MAR 31 2024 | EASTER Arise! Then. Now. Forever…

Sea Change Church · MAR 31 2024 | EASTER Arise! Then. Now. Forever...
John 20:1-10
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Amen. You may be seated. The Gospel According to John Early on the first day of the week While it was still dark Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, They've taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they've put him.

So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked at the strips of linen lying there, but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus' head.

The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally, the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to where they were staying. This is the word of the Lord. The cloth was still lying there, as well as the cloth was still lying there.

For all of you, there's a little thing that we do here at the church, and Chris did it a minute ago. If you don't go to church often, maybe you haven't heard it, but I say, He is risen, and then what you'll say is, He has risen indeed, all right? So we're going to hit that right now, all right? So He is risen. He is risen indeed. Goodness, so much better than first service. That was legit.

Oh my God, no shade on first service. I like that word indeed, because you can make your friends think you're really smart if you use it. So put that into your lexicon if you get a chance. Like if you're at Costco and somebody says, Hey, this is a super good hot dog from Costco, you can say, Indeed. So just do that, and it works. And with that, let's get into the Scripture.

If you have your Bibles, open to John 21 through 10. And incredible passage here. We're looking at the life of three of Jesus' closest friends, followers, in this passage, and how their lives have been radically transformed. I mean, He has been resplendent in their life. They have seen Him. Their lives have been turned around, upside down, inside out.

But they've also just witnessed Him be brutally murdered before their eyes. And so there's an extreme amount of trauma that's going on with these people. Peter probably wasn't at the crucifixion, but John was. And so was this Mary of Magdala. And so Mary's an interesting character. We're going to look at these three characters. We're going to look within the story.

And what I want to do is try to put you in the story. I got a chance one time to talk to a guy named Eugene Peterson. He wrote a paraphrase of the Bible called the Message Bible. Maybe you've seen it. It was really popular. And as I was talking to him about preaching, he says, hey, whenever you preach, you want to do the same thing that I try to do with my grandchildren.

And I said, well, what's that? He said, you want to put people into the story. You want to put your kids into the story. And so what I want to do today to make this story come alive is to see if you can identify within these three really diverse people that are in the story. You have John, probably the best friend of Jesus. You have Peter, this incredibly rash individual who follows Jesus passionately.

And then you have Mary of Magdala. And she is just an amazing person as well as we look into that. I want to talk about the setting, though, first of all. And let you know, if you haven't read the Bible for a while or you haven't been at church or know much about the history of the Bible, where is this actually taking place? This story is taking place in modern-day Israel.

If you see a map here, there is modern-day Israel right there. And Israel, at this point in the story, is no longer a nation. They've been overtaken by the Romans at this point. It was the Macedonians before that under Alexander the Great. But before that, about 1,000 years before that, there was a king by the name of David. And maybe you've been to Italy and you've seen Michelangelo's portrait, or excuse me, the statue of David.

You've seen that. You've heard of him before. And so one of the things that's happened is that the nation of Israel has fallen. And the prophets had spoken about this because they had turned away from God. And God said, you will not be a nation if you don't follow me. And so what has happened now that the Romans have come in and become the most powerful nation of all time?

We're at this point. We are at a point in history of the apex of the Roman Empire. Now, Julius Caesar has died about 45 years before Jesus was born. With Cleopatra, Mark Anthony, the whole group. And it was just recently, I thought that Cleopatra was like 2,000 years before Jesus. Like way back in antiquity before Christ. But no, it was only about 45 years before Jesus.

And Caesar, if you know Julius Caesar, had changed the Roman Empire. From the time of Caesar, it reaches its apex. Before that, they had been a republic. They'd kind of made their way up and in the world and conquered and taken with the Macedonians and taken before that with Alexander the Great in about 325 before Christ when he died. And from this point on, the Roman Empire would begin to descend.

And Caesar was the first one who had taken it away from a Senate. And without turning a whole history lesson, he had become what you'd know as Caesar, an autocratic leader, and then there was multiple ones after that. Why would they be there? Why is this piece of land so important? This piece of land that the Bible says that God had given to the Jews.

