He is Good | The Resurrection | Mark 16:1-20 | Coleton Segars

We are finishing up our series, He Is Good.

This has been a two-year series in the Gospel of Mark.

And today we finish it up.

And so I'm going to read the teaching text.

That is all of Mark 16.

Mark writes, When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome brought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body.

Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb.

And they asked each other, who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb.

But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away.

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

Don't be alarmed, he said.

You're looking for Jesus, the Nazarene, who was crucified.

He is risen.

He is not here.

See the place where they laid him.

But go, tell his disciples and Peter, he is going ahead of you into Galilee.

There you will see him just as he told you.

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb.

They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.

The earliest manuscripts, and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses nine through twenty.

We preach these verses because testimony of these words are found in the earliest manuscripts of the writings Matthew, Luke, and the Book of Acts.

So verse 9.

When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons.

She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping.

And when they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it.

Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country.

These returned and reported it to the rest, but they did not believe them either.

Later Jesus appeared to the eleven as they were eating, and he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.

He said to them, Go into all the world, preach the gospel to all creation.

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

And these signs will accompany those who believe.

In my name they will drive out demons, they will speak in new tongues, they will pick up snakes with their hands, and when they drink deadly poison it will not hurt them at all.

They will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.

After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven, and he sat at the right hand of God.

Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs accompany that accompanied it.

This is the word of the Lord.

To begin, I want to make a case for the resurrection.

I'm gonna do two things basically today.

The first is I just want to make a case for the resurrection.

And so we have this man who was historically, we know, actually lived.

He had tremendous influence among the people.

He was hated by some, he was loved by others, he died in obscurity.

After he died, no one could find his body.

Multiple witnesses claimed to have seen him alive after his death.

Stories began spreading among the people that this man had come back to life and that he would return to reclaim his power.

Some people said it was fake, some people called it a myth.

And that particular man that this story that I just told you represents, that man's name is Nero.

He was the emperor of Rome from 54 A.D.

to 68 A.D.

And I think we have a picture of his face on a coin right there.

His resurrection story, Nero's resurrection story, supposedly happened some 30 odd years after Jesus' story, the story we just read in the text.

The reason I bring this up about him is very few people today know about Nero's resurrection or supposed resurrection story.

So just show of hands.

Anybody ever heard of Nero's resurrection story?

A couple of you?

Okay.

Anybody ever heard of Jesus' resurrection story?

Just show of hands?

All of you, most of you?

Here's my question.

How is that possible?

Nero is the ruler of Rome, like the known world.

He ruled the known world.

He had his face plastered on coins.

Jesus was a poor Jewish carpenter that like ran his mouth in the backwater of Judea somewhere and got himself crucified.

Like he had no money, he was homeless, he was wandering, basically a street preacher.

How do we know more about a poor homeless man's resurrection than a man who actually ruled the known world and had his face plastered on coins?

We know more about what would happen to our president than we would any homeless man at the Calvary Rescue Mission, and that makes sense.

But this doesn't make sense.

Some people, when they're asked that question, they use the cultural argument and they say, well, the reason that we all know about Jesus, even if we don't believe in it, the reason we all know about it is because culturally we were just brought up with it.

If you grew up in the South, you've heard about Jesus and you've been to church at Easter, like they they use the cultural argument to say, like, that's why we know about that, but not Nero.

But the truth is, the cultural argument doesn't actually work because culturally, the majority of the people in this room are not Jewish from birth.

Culturally, we are Gentile.

We're more Roman than we are Jewish.

We're Gentiles.

So realistically, based on the cultural argument, we should know a ton more about a non-Jewish Gentile resurrection than we do a Jewish resurrection.

Culturally, we should actually know more about Nero because we're all Gentiles for the most part.

And somehow we know more about the Jewish resurrection story than we do the Gentile resurrection story.

Some would say that the Roman authorities wanted to squash this particular story, Nero's story.

And that's true.

But the Roman authorities also wanted to squash Jesus' story, and the Jewish authorities also, they had two going for them, trying to squash Jesus' story.

But what most people say when you ask them the question, why do we know more about Jesus but we don't know as much about Nero?

