Making Room for Resurrection

Let's turn our attention to his word.

Christ is risen.

This was a phrase that was commonly used as a greeting of sorts throughout church history.

Instead of exchanging hollow pleasantries, like, hey, how are you doing?

They would instead speak truth to one another by pronouncing and proclaiming over one another, Christ is risen.

This was actually a pretty famous call and response that was used throughout the church historically as well.

What would typically happen is a preacher or pastor would take the stage and they would say, Christ is risen, and in unison the congregation would respond, He is risen indeed.

What do you say we try that?

Christ is risen.

You sound so good.

One of my favorite uh stories of this uh occurred in 1917.

And this story is about a guy named, uh let me make sure I get his name right, Nikolai Ivanovich Buharin.

He took a trip to Kiev with the intention of giving an address to a large crowd on the tenets of atheism.

Buharan was a Russian communist leader who fought in the Bolshevik Revolution.

He was the editor of a newspaper called Pravda, which literally translates into the word truth.

He was a prolific author.

In fact, a lot of his works on philosophy and political science are still widely read today.

And Bukharan takes the stage and delivers to this crowd what amounted to a scathing rebuke of Christianity.

He pulled out all the stops and his attempts to dismantle Christianity piece by piece, and he was seemingly successful because a hushed silence fell over the crowd.

And at the end of this address, Buharan smugly asks, Are there any questions?

And the silence lingered probably for a minute or two longer than it should have, until finally one older gentleman stands up from the back of the room, and he slowly makes his way to the stage, and he stands behind the lectern, and he triumphantly shouts, Christ is risen! And in unison with one voice, everybody in the crowd stood to their feet and they responded, He is risen indeed.

And they walked out.

How good is that?

The resurrection, you guys, is literally at the heart of what it means to be a Christian.

I'm a Christian.

I've been a Christian for a long time.

I'm a Christian because God has been good to me and I've experienced His love and His presence in a very real way.

I'm a Christian because I've been personally transformed by the power of the gospel.

I love the way C.S.

Lewis says it.

He says, I'm a Christian.

He says, I believe in Christianity like I believe in the sun, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

In other words, Christianity gives us the best, most comprehensive worldview and helps us make sense out of the mess in our world, but also gives us an unshakable hope even in the midst of that mess.

But I am also a Christian because the resurrection is a historically verified reality.

Jesus is alive.

Now, I want to make a confession to you all.

I'm a pastor, I'm a professional Christian, I get paid to do this, which is shocking to some of you.

You'd be amazed at how many folks they say, so what do you do?

I say, I'm a pastor.

They say, Well, what do you do throughout the week?

It's like, no, this is a real job.

Like, this is a thing.

But I, as a pastor, live with a fair amount of perpetual doubt.

And I don't know if we're supposed to share this stuff with you.

But this is my last sermon, so here you go.

I often wonder that at the end of it all, when I see God, might he say to me, Shane, the way you conceive the world to work was terribly wrong.

I live with that doubt.

But nothing short of Jesus' bones will cause me to disbelieve.

We serve the one and only resurrected King of kings and Lord of Lords.

Listen to me all.

Muhammad had some good stuff to say.

I could walk you to his grave.

Buddha had some good stuff to say.

I can show you his bones.

Jesus is alive right now, and he's standing at the right hand of God, making intercession for you and I.

The resurrection for us Christians literally means everything.

Paul talks about the resurrection like this in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 3 through 5.

1 Corinthians 15:3–5

He says, For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.

He says, the resurrection, for those of us who call ourselves Christians, is the most important thing.

The thing that which is of first importance.

He goes on to say elsewhere that if Jesus isn't alive, our faith is futile.

We might as well cast this thing in.

Let's eat, drink, and be merry.

But if he is alive, then it changes everything.

It changes how we worship.

It changes how we grieve, it changes how we suffer, it changes how we live.

The resurrection has massive implications for your life and mind.

So what I want to do in the rest of our time together is I want to bring the resurrection to bear on this question.

What do you do when life doesn't work out the way that you wanted it to?

It's going to be a cozy sermon today, so just get cuddly.

Lock in.

What do you do when life fails to work out, when life is interrupted, when life takes a sharp left turn?

What hope do we have in a life that is full of letdowns and losses and disappointments?

And this is a universal reality for every single person.

We all know what it feels like for life to fail to go according to our plan.

What hope do we have when life doesn't work out the way that we want it to?

Well, for the answer, let's turn our attention to John chapter 11.

John 11 · chapter mention

This is a well-worn story.

