Easter at Access – The God Who Comes Running

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason and Liz Burns in Access Church in Lakeland and Bartow, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Love it so much.

Welcome to Easter at Access, everybody.

We're so excited you're here.

I want to look right in the camera and say a special hello to our church family joining us this Easter weekend.

We are one church in three locations, and this Easter, we have 13 services.

Can we put our hands together and welcome our church family, everybody?

Hello, North Lakeland.

Hello, Barto.

Love you.

So excited to see what God is doing in our church in this season.

And I'm really honored you're with us today.

We're in a really important season in our church.

And I before we get into the message today, I have a quick favor to ask.

Inside the worship guide you got when you came in, there is a connection card.

If you do me a favor, grab that quickly.

This is an all skate.

I need everyone to do this.

The reason I'm going to ask everyone to fill it out is Easter is the weekend when everybody just seems to show up to church.

So we think that between all of our services, we should have five or six thousand people this weekend.

And we'd love to hear from you how we can pray from you for you.

But but I've got one other favor to ask, and this is really important.

I like to do a quick survey.

I like to hear from my church people, hear what's going on in your life.

And I want two questions answered by everybody, if you don't mind.

The first question is this What would you like to hear a message or a message series about?

This helps to inform us as we pray and work on messages.

And the second question is this as our church continues to grow in the last seven months, we've opened locations in North Lakeland and in Bartow.

The question is, where would you like to see the next access location?

And this is fun last Easter, just one year ago, we were very close to opening North Lakeland.

We didn't even know Bartow was coming.

And Bartow was the number one requested city, and we did it, everybody.

So grateful for that.

And also want to say this I don't know if we'll open another one this year, kind of hope not, to be honest with you.

But we are just excited to see what God has for us, so we'd love to hear from you on that.

One last thing is this Easter's a weekend when lots of guests come to church and check it out.

So I have this favor.

If you are new to this place, here's my request.

Just give us six weeks.

Why?

Because six weeks is enough time to determine whether or not a place is home.

But can I give you a quick warning?

I think if you come, you're gonna fall in love with this place because you're sitting around the most incredible people I've ever met.

If you bring your kids, I promise you, they are gonna beg you to come back.

We've got the most incredible ministry for kids and access kids.

If you have students in middle and high school, bring them on Wednesday nights.

They're gonna love Access Youth.

And we are opening Access Youth in Bartow in just the just a few months in the fall, so we're excited about that.

And then here's the last thing: we want you in a community, in groups, doing your life together, because you need to find your people.

And so we would love to help you find this.

And we think if you give us six weeks, you're never gonna want to go anywhere else, and we would love that for you.

One last reason to come next Sunday, kicking off a series of messages called What's Next?

And here's the point.

Every single person, whether you've been a Christian for 75 years or you only came this Easter weekend because someone promised to buy you a meal, no matter where you are in your relationship with God, all of us have a next step.

And I would love to help you take your next step with God.

You see, God has a plan for all of us to grow closer to Him.

And all throughout Scripture, He makes it really clear.

And I want to help you as your spiritual tour guide over the next four weeks, really be intentional about growing closer to God.

Let's do that together.

All right, everybody.

Well, let's get to work today for this Easter message.

Again, so glad you were with us this weekend.

A few years ago, I was in my upstairs living room, just kind of doing my thing.

I was working, minding my own business, and my wife came up to me and she looked like she had seen a ghost.

I mean, her eyes were as big as the state of Texas, and she was holding a piece of paper and she said, I am so sorry.

Like I'm so, so sorry.

I'm so sorry, I'll pay for this.

I'm so sorry.

And I said, What are you sorry for?

And she hands me this paper, and it's um it was embarrassing for her.

She got a ticket for running a red light at a light that had one of those red light cameras.

Has anybody experienced this before?

Call me old-fashioned.

I think you should have to get caught the old-fashioned way, but whatever.

And she's like, I am so, so sorry about this.

And the ticket was like$159.

She's like, I'll find a way to pay for it.

I'm like, no, it's fine.

But but then because I love her, I had to tease her.

Come on, you know this.

Like, if you love someone, you tease them.