Most people, when they say that, they the answer is we don't know about it because it just didn't actually happen.

Nero's story didn't really happen, that's why we don't know anything about it.

But then that forces the question, then why do so many people know about Jesus' resurrection story?

If we don't know about the Roman Emperor Nero's resurrection story, if we don't know about that because it didn't happen, it then forces us to look at, so that argument then could be pitched the other way and say, we do know about Jesus' because it actually happened.

We don't know about one because it didn't actually happen.

We do know about this one because it did actually happen.

Here's my point.

Many people have trouble believing in the resurrection of Jesus because they cannot personally prove it, and I can't personally prove it to you.

And so what they believe about the resurrection of Jesus is I guess I just gotta take this thing on blind faith.

I just have to just believe and just check my mind at the door and just receive it with blind faith.

But that's not what Jesus wants his disciples to do.

He's not telling them to believe by blind faith.

He rebukes them, but what he rebukes them for is like, not you didn't have blind faith in this.

He rebukes them for like, you didn't listen to the people that saw me.

You didn't consider the evidence that's presented to you.

And this is what he says in verse 14.

He rebukes them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had actually seen him.

And so Jesus doesn't sit there and rebuke them for their blind faith, he rebukes them because they won't look at the evidence.

And to you as well, and to us, he doesn't call us to blind faith, but he does call us to consider the evidence that's presented to us.

In Matthew 6, when he's uh doing some of his first preaching, he says that considering the evidence in life, considering the things that you can see, is how faith actually grows in you.

And that's how he wants faith to grow in us, not just blind faith it.

He wants us to consider, and so he says, like, hey, I don't want you to worry, and I don't want you to live in fear.

I want you to have faith.

Therefore, consider the lilies of the field.

Look at them, see how God clothes them.

I want you to not live in fear, so consider the birds of the air and how our God takes care of them.

And you need to then take what you consider and go, of course, God loves you more than these birds or these lilies, and so if he takes care of them, how much more is he gonna take care of you?

So don't live in fear, don't worry, have faith, but have faith by considering the things that you can actually see with your own eyes.

And so for us, we shouldn't think about the resurrection.

I can't prove it, so if I'm gonna believe it, I've got to believe it by blind faith.

That's not what he's saying here.

What you do need to do is you need to consider the evidence, you need to think about those things.

If we don't know about the Roman Emperor Nero's resurrection story because it didn't happen, we should consider then how do we know so much more and so much about a homeless, wandering rabbi's resurrection story?

How is that possible?

The person who had enough money to keep that story going would have been Nero.

The person who had the power and the influence to keep a story going like that would be Nero, not Jesus.

And yet we know tons about Jesus and very little about Nero.

Author Glenn Scrivener says this the question we should all consider is why we've ever heard of Jesus.

From a purely human perspective, Jesus was a penniless preacher who was shamefully crucified in his 30s.

Yet he's the most famous man who ever walked the planet.

You may not believe that Jesus turned water into wine, but here's a miracle that's difficult to deny.

Somehow, Jesus has gone from Godforsaken execution to world domination.

Why didn't Christianity die with Christ like every other messianic movement in those days?

Intellectual honesty forces us to consider the explanation.

Christianity rose from the dead because Christ did too.

And so there's this thing that we're just supposed to be looking at.

And intellectual honesty forces us to consider.

There's something here that people know so much about.

And so Jesus isn't calling you or me to blind faith in the resurrection.

He wants us to openly consider the evidence for it.

That's my case for the resurrection.

Next, I want to show you what the resurrection inaugurated in the world.

Like this is what the resurrection of Jesus like began in the world and what we should be living into here and now.

If you're a follower of Jesus or you're not, the resurrection began something in the world.

And in order to understand what the resurrection began in the world, we need to look at a prophecy that Isaiah 11, uh, when he wrote, and it talks about what would happen when a Messiah would come and rule over the entire world.

So this is what he says in Isaiah 11 about when this Messiah comes, and here's what the world will look like when the Messiah rules over the he uh the heavens and the earth.

It says, The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him.

With righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.

And then he says, This the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them, the cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like an ox.

The infant will play near the cobra's den, and the young child will put its hand in the viper's nest.

