Easter

[00:00:10] Our dear heavenly Father. [00:00:14] What a beautiful thing you did. [00:00:19] What an unspeakably glorious thing you did when you sent Christ to be the person sacrifice for our sins. [00:00:31] But you also said you would not allow your holy one to see corruption. [00:00:37] And so on that first Easter morning, by the power of your holy nature, you raised Jesus Christ from the dead. [00:00:49] And your people have been celebrating it ever since. [00:00:54] Grant us grace this morning. I pray in Jesus name. Amen. [00:01:02] If Chase Demeano could be here today, he would tell you that it was his plan to have a career in the air force. [00:01:17] And things were going very well for him until there was a training accident and he broke both of his knees. [00:01:27] And they took him into the hospital there at the camp, and they did an operation to fix his knees. [00:01:41] The operation required that he have an iv. [00:01:45] Well, the nurse did something wrong on the iv and it got air into his blood system and he had a heart attack. [00:01:59] But it was more than just a heart attack. I mean. [00:02:03] And he says he would tell you that he remembered at one point all the pain was gone and he started to feel very light. [00:02:20] And he said he felt himself floating out of his body and he could actually see himself on the bed and the doctors and nurses who were working on him, but he just kept rising. [00:02:39] And he said suddenly he found himself in the most beautiful place he had ever been. [00:02:49] He said the light was undescribable. [00:02:52] It was golden. [00:02:57] It just made everything beautiful and healthy. [00:03:02] He said he was stunned because the place he was in was a garden. And the colors were more graphic than anything he had ever imagined. [00:03:17] And he said all of a sudden, he became very, very aware of an incredible peace. [00:03:33] He said he felt more loved than he ever had in his entire life. [00:03:41] And he said after a little while, he was overwhelmed with contentment. [00:03:49] He was absolutely and completely content. [00:03:55] He would tell you that suddenly he heard a little boy laughing and running. [00:04:02] And Jesus was following this little boy. [00:04:08] And when the little boy ran up to him, he recognized that is what he looked like when he was a boy. [00:04:18] And he remembered how happy he had been as a child. [00:04:24] And Christ, Chase would tell you, Christ spoke to him and he said something like this, I created you for joy, but somewhere in your life you've lost it, and this is your time to regain it. [00:04:53] And they talked a little longer. And finally Jesus said to Jace, you know you can't stay, don't you? [00:05:05] I'm asking you to return, and I want you to spend the rest of your life meeting people in their pain and sharing your joy with them. [00:05:23] Jace would tell you he woke up in a hospital bed, in a different hospital than he was put to sleep in. [00:05:33] And he spoke to the nurse and shocked her, and she said, oh, oh. And she ran out and got the doctor. [00:05:41] They did a bunch of tests on him and let him go. [00:05:46] And he spent the rest of his life doing the very best he can every day to mediate the joy of God in the world around him. [00:05:58] Now, some of you are cynical, and you go, yeah, I haven't read about these near death experiences. It's just your brain playing a trick on you. [00:06:09] They've proven none of it's true. [00:06:12] Let me tell you Doctor Mary Neal's story. [00:06:18] Doctor Neal is a spinal surgeon. [00:06:22] Spent her whole life preparing scientifically to do a surgery that leaves people completely better or in a wheelchair. [00:06:36] She is as analytical and as scientific as you can imagine. [00:06:43] Mary would tell you that her husband and she and her husband decided that they were going to take up kayaking. [00:06:52] And so they started going to these kayaking classes. [00:06:57] I don't understand how it works, but evidently you have to pass certain tests to be able to do certain rivers. [00:07:04] And so they got better and better and better and better. And finally they were at a very high level, and so they decided to take a vacation of a kayak trip. And you went down this pretty challenging river, but they were certified for everything on the river. [00:07:23] One day, while they were kayaking, they came to a waterfall that was about ten to 15ft tall. She had done waterfalls like this on other occasions. It wasn't beyond her skill. [00:07:37] But when she went over the waterfall, oddly, the front of her boat wedged in some rocks at the bottom of the waterfall. [00:07:51] And she tried to do the procedure where you escape your boat, but the water was pounding down on her so hard that she couldn't get out of her boat. [00:08:01] She would tell you that she had no sense of panic at all. [00:08:07] She had a sense of being surprised that she could breathe underwater. [00:08:19] And her analytical mind told her, you are caught in an air pocket. You're going to be fine. [00:08:26] But just like chase, she felt this drawing, and it seemed to draw her out of her boat, and it drew her out of herself. [00:08:38] And she felt herself rising, and she entered this place of incredible light and beauty. [00:08:49] She felt peace and deep contentment. [00:08:54] And she would tell you that to her surprise, a group of people walked up to her in this beautiful garden that she didn't know, but