Simply Jesus

Welcome to the We can't podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provide the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

If we have not had the chance to meet yet, my name is Glenn.

And if you know me but you haven't seen me around for a while, that's because my wife and I got to welcome our first child into the world two months ago.

So if you see the bags under the eyes, that is why.

Parents, you know, you understand.

I also get to oversee the worship and production ministries here at Awakening.

And I also get to lead Protege alongside Megan Schaeffer.

And yeah, Protege is probably one of my greatest joys serving here.

And if you want to know more about that program, please come and talk to me.

Applications are due about halfway through July.

We've been in a series called Unfollow.

And what we've been doing is taking a look at how our culture is shaping us, and then looking at the scriptures to see what God has to say about that.

This morning, what we're gonna do is kind of just take a step back from everything and look at what is central to our faith, which is the gospel.

Before we do that, um let's just pray and ask God to speak to us this morning.

Father in heaven.

Thank you for the privilege it is to gather.

Thank you for your church body.

God, thank you that we get to be with one another.

God, thank you for choosing us.

And thank you for your gospel.

I pray that this morning, um, God, those who might not really know what the gospel is, God, would would you help them understand it?

I'm gonna pray for those of us who have heard that word thrown around a million times that there would be a freshness to it this morning.

God, we want to know you more.

And we want to be like you.

Teach us to do so this morning.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

When I was in the first grade, I had this recurring nightmare about a bear.

And before you think poo bear, it's not poo bear.

He's not very scary.

Um it was a dream about like a big black bear.

And this bear had like red eyes and bloody teeth, and in this dream, it would always be prowling around somewhere in like the back of the scene.

And unfortunately, at the end of this dream, every single time the bear would find me, it would stand up and crush me, and I'd wake up from sleep, and like, ah.

And this is probably the first time that I remember being afraid to fall asleep as a kid.

Um, my parents would try to tell me stories to get me to fall back asleep.

And I was really into knights and kings and stuff, so my mom would make up stories and be like, King Glenn and Knight Isaac, my brother's Isaac.

Um and that was helpful, but in my first grader brain, the bear that I saw every night was so much more real than the fake stories my mom would tell me.

And so uh while the stories calm me down, I didn't want to go back to sleep.

Because I'm like, that bear is more real.

I'm not gonna keep dreaming about this story.

And so I think my mom caught on to this and she started to tell me a different kind of story.

She told me a story about a real place.

A place that she could describe, I could dream about, and one day I would get to experience myself.

And what was even better is that this place my mom promised to actually bring me one day, that place was Disneyland.

See, as a first grader, I had not yet been to Disneyland.

And the story she would describe to me about like feeling you are on a boat in the Caribbean one moment, and then the next you were on a spaceship shooting through the stars.

That sounded awesome.

And what happened is I started to be full of hope.

I started to look forward to that one day I would get to experience what I'm dreaming about.

And interestingly enough, it actually helped me fall asleep, not because the dreams were gonna go away, the nightmares were gonna go away, but because I knew that one day I would wake up in Disneyland.

I had a hope for that.

And this is the power of hope, isn't it?

It helps us get through things that are hard in our lives.

We'll endure something that we're facing right now because we have a hope in something else.

The question is, as adults, what do we hope for?

What do you hope for?

Maybe it's a vacation you have planned.

Maybe you got two weeks left of work and you then get to go on this vacation, so you're gonna bear with what your boss is saying and all this stuff.

Or maybe you're hoping in something much more serious.

You're hoping in medicine, treatment.

Hoping that one day you won't be in the pain that you are right now.

But whatever it is, what do you hope for, and how does that hope help you get through what you're facing right now?

For centuries, Christians have professed that their hope is found in the good news about Jesus Christ.

And this morning, what I want to do is re-examine what does that even mean and how is there actually hope in that good news?

This good news we refer to is the gospel, because the gospel literally just translates to good news.

And one definition of it is the good news about God reconciling himself to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

And what's really interesting about the gospel when you look in your New Testament is that there's actually a bunch of different explanations as to why the gospel is good news.