They will neither harm nor destroy on my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

So N T Wright summarizes what this means, what Isaiah is saying.

He says, Isaiah's vision is of a world that's put to rights.

Not only is it put to rights, but it's transformed, made to be more fully and gloriously itself, discovering at last what the Garden of Eden might have become if only we hadn't messed it up.

And so what Isaiah is saying and what N.T.

Wright is summarizing is when the Messiah, when this Messiah comes, when he rules and reigns over the earth completely, there will be this Edenic way of life that's restored to us.

There'll be no more injustice, no more evil, no more brokenness, no more illness, no more chaos.

That's what's gonna happen.

That's what the world is gonna look like when he rules and reigns over the earth.

The reason it's important for today is because when Jesus talks about, and verses 15 through 18, when he talks about what life will be like for those who believe in him, they believe the gospel, they come under the rule and reign of Jesus in this life.

When he talks about that, he uses similar language to what Isaiah is saying.

And so look at verse 15 through 18.

Jesus said to them, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

And then notice the signs.

The signs will accompany those who believe.

In my name, they will drive out demons.

They'll drive out evil.

There will be no space for evil.

They will speak in new tongues, they will pick up snakes with their hands.

It's not something you should practice in church.

It's stating that there's a reality that's available to us that sounds very similar to a child placing his hand in a cobra's nest or a viper's den.

And they wouldn't be hurt in that space.

And Jesus is referencing the exact same thing.

They'll drink deadly poison and it will not hurt them, similar to the way it will be on God's mountain.

He's like, there will be no more hurt, no more pain on this mountain.

They will place their hands on sick people and they will get well.

And so what Jesus is describing in this text is not like, hey, so go get into a church where they handle snakes and drink poison and see what happens.

Like, that's not it.

Um so if you've ever been at those churches, a thousand apologies.

Um don't go there.

Come here.

But what Jesus is describing is he's describing a new type of world that is available for us now who believe in him.

Jesus is using similar language that sounds like the fully restored world in Eden one day, when he fully restores the world.

He's using language to describe that when the Messiah rules over the heavens and the earth.

Evil, he's using the exact same words, evil and injustice will be driven out.

Healing, there's no heal, there's no brokenness or disease in the world to come.

And so healing is available now in this world.

The snake and the poison effects are reversed.

They don't hurt in this particular thing.

And so he's using language to describe that there is something available in the future, but that future is being pulled into this one.

And so Isaiah 11, he's speaking of a future day.

Isaiah's prophesying a future day when Jesus rules and reigns over the earth, and in full there will be full restoration that everybody experiences.

And in Mark 16, Jesus, after his resurrection, is saying, Hey, right now, those who believe in me, those who choose to live under my rule and reign in this world, they will experience those things in part.

One day we'll experience those things in full, but right now, those who come under, because I will rule and reign without anybody, any rival.

No one's gonna be able to touch my rule and reign.

But right now, if people choose to live under my rule and reign, they will experience in part what my future world and what my future reign and what that restored world would look like.

They will experience some of those things.

And so N.T.

Wright continues and says, Easter Day, Easter Day the living God declared, in an act of judgment that rang around the world, that all injustice had been overthrown, and that all cruelty had been confronted, that all that chaos had been dispelled, and a fresh, wise, healing, restorative order had finally come to birth.

Our calling, as Christians, is to pray and discharge our duties as faithful followers of Jesus, and in doing so, thereby catch an early glimpse of that restorative lifeblood of the Messiah, to know now, in part, the beginnings of that great incoming tide which we are promised in Isaiah 11, the filling of creation with the knowledge of the Lord.

And so the resurrection has inaugurated and begun that the future kingdom is breaking into this world here and now.

Heaven is coming, that the heavenly kingdom is moving towards and moving towards earth.

And so those who believe in Jesus can begin here and now experiencing little glimpses and glimmers and little reflections of what that world is actually going to be like.

And so that's what Jesus is referencing.

He's like, hey, now something new has come about.

We have begun something.

I have begun something in the world.

And so now people can actually experience what that world is going to be like.

They can experience some of that here and now in this world and in this life.

And you see that in the early church.

If you just read through the book of Acts, you see those things in the church community.

