Living Resurrected: New Clothes - Steve Craig

Father, I just praise you for being such a great God, for taking such uh good care of us, and and thank you for bringing us all uh together this morning.

Please uh speak to each of us, uh even translate what what we're gonna talk about right into into our hearts, and so that we all would would uh get a a word from you this morning, that we'd all leave um hearing from you.

And uh we do ask you to be with uh Megan and Justin and especially Liam.

Thank you for for uh healing him, and I just thank you for the futures and the plans that that you have for him.

And so we praise you for all that.

Trust you with all that.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, last week was Easter Sunday, and we celebrated together um uh Jesus being being raised.

It's really something we celebrate each Sunday.

It's it's it's really something we celebrate every day.

Not just Jesus being raised, but but his resurrection allowing each of us, enabling us, empowering each of us to be raised, to be resurrected to a whole new life.

And that's what I want to look at for the next few weeks.

Just uh how is it we can live a resurrection life, a life raised from the dead?

And we'll see what uh some of the things that Jesus did after after he was uh raised, um what he said, what he taught, where he went, maybe even what he ate.

But uh we'll see about uh how we too can live a resurrection life.

But this morning we're gonna start uh by looking at uh someone else that was raised from the dead.

It was Mary and Martha and Lazarus were three of Jesus' closest friends.

Um Lazarus uh became ill uh very quickly and died very suddenly.

Jesus was out of town and they got word to him, and so he headed toward Bethany where they lived.

And we read about it in John chapter 11, starting at verse 17.

John 11 · chapter mention

When Jesus finally got there, he found Lazarus already four days dead.

Bethany was near Jerusalem, only a couple of miles away, and many of the Jews were visiting Martha and Mary, sympathizing with them over their brother.

Martha heard Jesus was coming and went out to meet him.

Mary remained in the house.

Martha said, Master, if you'd been here, my brother wouldn't have died.

Even now I know that whatever you ask God, he will give you.

Jesus said, Your brother will be raised up.

Martha replied, I know that he will be raised up in the resurrection at the end of time.

You don't have to wait for the end.

I am right now resurrection and life.

And really, that is what we're going to talk about through the next, for the next few weeks.

How we don't have to wait for the end.

That Jesus is right now resurrection and life.

And certainly when he comes again, we will experience it all, beyond what we can even imagine.

It'll be the way God originally intended.

Without death, with eternal relationships, uh, intimacy with uh with God, um, real responsibilities in a real place.

But Jesus said to Martha, you don't have to wait for the end.

I am right now, resurrection and life.

That's our challenge, I guess.

That's our opportunity, is for us to live that resurrection life right now.

1 Peter 1 and verse 3 says, What a God we have, and how fortunate we are to have him.

This father of our Master Jesus.

Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we've been given a brand new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven.

And the future starts now.

The future starts now.

So this morning we're going to look at just one aspect of getting started on a resurrection life.

Martha had rushed out to meet Jesus before he even got there.

Mary soon got to Jesus as well.

Mary came to where Jesus was waiting and fell at his feet, saying, Master, if only you'd been here, my brother would not have died.

When Jesus saw her sobbing and the Jews with her sobbing, a deep anger welled up within him.

He said, Where did you put him?

Master, come and see, they said.

Now Jesus wept.

The Jews said, Look how deeply he loved him.

Others among them said, Well, if he loved him so much, why didn't he do something to keep him from dying?

After all, he opened the eyes of a blind man.

These three verses are a little off topic.

Um, but it's one of the things I just love about the Bible.

You know, when when the Holy Spirit inspired men to write the Bible, they didn't write it in bullet points where everything was uh nice and neat and and organized.

And these three verses here are really uh maybe an aside to what we're gonna talk about this morning, but the three of the most poignant verses in the Bible.

Jesus wept.

The Jews said, Look, how deeply he loved him.

Others amongst them said, Well, if he loved him so much, why didn't he do something to keep him from dying?

You know, when tragedy strikes our life, we can feel God's love.

We can see his compassion.

You know, Hebrews says that Jesus is an exact replica of our Father.

This is what God, our Father, is like Jesus' reaction.

How he too wept.

But the question some had was if he loves us that much to weep, why didn't he just keep the bad thing from happening in the first place?

It's one of the things I appreciate so much about the Bible, how it doesn't ignore the hard questions.

Why do you think John would include a comment like that?

I think because it is such an excellent question.

It's such a great question.

It's a question I've had.

It's a question that I think we all have when we when we face different things and different tragedies, particularly the death of a loved one.

As we know he loves us so much, why doesn't he keep the bad stuff from happening?

You know, it's uh it's in there because it's such a good question.

And it shows it's not blasphemous to ask hard questions of God.

You know, and part of having a relationship with anyone is being open and being honest and communicating.