Not different gospels, there's still just one gospel, but there are different angles that describe why it's good news.

One you might have heard thrown around is that the gospel is good news because you're forgiven.

This morning, we're going to focus on the gospel being good news because of victory.

Theologians call this explanation Christus victor, which means Christ the victor in Latin.

So you could learn some Latin today.

And in this explanation, the gospel is good news because Jesus had victory over Satan, sin, and death.

It's good news because Jesus has victory.

And I think for a modern audience, it can be hard for us to understand why this is victory so great, Satan, sin, and death.

Those are three things I try not to think about or talk about with anyone.

And what I want to do this morning is just touch on each one of those to help us understand how they're still really very much so our enemies today, and how they very much so oppress us today.

Let's start with Satan.

Scripture says that Satan is a real spiritual being who has real power in this world.

1 Peter 5.8 says, be alert and of sober mind.

Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

1 John 5.19 says, We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

Satan is alive and prowling around like a roaring lion, real.

And he has power in this world, so much power so that he controls.

Scripture is super clear about this.

And he often gains this control through deceit.

You can see it as early as Genesis.

But you also can see it when Jesus says Satan is the father of lies.

He is a liar.

And the unfortunate truth is that we are still all deceived by Satan in some way today.

And we hear lies in our heads, and these are the kind of lies like I'm not good enough.

If I just finish school, or if I just get a new job, or make more money, or have more friends, then I'll be good enough.

And for those of you who have lived that cycle and these lies, you know that once you get the friends, or you get the job, or you get the money, the lie is just waiting for you again.

That you're like, you're not good enough.

You need more friends, actually.

You need a different job.

These are the lies that trap us.

Satan also lies to us and says, No one will believe you.

Don't tell anyone.

Or they'll say, No one will forgive you for what you've done, and you're gonna lose all your friends.

So don't tell anyone.

Just just keep that in.

And he tells us these lies because he wants to rule over you and he wants to ultimately destroy you.

Scripture is very clear about that as well.

Okay, let's talk about sin.

Sin is one of those words that we hear thrown around a lot, but what does it even mean?

I thought what might be helpful in defining what sin is for us this morning, um, to look at one of the several Hebrew words that's translated to sin in our Old Testament.

And the best pronunciation I have for this word is khattah, and it means to fail or miss a mark.

And in the Old Testament, this failure or missing the mark has to do with failing to love God and others.

You can see it in one of the climactic points in our Old Testament, when the people of Israel are pulled up out of Egypt and they're becoming a nation, and God gives them this law.

And the beginning of this law is what we know as the Ten Commandments.

And the first five of those laws say ways that we can fail to love God, and the second five are ways we can fail to love others.

And this is like really like bare bottom, easy to follow.

You know, ways to love God, you don't worship other idols.

Don't worship other gods.

Ways to love others, you don't kill them.

And what's helpful in the New Testament is that Jesus actually takes these laws and he explains that it's actually not just doing the bare minimum that is failing, but it's actually a bent or a disposition we all have towards sin.

Jesus says that if we have anger in our heart, we have already committed murder.

If we look at someone with lust, we've committed adultery.

The thoughts is equivalent with the actions, that missing, that failing.

I was preparing for the sermon.

I was practicing in the car on my way home earlier this week, and I was getting to the sin section describing sin.

And just as I was talking through it, there's a guy to my left, and he like cut in front of me, you know, without his blinker.

And then he cut over another lane, and then he cut over one more lane in front of a long line of cars to get on the freeway.

And you know what I thought to myself?

Sinner.

And then I spent the rest of the car ride home thinking about how awful that man was.

I was like, dude, he cut me off, like he's ruined my car, and then the person next to me had like a baby sticker on the back of their car, and I'm like, dude, he could have hurt someone seriously.

He's so awful, so selfish.

And then I get home and I'm like, okay, where was I in this sermon?

Oh, don't harbor hate in your heart.

