The Gospel Of Mark | Astonishing News (December 2nd, 2018) - Mike Armstrong

Alright, we'll get your Bibles open to Mark's Gospel.

Chapter 16 is where we're at here today.

And I got a question for you.

You can think about as you're getting turned there.

When was the last time that you were truly astonished by something?

I mean like blown away, you know, shocked.

Maybe it was appalled or amazed or something like that.

Can you think about a time where that happened?

I you know, I feel like we live in a in a day now where you know most of us, anyways, are so hyper-plugged into everything that's going on on you know on a on a global scale, and you know, we're constantly receiving and and processing so much information that I think our ability to be legitimately astonished is somewhat diminished, I think.

Just because of the like the sheer volume and plethora of things coming at us constantly.

Have you noticed that you know it seems like every week now there's you know a news story about another shooting in a school or or in a church or at a mall.

It's another tweet from the president.

You know, it's it's the horrific abortion statistics that we see over and over again.

Or maybe it's it's viral videos, right, that you've seen showing heroic rescues or or or funny bloopers or you know, wild stunts, whatever it may be.

I mean, just just this week, a friend of mine texted me a video of uh of this guy who went hang gliding for the very first time.

And uh he was with his instructor, and as they took off, uh you learn really quickly he's not strapped in.

Okay, and so he goes like off this cliff and he's holding on with one hand, and the instructor's holding on to him, and they're trying to land this thing, he's trying to fly it, and you know, he gets he gets down to the ground and he and he lets go right at you know before impact, and he like breaks his arm, but he's but he's fine.

You know, I was thinking about this.

Like I'm almost 38 years old now.

I've had nothing even remotely as crazy as that happen to me.

But I watched this video and I'm like, eh, well, whatever.

You know, I saw the very next day there's like another hang gliding video that came up on my news feed.

I'm like, why like I don't need to watch that?

Like, why bother?

Like I it's like that's crazy what happened, but for me, I'm just it doesn't even have an impact.

Right?

True, truthfully, these examples are are astounding, right?

Uh you know, to various degrees and for various reasons.

Um, but because we see and we hear about these types of things over and over again and so often, I think in some ways become we become a little desensitized to uh how astonishing it really is.

And uh and getting uh to the point of being truly blown away by all of these things uh seems to be uh more of a rarity than maybe it it once was.

Well, today we're concluding our series in Mark's gospel, right?

With last week bringing us to the uh crucifixion, and now today the the resurrection as we look at this.

Uh, we're at the climax of the book, right?

This is this is it.

Everything has been driving towards this.

And so what we're gonna see here is is that the resurrection, as much as you and I have have probably read it before, most of us anyways, have we read it before, but probably multiple times.

We've we've heard sermons on it, we've been to Easter services.

It's you know, many, many times uh we've heard it.

And that being said, it really is astonishing when you really kind of think about it.

Right?

It truly is the event upon which human history, world history hinges, right?

It is.

It was definitely a shocking moment for these for these women here as they you know came to the tomb and they found the scene as it was.

And you know, as Jesus rising from the dead was to compel them to faith and to action, it it compels you and I now today to consider our own response to all of these things.

Well, this is what we're gonna be looking at here today, but before we jump into verse one, uh why don't you join me as we pray?

God, we come before you as your church and we love you, and we're just so thankful for your word and and God for how you uh have made it so clear that uh yes, you died, but uh you have uh also been brought to life.

Jesus Christ is risen.

And God, today uh we uh as we work through this passage, Lord, I pray that uh we would be compelled to respond, Lord.

I pray that it would not be um just another ho-hum, you know, bit of information that goes in one ear and out the other.

But Lord, I pray that it would shake us.

I pray that uh we would be astonished by this, Lord, not in an emotionalism type way, uh, but Lord, as we just kind of consider the reality, I pray that your Holy Spirit would allow it to strike us and to hit us and transform us.

And so, God, I pray today that as uh as we as believers, we come before you, we've heard this before, Lord, but we need to we need to understand it in deeper ways.

That's what our heart needs most of all, Lord.

I pray that if there is anyone here who has not yet placed their faith in Jesus Christ, I pray that uh that would in fact happen.

Lord, I pray that your Holy Spirit would be so good to save someone here today.

And so, God, we thank you again for this time together as your bride, as the church.

Uh, make these things clear, I pray, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, the first thing here, uh along in your notes, it'll be on the screen as well.