So I'm like, but they probably should take your license away.

We should just sell your car, right?

And then I ramped it up another level.

I was like, should women even be allowed to drive?

You know, I said that.

Okay, whatever.

And uh, and then I noticed on the paper it said, you can go to a certain website and you can actually watch the video of the running of the red light.

And I was like, oh, this is perfect.

Babe, sit down, get some popcorn, put it on the TV.

And I have it.

Would you like to see it?

I'm just so embarrassed.

She's a hardened criminal.

Look at this.

Here comes her van and doesn't even stop, blows through the red light like a heathen and a criminal.

Let's watch it one more time, shall we?

I just want you to see this.

I want you to get the full weight of this moment.

Look at this.

Couldn't believe it.

Anyway, I was just so ashamed.

I had no idea what I was marrying into, everybody.

Anyways, so we sit there for like 10 minutes, and I should have let it go, but I kept messing with her.

And then all of a sudden she goes, Hang on, wait one second.

What date was that red light camera?

And I was like, What do you mean?

And she goes, Let me see it.

And she took the paper and she pulled her phone out and she goes, Are you kidding me?

I wasn't even in the city of Lakeland when that happened.

You were driving, you were driving my car.

And then she said, Should guys even be allowed to drive?

You know, something like that.

Whatever.

Whatever.

We're working through it with our therapist.

Here's the point, right?

If you have the wrong information, you'll have the wrong perspective.

If you have the wrong picture of something, you're gonna get a wrong perspective on it.

And this is true about every part of our life.

If you get wrong the wrong input, you're gonna have the wrong output.

But I want to say this Easter weekend, this perspective is entirely true about God.

If you have the wrong information about God, you will always have the wrong perspective of who he is.

This is one of the primary reasons Jesus came.

It is he wanted to give humanity a picture of who God really is.

The truth is, if we could take a poll of every person who comes to our church this weekend, we'd get a lot of pictures of God that are really nothing like him.

I think there's a lot of us who think that God is just this angry old crotchety man who's sitting on his porch saying, Get off my yard.

Some of us think God is nothing more than a cosmic kill joy looking to zap us if we do something wrong.

Some of us see God as an endless flight of stairs that we just have to do more and more and more and more and more to try to get close to him, and it's exhausting.

Some of us have a healthy picture of God.

We see him as our loving heavenly father.

Regardless of where you are on that spectrum, the Easter story and really the whole story of Jesus is God saying, I want you to know who I actually am so you can have the right perspective of my love for you.

Now, this is interesting.

Jesus came.

The book of John, chapter one, says He put on flesh and blood and moved into our neighborhood.

And all we have from the life of Jesus is the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

At the end of the book of John, John says that if all the stories of Jesus were to be written down, there wouldn't be enough room on earth to contain all of it, all the miracles and all the teachings.

But all we have are these little highlights, this snapshot of Jesus' life.

And in the book of Luke, Luke, who was a doctor, so his eyewitness account is a much more detailed kind of account than all the other writers.

He gives us a whole chapter where Jesus tells three stories that showcase the heart of God.

All three stories Jesus is going to tell, all the three stories are literally the same story.

They have the same meaning just from a different point of view.

To understand what he says, he starts in Luke chapter 15, verse 1, by telling us who he was talking to.

Luke 15:1

He says, now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus.

Let's just pause here for just a moment.

We read this and it's like, what's the big deal?

But but tax collectors were hated among the Jewish people.

These were people who were Jewish by birth, but they had sold out to the Roman government in order just to have a job.

But the job was going to their Jewish neighbors, family, and friends and collecting the taxes that would fund the government in Rome that was oppressing all of the Jewish people.

They were seen as sellouts.

And there was the tax collectors and the sinners.

And in Greek, this word sinners, uh, it literally is this kind of junk word, junk drawer kind of word that literally is like the worst of the worst people.

So the tax collectors and sinners, people who were nothing like God, they were all gathering around to hear Jesus.

Now, what does this mean to me?

To me, this means people who were nothing like Jesus liked Jesus.