Well, I learned in seminary there was no place in the world that is more strategically important than what they would call the Holy Land in the Middle East. Why? It is the gateway to three continents. You can get to Africa. You can get to Asia. You can get up to Europe. You also have the Persian Gulf as well. And it's the reason that America is there today, plus the oil, because of its strategic alliance and one of the reasons.

So there's other geopolitics that are going on with that. But it's why the Romans were there. Now, I'm telling you this for a reason. Because when the Romans came in, one of the things that they would do is they would look at the religious history of the people and they would assume the gods of the time. What they found out as they went, there's another picture here.

Remember, this picture shows exactly where Alexander the Great had taken over. And I'm telling you all this for a reason. Everywhere he went, he would find a new nation. And every single one of those nations to a nation was a polytheistic nation. It means they believed in multiple gods, right? They believed in many gods. And Alexander the Great, when he went to these places, he would assume them, these gods for himself.

And then he would begin to sacrifice to these gods to appease them for their favor and would do that each time that he came in. Now, here's what's different. Jesus, in this passage, you have Jesus that shows up. In the one nation, if you can put that picture back up there again, the one nation of Israel, which is over right there at the top of the Persian Gulf.

And I'm sure you all know exactly where that is from your history lessons. But this is the one nation, the Israelites, that believed something different than every single other nation that was around them. They believed different than the Egyptians that had, you know, Iris and these different gods. Different than the Greeks was Zeus. I could go on and on to the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Persian Empire, the Medes, you know, on and on.

There was one nation that believed something different, that there was one God. This was monotheistic. Now, here's why this is important as we get to this story. Because the man who was just crucified, Jesus, the friend of these three people that are coming to the grave today, not only agreed because he was a Jew that there was one God, he said, I'm him.

I mean, it's a radical claim, right? All these other nations, and there's only three choices when it comes to your religious beliefs. You either believe there's no God, you believe that there's many gods, or you believe that there's one God. You only have three choices. Those are the only three choices that you have, and each of those have consequences on how you will live your life.

Every nation in human history to this point has believed in the polytheistic idea. But Israel is different, surrounded by all these nations where they say there is only one God, and Jesus says, I am he. And let me tell you something else that's different. All of these gods required sacrifices to themselves in order to give favor. But when Jesus comes, he ends a sacrificial system, and he does something different than saying, you must sacrifice to me to have favor.

He becomes self-sacrificial. That is totally radically different. He comes and says, I am going to die on the cross. God himself is going to present a sacrifice to himself to pay for the sins of mankind so that you can have relationship with me. I'll tell you why this is important, because so often we see Jesus as this cosmic lifeguard, right? He came to save people from hell.

He definitely did that. He says controversial things that you can lose your soul. He says you have a soul, and you're in control of it, not right now, but there'll come a point where you can lose your soul. But when we only see Jesus as a cosmic lifeguard, we miss the true intention of why he died on the cross. John, in this passage here, in just a second, is going to tell you why it is, because John sees himself and calls himself something, and that's the beloved of Christ.

Jesus died on the cross, not just to save people why. He died so that he might have relationship with you and intimacy with you and know you, and that you might know that you are his beloved. It said in the first service, if your child is in the water and they're drowning, granted, you want to save them, right? But you're not just saving them for saving's sake, right?

You're saving them because you love them deeply and you want relationship with them. This is the radical story that Jesus comes and plants himself in the midst of thousands of miles all the way around. In fact, the whole earth, polytheistic, sacrificed to us, oftentimes vindictive, got to please the gods, who says, you don't have to please me.

I will come and sacrifice myself because I am the God of God who can save you from your sins. There's a verse in Hebrews. Now, I didn't make it into your notes, but I want you to write it down because it's key. Hebrews says this, but Christ offered himself to God without any flaw. He did this through the power of the eternal Holy Spirit. So how much cleaner will the blood of Christ make us?

It washes away our feelings of guilt for committing sin, for sin always leads to death, but now we can serve a living God. Go to verse one. We're going to look at three characters and we're going to continue to look at this scene. So that's the setting. I've put you in the story. I've taken you back 2,000 years to where we are, what people believe, the difference of Jesus and what he is saying, what he is proclaiming.