This is the story of Jesus raising his best friend, Lazarus, from the grave.

But I think this story is very telling and hopefully will help the resurrection settle on whatever it is that you walked in here with this morning.

John chapter 11.

John 11 · chapter mention

If you're with me, give me a good amen.

Starting in verse 1.

Says this.

Now a man named Lazarus was sick.

He was from Bethany, the village of Mary, and her sister Martha.

This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.

So the sisters sent word to Jesus, Lord, the one you love is sick.

I don't know about y'all, but when my time is up, I would love for people to say of me that I was the one that Jesus loved.

The one you love is sick.

When he heard this, Jesus said, This sickness will not end in death.

No, it is for God's glory, so that God's Son may be glorified through it.

Let's skip down to verse 17.

On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.

In other words, Lazarus was dead as a doornail.

Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in their loss.

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she got a little bit of an attitude.

She went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.

Lord, I want you to hear the tone in her voice.

Lord, if you would have been here, my brother would not have died.

Where were you, Jesus?

But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.

I love Martha's faith.

Jesus said to her, Your brother will rise again.

Martha answered, I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.

Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life.

The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.

And whoever lives by believing in me will never die.

Do you believe this?

Jesus wants to confront us with that same question.

Do we believe this?

Do we believe that he is the resurrection?

Do we believe that he is the only way, the only truth, the only life, the only route to life that is everlasting?

Do you believe this?

Let's close our Bibles and open our hearts.

I want to talk to you for the next 20 minutes or so from this subject.

Making room for resurrection.

Making room for resurrection.

Let's pray together.

Spirit of God, we pray that you would speak to our hearts.

Give us faith to believe in the power of the resurrection.

Help us to hold on to hope in the midst of suffering, loss, dashed dreams, believing that you are the resurrection and the life.

And help us to find eternal joy in you, Jesus.

And it's in your mighty and matchless name we pray.

And everybody said, Amen.

Amen.

What do you do when life doesn't work out the way that you wanted it to?

When someone or something you love dies, whether it's a dream or an ambition or a goal or perhaps even a relationship or a person, next week will be five years since my father passed from stomach cancer.

So if this message isn't for anybody else, this message is for me.

Five years.

What do you do when someone you love or something you love dies?

Perhaps you applied for a job that you thought you were a shoe-in for, you were completely qualified only to ultimately receive the phone call where they told you that, hey, they're going with somebody else.

I prayed with uh somebody at the end of the first service who said, Shane, I actually just got fired.

Maybe that's you.

What do you do when when you get fired or laid off from your job?

And and Lord knows your bills don't stop coming just because you lose your job.

God knows they don't stop coming because you decide to plant a church either.

So y'all pray, pray for your boy.

What do you do when a relationship with somebody that you thought was your soulmate, your everything, your boothang ultimately ends in heartbreak, and now you're left lonely picking up all the pieces?

What do you do when you're met with unmet expectations, with a sense of loss and longing?

You know, this example might be a bit trite for some, but I hope it's relatable to many of you.

Uh my wife and I, we have been married for almost 12 years.

We got married young.

Uh I was 22 years old.

Here's my best marriage advice: marry your best friend.

I love that girl with every ounce of my being.

I enjoy her company.

She is the coolest person on the planet.

And uh that's why we've our marriages worked for so long.

We got married.

I don't recommend getting married as young as we did, but it worked out for us.

So, but we decided because we were so young that we were young, we were gonna try to wait uh for at least five years to have kids.

And we made it four and a half years.

We, and they were a glorious four and a half years, you guys.

Like we had so much spontaneity, we could go out to eat whenever we wanted.

How many of you know date nights cost double now?

Because not only are you paying for dinner, but you're paying for a babysitter.

Come on, somebody.

We we could do whatever we could travel, we traveled so much, and then JR showed up.

The little dude, I love him, but man, did he change everything for us?

And and honestly, Elise was the one that felt it the most because um she's she's uber creative, you guys.

She's an immensely talented musician.

You'll often see her up here playing bass for OCM.

Can we give it up for OCM and Pastor Greg for serving and leading at the Assemblies of God General Council?

No big deal.

They just led and preached to about 20,000 people, just a little small crowd over at Nationwide Arena.

Elise will play bass in OCM, but uh actually back in the day she was a singer-songwriter, and that was her ambition and her pursuit.

She was making music, but then motherhood just hit her in the face, and and she had to lay so many of those dreams to the wayside.

Now they they've taken a bit of a different shape, but but but change is inevitable when you when you have kids, and and and this isn't a commentary.

Hear me clearly, this isn't a commentary on gender roles.