And if your experience with followers of Jesus has been anything other than delightful and full of love and joy, that's not a good representative or a good picture of who Jesus was because people who were nothing like him liked him.

Then it says, But the Pharisees, now if we got the tax collectors and sinners on one side, the pendulum swings the whole other way to the Pharisees who were the religious elite.

These were the people who tripped up and all of their legalism, they couldn't see past their own nose with how much they followed the rules.

But these Pharisees and teachers of the law muttered, we've got to bring that word back.

They said, This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.

This idea of eating a meal with someone in our culture is not that big of a deal.

But in Jesus' day, to eat with someone means that you align with them.

It was seen as a more intimate act than what we experience in our world today.

And they say about Jesus that Jesus, he hangs out with them, he likes them, they like him, and he's even willing to go as far as to have meals with them.

And then Jesus to this audience is going to tell the three stories, all that have the same rhythm and cadence.

Each story goes like this something is lost, and then it is found, and then we celebrate.

Something is lost, and then when it's found, then we throw a party.

Now, all three stories center around numbers.

The first one is about a shepherd who has 100 sheep.

And it says that he loses one of his sheep, but instead of forgetting about it because he's still got 99, no, no, he leaves the 99 to chase the one, and when he finds the one, he throws it on his shoulders and says, Let's celebrate because the sheep that I lost is now found.

And then Jesus takes the story, flips it upside down, and he says, I tell you in the same way, there will be a party throne in heaven whenever one person who was far from God and separated from him comes back home into relationship with God.

Then there was not just a hundred sheep, there was a woman, Jesus says, that had ten silver coins.

Now we don't have a full understanding of what this means, but most people think that this would be like the equivalent of a modern-day engagement ring.

And he says that she had ten, but she loses one.

Jesus says, like, would she think, oh, no big deal, I've still got nine.

No, no, no.

She would flip her house upside down looking for that coin because it mattered to her.

And when she finds it, he says she would gather her friends and say, Celebrate with me, that coin that was missing is now found in the same way heaven throws a party whenever someone who's far from God is found in relationship with him again.

And if these two stories feel a little cold, if they feel a little distant, you're not alone.

So Jesus takes it and he makes it entirely personal.

He says there was a hundred sheep and ten coins, but there was a father who had two sons.

Now, before I even talk about the two sons, I want you to notice something.

Some people get all weirded out when churches talk about numbers because they're like, it's all about numbers.

Jesus was all about numbers, but it's because numbers matter.

You ever notice that we count the stuff that matters to us?

Like, I don't have two or three or four kids.

I've got three kids.

I know that I have three kids.

My three kids matter to me.

I love my three kids.

We count the stuff that matters to us.

What Jesus is trying to get at is all of these represent people, and people are the heart of God.

They're what matter to God.

So Jesus goes on.

And he says, There's this dad who has two sons.

And these two sons, I mean, they were his pride and joy.

This father loves his sons, but one day the younger of the two sons comes to his dad and says, Dad, I wish you were dead.

Because if you were dead, you'd be worth more to me than you are alive.

Everyone in the room would have lost their breath.

They would have been aghast in this moment.

Like, how dare a son say that to his father?

How disrespectful and dishonoring.

And the dad does the unimaginable.

The dad says, Okay, fine, if that's what you want, and he divides his assets and he gives them to his son.

Now, if you've heard this story before, maybe you're like me.

Maybe you thought in the past that he just like cashed in his 401k and, you know, cashed out his wrath, and he put us, pull all this cash together and gives it to his son.

That's not how this would have worked.

He would have literally given his son his stuff, the things he purchased, the things he worked for.

And the son would have had to go door to door selling his father's stuff just to have money.

Think about how disrespectful and dishonoring this is.

The boy takes his money and he leaves home and he goes and he lives this wild life.

And he's got money, and as long as he's got money, he's got friends, and as long as he's got friends, he's got a party.

But the problem was the money ran out and the friends left and the party dissipated.

And he reached this moment where he's like, I've got to earn some cash or I'm gonna starve to death.

And he can't find a job, and the only job he ends up finding, Jesus says, is feeding pigs.

