Easter at Access – The Living

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

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Easter at Access Church.

Today, we join with millions of people around the globe to celebrate the fact that death no longer has the final word, but because of Jesus' great sacrifice, we too can live again.

Can I get a good amen from somebody up in here?

Amen.

And listen, all throughout history, there has been this phrase that's kind of associated with Easter.

When these new followers of Jesus would run into each other and town, one would say, He is risen, and the other person would respond with He is risen indeed.

So let's join with millions of people as we declare He is risen.

Oh, come on, like He's alive and like you mean it.

Come on, he is risen.

Can we give God the praise one more time?

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Wow.

Well, thank you for worshiping with us today.

Hello to those of you joining us online as well.

We honor you.

Glad you're with us.

Hey, do me a favor, pull your phone out.

And if you can, find us on Facebook or on YouTube and hit share.

You have no idea who needs to hear what God has to say on this resurrection Sunday.

I believe that God is still in the resurrection business and He's got something for us today.

Here's what I need you to do as well.

Do me a favor, in your worship guide, you got one of these cards that says Easter Sunday.

I need you to pull it out.

Now, if you're a part of our church, normally we have a connection card in your worship guide.

And we say if you're new, fill it out.

And if you have a prayer request, let us know.

But today's an all skates.

And here's what I need you to do.

Before you leave, I need you to fill it out.

But at the bottom, um, I need you to answer a few questions.

And the reason we're doing this is Easter Sunday, like everybody shows up.

And so we want to hear from you.

Here's what I need you to do.

Two questions now and one at the end of today.

Here's the first one.

We want your help as we plan message series and as we pray about it.

I'd love to know what you'd love to hear us preach about.

Like, what are the series and things that are on your heart and on your mind?

Let us know that one.

Here's the second thing.

This weekend we've done three extra services already, but our normal service times are Sundays at 9 a.m., 10.30, and then at noon at 12 p.m.

Here's the thing.

I don't know if you've been around recently in one of our normal service times, but it's getting kind of full up in here.

We added another 150 chairs just for today.

And look around, everybody.

It's like this all the time around here, and it's so fun.

So here's the truth.

We need two things to happen.

The first thing is we are trusting God and asking God to give us a location in central or north Lakeland to create a whole nother location of our church this next year.

And so if you have a rich relative who's on their deathbed looking for someone to donate a building to, holler at your boy.

Um but secondly, secondly, we're gonna have to add more services, and so here's what I'm asking you to pray about, okay?

Besides these times, besides 9 a.m.

to 12 p.m., when is another time that you'd be willing to come to church to create open seats at optimum time for people?

Fill that out, let us know.

I've got one more question for you at the end of the service that we'll get to, and then we'll collect the cards on your way out today.

All right?

Let's get to work today, everybody.

Got a message for you for this Easter Sunday called The Living.

Let's get after it today.

Um, nine or ten years ago, it was a Friday morning, my wife and I had the day off, and we decided to go on a little date.

We're gonna go to go to Tampa, get us some breakfast.

And you need to understand this.

For some reason, the eggs and the chickens in Tampa cost twice as much as they cost here in Lakeland.

And so we went and had us a bougie egg breakfast up in Tampa.

Then we went to a mall that was so nice we couldn't afford anything.

We just walked around and looked at it all.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

And then as we were trying to leave Tampa, we saw this sign on the side of the road for an estate sale.

We thought that'd be fun.

Let's go check it out.

And so we followed the signs, and the next thing we know, we landed in this beautiful custom home area, pulled up on this amazing mansion of a home.

We get out and we look around, and you could tell whoever had died, they had some coin.

I mean, they had all kinds of really nice, expensive stuff.

And as we were shopping around and looking at all the stuff we weren't going to buy, I noticed this man off to the side and he had his arms folded and he was kind of looking me up and down.

I'm gonna be honest.

It was a little creepy, it was a little weird, and he's checking me out and he's looking me up and down, and he comes up to me and he goes, uh, sir, this is gonna sound super weird.