I'm not saying that the woman has to stay home with the kids while the husband brings home the bacon, whatever the heck that means.

I'm just talking about the biology of the thing.

I'm talking about the breastfeeding and the sleepless nights, and all the mothers said amen.

Like it is a struggle, y'all.

And so much for us changed.

And life looks now a little bit different than we thought it would, because J.R.

and Miles.

Now, now, those two boys give us so many joys that are unlike anything else we've ever experienced in our lives.

But with those two boys also comes a great measure of sacrifice.

Life looks different, it is not lost on me that in a crowd this size, you hear me complaining about what happens when you have kids, and there are many of you in here who wish you could.

And you're like, Shane, I would love to have your problems.

Maybe you're struggling with infertility, or you experience the pain of a miscarriage.

You know as well the feeling when life does not work out the way that you wanted it to.

And this is the way that so much of our lives work, isn't it?

Plans change, people come and go, our dreams, our dash, we struggle to achieve all the ambition that we had when we were younger, unexpected transition, and usually the adage holds true.

When it rains, it's gotta be in the Bible somewhere, y'all.

When it rains, it pours.

You ever just found yourself feeling beat up a little bit?

You ever just felt tired?

Weary?

Many of you feel that way this morning.

You're like, Lord, I was doing just fine before all this pain and confusion and disappointment set in.

I'm just trying to keep my head above water.

And what's even worse is when the pain that we feel comes as a result of self-inflicted wounds.

So much of the disappointment we feel is a direct result of our own dumb decisions.

And so we're left in the wake of those dumb decisions with the painful consequences, but we're also stuck shouldering the shame and regret of those decisions.

And to whatever degree you've experienced loss in this life, you've lost your marriage, you've lost a loved one, you've lost a dream.

To whatever degree you've experienced loss in this life, what that tells us for sure is that so many of the things that we love will not last.

They will not last.

And it makes it all the more damaging when we tie to these things, our joy and our security and our identity, when we hitch to our thing, to these things, our purpose.

Because ultimately they all go away.

And they're all on their slow march toward death, death being their ultimate end.

But wouldn't it be good news if death didn't have the last word?

Am I preaching anybody today?

Wouldn't that be good?

This is what it means to be a Christian.

We believe that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world, that he was buried in a tomb, but three days later he walked out of his grave, defeating death.

And so now, for any of us who tie our hearts to him by faith, we too can have eternal life.

But the mistake that we make is we think that that's good news that's gonna come in handy someday off in the distant future when we die and go to heaven.

But right now, I'm just trying to get through this, this being whatever it is that you walked in here with.

This is kind of what Martha's going through.

Right?

Martha's brother Lazarus has been dead for four days.

Jesus shows up, and Martha says to him, Jesus, if you would have been here, my brother would still be alive.

Jesus responds to her, Martha, you gotta chill, girl.

Because this will not end in death.

And Martha, being a good Jewish woman, she responds with the typical Sunday school answer.

See, for context, Jewish people believed in the bodily resurrection.

At the end of the age, she couldn't conceive of what Christ was talking about when he was saying that her brother will literally rise from the dead.

So Martha's like, yeah, Martha gives Jesus the Sunday school answer.

She's like, Yeah, Jesus, I know that one day into the future my brother will rise from the dead, but right now he's laying in his grave if you haven't noticed.

And surely people are like, Martha, you you cannot talk to Jesus like that.

But Martha is just putting words to what you and I so often feel when we face disappointment.

Jesus, where were you?

If you would have been here, my marriage wouldn't have ended in divorce.

Jesus, if you would have been here, my dreams wouldn't have died.

Jesus, if you would have showed up in the hospital room, my loved one wouldn't have died from cancer.

Jesus, where were you?

Martha is just brave enough to keep it real.

And so Jesus says to her, Martha, there's more to the story.

Because listen, if you're taking notes, write this down.

Resurrection doesn't guarantee that every story has a happy ending.

But it does guarantee us that every story does have a new beginning.

I want to tell you today that the resurrection makes all the difference for whatever it is that you find yourself going through right now.

Right now.

Not one day in the distant future, right now.

And here's why.

The resurrection assures us that anything we lose in this life is being redeemed by God and is making room for new life on the inside of you.

Let me say it again in case you missed it.

Come on, one church, if we're gonna clap, let's do it well.

Resurrection assures us that anything lost in this life is being redeemed by God and making room for new life on the inside of you.

On the other side of all that grief, on the other side of all that loss, on the other side of all that disappointment, always remains the hope of resurrection.