Oh.

And I think this is easy for us to do, right?

We look at other people and we can see sin in other people so clearly, but we have a lot harder of a time seeing it in ourselves.

It's a lot more uncomfortable.

And I this is because we're actually all enslaved by sin.

We're stuck in it.

And so we like to ignore it and pretend that we don't have it there.

But Jesus says that anybody who sins is a slave to sin.

And in the book of the Psalms, uh, it says, all have turned away, all have become corrupt.

There is not one who does good, not even one.

I love how dramatic that is.

Everyone's turned away.

But it's true.

We've all corrupt.

And this is the yeah, this is the biggest problem of sin is that we're stuck.

Stuck in it.

We're trapped.

Okay, death.

You know, you probably saw me up here and you're like, okay, great, light, fun sermon.

It gets better, I promise, okay?

Death.

Death is not just the end of biological life, but it is a separation from God caused by sin.

Sin causes death.

The wages of our sin is death.

And this separation from God is specifically a separation from all things good.

Life, joy, love, peace.

All those things are of God and from God.

And I think with death, there's actually something that we ignore often about it.

I mean, we ignore a lot of it.

But I think we forget that it actually holds a power in our lives and it controls the way that we behave.

And I see this most often manifested in our culture through fear and anxiety.

And I'll be the first one to tell you I'm actually a pretty anxious person.

Get anxious about a lot of things, silly things.

But when I take a look at my anxious thoughts, I'm able to trace them all back to the fear of death.

You see, I get anxious about time because I only have so much of it before I die.

I get anxious about money because I'm afraid I'm not gonna have enough and I'll starve and die.

Or, more honestly, I'm afraid I won't have enough to enjoy all the things before I die.

I get anxious about relationships because I'm afraid that they're gonna end or they're gonna die.

And I get anxious about the future because I'm afraid that it promises death.

And then it promises separation and pain.

Because the promise of death is actually pain, loneliness, and separation.

And the unfortunate truth is that we're all under this power.

We're all under the power of death.

So that's Satan, sin, and death.

And I hope after describing them a little bit, you can see how they're actually really big problems, and they're very much problems that we face today.

But the good news is Jesus had victory over those three things.

And that brings us back to Christ's victory.

Christus victor, Christ the victor.

Jesus had victory over Satan's sin and death through his life, death, and resurrection.

And I want to be abundantly clear here before I talk about his victory, is that God was not wrestling with Satan.

There wasn't what we call a dualism, where it's like, will God win?

Will Satan win?

I don't know.

No, God does not struggle against Satan.

He is above all things created.

But we do, humans do.

And so what God did is he came down to be one of us, and he conquered these things on our behalf, so we might be reconciled to God.

Hebrews 2, 14 through 15 says that Christ shared in our humanity, so that by his death he might break the power of the one who holds the power of death, which is the devil, and then free those, us, who are held in slavery by our fear of death.

Colossians 2.15 says that Christ has disarmed the powers and authorities, and that he actually made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

In other words, Jesus didn't just have victory over them, he humiliated them.

He took the very thing that was made to humiliate him, the cross, the sign of shame and humiliation, and he used it to conquer his enemies and humiliate them.

That's awesome.

So how does Jesus' victory bring hope for us today?

Well, as Christians who have God's Spirit in us, first we have the hope to overcome the temptation and lies that we hear.

This is why James writes, Submit yourselves then to God, resist the devil, and he will flee.

You can resist the devil.

And we're able to do so because as John writes, the one who is in us is greater than the one who is in this world.

And this means you don't have to believe those lies about you not being good enough.

You'll certainly hear them.

But they do not have to have power over you as you live.

And what I want to encourage you with is when you hear those lies and you notice you start living in that way, I gotta be better, I gotta do more.

Speak God's truth over your life.

I need to work harder, and then people will love me.

No.

God sent his son so that you could have life with God.

God sacrificed his son, he sacrificed himself so that you could be with God.

God chose you.

God loves you.