they all knew her. [00:09:07] She said she hadn't been close to anyone who had died yet. But all these people knew her and she believed that they were her relatives who had gone to heaven before her. [00:09:21] And they spoke to her in such loving ways and she felt so welcome. [00:09:29] She couldn't describe the sense of community she had. [00:09:35] And Christ talked. [00:09:38] Christ talked to Doctor Mary and he said, it's not your time. You're going to have to go back. [00:09:47] But when you do, I have some specific things I want you to take care of. [00:09:55] If you were to meet both of these people today, they would be on a sense of mission, they would be on a quest. [00:10:04] They have a sense that their life has meaning and there's something important and valuable that God wants them to contribute to life. [00:10:19] In all these near death experiences, in all the ones I've read, after they return, they're very different than they were before they had the experience. [00:10:37] Their lives are radically changed. [00:10:42] You see, the resurrection is not a wonderful thing that happened 2000 years ago, but doesn't make any difference in the world today. [00:10:55] The resurrection is God's way of changing people. [00:11:01] The resurrection is God's great idea that your tomorrow can be much better than your yesterday. [00:11:12] There is a near death experience in the Bible. [00:11:17] John recorded it in his gospel. [00:11:21] He tells the story from Mary and Martha and Jesus point of view. [00:11:27] But with your permission, I would like to tell it from Lazarus point of view. [00:11:38] If he could speak to us today, he would say, I woke up one day and I just wasn't feeling very good. [00:11:49] I couldn't put my finger on it, I just wasn't feeling good. [00:11:54] But I went to work and as the day went on, I felt worse and worse. [00:11:59] And by the time evening came, I had a terrible headache and my body ached and I felt absolutely miserable. [00:12:10] My sister Martha is too motherly and she was telling me what I need to do and what I shouldn't do. [00:12:23] He would tell us that he had a very miserable night that night. [00:12:27] And when he woke up the next morning, he couldn't get out of bed. [00:12:32] He was so sick, he couldn't get out of bed. [00:12:39] He would probably tell us a story, just like Chase and Doctor Mary, that at some point he felt himself slipping away from his sick body. [00:12:54] He felt himself drawn to someplace better than where he was. [00:13:02] He would tell us that he slipped into the garden of God. [00:13:08] He saw the amazing light. [00:13:11] He was overwhelmed by the beauty, peace washed over him. [00:13:18] He was content. [00:13:22] And he had four days of community with beautiful people that he knew and loved who had already gone to heaven. [00:13:34] But all of that changed. [00:13:39] Suddenly he wasn't in the beautiful garden anymore. [00:13:43] And it wasn't golden light that was bathing him. [00:13:47] It was in a dark place laying on something very hard. And he found himself totally confused. [00:13:58] But in his confusion, he heard a voice. [00:14:02] It was a voice that he recognized. [00:14:05] It was the voice of Jesus Christ himself. [00:14:09] And he heard jesus say to him, Lazarus, come forth. [00:14:16] And when he heard that call, he had an overwhelming urge to get up from where he was and make his way to Jesus. [00:14:29] He found getting up wasn't very easy. He was all wrapped up and tied up. He had been buried four days ago, but he shuffled his way to the entrance of the tomb, and once again, he heard Jesus speak. And he said, release him and let him go. [00:14:52] And instantly, Martha was tearing the grave clothes off his face, setting him free. And they all went back to Mary, Martha and Lazarus house and had lunch with Jesus Christ that day. [00:15:10] When I read these stories, something in me says, I had a really bad accident in the eighties. I got as close to getting out of here as you can go. But I didn't get to fly anywhere. I didn't go to any beautiful gardens, no light, no flowers, no happy people. I was in St. Luke's Hospital, totally miserable. [00:15:31] So I'm feeling a little ripped off when I read these stories. [00:15:40] Paul explains how to live a resurrection life. [00:15:50] Paul says you don't have to have an after death experience to live a resurrection life. [00:15:59] This is what he says it is. In the same way with the resurrection of the dead, our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever. [00:16:18] Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. [00:16:24] They are buried in weakness, but they will be raised in strength. [00:16:30] They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies. [00:16:37] For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies. [00:16:43] The scriptures tell us the first man, Adam, became a living person, but the last Adam, that is Christ, is a life giving spirit. [00:16:57] What comes first is the natural body, then the spiritual body comes later. [00:17:05] Adam, the first man, was made from the dust of the earth, while Christ, the second man, came from heaven. [00:17:15] Earthly people are like the earthly man, and heavenly people are like the heavenly man. [00:17:24] So just as we are now like the earthly man, we will someday be like the heavenly man. [00:17:37] I would like to share with you six ideas of resurrection thinking six ways you can begin to