Uh, the astonishing news of the resurrection compels me, first of all, uh, to believe that God has done the impossible.

We've got to believe that.

Uh take a look at this now, starting in verse one of Mark 16, it says this.

Uh, when the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome uh bought spices so that they might go and anoint him.

Alright, so these are the these are three of the women, anyways, who who witnessed the death of Jesus Christ, like we talked about just last week in chapter 15.

They had seen this and they had they had followed the action, uh, albeit at uh at a distance here.

Alright, so now, now the Sabbath uh celebration was over, now that it was, they were able to purchase uh these spices to anoint the body.

Okay?

Now, this wasn't embalming as you know some of us might be familiar with, but rather this was perfuming uh the body as it uh decomposed.

Okay, now that's that's something that would normally have happened as the body was being put uh into the tomb, but that didn't happen yet because of the timing of Passover.

Now, why explain these details?

Some of you might be thinking that's too much information for me.

Well, we explain them because I think it really helps us uh to understand the headspace of these women as they were approaching the tomb here today, right?

That you know, Jesus had been killed three days earlier on what we celebrate around Easter time as Good Friday, right?

He had been killed, he'd been buried, and while he had said that he would rise, he had told his disciples this.

We know that they, you know, that kind of went over their heads.

They didn't get it, they didn't understand uh yet.

Okay.

And so their expectation as they're as they're walking towards the tomb here is simply like it's over.

It's done.

Like, you know, Jesus was our friend and he said and did some amazing things, but but now he's dead.

Right?

It's it's it's game over.

For them, it was it was sorrow and for sure a lot of confusion about all of this, and trying to put the pieces together, and and and they were they were grieving.

And so what they were doing as they were coming here uh on the Sunday was was simply hoping to do their little part to honor Jesus' body.

And I mean they definitely weren't expecting what was about to happen next.

Verse 2, take a look.

It says, and very early on the first day of the week, so this is what we know as Resurrection Sunday, when the sun had risen, I don't know, pun intended their church?

What do you think?

Some of you caught that.

Doesn't matter, keep going.

When the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.

And they were saying to one another, Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance uh entrance of the tomb?

And it says, and looking up, okay, pause right there.

So it appears that that what was their body language like?

Right?

They've been they've been walking towards the tomb.

It's early morning, and they're sort of like, they're kind of shuffling along, right?

Their heads are down, and again, they're they're they're grieved, they're defeated.

Right?

They're they're they're so down about all of this, and it's just so much, so much sorrow.

And so, I mean, you might expect that though of them.

But it says then, and and and looking up, okay, so they get their eyes up, it says that they saw that the the stone had been rolled back, it says, and it was very large.

Okay, so because they'd gone so early in the morning, and we know this already, that the men, the disciples, that they'd scattered, right?

They'd ran, they'd taken off, right?

They they'd wondered as they were walking up to this, how are we gonna move this stone?

Like it's it's huge.

How are we gonna do this?

But they arrive and find that this large stone, as the text tells us here, it was already rolled away.

Now understand that the implication here being that that God himself did it.

Okay, the the the the impossible, the impossible had happened.

They were they they were they were literally stepping forth into an astonishing new reality here as they enter the tomb.

Verse 5 picks it up.

It says, and entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed.

Okay, so realize this is an angel.

Right?

This is an angel that they're seeing here, and and and the women's reaction here is extremely consistent with the reactions of multiple people throughout the scriptures whenever they come face to face with an angel.

It says there that they were, they were alarmed, right?

They were alarmed.

And I mean, I was thinking back to you know when Jesus, the pronouncement of Jesus being born was made to the shepherds, right?

They were, they were alarmed.

And so this angel, though, he he tries to help them out.

And he tells them, do not be alarmed, verse 6.

Okay, now that word alarmed there is pretty good.

It's actually very, very literally, it means kind of a combination of things.

It's a mixture of fear and and wonder and amazement and and astonishment.

Okay, so when when the when the ladies come into the tomb here, there this is a supernatural encounter and moment as what they were expecting to come across was was not at all the scene.

And instead it was something entirely different.

It was it was wonderful, it was at the same time terrifying.

And again, the the the angel tells them, do not be alarmed.

So he tries to he tries to calm their fears.

Again, when the dis or when the when the shepherds you know had that encounter with the angels when Jesus was born, what what what are the what do the angels say then?

Fear not, right?