And so when we are in a relationship with God, if we always try to talk to God, telling him what we think he wants to hear, you know, using uh uh Christianese and prayer words and um it's hard to have that close relationship that we can have when we just let it off let things off our chest, ask the hard questions.

And this is this is uh a hard question here, and and I guess what is interesting is that it doesn't get answered.

The question just hangs out there.

And I think you know, we know part of that answer, that we live in a fallen world, and that we have to have free will, and you and that there are times when when God can intervene and he does when he can, and there's there's times that that he he can't.

You know, 1 Corinthians 8 23, I mean 1 Corinthians 8 2 and 3, I love this verse.

We sometimes tend to think we know all we need to know to answer these kinds of questions.

But sometimes our humble hearts can help us more than our proud minds.

We never really know enough until we recognize that God alone knows it all.

We never really know enough until we recognize that God alone knows it all.

And so, in other words, when you meet a Christian that has all the answers, just run.

Run as fast as you can.

I mean, there's some things only God alone understands the uh the true answer to.

And I think this is one of those questions.

But we can know this.

We can know this, that Jesus does care.

And not only that, but he suffers when we suffer.

We see him weep, we see him get angry.

It makes him angry that we have to suffer at all.

And we also know that in the end it'll be made okay.

And here's Jesus knowing he's gonna raise Lazarus from the dead, knowing that it's quickly gonna be okay.

Yet he's suffering as his friends suffer.

He's weeping as they weep.

He's angry that they have to go through it at all.

He was deeply angry, and he wept.

Then Jesus, the anger welling up within him, arrived at the tomb.

It was a simple cave in the hillside with a slab of stone laid against it.

Jesus said, Remove the stone.

The sister of the dead man, Martha, said, Master, by this time there's a stench.

He's been dead four days.

Jesus looked her in the eye.

Didn't I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?

Then to the others, go ahead, take away the stone.

They removed the stone.

Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and prayed, Father, I'm grateful that you have listened to me.

I know you always do listen, but on account of this crowd standing here, I've spoken so that they might believe that you sent me.

Then he shouted, Lazarus, come out.

And he came out, a cadaver, wrapped from head to toe, and with a kerchief over his face.

Jesus told them, Unwrap him and let him loose.

Then IV says it this way you take off the crave clothes and let him go.

You see, Lazarus was alive, excuse me, but he wasn't free.

He was alive, but he was still bound up.

He was alive, but he had a problem.

This is uh one of Betty's favorite uh verses.

Because Jesus says to his friends, you take off his grave clothes.

He had a whole new life in front of him, Lazarus did.

But he's gonna need some help getting out of those clothes.

It was true for him, and it's true for us.

Just because we're saved, just because we come alive, does not mean that we're free.

It doesn't mean that we're not still bound up in different ways.

It doesn't mean that we're not tied up in different ways.

You know, back then when they when they buried someone, they took a long piece of cloth about twice as long as a body.

They would lay the body down on half of it, fold the other half over, um, and then they would just wrap up the body, uh, like like you'd picture a mummy.

And that's that's how Lazarus was when Jesus raised him from the dead, bound up, tied up, and he was gonna need some help getting out of those clothes.

And if we're gonna live the resurrection, a resurrected life, the first thing we're gonna need is a new set of clothes.

We're gonna need a whole new wardrobe.

We're gonna need some help, maybe, getting out of our grave clothes.

And those were some pretty bad clothes Lazarus was wearing, looking like a mummy, smelling really bad, according to Martha.

He was gonna need some new clothes.

In uh Colossians, Paul uses this exact same metaphor to talk about the exact same thing.

He says, So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it.

Pursue the things over which Christ presides.

Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you.

Look up and be alert to what is going on around Christ.

That's where the action is.

See things from his perspective.

Paul then gives us a list of a few of the things that he would consider grave clothes, old life things that we get used to wearing.

He lists sexual promiscuity and lust.

He says, doing whatever we feel like, whenever we feel like it, grabbing whatever attracts our fancy, bad temper, meanness, profanity, lying to each other.

It's just a short list that Paul gives.

Almost anything could be on the list.

You know, when Jesus saves us, we're gonna have some sort of grave clothes.

It could be addictions, it could be getting our value from things.

It could be not seeing ourselves as valuable at all.

It could be how we interact in relationships, it could be it could be pride, it could be how we think about money, how we deal with money.

It's what has defined us.

It's how we see ourselves.

And Paul goes on in verse 9.

He says, It's like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire.

Grave clothes.

Grave clothes.

A filthy set of ill-fitting clothes.

See, we don't get dressed up to come to Jesus.

He saves us just like we are.

Grave clothes and all.

And then he fills us, he strengthens us, he teaches us, he starts freeing us from the inside out, and he does something else for us.

He gives us each other.

He gives us each other.