Now, again, to us, maybe not that big of a deal, but in Jesus' day, pigs were seen as unclean to a Jewish audience, and this would have been the most repulsive idea imaginable.

There's this moment when this boy, when he's feeding the pigs, and it something happens to him.

It's it's the same moment that you saw in the story of Wayne earlier.

This moment where he asks himself this five-word question How did I get here?

You ever have this moment?

You ever have this moment when it feels like the bottom is fallen out and life isn't going your way?

How did I get here?

Now, this is my translation of it.

Here's how Jesus said it six words.

When he came to his senses.

And here I am starving.

So here's what I'm gonna do.

I I will go set out and go back to my father's house, and I will say to him, and he he prepares this beautiful speech, three parts.

Number one, Father, I've sinned against heaven and against you.

Number two, I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

Number three, make me like one of your hired servants.

And he works this speech.

He thinks about every word and every syllable.

I just imagine this that he's walking towards his father's house and he's preparing the speech as he plays with rocks.

Father, I've sinned against heaven and against you.

I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

Make me like one of your hired men.

And he got up and he went to his father.

And then the story changes.

If you can imagine it cinematically, there's this boy and he's walking up a dusty path towards the familiar, the familiarity of his father's house, and off in the distance he can see it, but when he sees it and it comes into focus, Jesus changes the perspective on the story to the father.

It says, But while he, the boy, was still a long ways off, the father saw him.

What does that mean?

It means he was standing, waiting, hoping that today was the day he would come home.

He saw him and he was filled with what I don't know how you roll, but I would be filled with anger or frustration or resentment.

I would be filled with hurt and pain.

But this father was different.

It says he saw him and was filled with compassion and for him.

Jesus wants you to get this picture that God is maybe different than you have presupposed.

That there is something beautiful about him, and in the same way this father would wait for his son.

God, your father loves and he longs for you to be close to him.

He waits for you.

His heart's filled with compassion.

It says that he ran to his son.

He threw his arms around him and he kissed him.

I don't know if you've ever thought about this story before, but but why do you think the father came running?

This is an important question.

Let me ask it again.

Why did the father come running?

Now I've taught this story a million times.

For a father to run would have been a big deal because in the ancient Jewish world, a Jewish father would never run because it would assume that what's over there is more important than me.

People run to me, I don't run to them.

I taught this story in Spain many years ago, and I had a man come up to me and he said, Pastor, I did a PhD dissertation on this story.

One of the things you need to know is another reason a father wouldn't run is because they wore those long tunic kind of dresses, he would have to literally pick it up, exposing himself in order to run and not trip on his clothes.

No good Jewish father would do this.

And I've always thought, why would he run?

Well, it's obvious.

Because it's his boy, and he loves his boy.

I have two sons and a daughter.

I love my kids.

I will always come running for them.

I will make a fool of myself for them because I love them and they are my kids.

But I want to show you something else.

Maybe you've heard this story your whole life.

It's certainly Jesus' most known story.

Maybe you've never known this.

Why would the father run?

In the ancient Jewish world, if a son were to disrespect and dishonor his father the way this prodigal son did to his dad, he would be excommunicated.

The relationship would be severed.

He would be gone and dead to his father forever.

But every once in a while, when this happened, the kid would come to their senses and come back home.

And all the neighbors and all the friends and all the family members knew this.

And so what they would do is when the sun was coming back, they would have a ceremony to kind of keep them away.

The ceremony was called kezazzah.

This is a fun word, everybody.

Kazazzah.

Work that in at work on Monday.

And kezazah means the cutting off.

But literally, it was not just a word, this was a ceremony that would happen.

So imagine if the sun was coming back, all the Jewish neighbors, family and friend, would stand and wait with clay pots.

And what would happen is when the sun was coming back, they would yell at him, hold their pots, and they would take them and they would slam them and break them down.

What they were saying is that what happened to this pot is what you did.

It's unreparable.

It's irreparable.

It's broken beyond repair.

And you are like this worthless, broken, unflexible.

Why do you think the father in Jesus' story came running?

Why did the father come running?

It wasn't just because it was his boy, it was to get ahead of the punishment.

This, by the way, is the Easter story.