They're experiencing this restored and restorative thing in the life of the church.

And so there was no needy, we know this in the church, there was no needy among them because there'll be no needy in the kingdom to come.

And so there's no needy there, and they're experiencing a pocket of that now in the church.

Women, men, poor, rich, slave and free, old and young from all nations, they're all equal and held up and honored and cared for.

Like they're experiencing a unity that will only really be experienced one day in full in the world to come, but they're experiencing it in the life of the church.

People who no one can help in this world, they're helped because of Jesus.

They will be helped in the future world, and because these people follow Jesus, they're bringing that world into this one.

And people who could not be healed in this world, God's world breaking into this one is healing them.

People have their lives transformed in the book of Acts when they believe in Jesus.

People are freed from evil and oppression, and it's driven out of them and things that they were just long into, like I'm just held captive by these strongholds.

That's driven out because that stuff won't be in the world to come, and they're pulling that world into this one, and they're experiencing those things.

But then you see that it's only in part.

They're only experiencing things in part because they still have conflict, they're still persecuted, people are still getting sick, people are still dying.

And so what you're seeing in the book of Acts, like they are experiencing in part a glimpse of that further world that's still to come.

But they're experiencing the wonder of that world here and now in their time.

And so the idea is that that same thing, and what Jesus is saying to any who believe in him, that same thing is available to us.

What Jesus can do and what he will do for those who believe in him is he will bring restoration to your life.

He will bring restoration to your family.

He wants to.

He's like, I've begun a thing.

I'm doing something in the world now.

You don't have to just wait for this later.

I have this for you available now, here in this life.

You can experience eternity now.

You can experience some of those things now.

Jesus can still heal, he can still transform people's lives, he can still set people free from evil and bondage and things that they're just like, I'm wrecked by this thing and I want it to go away.

He can bring that world into this one because he has conquered this world and he rules and reigns over it, he has authority over it.

And so the resurrection is announcing that the future world where everything is restored is available for us to experience now with Jesus.

One of the best stories I've heard in a while, because I'm always looking for stories where Jesus just wrecks somebody's life in a wonderful way.

One of the best stories I've heard in a while was this interview that was recommended to me.

And it's of this girl who was an OnlyFans girl, if you're familiar with that app.

But she was selling her body and sex work and was addicted to narcotics and drinking just to make herself feel better about some of the stuff that she had to do.

And uh she starts dating this guy, and uh you can go listen to the whole uh interview, it's about 30 minutes long.

Um she starts dating this guy, and the guy they go to church, and she's like, whatever, I'll go to church.

And she's living in New York, so she goes to church.

And just really, she's like, I went there to make fun of it.

Like, these people are stupid.

I can't wait to make fun of this and then blog about it or something.

And uh it goes okay, whatever.

Nothing really crazy happens or whatever, but she goes to church and it's fine.

And um, she ends up receiving like a first-time gift for being there the first time, and it's this book, so she takes the first-time gift, and the book is Mere Christianity by C.S.

Lewis.

And uh she decides, she's like, I'm gonna read this book just to debunk this whole Christianity thing.

So she reads the book and comes to faith in Jesus.

And like everything that she was reading, she's like, This makes so much sense.

And so she comes to faith in Jesus, and in that process of like coming to faith in Jesus, Jesus completely transforms her life and how she describes it.

She's like, the only word I can use to describe it is transformation.

He shifted things in me.

Like I believed in this man who apparently is still alive because he still has agency in the world, and he changed my life, saved her out of the sex work that she was working in, saved her from her addiction and freed her from those things, completely changed her life around, is now married, has a has a child, and is following Jesus at a church locally in New York.

And like Jesus just radically transformed this woman's life.

But what she's experiencing is she's experiencing a taste of the world to come.

One day her life could have been fully, fully restored, and there's restoration coming in every capacity of her life, every capacity of her world.

But right now, Jesus is breaking into this life right now, changing things in her and shifting stuff and moving things around.

And she's like, it's the difficulty to explain the fullness and the satisfaction and the things that I was looking for and searching for and finally finding in Jesus.

She's experiencing a pocket of what that world is supposed to be like and will be like.

She's experiencing that now.

