Easter Sunday - Take a Deep Breath of God - Steve Craig

Happy Easter.

What a great Easter Sunday.

Glad you're uh here.

It's so great being all together.

I know some of us woke up this morning, you know, excited, expectant, knew we were gonna have a great day.

Um others, probably not so much, woke up uh discouraged, confused, uh frustrated, uh scared perhaps.

A couple thousand years ago, Jesus' followers would be in that group with you.

Um they were confused, they were scared.

They weren't sure what's going on.

They didn't know what their future would bring, what the day was going to bring.

One of Jesus' friends and followers, Mary Magdalene, came to his tomb early.

Read about it in John chapter 2.

John 2 · chapter mention

It says, early in the morning on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone was moved away from the entrance.

She ran at once to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, breathlessly panting.

They took the master from the tomb.

We don't know where they put him.

This is a bit of an aside right out of the chute, but uh, you gotta love John.

You know, John wrote wrote this book, and one of the things I really appreciate about the Bible is just the humanness of it.

The Holy Spirit inspired the people that wrote the Bible, but there's a a normal normalcy, a humanness in what they wrote.

To me, this is just one example.

John describing himself.

See, he's the other disciple, so he's describing himself as the one that Jesus loved.

And uh it's kind of kind of sweet, and it and they did have a very close relationship.

John describes himself that way over and over.

Um, the one that Jesus loved.

Um, but there also might have been just a touch of competitiveness in John, and uh we'll see a little bit more of that in a minute.

Peter and other disciples left immediately for the tomb.

They ran neck and neck.

We do different things on Easter Sunday.

We uh do sunrise services or Easter egg hunts.

If uh if we wanted to be biblical, we would do 5K races because uh that's what happened the first Sunday.

Peter and uh and John take off uh neck and neck.

And next is the kind of too competitive part.

The other disciple got to the tomb first, outrunning Peter.

You see, John just can't help himself.

He is describing the resurrection of Jesus, the most important moment in all of history.

And he has to throw in that he won the race, that he outran Peter.

Stooping to look in, he saw the pieces of linen cloth lying there, but he didn't go in.

Simon Peter arrived after him, entered the tomb, observed the linen cloth lying there, and the kerchief used to cover his head, not lined with the linen cloth, but separate, neatly folded by itself.

Then the other disciple, the one who had gotten there first.

You see, you see, he was the one that Jesus loved.

Now all of a sudden he is the one that got there first.

And so all of you two competitive types, you know, the the ones nobody wants to play Scrabble with, you know who you are.

You have a friend in John.

Now, Peter might have ran faster if he knew that 2,000 years ago everybody would still be reading about how John whipped him in the uh in the race that day.

But they went into the tomb.

They took one look at the evidence and believed.

No one yet knew from the scripture that he had to rise from the dead.

The disciples then went back home.

You know what it was?

The evidence they they couldn't ignore?

It was the neatly folded linen.

See, they'd seen it before.

They'd been with Jesus for three years.

You know when you're around somebody long enough and you observe how they do things?

It was how the cloth that covered Jesus' head was folded.

You know, Susan and I fold things in different ways.

When uh when she folds towels, she folds them long ways and then kind of rolls them up into thirds, and they look real nice.

You know, if I'm folding towels, I'm just like and so I can always tell something that Susan's folded.

It's so neat and it's so nice.

Likewise, she can always tell something that I've folded because it's sort of a clump or a pile.

But they knew Jesus.

They had seen him fold things before, they'd lived with him for for three years.

See, it says that he hadn't they hadn't understood the scriptures yet.

But they understood that.

They understood that Jesus himself had folded that cloth.

He was risen, he was alive.

They went back home, excited now for sure, but still scared.

Says later on that day, the disciples had gathered together, but fearful of the Jews, had locked all the doors in the house.

Jesus entered, stood among them, and said, Peace to you.

Then he showed them his hands and sighed.

The disciples, seeing the master with their own eyes, were exuberant.

Can you imagine how they felt?

What joy to see Jesus alive.

Jesus repeated his greeting, peace to you.

Just as the Father sent me, I send you.

Jesus is going to do something next that will change their lives forever.

It would be the only, it would be only the second time that God had ever done this.

And to really understand what Jesus is going to do next, we've got to take a step back.

We actually have to take a step way back to when God created us.

When God first created men and women.

That he breathed his life, his spirit, into man.

And things were in good shape then.

It's a beautiful world.

Adam and Eve had responsibility, they had things to do, they had a great relationship, they had a relationship with each other, they had a tremendous relationship with God.