live the resurrection life. [00:17:50] The first thing that Paul said to us is, we're buried in brokenness. We're raised in glory. [00:18:07] If we're going to live the resurrection life, we have to begin to think differently. [00:18:15] We have to stop thinking so much about what is perishable, and we need to begin to think more about what is imperishable. [00:18:27] If you looked at your life last week and you compared how much time you spent thinking about and dealing with things that are all perishable, they're not going to last. [00:18:41] And then you compare that to how much time you spent thinking about things that are imperishable, that they're never going to go away. [00:18:52] Some of you are saying, well, I don't know how to do that. Okay. How much time did you think about your job? [00:19:04] You know, someday they're going to run that company without you. [00:19:09] You do know that, right? [00:19:11] Someday people are going to come to this church that, and they'll never even know I existed. That's the perishable. [00:19:19] How much time did you think about taking care of stuff? [00:19:24] Now compare that to how much time did you think about love that's never going to pass away? [00:19:32] Do you get this? The love that you share is imperishable. It never passes away. [00:19:42] It pays dividend throughout all eternity. [00:19:47] How much time did you think about taking care of your physical body compared to how much time you took taking care of your eternal soul? [00:19:56] If we're gonna live the resurrection life, we gotta get some balance in our lives where the imperishable gets the time that it needs. [00:20:09] The second aspect of resurrection thinking is glorious thinking. [00:20:18] How much time did you spend last week thinking about ugly stuff compared to how much time you spent thinking about absolutely glorious stuff? [00:20:32] How much time did you spend last week criticizing compared to how much time did you spend giving thanks? [00:20:40] How many things did you see that were ugly, broken, and wrong compared to how many things you saw that are beautiful, wonderful, delightful, and enriching? [00:20:54] See, in heaven, people don't think about the ugly anymore because the beautiful is overwhelming. And if we're going to live the resurrection life, we have to to begin to discipline ourselves, to think about and give time to what is glorious and beautiful. [00:21:15] The third quality of resurrection thinking is empowered thinking. [00:21:21] Resurrection thinking. We die in weakness. We're raised in power. [00:21:28] Do you feel empowered? [00:21:30] Or do you often feel like you are the victim of life? [00:21:35] Do you feel empowered? Do you feel like the good that God has put in you is greater and more powerful than the bad in the world? [00:21:47] Somewhere in your soul, do you hear the voice of Jesus saying to you, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. [00:21:58] You haven't been deceived into believing that evil is stronger than good, have you? You haven't watched so much cable news that you have been convinced that ultimately evil will win and good will die a sad death in the basement. [00:22:18] I believe that resurrection thinking feels empowered. [00:22:23] Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. [00:22:27] Listen, resurrection thinking says, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. [00:22:35] Do you want to live the resurrected life? Then you have to allow the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit to make you feel adequate and capable of dealing with everything you have to face, because you are the follower of the great Christian. The fourth way of thinking is spiritual thinking. [00:23:04] Do you think about your spiritual life? [00:23:08] I asked you last week to do a self examination. [00:23:14] I gave you questions. [00:23:17] Did you answer those questions? [00:23:20] I don't want to send a bad note home to your heavenly Father that you're not doing your homework. [00:23:29] When we live the resurrected life, something very real happens about living a spiritual life. [00:23:40] We're not just walking around like other people. [00:23:44] The life of Christ is true in us. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is powerful and active. There is something very, very real about the presence of God. [00:23:59] Prayer is not me talking to myself. I sense that I'm talking to someone who's listening. The spiritual life is at the core of the resurrected life. [00:24:14] And then Paul did this incredible comparison. [00:24:18] He said the first man, Adam, was dusty. [00:24:27] I have an image in my head. [00:24:30] When I was going to college, I worked at a feed mill. [00:24:35] We live in the city, and feed mills don't mean anything. People who have farms, feed mills were hugely important. They make animal feed there. And I worked in this place, Missouri Farmers association, and we made feed. [00:24:52] And this place, the dust would be so thick and it's like fog, you couldn't see. 5ft. [00:25:00] I've walked out of that feed mill, stood on the loading platform and just patted myself like this. Clouds of dust billowing everywhere. [00:25:11] I was the dusty man. [00:25:14] That's the image that Paul's trying to see. [00:25:19] If you're just living a normal human life, you're living a dusty life. [00:25:26] But there is something better. It is the heavenly life. [00:25:31] The dusty life is I can't ever rise above the