It's pretty common response.

They say, Do not be alarmed.

Verse 6, you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who is crucified.

And then it says, He has risen.

Literally, literally, that means he was raised, as in God raised him.

God has done the impossible.

Keep going.

The angel says, He is not here.

See the place where they laid him.

Now, a couple of things here that should not escape our notice as we kind of look at some of the details of this.

Okay, first of all, uh the fact that women were the first ones to encounter the empty tomb and and and learn of the resurrection, and that's what's recorded.

That's a that's a pretty bold move uh made by not only Mark, but actually all of the gospel writers, uh Matthew, Luke, and John uh as well.

Okay.

Now you need to understand that that these guys who wrote the gospels, they they've long been accused and criticized for just making this whole thing up.

Right?

Now, a lot of people don't criticize them as much anymore because there's kind of evidence to suggest that that they that they didn't make it up.

Um but the reality is back in that day, if you were trying to fabricate testimony, okay, you would not have used women's testimony as a way to try and prove your case.

Because back in that very patriarchal society, women's testimonies, especially in a court of law, uh, they didn't mean uh really anything at all.

All right, they wouldn't have used women as witnesses here if they were just making this up.

So all of this suggests that the gospel writers, they're just simply recording these accounts as they actually occurred.

Right?

And women happen to be the first witnesses.

In verse 5, take a look at that, it gives us this kind of seemingly unimportant detail here that we got to see.

That the angel was, you notice where he was sitting?

On the right side.

Okay, you know that that's you know, that that kind of specific detail there is also not typically given in fabricated testimonies.

Right?

If someone was to make something up, they generally keep it well more general.

They wouldn't give a very specific example like that again.

This just suggests that that Mark is just delivering the facts as has been communicated to him.

Okay, now second thing to notice is the the emphasis or the repetition on what's seen with the physical eye.

I don't know if you picked up on that, but in verse 4, take a look.

It says, looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away.

Verse 5.

And entering the tomb, they saw a young man, verse 6.

The angel says, See the place where they laid him.

Okay, this helps you and I understand that Jesus didn't merely experience uh like a spiritual resurrection of sorts, but rather like an actual, literal, real-world, physical, bodily resurrection, rising from the dead.

Okay, so the women were observing this scene with their own tune eyes.

And even the angel, he he invites them to examine the empty tomb, like see for yourselves.

Right?

He's not here.

And so the intended response then for these for these women is is not just to see with their with their eyes, but to but to believe.

Right?

So both rationally and from the heart that that God has actually done this.

As impossible as it all seems, God astonishingly actually raised Jesus from the dead.

So the question then is do you believe?

Do you believe?

Do you believe that that Jesus Christ was once dead and now he is alive?

Okay, this isn't just some fable or or some legend that's been, you know, passed down and and and and talked about and shared around campfires throughout the generations where we, you know, we've kind of heard it so many times that on a surface level we just sort of accept this as you know, we've we've learned to accept it.

No.

Have you spent time personally and seeing with your own two eyes, so to speak, taking in the details of this, weighing the evidence, considering the facts, coming to your own conclusion.

You know, so many people who call themselves Christians, they they you know, they they we want the transformed life.

We want the Lord to come in and make all things new.

We want we want the power of the Spirit in our lives and and and all of those good things.

But listen, it begins with processing what these women were processing as they they walk up to the empty tomb and have this encounter with the angel.

Right?

Each one of us getting to the place where we're like, whoa! Something astonishing occurred.

The resurrection happened.

Do you believe it?

Right?

It starts there for everyone who would profess Christ.

God raised Jesus for you, to pay for your sins, to reconcile you with your creator, right?

To defeat sin and Satan and death and hell and and to bring justice to a world that that so desperately needed it.

So listen, have you confessed Jesus as your Savior?

Have you done that today?

Have you understand, understood that all of this was for you?

It was for me too.

You know, as we put these pieces together and we absorb all of this, the you know, the astonishing reality compels us, I believe, to believe this, right?

To believe in him as your Lord, as your personal savior.

And respond to him in worship and radical surrender, right, to the God who would go to all this trouble to die and then rise again for little old you and I.

The astonishing news of the resurrection compels me, first of all, to believe, but then to proclaim that God has done the impossible.

That's the second thing.

Take a peek now at verse 7.

The angel says this, but go tell his disciples and Peter.

Maybe you're looking at it and you're like, well, on a second, why does he differentiate between the disciples and Peter?