A friendship.

Freedom is a big thing to God.

And so even back then they had choices, just like we have choices.

Those choices were exemplified in the two most prominent trees in the garden.

There was the tree of life, and there was a tree of knowledge of good and evil.

God had told Adam and Eve that they could eat from actually all the trees, except for the one, but they could eat from all the trees, and they were beautiful, and they had great fruit, but they could especially eat all they want from the tree of life.

The other tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God warned them not to eat from.

Because if they did, it would cause them death.

And so when we think about the forbidden fruit, you know, different things come to mind and all that in the Garden of Eden.

But the forbidden fruit, if you will, was that tree.

It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

See, Satan told Adam that God was holding out on them.

That he was holding out on them.

If they could be like God, godly.

They could be godly if they just knew good and evil.

If they just focused on morality, if they just focused on the right things to do, they could do them.

And they too would be like God.

It was a bad choice.

It was an earth-altering choice because they chose rules and law over relationship and life and love and God.

So God doesn't force himself on us.

He didn't force himself on them.

What he does is he works humbly alongside us, making things work out.

But we chose mankind.

We chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And so that's what we got: the Ten Commandments and the law of Moses.

The knowledge of good and evil.

Now, this is where we start misunderstanding God.

We look at the old law and we think that this is what God cares about.

This is what's important to God.

This is what God is like.

All the things in the old law.

It's not true.

That is not what God is like.

That is not what God cares about.

It is what we had asked for.

It's what we had asked for.

The knowledge of good and evil.

This is right.

This is wrong.

This is good.

This is evil.

And some of the laws were for their good.

Some of the laws kept them healthy.

Some of the laws kept them safe.

But it was the tree that we wanted, the knowledge of good and evil.

It did not reflect the heart of God.

The religious people asked Jesus once about one of the laws.

It was a marriage and divorce law.

And Jesus said, Oh, that's only in there because of your hard hearts.

Because of your hard hearts.

It didn't reflect God.

It wasn't what he wanted.

It wasn't what he desired.

That's true of a lot of the old law.

You know, it's not a reflection of God's heart.

It is an appeasement to our hearts.

God does that all the time.

He works within our choices.

You can see that with the children of Israel.

They wanted a king.

They wanted a king, it says, because all the other nations had kings, and the kings would lead them into battle, and they'd have a big prede and a hoop-de-doo, and they wanted a king like all the other nations.

God told them, you do not want a king.

He wanted them to have a prophet to lead the country.

He says, if you have a king, he is going to tax you, he's going to take your land, he's eventually going to enslave you and your children.

And they said, no, we want a king.

So do you know what God did?

He gave them a king.

And he started working through that plan.

But it wasn't his choice, it was their hard hearts.

That's a pretty big thing for us to understand.

Because in the Old Testament, God at times seems heartless.

And he seems cruel.

But he's not heartless.

He is not heartless, and he is not cruel.

He was allowing our system, our desires.

And even after allowing it, he was making it right.

A lot of people were destroyed in the flood.

Noah preached to them.

He talked to them.

He warned them.

He tried to help them.

But they were violent.

They were evil.

So much so, the Bible says, that it even surprised God how they were.

And in 1 Peter 3, the Apostle Peter, or as John would say, the one who got there second, he writes this.

He's talking about Jesus.

And so he went and preached to the spirits in prison, those who disobeyed God long ago, when God waited patiently while Noah was building his boat.

And then Peter goes on in chapter 4.

That is why the good news was preached to those who are now dead.

So although they were destined to die like all people, they now live forever with God in the spirit.

Isn't that amazing?

Isn't that outside of our box that God didn't allow even those people to be destroyed forever?

That he redeemed those people, his ways are far above our ways.

His love is more than we can possibly imagine.

His mercy triumphs over justice.

The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 3, for God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin.

People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.

This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past.

A whole life ahead of us in a wonderful place that He's made and created.

God did this to demonstrate His righteousness, for He Himself is fair and just and He declares sinners to be right in His sight when they believe in Jesus.

Do you understand exactly what that means?

I don't.

I don't.

His ways are far above my ways.

But I can see his nature that he wasn't looking to punish anyone.

He was holding back to all those that came before Jesus, had a chance somehow to believe in him.

He does not fit in our box, God doesn't.

God is loving, God is kind, God is merciful.

There was a perfect quality to the old law, a perfect perfection about it.

It perfectly convicted us that we had chosen the wrong tree.

