it, death is not normal.

And we know this.

It's unnatural.

In a world of evolved humanity that comes from nothing and ends in nothing, a world of blind, pitiless indifference.

Death is all that there is, death is all that is natural.

The Bible tells us what we know deep down, this is a perversion of God's good creation, not a reality he designed or desired.

And on top of that, death is deeply mysterious.

What is death like?

What is it like to die?

No one can tell you.

We have promises from God that assure us, but no one can tell us what it is really like.

It's unnatural, it's unknown to us so much so that philosophers and scientists alike struggle to explain it or define it.

And likewise, the deaths of those that we love are unnatural and confusing and excruciating like nothing else.

Even Jesus, who identified himself as resurrection life in human form, just moments before he raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, was seen sobbing at the tomb, and filled with sorrow and anger at the unspeakably horrendous reality of death.

And on the night he was betrayed to his own death, he was seen weeping and sweating blood and fear and anxiety.

So if you are filled with sorrow this morning from the loss of a loved one, be it days ago or decades, you are in good company here today.

Not just with the rest of us sitting here, but with Jesus Christ Himself, who is with us.

And if you are anxious and fearful of your own approaching death that has invaded God's world, you too are in good company.

Death is real.

It's really painful and really scary.

And so I don't want us to gloss over this reality this morning and gloss over the weight that death has and the power it has in our lives.

But I also don't want us to miss the promise that Jesus has for us this morning in Isaiah 25.

Unlike much of the world, Jesus doesn't respond to death with pithied platitudes.

He doesn't tell us to make peace with it or suppress it or learn to accept it as just part of life.

He calls it what it is, an enemy, and he promises that this enemy will be destroyed.

On this mountain, the Lord Almighty will destroy death.

He will swallow up death forever.

Think about that image.

Death swallowed up, not just restrained, done away with entirely.

He doesn't just push it back a few years or stop it from continuing further or give us tools to cope with it.

He will destroy it, the text says.

And just as Jesus walked out of his grave with a renewed body, never to suffer or die again, the promise of Isaiah 25, secured by the resurrection, is that so will we.

We don't just float away to some floaty ethereal realm in the sky somewhere.

We get up.

We get new bodies, never to die again.

Death will be destroyed forever.

And it is not only death, but the things that cause it: violence and war, sickness and disease, oppression, injustice, every illness, every weakness, every wickedness, everything that plagues our bodies will someday be destroyed for good, wiped off the face of the earth by the resurrected King Jesus.

And it is because King Jesus in history swallowed death on that very mountain.

As Isaiah prophesied, it's because Jesus tasted death on the cross and rose victorious over it that we will taste the everlasting delights of his banquet.

It's because Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath that we will drink the cup of infinite joy when he returns to put an end to death forever.

And you might say, you know, that's great.

But putting an end to death doesn't change the effect that death has brought me suffering right now.

Erasing the reality of death doesn't erase the scars.

And Church Jesus sees that, he understands, and I think he agrees, which is why he goes on in verse 8 to say that he will not only swallow up death forever, but he will wipe away the tears from all faces.

God will not only put an end to death and pain, but he will undo every ounce of suffering you have ever experienced.

He doesn't simply stop the tears, but he comes to personally wipe them away and reverse the hurt that brought them about.

The sovereign Lord, Isaiah says, the master of the universe, the king of the cosmos, will personally and tenderly wipe away every tear you have ever shed.

Not just the tears of a moment, but the tears of a lifetime.

Every silent cry, every ounce of despair, every moment of heartache, gone.

And your hurt will turn into joy.

And somehow, brothers and sisters, somehow, in some mysterious way, it will all be even greater and more glorious for having once been broken.

There's this story about a group of Christians in Russia who built this church using the stones from an abandoned Soviet prison camp.

One of the many camps used to imprison, enslave, and execute followers of Jesus under Soviet rule.

And these believers were taking the very stones once used to crush the church and using them to raise it back up.

But inside one hollowed out stone, they found a canister with a note in it.

And the note said this We are a group of Christians being forced by communists to take the stones of our church and Build a prison where we will stay until we die.

And our prayer is that one day these stones would once again be used to build a church.

And I can tell you confidently, without ever having laid eyes on this new church, that it is beautiful.

Am I right?

Not because of its architecture, but because of its story.

Seeing that church would bring tears of joy to my eyes in ways the first church never could, no matter how beautiful it was.

And it is precisely because those stones had been scarred by sorrow and broken by suffering and soaked in the desperate cries and prayers of hurting people that they now stand resurrected in a glory they never could have displayed before.

It is more beautiful, more wonderful than ever before, not in spite of its past brokenness, but because of it.

And church, in a similar way.

The transformative resurrection power of Jesus Christ means that even the depth of your suffering and the agony of death can give birth to something that is more wonderful and more beautiful because it had first been broken, because we had first been broken.

Your suffering is producing something glorious for you.

Jesus will not simply put an end to death, he will undo its hurt.

He'll reverse it and redeem it, he'll wipe away every tear that death has ever caused you, not just to restore things to how they were, but to resurrect them into something more wonderful, more glorious, more delightful than ever before for those of you who belong to him.

Dear friends, do you belong to Jesus?

Do you know this Savior?

If you don't yet know Christ, I want to encourage you this morning to trust in him today.

Trust in Jesus today.

He is your only hope.

C.

S.

Lewis said, All your life, an unattainable ecstasy, has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness.

And the day is coming when you will wake to find beyond all hope that you have attained it, or else that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.

Don't wait, friends.

Come to Jesus today and find everlasting life and joy in him.

Seek the Lord while he may be found.

Call upon him while he is near.

And if you have trusted in Jesus, then be reminded of this sweet truth this morning.

The day is coming soon when you will hear Jesus' voice calling you out of your grave to delight in him with all his people at a feast of everlasting joy, never-ceasing, ever-increasing gladness.

That day is coming soon.

Right now, you still feel the weight of despair.

Hear the voice of shame and live under the shadow of death.

The world is still broken.

But there is a blossom on the tree.

There is an empty tomb in Jerusalem, and it tells us more is coming.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, resurrected King.

Lord, who are we to receive such kindness?

To be given such a hope this morning.

That though we were sinners, broken, suffering, helpless and hopeless, that you descended into the depths of despair, the depths of disgrace, the depths of death that we had brought about to rise victorious over it all, that we might rise with you.

Lord, strengthen your people today by the reality of your resurrection.

And return to us soon, we pray, Lord Jesus.

Come quickly.

Amen.