Let's go back to the story.

So the boy he gets to his father and he goes into his speech.

Number one, father, I've sinned against heaven and against you.

I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

Number three.

And before he can get number three out, the dad's like, But shut your mouth, listen to me.

He says, But the father said to his servants, Quick, bring the best robe and put it on him.

Put a ring on his finger.

It symbolizes family, and you're a part of this family.

And put sandals on his feet.

Let's bring the fattened calf and kill it.

Come on, ribis and fillets for everybody up in here tonight.

Let's have a feast and celebrate.

Why?

For the son of mine was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found.

So they began to party.

Okay.

Now a lot of pastors preaching this story would stop here.

This is a beautiful way to end.

Oh, isn't it good that we serve a God who waits for us and will come running for us?

It is true and it is a wonderful sentiment.

But remember, this wasn't a father with one son.

This was a father with two.

Jesus leaves this moment.

He says, Let's not end here.

While all this is happening, Jesus drops this transitional word.

Meanwhile.

Conjunction.

Bridging two stories.

Meanwhile, he says.

Meanwhile, the older son was in the field.

When he came near the house, he heard the music and the dancing.

He hears this party.

So he called one of the servants and he asked him, Hey, what's going on?

Like, what's happening in there?

Your brother has come home, he said.

And your father has killed the fattened calf for him because he isn't back safe and sound.

The older brother, you think he'd maybe be happy about this, but it says he became angry and refused to go in.

So his father went out.

I want you to see this.

His father went chasing.

He also went running for this boy.

He went out and pleaded with him.

But the boy, he answered his father, Look, all these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders.

Yet, look at this.

You've never even gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.

Is this not the most Polk County verse you've ever heard in your whole life, everybody?

You didn't give me a goat, Dad.

He goes on.

But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes come home, you killed the fatted calf for him.

The father was indignant.

He said, My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.

But we had to celebrate.

We had to throw a party.

We had to be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found.

Jesus tells us a story and he tells it to this interesting audience of people who were so far from God and people who were so religious and who were so all about the rules and all the laws and all the legalism.

And to all of them, he tells this story about a father with two sons, and they seem wildly different, but the truth is they had the same condition of the heart.

Their hearts both said this that I don't want what my father has.

I don't want what dad has anymore.

Now, if you've heard this story before, certainly you've heard the story.

It's called the story of the prodigal son.

If we were to take a poll of everyone at our church and say, what does prodigal mean?

I think we would get answers like rebellious or runaway or disrespectful or dishonoring.

All true.

But you know the actual definition of prodigal?

It means wastefully extravagant.

Who is the wastefully extravagant one in this story?

It's not the boy.

I would argue it's the father.

And what is he extravagant with?

His love.

He has this wastefully extravagant love for the son who left and the son who stayed.

To this audience and to us today, he has this wastefully extravagant love for the irreligious and the religious, for the rebellious and the self-righteous, and check this out for the lost and the found.

Why did the father come running?

It was to get ahead of the punishment.

And this, friends, is the Easter story.

That you and I find ourselves at one point or another in our lives like this broken, worthless, irreparable, having no real value whatsoever.

And the Easter story is that God, in his love, didn't just sit on his hands and say, I love you.

I want the best for you.

Hope it all works out someday.

The Easter story is that God shows his love.

Let's be real for a moment.

We live in a world that has wildly misidentified and misdefined love.

Love is not a feeling, love is not a hope.

Love is an action.

It's something you do.

The Easter story, I want you to hear me.

The Easter story is that in our brokenness, in our worthlessness, Romans chapter 5, Paul says, God demonstrates.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Hear me on this.

God doesn't just feel love.

He doesn't just get all emotional and weepy-eyed.

He demonstrates his own love for us in this.

While we were still sinners.

Broken, worthless.

Christ died for us.

Part of understanding God is understanding that at the same time he is both fully love and full of justice.

He's full of love.

He really does love you.

Like the prodigal's father, he stands waiting for you just to come home.

He was willing to do anything for you, but he's also full of justice.

Because he's full of justice, here's what it means: it means that God, who set the system in place, that he is repulsed by or turned away from sin.