Wasn't Peter a disciple as well?

I think this is just kind of a really amazing, you know, personal touch that this angel gives to Peter.

Remember, last time we saw Peter, he was denying Jesus.

And he would have been feeling the weight of his failure in all of this.

I think this is just amazing how you know the Lord gives him this.

You know, you're still mine.

I'm I'm not done with you yet.

Go tell the disciples and Peter.

Go tell them what?

Well, go tell them that he is going before you to Galilee.

This is pretty amazing, actually.

This is a direct fulfillment.

If you want to flip back just a page, uh, to chapter 14, verse 28.

Do you see that there in your Bibles?

Right?

Where Jesus told them that he'd do what?

Go before them to Galilee.

Right?

He just said it straight up there.

I'm gonna go before you to Galilee, and now the angel is saying he's gonna literally do that very thing.

It's fulfillment of what Jesus had said would happen before he was crucified.

The angel goes on and he says, There you will see him just as he told you.

And look at what the women do.

It says, And they went out from there and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment, there's our word, had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Now listen, I'm gonna get to unpacking uh some of that stuff here in just a moment, but I actually want to hit the pause button here for just a second and uh and address uh what comes next uh in your text and actually explain to you as the church why I'm choosing to uh end our series at verse 8, okay?

And and not going on uh to preach and go through verses uh 9 to 20.

Now take a look at your Bibles here, okay?

Get your eyes down on that.

In in your translation of the Bible that you have in your hands, most likely, you see after verse 8 there, you'll see uh this phrase in brackets.

It says, Some of the earliest manuscripts uh do not include chapter 16, verses 9 to 20.

And then there's some, you know, kind of some numbers and some notes down at the bottom of your page about all of that.

But then you see that verses 9 to 20 uh continue, but the entire section is like in those double brackets.

Do you see that there?

You got that there in your in your Bible?

Now you might be thinking, well, what's what's this all about here?

You know, I don't feel like I've I've seen that before.

Well, well, let me explain.

Now, first of all, okay, we're gonna tie jump into a little bit of you know the science of textual criticism a little bit.

We're not gonna spend tons and tons of time uh in this, but I think this is really important because we're we're brought uh this is brought to our attention here in uh Mark's gospel.

What you need to first understand is that when it comes to uh the copy of God's word uh that you hold in your hands today, okay, none of the original manuscripts or the original autographs um uh of of the New Testament still exist.

Okay, so what I'm saying is that the the actual letters that guys like Mark and Peter and John and Paul, the the actual letters that they wrote to the church and the gospels and all that, we we don't have those anymore.

Those those are no longer with us.

And you know, they they got damaged and destroyed or lost, and I mean if you think about it, uh travel uh was difficult back then, right?

They were there walk-long distances and they would be passing these things around.

They're written on uh papyrus in a in a lot of ways, and so you can just imagine that some of this stuff would get damaged and lost uh over uh over the years.

Okay?

And so we don't have any of those originals uh left, the actual letters that the New Testament authors wrote.

And so your New Testament, again, that you have, is constructed from the oldest copies of those original New Testament writings uh that we have.

Some of those copies, okay, were written as early as the early 100s AD, so very, very soon uh after they were originally penned by guys like Mark and Peter and all of them, okay?

And and there are there are actually over 5,000, closer to 6,000 actually, uh, of these copies of the originals that are in existence today in the Greek alone.

All right?

Now that's a lot.

Okay, we're gonna get into more of that in just a second.

But but in general, among those copies that we have, there is remarkable, remarkable agreement and and precision as to the content of of those copies.

Okay, so that the doctrine all lines up, the the flow of thought, the stories, the the the details, you know, these copies that were written uh over you know centuries, you know, we'll find an older copy at some point, we'll we'll compare it to what we've got.

We're like, oh yeah, like it lines up uh almost per like perfectly.

It's amazing how the Lord has preserved uh his word.

Okay, so again, in general, there's just remarkable agreement among these nearly 6,000 copies that we have.

Mark 16, 9 to 20, being the main example, okay, of where these copies differ.

You know, actually, uh there's one other example.

It's John chapter 7, verse 53 to 8, verse 11.

Uh that's also the other, the only other section in the New Testament that has these like double brackets and the same kind of story uh behind it.

You know, here's what we need to know.

Okay?