And I'm showing you three characters here now in this story that were all very different, that are very much like us. One thing I always say is you could have been in the Bible. You say, no, that's not true. There's all these amazing people in the Bible like Moses. Moses was a murderer. Well, what about David? He was amazing. He's the one, you know, God loved him.

He was, you know, there's no one that had a heart after God. Not only was he a murderer, he was an adulterer and killed the wife, excuse me, the husband of the woman he had adultery with. And God redeemed that story and through that woman, Jesus is related to that woman who had her husband killed by David. But the Bible is just full of broken people, but people who are often willing to stand by a tomb and wait for Jesus to show up.

And that's what we see here. Here's in verse one. It says, early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, circle still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. The stone had been rolled away. I want you to circle a few things. Early, I want you to circle still dark, and I want you to circle removed.

Three things are really important here in this story, and it's easy to miss. The first thing is that it's still dark. It's early in the morning. It's early in the story, but it's still dark. Now, this idea of darkness and light is not a mistake in this passage. We tend to see the Bible as this monolith of stories, right? Not realizing that some of the people that wrote were really good authors.

I'm talking incredible authors, and John was one of them. John, who wrote this, is also in the story. He's writing about himself here. John uses the word light 17 times in his book on John, and he starts it out with about seven uses in the first chapter. What he is saying over and over again, that there is darkness, but light is coming. He says that Jesus is that light, so it's not by mistake, and this is a true story of what happened, that there was darkness, but light was coming.

See why that's really, really important? Because some of us are in a darkness. Many of us experience darkness. And oftentimes in darkness, we forget how close the rising of the sun is. If we would like Mary linger here at the tomb, she lingers, as you'll see later on in this story, but it's so close. I've heard the quote saying that the sun rises slowly and then all at once.

If you've ever seen the sun rise, that's true, right? It rises slowly. It's slowly. Light comes light, light, light, but then, boom, all at once. That's what we're seeing here. I want to give just a couple, just one verse from John, chapter one, that talks about this idea of light and Jesus being that. It says, John, in him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it. John is saying that Jesus is the light of the world. In the midst of all the darkness, that Jesus is that light. And there's one thing about light. Darkness can never take victory over light. No matter how dark the darkness, and some of us have been through some incredible darkness.

God has made a promise, and it is true just in physics and nature, that darkness can never overcome light. I said, you know, about six months ago in a sermon, that if you were to take a candle, or, you know, if you went into the deepest parts of space, into a black hole, the darkest part of space, and you just have a Bic lighter, right? And you lit it, it would overcome the darkness.

Now, I had a kid in high school quote that says, it's actually a black hole, it's a vacuum, so that wouldn't work. Okay, Grant, I get it, okay, separate of the vacuum, let's say you had a little air thing, right, okay? I get it, we need oxygen. But the point is this, in this story, you see three people that have incredible darkness. They have just seen Jesus be crucified in front of them.

They've lost one of their friends, their lives are in jeopardy at this point. But this incredible woman still shows up to the tomb, so we see that. The other thing I like in this passage is that it says the stone was removed, was rolled away. What that said to me is sometimes we need stones removed in our lives that we can't remove ourselves.

Mary gets there, and she has no way to remove the impediment between her and Christ. There's something that's there. I spoke to somebody that had an addiction issue in the break. And they said, you know, God just removed it, just rolled away the stone. And sometimes we have to believe that God can do something beyond ourselves. And so we see a stone that has been rolled away.

And I think that was on purpose. I think Jesus could have sent the disciples there and said, hey, move the stone. And they could have got some, you know, levers and used leverage and pulled it off. But it was removed. Why? Because God is a God that removes the things that are in the way, and it's not all on you. All Mary did, all these two disciples did, was show up.

That's all they did. And when they showed up in wonder, in amazement, in fear, in trembling, in courage, God worked. He moved. He went away. So we see that it's early but ready to become the dawn. We see that it's dark that will become light, and we see this being moved away. Go to verse 1 again. Early on the first day, while it's still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb.

Mary Magdalene. Who is she? Incredible, incredible story. The Bible says that she was a formerly possessed woman, that she had demons. It's disputed if she was a prostitute, right? So it's disputed. Some people believe that she was a prostitute. Some say she wasn't. Even if she wasn't a prostitute, she had seven demons, the Scripture says. I'll read you that in a minute.