And so Jesus is saying to us, there's something and something new available with him.

There is, because of the resurrection, he is announcing there is a fullness and a restoration that we will one day experience in completeness, in fullness and in wholeness.

That's coming.

But Jesus is saying, with him right now, that world is being pulled.

Into this one.

And those who believe in him will experience.

He doesn't say they might experience it.

He says they will.

They will experience that future world.

They will experience some of that here and now.

And so, based on that, I just want to give you two things to do in light of this idea, just two things in by way of application.

The first, if you're a follower of Jesus, you need to have that expectation and pursue the glimpses of the world to come in this world.

You don't need to be sitting there and being like, one day I'm going to experience some real beauty and some real wonder and some real restoration, but right now it's just hard.

It's like, man, it might be hard right now.

But what the resurrection has actually made available to us is it has begun that world breaking into this one.

And we need to have the expectation that this is what he wants to do in the world.

So we should pray with that expectation.

You're not going against the grain of Jesus.

You're not going against the grain of God to ask for some of that kingdom to be breaking into this one.

He's saying, I have broken that open.

It has begun.

I actually want to do that.

I want heaven to invade the earth.

This is why Jesus tells us to pray.

He's like, pray that my kingdom, that future kingdom, pray that it come on earth as it is in heaven.

There are things that are available there that you should pray that those things come here on earth as they are in heaven.

And so we should be praying with the expectation for the people in our lives, for our city, for our communities, for our families, for our kids, and go like, they're not experiencing that future world, what's available there.

They're missing out on what's available there.

I want them to experience those things.

And I know that we only get to experience it in part, but I want us to experience healing because he says it's available.

And I know that it's only in part, and that people still pass away, but still, death now is no longer a thing that ends our life, but it actually is a door that opens us into greater life.

He has changed everything.

And so we have this space where we should be praying with expectation.

If you are a person who follows Jesus and believes that, the resurrection is letting you know like there is something available to us to pull heaven to earth.

And it's not something that we're just having to like try and bend God's arm to do it.

He wants to do it.

He announces that the resurrection was the beginning of it.

I am pulling my kingdom into this one.

Pray for it to come here.

So we should pray with that expectation.

And then we should share the gospel with the expectation that the gospel will change people's lives in a better way.

I think sometimes when we're thinking about sharing about Jesus with other people, we're kind of like, uh, you know, you should believe in Jesus.

It's okay, it's kind of medium.

Eh.

Like, it will change your life.

It will absolutely change your life.

This woman wishes somebody had told her about Jesus a long time ago.

She goes, I wish I had found God 10 years ago in my 20s because I would have, I would have been saved, all the wreckage of some of the decisions.

She goes, I don't know if I would have been able to receive it.

I don't know if I would have been able to hear it, but oh my goodness, I wish I would have known about this.

I wish I'd known that I was loved by him.

I wish I'd known that he was real.

He has drastically transformed my life, and I wish I'd known that sooner.

What he does is transform people's lives.

And so we need to share the gospel with the expectation that he will do that thing.

He tells them to do this.

This is what Jesus says to do.

After he rebukes them for not believing it, he's like, now go preach it.

You didn't believe it, now go preach it.

And I have to imagine that they're probably like, how's anybody else gonna believe this?

I didn't even believe this.

And now I gotta go talk about it to other people?

How's anybody ever gonna believe what I'm saying?

But Jesus doesn't even address that.

He's like, just go talk about me to them.

I'm not telling you to go convince them about the resurrection.

It's not go out into all the world and convince them that I'm real and resurrected from the dead.

He's like, just go and preach it.

He's like, some of them will believe it, and it's going to radically shift and shape and change their lives.

And he goes, and some people won't believe it.

Some people it sounds just too far-fetched, and to them they will experience the condemnation that comes with being an unbeliever.

But there will be people who believe this crazy message.

So go out into all the world and just preach it.

Don't convince them, just tell them.

And when they hear it, and those who believe it, they will experience my kingdom breaking into their life.

They will experience the qualities of what I am like, my life-giving power to transform.

They will experience those things breaking into their world.

And so we need to preach the gospel to people.

We need to tell them.

We need to do it well.