The oldest, the two oldest and most important New Testament manuscripts that we have, from which our modern English versions of the Bible are translated, do not include verses 9 to 20.

Okay, those two manuscripts, if you want to look them up at some point, are called the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex uh Siniticus.

Okay, those are the two that we've got.

Okay, on top of the two oldest manuscripts that we have, the you know, some of the earliest church fathers, guys like Clement and Origen, you know, show no awareness of the existence of verses 9 to 20.

Okay, so so based on that, that's external evidence outside of the scriptures, based on that external evidence, it's almost universally accepted among scholars today, uh, that this longer ending, 9 to 20, was not actually written by Mark.

Okay, but rather it was added to the end of his gospel uh sometime later.

Okay, although not long after, not like way after.

Now, that being said, there's also internal evidence within these verses that that's also suggests that Mark was not uh the author of this longer ending and that it was uh and that it was added later.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

Take a look at verse 9, okay?

Verse 9, you see here that there's a there's a real lack of smooth transition between verse 8 and verse 9.

It says, now when he rose early on the first day of the week, so now it kind of goes back into like Jesus rising.

We've already kind of talked about that he's risen.

And then it says, you know, first to Mary Magdalene from whom he had cast out seven demons.

So it's like the like reintroducing us to Mary Magdalene, even though we've already been introduced to her, like right again, it's just not a real smooth flow of thought here from verse 8.

Okay, also, at least 12 words in verses 9 to 20 um don't occur anywhere else uh in the book of Mark.

Okay, so it suggests that it's not his style.

It suggests that somebody else uh wrote this.

Also, everything in verses nine to twenty uh is actually, we find it in other places in the scriptures.

Okay, we find some of them word for word have been taken out of Matthew's gospel, for example, and uh we see some of the details of some of these things in the book of Acts as well.

So there's no new information in verses 9 to 20 that we don't find elsewhere uh in the New Testament.

Okay, so there's there's nothing really that we gain from including these verses, and at the same time, nothing that we lose from their exclusion.

Okay, so here's what we need to kind of understand here.

It appears very clear that Mark didn't write this longer ending.

Okay, but that being said, some old manuscripts do have this longest longer ending.

Okay, so think about it.

We've got you know five, almost six thousand manuscripts in existence, right?

Some of them have the you know this longer ending, uh, some of them don't.

I think where this really the crux of this here is that the two oldest, most important and valuable manuscripts don't have it.

And so that's really the big, the big clincher uh for me here.

And so the translators, as they're trying to put all this together, they're trying to figure out do we include 9 to 20, do we not?

There's a you know a history of acceptance of these verses by uh among many in the early church, but but not by everybody.

And so that's why they include it in these double brackets here.

It's kind of like a like proceed with caution with these verses here.

The ESV um translation team uh suggests that.

Now, personally, I don't think they should be included here as as text.

Instead, I think they should simply be a footnote at the bottom of our at the bottom of our pages saying, you know, some of the older uh manuscripts said this and and but the oldest ones uh different, uh, don't.

Okay, that being said, there are zero contradictions between what verses 9 to 20 say uh with the rest of the Bible.

Okay, these were merely additions that the early church inserted very early on, uh, that they borrowed from other places in the New Testament.

And so you and I, we can be we can be incredibly confident.

Hear me on this, okay?

Incredibly confident in the accuracy and the transmission of the New Testament that we have in our hands.

The process that these scribes went through, they were so meticulous in making sure that they that they recorded these things for us accurately.

It's been amazing to see how the Lord has preserved his word throughout the uh the century.

Okay, understand that the New Testament, whether you are a Christian scholar or a secular scholar, it is widely believed that the that the New Testament is the best attested document from the ancient world in our possession.

It's amazing, really.

Now, have you ever heard of Homer's Iliad?

We got like any English majors in here?

I slept through a lot of that, okay?

Homer's Iliad, okay?

That's that's the next best attested ancient document that we have.

Now hear this.

Only 650 manuscripts exist.

Yeah, that sounds like a lot, but that's that's not much when you compare, again, the nearly 6,000 Greek copies that we have of the New Testament writings.

The number is actually more like 25,000 copies that we have when we can when you consider the other languages.

You consider the the the Coptic, the Syriac, the Latin, as well as others.

Okay, so again, only 650 manuscripts of Homer's Iliad.

Okay, the oldest being from 900 AD.

That's the oldest copy of the original that we have, the year 900.