Jesus said to Lazarus' friends, you take off his grave clothes.

And there are some grave clothes that we're gonna need help getting out of.

That we're gonna need someone to help us take those off.

You know, God never meant for us to be, you know, the Lone Ranger.

That's part of what we do as a church.

That's part of why God uh created his church.

It's it's to help each other live a new life with a new wardrobe and get rid of the old clothes.

In Hebrews 10, 25, it says, let's see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out.

Not avoiding worshiping together as some do, but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big day approaching.

Encouraging each other, helping each other, loving each other, spurring each other on.

Every time you encourage someone, you're helping them out of their grave clothes.

Every time we pray for each other, we're helping each other out of our grave clothes.

You know, Financial Peace University on Wednesday nights, it's helping us out of our grave clothes, dead ways of life.

That's one of the reasons it's so important that this is a safe place where we can admit if we're struggling in an area, knowing we're not gonna get kicked out of the club, knowing that's part of the club, that we're all in process.

We all need help.

We need each other's help.

We need help getting unwrapped out of our grave clothes.

Every time we see each other the way God sees us, speak to each other the way God speaks to us.

See the value and uniqueness in each other.

We're helping each other out of our grave clothes, unwrapping each other, taking off the grave clothes.

And that's not even the best part.

That's just getting rid of the junk, getting rid of the old clothes, the stuff that binds us, the stuff that that uh holds us back.

And I guess that's kind of the difference between religion and a true relationship with the with the living God.

Religion looks at a list of rules and says, you know, if you're doing all these things, then then then you're bad and God's mad at you.

Jesus says, those are just grave clothes.

Those are things that are holding us back from life.

It's a whole different way for us to see sin, if you will.

That God's going to be frustrated with.

It's stuff that holds us back from life.

Creates death in our life.

Not life.

And so when we come to Jesus, he saves us, he helps us, and we help each other, and he gives us a whole new set of clothes.

Paul goes on in Colossians 3.

He says, Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe.

Every item of your new way of life is custom made by the Creator with his label on it.

All the old fashions are now obsolete.

Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free mean nothing.

From now on, everyone is defined by Christ.

Everyone is included in Christ.

So chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you.

Compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline.

Be even tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense.

Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you.

And regardless of what else you put on, wear love.

It's your basic, all-purpose garment.

Never be without it.

It's a whole new wardrobe.

A whole new set of clothes.

We get to help each other take off the crappy old stinky clothes.

And God gives us a whole new wardrobe to live this resurrected life.

Isn't it funny how with God it always comes back to love?

Our main garment, he says, our all-purpose garment is love.

Never be without it.

It's a new set of clothes.

It's a whole trade-up.

From grave clothes to life clothes.

Romans 8, 15 and 17 says this resurrection life you receive from God is not a timid, grave tending life.

It's adventurously expectant.

Greeting God with a childlike, what's next, Papa?

God's spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are.

We know who He is and we know who we are, father and children.

And we know what we're going to get, and we know we are going to get what's coming to us, an unbelievable inheritance.

We go through exactly what Christ goes through.

If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him.

It's a resurrection life that we get to live, an expectant, adventurous life.

And we get to start with a whole new set of clothes.

So we'll stop there.

If the worship team wants to come up, we'll sing one more song together, celebrate what a great Savior we have.

What a great and loving God.

Kind of a uh, I guess just a reminder, kind of a basic thing.

But it's kind of like a hands in the pile, which we're going to do in a few minutes.

You know, that symbolizes something to us.

Uh it symbolizes that we're in this together, that we have each other's back, but we're focused on Jesus.

God will change us.

He changes from the inside out.

But there's one thing that we learn over time is that we need each other.

Sometimes we're going to need someone to walk us through.

Sometimes we're going to need someone to hold us our hands.

Sometimes we're going to need someone to wrap their arms around us and pray and lift us up.

God created us to be together.

God created us needing each other.

Just like he freed, saved Lazarus, and brought him alive.

But first, his friends had to help him out of his grave clothes.

So we're going to pray.

We're going to ask God to give us a whole new wardrobe, complete what he's already started, close of life, close of love.

And thank each other for each other.

So let's stand and we'll pray.

Father, we praise you.

We thank you for being such a great and loving God.

Jesus, we thank you so much for coming, for saving us.

And just like you were raised from the dead, you raise us.

And that's what we want.

We want that resurrection life, real life, abundant life, filled with you, filled with your spirit, filled with your love.

And so we ask you, Father, to show us our grave clothes.

What it is that's keeping us bound up, what it is that's that's holding us back.

And help us help each other out of them.

Help us to unwrap each other and free us for our whole new wardrobe.

And God, we do ask you to dress us anew.

Dress us with your humility, dress us with your patience, dress us with your humbleness, dress us with your life and love.

We praise you for that and we thank you for that.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.