Here's what I mean.

Paul says it this way in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 36.

1 Corinthians 15:36

He's talking about a seed, and he says this whatever you sow does not come to life unless it dies first.

Unless it dies first, or unless it's buried first.

And the same thing is true for our lives as well.

When something dies, whenever something is lost, God is still able to bring new life out of those circumstances.

He is a master at bringing beauty out of ashes and turning our sorrow into joy.

This is in part what Paul means in Romans chapter 8 when he says that all things work together for our good.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Notice he does not say all things are good.

There is nothing good about losing somebody you love.

There is nothing good about having to grieve the loss of a dream.

There is nothing good.

About a broken relationship, but somehow our God is so good that He doesn't waste anything.

And there is a purpose to your pain.

And in his sovereign care, somehow underneath it are his redemptive purposes.

Whatever you lose in this life is making room for new life, is making room for resurrection.

A lot of you might be in here today and you feel lost.

You feel alone.

You feel like your dreams have been shattered.

And you thought you had a plan, but then life took a sharp left turn, and now you don't know where you're going or what you're doing.

And I want to submit to you that you might be precisely where Jesus wants you to be.

Because the prerequisite for new life is necessarily that some things have to die first.

We love being filled.

We love that language of fill me up, God.

Rarely do we want to talk about the need to be emptied.

But God loves you enough to empty you out sometimes because otherwise you might have settled for something less than God's best for you.

What if, what if that broken relationship, that unmet expectation, that failed business venture, the loss of that love?

What if all of this was just a prelude to new life?

To resurrection life?

What if the thing that you feel like you're missing out on is God just making room for the resurrection in you?

This is so much more than mere sentimentality.

I don't intend to sound trite or hollow.

What I'm not saying is that just hold on tight because time heals all wounds, and one day this is all gonna get better.

Grace is so much more deliberate than that, you guys.

Sometimes there's grace even in the losing and the letting go.

Because that means God just has something better for you anyway.

Remember, call to mind when Jesus says to Martha, this sickness will not end in death.

No, it is for God's glory, his glory, so that Jesus, his son, might be glorified through it.

Could it be that God loves you enough to leave whatever it is that you lost in his grave because he knew that it would have been for your glory and not his?

We're settling for our perceptions of the good life.

If I could have just had this job, if I could have just had this relationship, if things just would have gone according to my plan, I would have been happy.

We settle for our perceptions of the good life, but Jesus says to you today, I am the resurrection and the life.

I am it.

I'm what you're looking for.

I am the resurrection and the life.

This is the difference between sentimentality and the gospel.

Sentimentality says one day it'll all get better.

The gospel says Jesus is better.

Jesus is better.

And whatever it is that you're going through, there is Jesus weeping and mourning right alongside of you.

This is a hopeful word for anybody who feels an acute sense of loss.

Jesus knows that pain all too well.

Scripture says that Jesus wept when he heard word that his best friend Lazarus had died.

This is a hopeful word for those of you who feel like you've lost something.

But hear me well, one church.

This is also intended to be a challenging word.

Because it could be that if there's something in your life that is crowding out room for resurrection, if there's something in your life that needs to die, God might be calling you today to lay it down, to crucify it, to bury it.

There's this scene in Matthew chapter 16 where Jesus is explaining to his disciples that he would suffer and die for the sins of the world.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

And this is on the heels of an exchange in which Peter, um Christ asks of Peter, Who do you say that I am?

And Peter rightly and triumphantly responds, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And so Peter starts feeling himself a little bit, and Jesus is explaining to his disciples that he's gonna die, and Peter says, No, may it never be, Lord.

That's not how this story is gonna go.

You are the triumphant king, you are gonna overthrow the Roman government, you are not gonna die, to which Jesus responds, get behind me, Satan.

For the record, Satan is not something you want Jesus calling you.

But this has been the devil's tactic ever since.

He wants to keep you and I from going to the cross, he wants to keep you and I from crucifying our wills, our agendas, our desires, because he knows on the other side of that sacrifice there is resurrection life.

There is new life.

I believe Jesus is calling us to lay some things down today.

Today.

I end with this.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17 that if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation.

2 Corinthians 5:17

Come on, somebody.

Old things have passed away.

Behold, all things have become new.

That's good news.

But we often make the mistake of equating old things with bad things, sinful things.

As part of it, that's a huge part of what Paul is talking about in that text.

But for you, old things might just be some things that are crowding out room for resurrection.

It might be some comforts, some things that you have placed your identity and your security in.

What things might need to die today in order to make room for the new life that God has for you.