Now you need to understand that it was written, we believe, between the years 6 and 800 BC.

So we're talking a 2,000-year gap between when this was originally written by Homer to the first copy that we have.

Okay, so the New Testament blows that out of the water.

Okay, it does.

Right?

When you consider just the sheer volume of the copies that we have and and the incredible agreement among those copies, and and that the earliest copies that we have of the New Testament were written like mere decades of when the original authors wrote.

You and I have every single reason to be to be confident and trust the accuracy and the validity and the inerrancy and the authority and the inspiration of the Bible.

So you might be thinking, awesome, but why add this longer ending in in the first place?

Well, most people believe that it was it was added in by the early church because uh verse 8, it just ends so abruptly.

Right?

It kind of leaves us hanging a little bit with the women just fleeing from the tomb in fear.

Right?

That doesn't sound like the way you end a gospel.

Right?

You know, what about the, you know, seeing Jesus?

What about what about the victorious ending?

What about what about all of that?

Does this suggest that that Mark's, you know, Mark originally did end it differently, but but maybe that ending was lost?

I don't know, that's that's possible.

It's it's not so hard to imagine that.

I mean, you think about if that you know if the if the ending of, you know, if there was an original ending somewhere that that was Mark's gospel, that's probably the last page, right?

You ever have a book in your house that has you know kind of a beat-up cover?

Right?

You can imagine that maybe the last page, you know, in a codex would be lost, but listen, it doesn't really matter.

If if God wanted to preserve that kind of ending for us, he would have.

Either way, he decided that what we have is sufficient.

Personally, personally, I think that ending at verse 8 is totally in line with how Mark rolls.

I really do.

His fast-paced, right, no-nonsense way that he works his way through the text.

Right?

He'll share a story, it's kind of the reader's digest version.

It's not, you know, immense detail.

It's, you know, let's get to it, and you know, immediately they're on to something else.

The word immediately, you know, over and over and over again as we've read through it.

That's his style of writing.

It kind of makes me think that he meant to end it like this.

I mean, just take a look at it again.

Here we go, back into it.

Verse 7.

He says, But go, tell his disciples, and Peter, that he is going before you to Galilee.

There will you will see him just as he told you.

And they went out and obeyed the angel's words perfectly.

No, it says that they fled, right?

They fled from the tomb for trembling and astonishment had seized them.

And they said, Nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Right?

This is how the women respond here in the heat of this somewhat overwhelming moment for them.

Though we do know that their response here is it's short-lived.

Right?

The other gospels, remember, the scriptures give us the full story here as to what happened.

We can trust it.

We know that their their response is short-lived.

They would they would eventually, very quickly, actually, go on to tell Peter and to tell the disciples everything.

But I believe that Mark's gospel ends like this to get you and I to consider our own response.

How will you and I react now?

Today.

We've come all the way through this now, and we're at the end.

So what do we do with this?

It's been driving to the resurrection all the way through.

We need to believe that God has done the impossible.

Are we compelled to that?

Are we compelled to believe and and to proclaim that God has done the impossible?

That he has raised Jesus from the dead.

Now, certainly, evangelism is is implied here.

We believe and then and then we go and tell, like the angel tells them to.

We go out, we we share, we we we we speak the gospel, we are we articulate that, we we have a heart for people and we share that, but but in a more general, if you want to zoom out and think about it at a you know 80,000-foot level, everything about my life and about your life should scream, he is risen.

Right?

Everything about our life should should proclaim that.

Every detail.

Not just the the words we speak a couple of times a year, if and when we go downtown to Toronto and and share the good news of the homeless.

Not just the you know, the couple of times we have conversations with with co-workers or or or friends or or loved ones or whatever it might be.

No, every area of our life should be should be sharing the glorious news of the resurrection.

Whether it's, we've talked about these details before, whether it's my my bank statements, how I how I spend my money and and the focus of all of that should, there should be reflect some reflection of the resurrection in that.

How I spend my alone time, what my marriage looks like, how I how I parent my approach to work or or leisure.

The resurrection compels me to proclaim in every single way imaginable, whole scale, that God has done the impossible.

So listen, has this gripped your life?

To me, it would be just the biggest shame ever.

You know, if we got to the end of this gospel and just kind of left from here in a few moments and went on to the next thing without deeply considering whether I'm compelled by this astonishing act, the history and universe changing event of the resurrection.

Will you believe him?

Will you proclaim him?