Which means she had a starting five basketball team and two subs, all right? That's a heck of a lot of demons, and I don't know what she was getting into, but Jesus bound her demons and released her from those demons, and it set her free, and that's what Jesus does. Here's this verse, and it talks a little bit about her. And once again, I want to look at all these characters, because I see myself in all of these characters, at least some of them.

Maybe not the seven demon part. But Luke 8, 1 through C, says this, and this is from a little bit earlier in the story. After this, Jesus traveled about from one town to a village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The 12 were with him, and also some women. Also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases.

Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had come out. Joanna, the wife of Chusa, the manager of Herod's household. Full stop. That's important. We'll get to that in a second. Susanna and many other, these women were helping to support them out of their own means. What I think is interesting, one, it does say that she had seven demons. We talked about that.

The next thing, you have this woman named Joanna, who is the wife of Chusa. Herod's in charge of this entire region I showed you on the map. The man in charge of all of Herod's household, because Herod had a manager that was in charge of everything, so Herod was in charge. You have Caesar, you have Herod in charge of this area, and then there's a dude underneath him who's in charge of everything.

That guy's wife follows Jesus around. The Romans have a problem at this point. There is a radical follower of Jesus, this woman, who is politically connected to people from Caesar, who is beginning to follow Jesus. There were cracks in the political empire as this person of Jesus is beginning to make an impact in people's lives. She saw something in Jesus.

And not only that, it says that they followed them around doing what? Supporting them with their own finances to make sure that Jesus had money for his ministry. That's powerful. That's incredibly powerful. Joe talked about, you know, giving, and that's important. These women were giving. We're following Jesus, working. I don't know what they were doing on side trades, supporting the ministry of Jesus, but they had been radically changed and were giving directly to him.

The other thing that I think is really interesting about Mary Magdalene is the fact of her closeness to Jesus. And when Jesus comes back and raises from the dead, and he's already done it in this passage, I didn't put this into the notes, but if you go one verse further, so take your Bibles out when you get home and go one verse further, or maybe you have your Bible verses with you, there comes a story where the other two disciples go home, Peter and John go home, and she stays there and Jesus shows up.

The first person that Jesus appears to after he raises from the dead is a possible prostitute who had seven demons. Is that your choice? Like, if you're Jesus, is that your choice? I'm going to Caesar. I'm going to the heads of state. I'm figuring out who it is. But Jesus comes to a woman. Now, if you don't see the poetic resonance between that and the original creation story, because women have gotten a fair amount of shade for the whole apple thing in the garden, right?

This is a garden, the scripture says. Jesus doesn't come to a man first. First, he goes to a woman in a garden, and he shows himself to her. And so all the people are like, well, the church is all about the patriarchy and patriarchy. There is no other religious tradition in the world, and I will argue this out with you until I'm blue in the face, that is as liberating to women as the scripture, and no leader of any religious movement that is as liberating to women as Jesus Christ.

To the fact that the entire biblical story, and I don't think Christians have always gotten not right, but the entire biblical story, Jesus comes to a woman, and he redeems what was lost, and he starts where it was broken. Jesus wants to start where it was broken sometimes. And so she is here in this passage. It's a radical piece of the story to see this woman, and she is there.

Now, we're going to see in a second that after the, Peter and John, we're going to talk about them, after they leave, so they come, they see where Jesus was in this whole thing, they leave, she lingers. They leave, and she actually lingers. So, next thing we see is John 20, 11. I'll try to read that. Now, Mary stood outside the tent. If you go to verse 20, if you have a Bible with you, Mary stood outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she bent over and looked into the tomb, and she saw two angels there seated in white where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

So we see that. The next person in this story is John. I want to be John a lot. I'm not John. I just really, I heard about with your friends. If you have friends, it'll be somebody you connect with on a lot of areas, but it'll be somebody you kind of want to be, right? If you have a good friend, they're not just like you. There's something about them you're like, gosh, you're so funny.

I wish I was that funny. There's something you admire about them. When I look at John, he's just so smooth, you know what I mean? He is quiet. I mean, Peter's playing rugby. John's playing chess. That's the difference of these two guys, right? John is writing this incredibly beautiful gospel, and you can just see in the nature as he shares these different things.