Don't nobody go grab a sign and go stand on the street corner and start doing this.

Don't do that.

But we do need to testify.

What he wants to do is transform people's lives, and the gospel is connected to that transformation.

You're not going to get that transformation without it.

He's like, it's those who believe this gospel that's preached, that experience my world breaking into theirs.

And so it's contingent on the gospel, and so we have to share the gospel with people.

And then lastly, as an application, I want you, if you are believing in Jesus, I want you to not stop at simply believing in Jesus, but I actually want you to follow him.

The reason that so many Christians, especially in the South, I actually wrote this point for the South, so you're welcome.

I wrote it for you.

If I preached this in the North, I wouldn't say it.

The reason that so many Christians, especially in the South, who believe in Jesus, the reason they don't experience the transforming power of Jesus in their lives is because they've been taught all you have to do is believe in Jesus, you just, but not follow him.

So they believe in him for their salvation, but they're not told to go and follow him.

And so one day they will experience a transforming power of salvation that leads them into a heavenly kingdom where they're experiencing wonderful things.

But they're not experiencing here and now that transforming power in their lives because they believe, but they don't actually follow.

In the scriptures, we see this thing that I'm calling the spectrum of transformation.

Go to the next slide here.

I love charts, so I made a chart.

It's the spectrum of transformation.

On the left side, oh, it's small text.

Sorry, on the left side, we see the way of sin.

The way of sin leads to deformation and ultimately to destruction.

And so you see that in the prodigal.

Go to the next slide here.

And the prodigal son's life, he's like moving in the direction towards destruction.

So he he moves from a space of like, you see sin deforming his life.

He was living in luxury, and then he begins pursuing the way of sin.

And now he's not living in luxury, he's eating with the pigs.

Sin is deforming him slowly.

And then if you continue, if he hadn't repented and gone the other way, but if you continue, you see destruction taking place in Judas, Ananias, Sapphira.

Yeah, you had the right slide.

Go back to it.

You see what sin, fully grown, does in a person's life.

If you just continue down this path, what sin will do is it will lead you into a space of destruction.

It will fill your life with pain, it will fill your life with conflict, and it'll fill your life eventually with hopelessness and helplessness, which is where these people wind up.

But then on the other side, you have the way of Jesus that leads to transformation.

And then you see all these different people who've had their lives transformed by Jesus.

So you got Matthew and the disciples, the blind man that Jesus makes mud and puts it on his eyes and says, Go wash in the pool of Siloam.

And he goes and washes and he's healed.

The ten lepers who is like, they come to him, like, Lord, heal us, heal us, and he's like, Go show yourself to the priest.

And as they went to show themselves to the priest, they were healed along the way.

And so you see all these different people that he's transformed their lives.

But their lives are defined.

Their lives are defined not only by believing that Jesus has something for them, their lives are also defined by following Jesus.

And then we have this middle ground, this no transformation ground.

And this is a space where you see really the rich young ruler.

He's a super good guy, super moral guy.

But Jesus does not transform his life.

There's no transformation that he experiences in his life.

And the reason is because he has some belief in Jesus.

He believes that Jesus has something for him, but when Jesus says, I do have something for you, come and follow me, he's like, nah, I ain't doing any of that.

And all of a sudden he walks away and his life is not transformed by Jesus.

His life stays exactly the same.

And it stays exactly the same.

Not because he didn't believe that Jesus had something for him.

His life stayed exactly the same because he wouldn't go where the man told him to go.

He wouldn't follow him.

And the reason that so many Christians, and maybe some of you in this room, the reason many of many Christians today do not experience the transformation that Jesus says the resurrection has brought about, the reason so many Christians today do not experience that is because where they want to live in relation to Jesus is go to the next slide there.

We want to live right there.

We want to live, we want a little bit more belief than the rich young ruler had.

We know about the resurrection, we have the scriptures and all this different stuff.

We believe in Jesus for our salvation.

That's a little more belief than the rich young ruler had.

But at the end of the day, we don't want to follow him.

And so we have this space in our lives where it's like, we want to believe in Jesus for our salvation.

I want that thing.

But actually, I don't want to practice his words in my life.

I want to, I want to do my way of marriage.