mundane things of everyday life. [00:25:41] The dusty life is, I can't ever rise above where all the dust is. To live in some clean, pure air. [00:25:51] I don't ever seem to be able to get out of the dust and into the garden. [00:25:58] Ah, but there is another life. There is the heavenly life. [00:26:02] And this is the kind of life that Jesus modeled. [00:26:06] If you follow Jesus through the gospel. He's living the heavenly life. The things that people said they experienced in near death experiences. That's what he's sharing with people when he meets them in their day to day life. [00:26:23] Katie told us on Good Friday, he meets us in our darkness, in the darkest places of our life. He meets us and he brings light. [00:26:35] Church when Jesus walked the earth, he met people in their darkness. They were miserable with leprosy. They were broken, and they were blind, and they were crippled, and they couldn't make their way through life. [00:26:50] But Jesus Christ brought the light. [00:26:54] He brought the beauty, he brought the grace and the love. [00:26:59] And the very life that people said they experienced when they entered into heaven is the life that Jesus brought when he met people in the gospels. [00:27:11] And I want to say it's the very same life that he wants to share with you that darkest place in your life. [00:27:20] Christ has light for that ugliest place in your life. Christ has beauty for that most broken place in your life. Christ has healing, for there is a better life than the dusty life, and it is found in the resurrected Christ. [00:27:45] Paul says at the end of one corinthians 15, because there is a resurrection life to be lived. He says, so, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong, immovable, always enthusiastic for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless. [00:28:12] The resurrected life is a firm life. [00:28:16] It's an unmovable life. [00:28:19] It is an increasing life. And it is a life that knows the beautiful things that God has prepared for those who love him. [00:28:32] I should also tell you that not every near death experience was a good one. [00:28:41] If you do some research on this. Not everybody felt like they were floating. [00:28:47] In fact, I read an account of a man who did not want to give his name for obvious reasons. [00:28:55] He was in the hospital and he was at the end. [00:29:00] And he didn't feel the, like he was floating of at all. He felt like something was pulling him down through the bed. [00:29:09] He felt this unresistible pulling, and it pulled him through the bed, and he felt like he was falling. [00:29:21] And then he had this sense that he was in a great abyss and that he was falling through this abyss. [00:29:29] And instantly he was overwhelmed by anxiety. Where am I falling to? [00:29:36] And then, if that wasn't bad enough, it became bleakly dark. [00:29:46] It was so dark, he could not see anything. It was absolute, total darkness. [00:29:55] He was filled with anxiety and fear. [00:30:00] And as he fell, he had this painful sense of despair. [00:30:09] I'm ruined. [00:30:11] I'm ruined. [00:30:14] I'm desperate. [00:30:17] There's no hope for me. [00:30:20] And if that wasn't bad enough, he said he instantly was aware that he was all alone. [00:30:31] He had no sense that there was anyone anywhere near him or anyone who knew remotely where he was. [00:30:44] He says that experience was so painful that he can't describe it. [00:30:53] He says they resuscitated him, but he's never escaped the experience. [00:31:00] To this day, he lives with high anxiety. [00:31:06] To this day, he lives in a state of fear. [00:31:11] He never escaped the bad near death experience he had. [00:31:18] It defined his life to this day. [00:31:23] Church, Easter, and the resurrection. It's not just a good story we tell once a year. [00:31:34] It is a life and death story story. [00:31:38] It is a story about eternity. [00:31:41] We find life in Christ Jesus or we lose life without Christ Jesus, we find a life that makes this world better and promises us a beautiful life forever in his presence. [00:32:03] Or we lose life and we look forward to bleakness, to darkness, to anxiety, loneliness and fear. [00:32:21] And the resurrection and faith in Jesus Christ is what distinguishes these two futures. [00:32:30] I ask you one more time, who is Jesus Christ to you? [00:32:36] Who is this risen lord to you? [00:32:40] Has there been a moment in your life where you opened your soul to him and you said to him, I want the beauty, the light, the dignity, the joy, the hope, the community that you offer. [00:32:56] I want to be free from what is most ugly and most ruined about myself. [00:33:03] I want a future with you. [00:33:08] Maybe this morning would be a good time for you to whisper that prayer to Jesus Christ and invite him to be the resurrected Lord of your life. [00:33:19] Our dear heavenly Father, I believe in you. [00:33:27] I believe that everything I need, you have. [00:33:33] And I believe that the hope for a beautiful life is in Jesus Christ. [00:33:40] And I believe the hope for an unspeakably glorious eternal life is in Jesus Christ. [00:33:49] So I offer myself up to you. [00:33:52] I pray that your spirit wash across every heart in this room and everyone who's watching online. [00:33:59] And I pray that in each heart, there would be a whispered prayer to you that said, o Lord Jesus Christ, I receive your grace in Christ's name. Amen.