You are chosen, you are loved, and you do not have to earn it.

You do not have to work for it.

Speak the truth of Scripture over yourselves.

Jesus' victory also means that we have hope for healing.

We have a freedom from the enslavement of sin.

1 Peter 2.24 says, He himself, which is Christ, bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness.

By his wounds you have been healed.

You have been healed from your sin and you have been forgiven because of Christ's work.

This means you do not have to live in shame.

And this means you do not have to continue to live in sinfulness.

You are no longer enslaved by that.

You are free.

This is why Paul says in Colossians 3 that we can put off our old nature and we can put on our new nature and become renewed as we learn to know our Creator more and become like him.

Yes, we will still experience temptations.

Yes, maybe you'll be like me and be sitting in your car frustrated with somebody.

But the truth is we don't have to keep going down that rabbit hole.

And when we catch ourselves, we go, Lord, I'm sorry.

Thank you for your forgiveness.

We then continue to live in righteousness.

Finally, Jesus' victory means that we have hope for a future.

Means that you have hope for a future, not just in this life, but in the life to come.

See, through Jesus' death and resurrection, he broke the power of Satan and he gave us the gift of eternal life.

Romans 6 says, we were therefore buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we too will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.

In other words, in the same way that Christ died and was raised, we will also die and we will be raised.

We'll be raised in New bodies, glorified bodies that will not fade.

This is why Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15: death has been swallowed up in victory.

Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God, he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

He gives who?

He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.

We have been given victory over death, and death has lost its sting because death no longer has the final say in your life.

Even when one day we will face death, it is not the end.

There is hope of the resurrection.

And when we die, we will go to be with the Father.

But not only that, one day Jesus is coming back to restore his creation and we will be raised to new bodies and live in a creation free from Satan's sin and death.

And he will wipe away all of our tears.

And there will be no more pain and no more suffering.

Church, we have a hope for a future.

That's the hope of the gospel.

Hope of the resurrection.

Hope of Christ's return.

When I was in the third grade, I finally got to go to Disneyland.

And two years to a kid is like a century.

So after centuries of hearing stories, I finally got to experience Disneyland.

Let me tell you, third grader Glenn was impressed.

Shooting through the stars, sitting on a boat in the Caribbean, it was really cool.

But church, we have something far greater to hope for.

Something that is so real.

It's not like the made-up stories about kings and knights that my mom told me.

It's real.

It's a place that you will one day get to see and experience and feel.

And when we are finally in the presence of the Lord, it's going to be so much better.

So much better than you could imagine.

And for those of you who do not have that hope this morning, for those of you that feel like, I don't even know if I have hope, Glenn, when you ask me what do I hope for, I don't even know what I hope for.

Put your hope in Jesus.

There is no greater hope.

For Jesus says that 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.

And to step into this hope, all you have to do is ask Jesus to be your Savior.

Accept Him as your victor.

And for those of you who do have this hope, church, those of you who do call Jesus Christ your Lord, this morning we get to take communion.

And this is like one of the clearest pictures we have of how Jesus had victory on the cross through his blood and through his broken body.

And so as you take communion this morning, I want to remind you guys of the hope that you have.

And I encourage you, just take the things that feel broken and scary and dark, lay it at the feet of Jesus.

Say, God, I want to have the hope of the resurrection.

I know I have it, but I don't feel it, God.

Would you help me?

Ask him this morning.

Because, church, there is a hope we can stand on even when we don't feel it.

There's the hope of the gospel, which is the hope of the resurrection and hope of Christ's return.

Let's pray.

Father in heaven, thank you for your victory.

And thank you for extending that victory to us so that we can walk through this life not in fear, but in life and in hope.

Promise of death has been broken.

Father, help us to walk in that encouragement this morning.

And we ask that you give us the strength to walk with expectant hearts of your return.

And with our eyes fixed on eternity.

Thank you for your kindness and your love.

Thank you for choosing us.

In the holy, mighty, victorious name of Jesus, we pray these things.

Amen.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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