I don't want his way of how to go about my marriage.

And because you do that, you experience what your transforming power can do in your marriage, and it's not as good.

You want your way of prayer, you want your way of generosity, you want your way of forgiveness.

I want to forgive people the way I want to, not the way Jesus wants to.

It's like, okay, then you will have relationships that you can build, not ones that he can build.

You want to do your way of relationships.

People in this Christians who aren't experiencing the transforming power of Jesus that he says is available in the resurrection, it's because they live right there.

I want to believe for my salvation, but I have no desire whatsoever to actually follow him.

And the issue is, is look how far that is away from the transformation that's actually possible with Jesus.

Transformation doesn't live over there.

And I talk to so many Christians, and I've been a Christian for a minute and pastored a ton of people, and like I talk about what the resurrection can break in and what's available to them, and sometimes you just get these blank stairs.

And the reason I'm getting blank stairs is not because they don't want to believe me, they're just going, I have not experienced any of that.

So you're saying that he can do all this stuff.

That's not been my experience, and I'm going, it's because you're living right there.

You have a belief in salvation, and you thought that belief would do this thing that ultimately you didn't have to do anything, and you don't for your salvation.

There's no work that you can do to earn your salvation, to earn what Jesus has done for you.

But there is absolutely effort put into following him, putting his word into practice, so that you see the life-transforming power of his word and what it actually can do in your life.

If you think about it, if Matthew, the tax collector, had believed, just believed, he believed that Jesus was the Messiah, but did not choose to follow him, Matthew would still be a tax collector and not someone who had their life transformed by Jesus and wrote the Gospel of Matthew.

If he believed it but didn't follow him, his life would be completely different and not transformed.

If the blind man had believed that Jesus could heal his eyes, and then Jesus said, okay, now go wash in the pool of saloon, and he's like, No, that's okay, I'm good.

Then he would not have experienced the transforming work that Jesus wanted to do over his eyes.

The belief, he believed Jesus could heal him, that's why he went to Jesus, but that belief did not change his eyeballs.

It was when he said, Now go wash in the pool of saloon.

When he went and washed in the pool of saloon, when he put the word into practice and he did the thing, then he experienced not only that belief, but the action behind it, and it led something transforming in his life.

The same with the lepers, the same with so many different people in his life.

Like the people who have their lives transformed by him, they absolutely believe.

But it is also, their lives are defined by practicing, by putting his word into practice.

They're marked by following him, by taking his word and shoving that word into their lives.

And it does something.

Their hands do different things, their mouths do different things, their minds do different things.

Where they live is different because they're following his way and not theirs.

And their lives are transformed because of it.

And so, so many Christians in the South have believed in Jesus for so long, but have never actually experienced his power in their lives, in their families, in their marriages.

They've never actually experienced what's available through the resurrection of Jesus.

They've never actually experienced that.

They've never experienced glimpses of this world to come breaking into their lives because they believe in him.

And that's awesome.

But they stopped right there and they do not follow him.

And Jesus calls us not only to believe but to follow.

And so, if that's you, you need to know in his resurrection, Jesus opened up more to you than just believe so that you go to heaven when you die.

He has opened so much more to you than that, and that's a huge gift.

But so many people live their lives just waiting for death for Jesus' thing to finally coin to drop in and for that thing to happen.

And it's like there is something available to you here and now.

He has done much more for you than just that.

And that's huge.

But this is why he calls us to follow him.

You were meant, you and I, we were meant to be living with wonder.

Like living with awe and wonder, experiencing that world being pulled into ours and seeing his kingdom breaking out among us, in our families, in our lives, in our kids' lives.

Like we're we're supposed to be seeing that stuff.

He says that.

Not they might, they will.

Those who believe in me will experience these things.

John Tyson says this about what Jesus did in the lives of disciples who actually followed him.

He says the horizon of the disciples' lives was bound by the borders of Galilee.

Once in a while, they went down to Jerusalem for a festival, but by and large, most of them knew little more than the deck of their boat, the current of the lake, and the handful of people in the marketplace.

Their conversations consisted of trade talk, local gossip, family affairs, and Galilean politics.

And then he says this Then Christ came, and the horizon of possibility completely opened.