That was the purpose of the law.

The purpose of the law, the Bible says, was to convict us of our sins, to show us that we had chosen the wrong tree, that we could never be like God.

We could never be godly just by knowing right and wrong.

That's why Jesus says about himself that he fulfilled the purpose of the law.

The law was to get us ready for Jesus.

To get the whole world ready to know that we needed a Savior.

And so just at the right time, God sent His Son into the world.

He lived without sin.

Spotless, flawless.

And he did so much more.

He showed us what God is really like.

In Hebrews 2, it says that he is the exact representation of God the Father.

So before we had an impression of God the Father that wasn't right.

We see the compassion, we see the gentleness, we see the kindness, the humility, the love that Jesus has for us, the love that Jesus has for you, the love that God the Father has for you, and the Holy Spirit has for you.

How much he cares, how much he loves.

And so he chose to stand in.

Because he was spotless, he could stand in if he chose.

And that is what he chose.

He chose to stand in for us.

Us and everybody else.

To fulfill that law that we had chosen.

To pay the ultimate price for everyone, everywhere.

And it's such an irony.

See, the Jewish people killed him because they said he had broken God's law.

See, that's where the tree of the knowledge of good and evil gets us.

We kill God Himself who comes to try and save us.

But with that sacrifice in our belief, we have something incredible.

Something incredible.

We have forgiveness.

We have forgiveness.

Complete forgiveness for anything we've ever done, anything we will ever do.

Complete forgiveness.

But Jesus did not just come to give you forgiveness.

He came to get us back to the tree of life.

Real life, an abundant life, a living relationship with the living God, where we can walk with him, where we can talk with him, where we can hear his voice.

Real life, as he had originally planned it, as he had always intended.

A living relationship with the living God.

His children.

His friends.

So 2,000 years ago, Jesus did it.

He rose alive.

He had actually done it.

He had taken all the weight of all the sins and conquered death.

Rose alive.

Paid the price, defeated death.

And now there he is in this locked room with his disciples.

Once scared, now exuberant.

And Jesus is about to do something for only the second time ever.

It says, then he took a deep breath and he breathed into them.

Receive the Holy Spirit, he said.

Can you see what Jesus just did?

The same thing God did in the garden.

He took people created in his image and breathed his life, his spirit into them.

And they too now came alive.

Their spirits, their relationship resurrected, alive.

They were back where God had originally intended.

His friends filled with his life, filled with his love.

Breathed his life, his spirit into people.

But the curse of the law had been broken that morning.

And so since then, he does that every single day.

Breathes his life, his love, his spirit into people.

In Romans 8, it says, it stands to reason, doesn't it?

That if the ever, if the alive and present God, who raised Jesus from the dead, moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself.

When God lives and breathes in you and he does as surely as he did in Jesus, you are delivered from that dead life.

With his spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ.

So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red scent?

There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all.

The best thing to do is to give it a decent burial and get on with your new life.

God's Spirit beckons.

There are things to do and places to go.

There's a whole new life to live.

There's a whole new life to live filled with God.

With God inside of us.

You know, if the worship team wants to come up, we'll finish here in a minute by singing one more song together.

In fact, let's uh let's stand and we'll get ready for that.

See, Jesus' invitation to us is this.

Take a deep breath of God.

Take a deep breath of God.

Fill your lungs with God Himself.

Come alive with Him.

Let Him resurrect us.

It's as simple as turning to Jesus, trusting in Him.

He fills us, He gives us strength.

So you may think that God is mad at you, is angry at you, has given up on you.

It's just not true.

It is not true.

That is the wrong tree.

God loves you.

He loves you.

He would do anything for you.

He did anything for you.

He has not given up on you.

He is not mad at you.

What he wants is to have a relationship with you, just like with Adam and Eve, just like with Jesus' followers, but with you.

He wants to breathe his spirit inside you.

His spirit inside us.

We come alive, live a whole new life, just like Jesus.

That's why on Easter, you know, we're celebrating Jesus.

It's such Him being raised from the dead.

It changed everything.

But we're celebrating us.

Us being raised from the dead.

Filled with God.

Filled with His life.

He wants to bring us alive to Himself, bring, breathe His life into us.

And so wherever we're at, whatever's going on, you know, we can just exhale.

And then inhale, a deep breath of the living God.

Let's pray.

Jesus, we thank you.

We thank you.

We have done nothing to deserve a friend like you.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you for dying.

Thank you for loving us.

Thank you for breathing your life back into us.

We love you.

Amen.