Uh I've been checking you out, and I'm like, eyes up here.

Yes, yes, it is.

It's a lot weird.

Um he goes, No, but I need you to come with me.

And look, I've watched enough dateline in 2020 to know this is how a lot of murder mysteries start.

They were on a bougie date, went to an estate sale.

That's how they all start, right?

So he goes, No, come with me.

I got something for you, I want to show you something.

And he he leads me into the house and he says, The man who owned this home, he recently had a brand new suit custom tailored fit for him.

It's a Hugo boss suit.

And he goes, You are his exact same dimensions.

And I'm like, man, this is the creepiest thing in my whole life.

But whatever.

And he takes me in and he shows me this suit.

And he goes, It's a Hugo boss, he had it custom made for him, it's the same size, he's the exact same size as you.

I want you to have it.

And I'm like, Well, I wasn't here for suits, I was here for eggs, you know, I wasn't here for suits.

And he goes, Yeah, but how about just$10?

And immediately I thought, two words.

EBay.

I'm gonna sell that thing, right?

And he goes, No, it's custom made.

I want you to have it.

And so, based on my good negotiation skills, I was able to talk him from 10 down to five, and I left with an incredible custom-made, custom-tailored suit that he said would fit exactly to my proportions.

Now, either that man was a con artist or needs to get his eyes checked, because when I got it, first of all, the thing wasn't even close to fitting around my stomach.

Now I have happened to lose a few pounds since then.

It can almost button at this point, but here's the funny thing.

I think a dinosaur, a T-Rex, owned this at one point.

Like, it doesn't fit at all.

And the funny thing about it is, I have moved three times in the last 10 years, and I have somehow taken this Hugo Ball suit with me from house to house to house, even though it never fits.

Like, you can lose more weight, you can't lose arm length.

It makes no sense to me at all, right?

You understand this?

Now, let's be honest.

Does anyone in the room have a shirt in your closet and you bought it because it was on sale and it was awesome and it was cute?

But let's be honest, it doesn't fit.

So you call it a goal shirt.

Like you are working your way into that shirt, all right?

I have some shirts in my closet that are goal shirts, that not only do they still not fit, they are so long out of style.

At this point, I'm like, if I hold on long enough, it'll come back around, right?

You know this.

But here's the question I want to wrestle with today.

What do you do when your faith no longer fits?

Well, what do you do?

And the funny thing is for a lot of us, this suit kind of feels like it makes sense when you think about this question because it was something that didn't cost us that much to get our faith.

And we've carried it from season to season to season in our life, and as the seasons have passed, it's like more and more confusing, and things don't make sense.

And the funny thing is you came today for Easter, and I don't know why you came, but the funny thing is you came today, and maybe you're wrestling with the question that so many people are.

So, what do I do with the faith that doesn't fit?

And why doesn't it fit?

The truth is it could be for a thousand different reasons.

Maybe for you, like a lot of Americans, you have what I call borrowed faith.

And that means you grew up in a home where your mom and dad went to church because it was the thing to do.

Maybe you feel like you're a Christian based on osmosis because you were raised in the South and we're all Christians.

We're an American country and therefore we believe in Jesus.

But it's not your faith.

It's not yours.

You just borrowed it from someone.

Maybe another reason your faith doesn't feel like it fits is because you've experienced tremendous hurt and loss in your life.

And I understand that this can be detrimental to your faith, especially if the hurt came at the hands of a church or a pastor.

And you've thought to yourself, if they're God's people, how do they treat me like that?

How is it possible that I've walked through such pain at the hands of people who claim to be speaking and working on behalf of God?

Maybe for you, you thought that your mom would be at your wedding, but she wasn't.

Maybe you thought you would have that child by now, but you've miscarried over and over and over again.

Maybe you've experienced tremendous loss.

Maybe you said till death do us part, and you thought it meant till death do us part, but it just didn't.