Men and women who were destined to live and die in that one village had their destiny enlarged.

John became the bishop of Ephesus, Peter went to Rome, Andrew went as far as the borders of Russia.

The horizon of possibility was so wide that the whole world became available to them all because they said yes to following Jesus.

And I love that quote, but the point I want to make is like Jesus was not calling them to a smaller, lesser life.

Come follow me and I'll make your life diminished.

He is like, I am calling you into something greater, not something smaller.

You're living in the smaller.

I'm calling you into something beyond your imagination.

I'm calling you to be a part of something you can't fully understand.

And so what he's doing for us is when he calls us to follow him, he's not like trying to chain us down and go like, I just want to make your life just smaller.

He's like, I am trying as best I can to enlarge the possibilities in the horizon of your life.

And he does that.

That is what he does.

When I was in high school, the biggest dream I had, this is the dream I basically went to bed with every single night.

I want to be good at baseball, find somebody who's old enough to buy me beer and maybe get a girl to like me.

Okay?

Not a strong vision of life.

All right?

Wasn't the best moving forward.

What's your vision of life?

Like, that's it's pretty big.

That was as big as I could dream.

And like, then Christ came and he completely wrecked my life and changed my life, and the the horizon and expanse of my life.

The first thing he did was call me to leave where I was living, to move here, so that I could meet Rainey.

My original vision for life was never get married, or if I do marry, marry my high school sweetheart, who I kind of like.

And then I met Rainey and I was like, oh my gosh, I want to marry her for real.

Like, this is real.

And then he called us to like move to Chicago, move to Wisconsin, move to New York, move back to here.

A guy that used to get drunk most weekends now has preached in multiple churches in front of small crowds and huge crowds and different countries, and like the vision of my life was so it's smaller than that.

And then Christ came and he expanded and enlarged the territory of what he wanted to actually do in a life.

That is what he does.

He does not come to diminish our lives, he comes to expand it.

We don't fully understand what we can actually experience with him.

And so, my question to you where is he calling you to follow him?

Where is he actually going?

Like, yes, you believe.

I love your belief.

Put that into practice.

Where is he calling you to follow him in your faith, in your marriage?

Where is he actually saying?

These are words for you that I actually want you to take them, plug them into your life.

They are life to you.

Where is he calling you to follow him in your life, in your money, with your career, with where he wants you to go?

What he wants to do is expand the horizon of our lives.

And the resurrection reveals that we are meant to be experiencing this life that he has for us.

One day we'll experience it in full.

But the resurrection, he's saying, that world is breaking into this one.

You can experience pockets of that now, and I want you to experience that in your own heart, in your own family, in your own spaces.

And so I just want to encourage you today.

For those of you who do not believe or you're wondering what to believe, still not sure.

I just encourage you to consider the evidence of the resurrection.

And then I do want you to place your faith in him.

But we don't get anything out of that other than just the joy of seeing your life come about transformed.

It's not like we're gonna write these numbers down and all of a sudden some organization is gonna start sending us money like they really have people believing.

Like we there's nothing.

There's nothing in it for us other than like you get to experience your life transformed.

Consider the evidence of his resurrection and place your faith in him.

Jesus' resurrection for you means that he's not dead.

He's not dead, he's alive.

And so you can experience him in your life.

You can experience his presence in your life now if you invite him in.

Because he's not dead, he has agency to change things, move things, transform things.

And because death can't hold him, that means that death can't stop you either.

And so the work that he can do in your life is life-giving and life-transforming.

He is alive, and so you can experience his presence if you will invite him in.

And if you will, he will expand the horizon of your life.

And then for those of you who believe in him already, I just encourage you to follow him so that you experience what his resurrection has made available to us.

This day is not just about getting dressed up, although y'all look pretty.

Pastels and all the rest of it.

Like this day is just this inbreaking of this thing that's available to us.

We're supposed to be experiencing here and now what we will one day experience in full in a new heaven and a new earth.

We're supposed to experience those things in part.

He wants to do those things now.

We don't have to bend his arm, we get to ask for those things.

And he's like, Finally, I have found a people that want to see my kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

And that's why he tells us to pray for those things.

Let me pray for us.