And because whenever there is sin, there has to be a payment for the sin, punishment for that which was done.

God said, Someone has to pay for your sin, and because I love you, I'm willing to come running.

I'm willing to do the unimaginable for you.

And God sent his son into this world for us.

Jesus came.

And in dying on the cross, which we celebrated on Good Friday this weekend, He paid for our sin.

And the Easter story, if it ends there, it's a tragic story, but he's buried and then three days later rises again from the dead.

What does it prove?

It proves that if he has power over life and death, he also has power to forgive, power to change, power to take broken things, and not just to make them better, but to make them new.

This is the Easter story, everybody.

Why did our Father in heaven come running for you and me?

You ready?

It's to get ahead of my punishment.

What would it look like if all of us began to see ourselves the way God saw us?

What if all of us could reframe and reimagine the picture of who God is, not based on our feelings, but based on who Jesus says he is.

He is our perfect Father who would do the unimaginable for us.

Let me end with this.

I love you.

I do.

I love our church.

I pray for you all the time.

I think about you all the time.

I love you.

If you ever had a need so great, I would drop everything and come running for you.

I love our church.

But I wouldn't give one of my kids for you.

There is a limit to my love.

God's love is beautiful, unconditional, so perfect.

It's the reason, the only adjective that feels adequate to describe his grace is amazing.

So here's how I want to end today.

I want to invite you to take that connection card that you pulled out earlier.

Would you grab that with me for just a moment?

I'm gonna ask you to take it one more time.

And we're gonna end with a spiritual survey.

What is a spiritual survey?

It's I want you to take a moment and I want you to audit your heart.

Where are you in your relationship with God?

And here's how we're gonna end today.

For those of you who feel far from God, like the prodigal who has run, who feels that their life is broken.

Maybe you're saying, How did I get here?

For those of you who this is you, this is your moment, that Easter moves from being something we celebrate to something you experience.

If you look at the bottom of that survey, there's four letters A, B, C, and D.

Would you select letter A if you would say, A, I'm already in a relationship with Jesus?

What a beautiful thing.

I want you to select letter B if you would say, Today's the day I'm beginning a relationship with Jesus.

I want you to select letter C if you would say, I'm I'm considering following him.

And some of you maybe today are like, look, I'm gonna be honest, someone promised me a free meal.

I don't believe this, I don't intend on making that decision.

Just select B.

We're not gonna harass you, but we do want to pray for you.

And I want you to select this, and then here's how we're gonna end.

For all of us, we're gonna thank Jesus for his love.

And then for those of you who came this weekend saying, I I want to start, I I want to come home.

If this is you, we're gonna pray with you.

Here's how I want to end today.

I want to invite everyone to stand with me at all of our locations.

Would you stand?

And here's how we're gonna end today.

I want to give you an opportunity to pray, to say, Jesus be the Lord, the leader, the savior of my life, to accept his gift of salvation that he offers you based on what he did that first Easter weekend.

We're gonna pray together and then we're going to sing as one church unified all across Lakeland and Bartow, we're gonna sing and remind ourselves that not even death had the final word.

Let's pray.

So, Jesus, thank you so much for everything you've done and for who you are.

Jesus, we love you.

It is our desire to honor you.

Thank you for your love.

It's so beautiful, it is so unimaginable.

For those of you who are here today who would say, Jason, look, I I selected letter B.

Today I want to make the decision to give Jesus my life to come home to him.

Would you pray this with me?

Say, Jesus, today I give you my life.

Would you be my Lord and my Savior?

I make this decision from this day forward.

I choose to follow you.

I give you my life for the rest of my life.

Jesus, I believe you are the Son of God.

I believe you came into this world and died on the cross in my place.

And because of your great sacrifice, I believe that my life can be made new.

So, Jesus, would you save me, change me, make me new from the inside out?

I love you and I choose to follow you all the days of my life.

It's in your name I pray, Jesus.

Amen.

Church fam, can we celebrate those two days?

That decision together.

What a moment.

So, Jesus, today we honor you.

We declare that not even death could hold you down.

We worship you in this place.

Come on, let's sing together.