And you've walked through loss, and you can't reconcile the fact that you have this picture in your mind of who God is and it doesn't match the picture you're seeing with your eyes, and there's a disconnect and it hurts.

And what do you what do you do when your faith doesn't fit?

Here's another one for a lot of Americans, you just you just don't believe.

You don't believe.

You push all the stories of God into the same category as you do fairy tales.

And yes, they're good and they're fun to talk about, but it just doesn't make sense and you don't believe.

If you feel like your faith doesn't fit, then the resurrection is for you.

But I want you to hold on to that feeling for just a moment.

Because if anyone could empathize with a faith that doesn't fit, it was these three ladies in Luke chapter 24.

Luke 24 · chapter mention

We're not gonna read their names today, but if you read the end of the chapter, we find their names are Mary and Mary and Joanna.

These ladies were close to Jesus.

They were with them when he traveled, they were with them when he taught, they were with them for his miracles.

They loved him, they were close to him.

Jesus had done miracles for all of them and for members of their family.

They adored him.

All of their hope was in him.

All of the chips of their life were pushed into the center of the table for him.

They were all in with Jesus.

And can you imagine how they felt on that good Friday when they saw his hands nailed to a tree, his feet nailed to a tree, and his head hung in death?

Embarrassed, ashamed, lied to, let down.

What do you do when your faith doesn't fit?

If anyone would understand it, it's them.

Luke 24, verse 1, on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and they went to the tomb.

Luke 24:1

They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

Confused.

And while they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.

In their fright, the women bowed down with their faces to the ground.

But the men said to them, This question that is preposterous.

It's audacious.

It's what I want to wrestle with today.

They asked them, Why do you look for the living among the dead?

He is not here.

He has risen.

Remember how he told you while he was still with you in Galilee?

The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified on the third day, be raised again.

And then it's like their ears and their eyes were open, and they remembered his words.

If anyone would understand what it feels like to not have your faith fit in a moment, it's them.

But I want you to imagine this.

Like I said, all of their hope was pushed in on Jesus.

They saw all the miracles, heard all the teaching, they loved him, they adored him, but he had let them down when he died.

He let them down, all their hopes and their dreams died when they saw him die.

I'm gonna be honest with you.

If you let me down in that way, I'm gonna be honest, I'm not showing up for you.

And yet, here three days later, they come with these spices to do what's called anointing the body.

That this was a burial thing that they would do to help kind of uh process the decaying and to make it go a little faster and a little better smelling.

And they show up with these things in their hands, these spices.

Let me ask you a question.

Why were they doing this?

Because they assumed that he was dead.

You don't show up with spices to anoint a dead body, assuming that he's risen from the dead.

They show up assuming he's dead.

So often I think we read stories in the Bible and we know the end of the story, and we forget what it's like to live in the middle of the story.

All their hopes, all their dreams are dashed.

They're lying dead in a tomb.

And maybe Jesus wasn't everything he claimed to be, but he was more than enough for them and they loved him.

And so they show up on this brisk, cool morning.

Early in the morning, it says, with the spices.

They have this dramatic encounter.

You know, in movies when there's an explosion, you hear that high-pitched ringing sound, it's like you can't feel, you're so disoriented.

I can't imagine it felt like that for them.

They show up, and the stone that was meant to protect his body has been moved, and the tomb is empty, and they see these men that scripture illustrated illustratively calls gleaming like lightning, and they ask this question, and the question is preposterous.

The question is, why do you look for the living among the dead?

What a ridiculous question, right?

This is the kind of question that can only be answered in the future.

It can't be answered right now.

You can't look for the living among the dead because historically, when people are dead, they're dead.

They weren't there looking for the living among the dead, they were there looking for the dead among the dead.

And in their confusion, they had no way to answer this at all.

You see, I could I could explain it to you like this.

On that day, nobody was expecting nobody.

They were expecting a body to be there.

They showed up expecting to anoint his body.