The first thing I love is, go to verse 2. John is writing this book, and he writes a couple things about himself. And in verse 2, it says, so she, that's Mary, came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, that's himself, writing in the third person, the one whom Jesus loved. Now, you can immediately just think, this guy is arrogant. How arrogant is he?

The one that Jesus loved. He wasn't the one that Jesus loved, you know? Not only that, he already said he beat Peter in a race to the tomb, right? If you missed that, he's like, we ran there, but the other disciple got there first before Peter. I mean, and then later on in the story, he says, I'm the one who Jesus loved. It'd be really easy to look at John and just go, oh my goodness, like, what a train wreck this guy is.

Or, the other option, his identity had become so enmeshed in knowing that Jesus loved him, too, that's how he saw himself. We have a crisis right now of people taking on identities of shame and fear and worry or whatever these different things are, and they start to own this in who they see themselves to be. But in the midst of that, we see John, who takes a different tack, who when he speaks about himself, he says, I'm the one who was beloved by Jesus.

And I would say to you that I don't think that he would say that you're not beloved by Jesus, but he saw himself as beloved. The other thing, and I love that, because I oftentimes don't see that. I oftentimes, when I look at myself, I see my flaws. I see all the things. And Pastor Harry, I was getting on a plane to go to England recently, and Pastor Harry, he spoke about this on Friday night, Good Friday service.

He was driving me to the airport. And he had this verse, and he said, all God's wrath was poured out upon Jesus. And he goes, Adam, there's no more wrath left for you. That Jesus self-sacrificing, like I said, took all of the wrath, all of the sin, all of the shame. There's none left for you. It was like I got a warm shower of God's love. I went off on my trip for the first time in a long time not feeling this guilt that I'm not somebody I shouldn't, that I should probably be different than who I am.

And that is the radicalness of who John is. John is such a good friend of Jesus. It says that at the Last Supper, he's reclining against Jesus' breast, just laying there so close and intimate with him. When Jesus is on the cross, he looks down to John, and he says, John, my mother, will you take my mother in? This is his retirement plan for his mother.

Let me just read this to you out of John 20, 11. Excuse me. Out of John 19, 26 and 27, I think it's in your notes. When Jesus saw his mother there and the disciple whom Jesus loved, that's him again saying this identity, standing nearby, he said to her, woman, here is your son. And to the disciple, here is your mother. From that time on, the disciple took her into his home.

You've got to think John is a special person if Jesus is like, hey, you've got to take care of my mom. I mean, who do you do that with? He's on a cross, dying. And he looks down, he says, that's my boy. And he goes, mom, you go with him. It says that he went up into Turkey in Ephesus, and that he actually lived in Ephesus in modern day where Turkey is, and watched over the mother of Jesus.

And John was the only disciple that was not martyred for the faith. Peter, as we'll see in a moment, Peter was crucified upside down in Rome. They were going to crucify him, and he said, I'm not worthy to be crucified like Christ, so crucify me upside down. But John lived out and died in his old age, even though he was boiled in oil once before he was sent to an island.

So that's not great. I have to imagine that John was so bummed that he couldn't die for Jesus. All the LR11 got to give their lives for Jesus and what they believed, but not John. And I tend to think that that's probably the biggest cross that he ever had to bear, because he loved Jesus so much. I can have him, I bet he was like, God, let me die for you.

That's John. I want to be like John. I just tend to be a lot more like Peter. Not all the way like Peter. So Peter gets to the tomb, okay? Let me just read this real quick. Go to verse 3. So Peter and the other disciples started for the tomb. Both were running. Now everyone's running, right? Mary ran. They're running. Something's happening. Everyone's running.

But the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. I don't know why he put that in there, but he did. He bent over. This is John. So John gets there first, goes in last. And some people are like that, but he's the first to believe. Some people get there last or get there first. They figure it out last, but then they become the first person to believe, and that's what happened.

He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen, but he didn't go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. Are you doing that? Jesus, tomb, stone, everything. You just run straight into the tomb. But this is the guy who is also violent and brash. Two nights before, there was, in the Garden of Gethsemane, they came and tried to take Jesus, and it said that Peter pulled out a sword and it cut this guy's ear off.