I think a lot of us have this picture of the resurrection of Jesus as if there was like a scoreboard in heaven with a 10-second countdown, and all the disciples and all the angels are standing around going, ten, nine, eight, roll the stone, seven.

It doesn't happen like that.

Nobody expected him to rise again from the dead because dead people tend to stay dead.

Now that raises an important question, and this is really what I want to wrestle with today.

Why did Jesus need to rise from the dead?

Let me break it down for you.

If what Jesus did on the cross on Friday was such a big deal, and it was, that his death on the cross, his blood that was spilled for us, his death on the cross that paid the price for our sins, the whips on his back that brought our healing in our physical bodies, if all of that was as dramatic as Scripture portrays that it is, then why did he have to rise again from the dead?

There's a thousand different answers, but let me give you two.

The first one is to validate, to prove that he really is who he claimed to be.

If he doesn't rise again from the dead, then what we would do with the story of Jesus is we would push him into the corner where we push the stories of a lot of gods that people have made up, people that had good teachings that maybe they did things that we couldn't explain, but they died, we'd push him into that category.

But by rising again from the dead, it validates, it proves everything he said to be true.

But here's the one I want to wrestle with today.

Why did Jesus need to rise from the dead?

It was to conquer death for himself and for us.

To conquer death once and for all, the finality of death once and for all for himself and for us.

And in the resurrection, here's what you need to understand: Jesus broke some stuff.

He broke sin, the curse of sin, and he broke the grip of fear.

He broke down the gates of hell, but ultimately what he broke is he broke death.

And here we are, some 2,000 years later, packed in buildings, gathered around the globe, remembering this life that was so consequential.

Some years ago, Time Magazine did an interview where they interviewed people to determine who was the most influential person to ever live, and Jesus won by a wide margin.

There are more books written about Jesus in the Library of Congress than anyone else in the history of the world.

Abraham Lincoln is a distant second.

You can't look at a clock and you can't look at a calendar without understanding and realizing the impact this man had on our world and on our culture.

That the poet James Allen Francis said it like this: 19 wide centuries have come and gone, and today he is the centerpiece of the human race and the leader in the column of progress.

I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched and all the navies that were ever built and all the parliaments that were ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned put together have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.

If you were to describe Jesus in a word, what might that word be?

I would argue to you today that I believe the word that might best describe Jesus is life.

But what does it mean?

Jesus is life, and before he died, he was fully alive, and after he raised again from the dead, he was fully alive, and he invites us into this.

The funny thing, and the thing that I think must be perplexing to God is that God wants us to give us this very thing, and it's the thing that we feel like we already have.

You ever tried to give someone a gift that they already have?

It's challenging, isn't it?

And we think that we're alive.

We have all the tangential evidence of being alive.

We woke up this morning, we breathe, we walk, we think, we feel, we smell, we hear, we touch, we dream, we have life and passions.

We feel alive, but the funny thing is, if we're just honest, a lot of the things that we push into the category of living really more resemble death.

Because we walk through this life carrying offense and bitterness and rage and envy and depression and suicidal thoughts.

It's like we're alive, but we are the walking dead.

The characteristic of a life that Jesus has transformed is that you too are fully alive.

Like from the beginning of creation, this was always God's intention.

Genesis 1, in the beginning, God creates the heavens and the earth, and with his voice, he hangs the sun, the moon, and the stars.

He litters the planets, the galaxies with planets and solar systems farther than science will ever allow us to get.

Scientists believe that there are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on our earth.

He creates all of it with his words.

He fills our earth with mountains and valleys, with deserts and with oceans.

He fills the sky with birds and the fish with those really the seas, with those really creepy fish at the bottom of the sea, the ones with like eyeballs that are in different angles and weird teeth.

He makes all of it, all of it with his mouth and with his words.

He speaks it into existence.

But at the end of his creation, it's poetic how he does this.

It says that God creates humanity in a different way.

Genesis 2, verse 7.

Genesis 2:7

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground, pushes them together, and it says, and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

This word breathed in breath is the same Hebrew word that we would use for spirit, the spirit of God.

And God breathes into man his spirit, and then it says about him, and the man became a living being.

You are only alive when the spirit of God is alive in you.

So let me say it to you like this.

This is the reason you feel so intimately connected to God when we worship.

Why?

Because the breath that you carried is borrowed breath from God, and when you worship, you're returning to God that which is his the whole time.

It was always God's intention that you would be alive, that you would be living.

Four books later in the book of Deuteronomy, God speaks to Moses and He says it like this This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you, that I have set before you what?

Life and death, blessing and curses.

Now you're gonna get a choice in this, and here's what God says.

Now choose life that you and your children may live.

It was always God's intention.

And this is how we tend to think of the world.

We tend to think of the world this way, that there's life and then there's death.

And so we live and we try to get the make the most out of it.

YOLO, make the most out of our lives, and then we die.

But but the resurrection makes us understand that God has a different way of understanding this.

That what precedes life is actually death.

It goes death and then life.

Jesus models it for us.

His death on the cross preceded his resurrection.

Where there is no death on the cross, there is no resurrection.

Let me say this to you.

If you want to experience the life God has for you, it starts with you dying to yourself.

God, my former me is dead and buried and gone once and for all.

So, Paul, who I love, Paul, who wrote like two-thirds of the New Testament.

If anyone would understand this, it's him.

At one point in Paul's life, he went by the name Saul.

Saul would have been considered a modern-day terrorist.

He went from city to city assassinating followers of Jesus.

Saul has this dramatic encounter with God on the road the way to a city called Damascus, which would be modern day Syria.

He's on his way.

God interrupts him and says, Stop this, stop what you're doing.

Saul changes his name.

God changes his name to Paul, transforms his life.

And here's what he says to us.

He says, Philippians 3.10, I want to know Christ.

Yes, to know the power of his resurrection.

Let me show this to you.

He gives us these two thoughts.

The first one is, he says, I want to know Christ.

This is I want to identify with what Jesus did for me on Friday.

I want to know him.

I want to experience the forgiveness that his death on the cross pours out for me.

What can wash away my sins?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

I want to identify with Friday so that I can experience the power of his resurrection on Sunday.

Now this leads to two dramatic questions.

This is all I want to end with today.

Here it is.

Number one is do you know Jesus?

And it's so simple.

But you know what's fascinating to me?

In Scripture, particularly the New Testament, the Greek word for the word know that we use sometimes in the New Testament has this interesting connotation.

It doesn't mean do you intellectually know him?

I think that's the relationship a lot of Americans have with Jesus.

We know about him, we believe that he was a historical figure, we believe he lived.

There's all kinds of extra biblical accounts of Jesus' life to validate that he was a real person.

But it's not, do you know about Jesus?

The word in Greek, often for the word no has this implication.

Um, it's like this, okay.

When you sat down after we sang earlier, I don't think anyone in the room did this.

Oh, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please.

You didn't do that because you trusted the chair would hold you.

You you did, right?

In the same way that word no means to trust all of your life, all of your weight into his power, into his plan, and into his purpose.

For your life, do you know Jesus?

Have you fully trusted him?

Not do you know, but do you know him?

Second question, though, and this is this is the money question for today.

Do you know the power of his resurrection?

Has what Jesus did on Sunday by resurrecting his life transformed your life?

You see, the goal of Jesus at the resurrection is that by him modeling that he can raise himself from the dead, he can do the same thing in you, and the death in you can come back to life.

Paul says it so beautifully and poetically in Romans chapter 8, verse 11.

Romans 8:11

He says, and if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his spirit who lives in you.

What does it mean?

Think of all the power, think of all the energy it would take for God to raise Jesus from the dead.

Okay.

The same spirit, the same power that raised Christ from the dead, Paul says, is alive and available to us.

And if he can do that for Jesus in the grave, think of what he can do in your life, in your heart, and in your situation.

Come on.

Let me say it like this Jesus didn't come to make bad people good, he came to make dead people alive.

He wants to do it for you.

So let me end with this Easter.

And the resurrection isn't meant is meant to be experienced, not just celebrated.

Let me be honest.

I'm all about the celebration.

I like the pastels, your hats look cute, your kids are adorable.

I like bunnies and eggs, and don't get me wrong, I love some Cadbury eggs and some Reese's peanut butter eggs.

Come on, somebody.

I love it, right?

We have had four Easter egg hunts in my house alone.

My wife did an Easter egg hunt for my dogs.

I'm like, Liz, they don't have thumbs, they can't pick it up.

What are you doing, right?

We love it, we celebrate it, we have fun.

But if that's all you get, and if you leave today and you say, Great service at Access, and you go on your way as if the resurrection has no power for you today, you miss all of it.

Easter.

The resurrection was meant to be experienced, not just celebrated.

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

If you come to our church, normally the way I end the service is I say every head bowed, every eye closed, I give you an opportunity to make the decision to surrender control of your life to Jesus.

But we're gonna end a little differently today.

I want you to pull out that same connection card that I had you fill out earlier.

And at the very bottom of this side, there is a little Easter survey.

And I want you to not fill it out yet.

I want you to listen to me explain it.

There's four letters, A, B, C, and D.

And I want you to do a self-evaluation, an audit of your soul, if you will.

And I want you to answer this question: how is your relationship with Jesus?

Letter A, you might say, I'm already in a relationship with Jesus, but I want to add a word here.

Not just a relationship, but I'm already in a real relationship with Jesus.

Has he transformed you?

Has he brought the dead things in you back to life?

Letter B is for those of you who today are ready to make the decision to allow Easter to not be a holiday you celebrate, but to be an experience where he transforms your life, where Jesus makes you new and you want to begin a relationship with him.

We are so glad you're here, and today is for you.

Letter C, you're some of my favorite people in the whole world.

We started this church with you in mind.

It's for the people who may be considering following Jesus.

And you've still got questions and you've still got doubts.

Maybe you're kicking the tires of faith and you just don't know, but today you're considering it.

Today's for you.

And then letter D, though, I want you to be honest.

If you're here because someone invited you, they said, I'll buy you brunch afterwards, cool, cool, cool.

And you would say, I don't really intend on making that decision.

If you check D and you're honest, we we honor you for being honest.

And let me tell you this, we're not gonna harass you, we are gonna pray for you.

Here's what we believe: we believe the same power of God that arrested Saul on the way to Damascus, that forever transformed his life, the same power of God that raised my life and all the jacked up parts of me back to life, that transformed the lives of hundreds of people around you, is available to you as well.

And we just want to pray for that for you.

Here's what I want you to do: I want you to take a moment and assess your heart and ask yourself, where are you on that list?

A, B, C, or D, and then check a box.

And after you check the box, will you bow your head to pray?

You'll let me know you're done when you bow your head right now.

Go ahead and do this for me if you would.

And then I'm gonna pray for us.

All weekend we've had people selecting B.

We're gonna begin a relationship with Jesus.

And if this is you, here's your moment.

We're not gonna embarrass you.

I just want to give you an opportunity to let him be the Lord of your life.

If this is you, would you pray this prayer?

Say, Jesus, today, I give control of my life to you.

I believe that you are the Son of God.

You came into this world to live for me.

You are the living.

Jesus, I believe that you died upon the cross to pay the price for my sins, and you rose again from the dead so that I could experience new life in you.

So, Jesus, today I put all of my trust, all of my hope in you.

I invite you to forgive my sins.

I invite you to be the Lord of my life, and from this day forward I'll live for you.

Jesus, I love you and I give you my life now.

When it's in your name, I pray, Jesus.

Amen.

Church, look at me all weekend.

We've had people making that decision.

Can we honor them?

Can we celebrate together?