I mean, Peter is so rash. He's so bold. He's so annoying. He also is a denier. Peter, he denied Jesus three times. He was all, hey, I'm going to live for Jesus. I'll die with you. But then when a 13-year-old servant girl says to him, hey, you know that guy Jesus? He's like, no, I don't. No, pretty sure I saw you with Jesus, this 13-year-old, 12-year-old girl says.

He's like, no, I don't. Starts calling down curses upon himself. I sometimes, I don't think I've done that, but I sometimes so relate to this, and I relate to how annoying Peter can actually be. Like I said, I want to be John, but I see myself in Peter all the time, although the older I get, I think I'm getting a little closer to John, hopefully.

But here's what I love about Peter. Peter is so real. Do you have those people in your life, like they just annoy you, right? They're just so annoying. But something in you just loves them. Why? Because they're just so real. They're just so, they're like little puppy dogs that are just, they believe first. They're the ones, they hope the most. You're like, you know, you annoy the crud on me, but I couldn't live without you.

Some woman's like, yeah, that's my husband right here. I can tell you, you know. This is Peter. This is Peter, and I love this story that we see Peter there. He's rash, he's violent, but he's incredibly real. And as we come in for a landing, I just want to say this. So I've given you the setting of 2,000 years ago, where we are, what's happening religiously, what's happening in the political system, all these things.

And I've shown you these three characters whose lives were enraptured by Jesus, encased by Jesus' love, inculcated in everything that he is. And I put, despite the diversity of characters in this passage, and there's an incredible diversity of characters. There is a thing in the world today, especially like, oh, Christians are this. There's like this one media narrative of all Christians are the same.

It's so ridiculous. Not everyone's the same. And we see this diversity of people. But I would say, despite the diversity of characters in this passage, all ended up at a common waypoint within the story and confronted with a common question. Would they believe that Jesus has risen from the dead? Would they believe that Jesus has risen from the dead?

They all end up in this place. And so what I think is really interesting is you go to verse 9. Go to verse 8 and 9. Finally, the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went inside. He saw and believed. And then verse 9 is so perplexing. They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to where they were saying, where they were staying.

Verse 8 says, John, saw and believed. Verse 9 says he didn't understand. Verse 8 says he saw and believed. Verse 9 says he didn't understand. Let me tell you something about faith. You don't have to understand everything to have faith. Matter of fact, if you do understand everything, it's not faith anymore. If you understand everything, it is no longer faith.

It is foregone conclusion. And because God loves us so much to make sure that our destiny is not in our hands, he makes it about faith. Because faith is not something that can be proven. Faith is not something that can be seen. Faith is something that needs to be believed. And this is why it is faith. And this is why it is such a chasm for people to make a jump to believe, especially if they haven't checked all the boxes, that they understand everything that is being said.

The gospel says that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, that he self-sacrificed himself. Not just so that you could be saved from hell, although that's one of the things that does happen, but that he could know you and that you could become like John and become his beloved. That you would be known by him and know him deeply. And that's what we see happening in this story.

I want to close with a, I was flying back, I took a Lenten retreat just to go spend a couple weeks to breathe after three incredibly busy months here at the church and just sit in England on this path, do some hiking. And on the way back, I was flipping through the movies, and the movie Good Will Hunting was on. And I could watch it. And I have to say, it's not a biblical movie, but probably no movie has changed me more than that movie.

It hit me at the right time in my life in the 90s, and I watched it again, and I'm just crying through the whole thing. I'm just crying, right? Matt Damon, Robin Williams, the whole thing. And there's this scene where Matt Damon comes in, and he's this brilliant kid that is on the other side of the law, and they make him, and he's a genius. He's like this math genius.

And he's, you know, many of you have seen that, and they say as part of his parole, he has to go see this psychiatrist. And so instead, you know, he goes through about five of them, and he just always finds them and breaks them apart and basically just, you know, tears them apart, and the shrinks don't want to have anything to do with them, right?

They finally take him to Robin Williams. And the first scene, they're sitting there, and the kid's trying to find that spot where he can break them. And he sees this picture. Matt Damon sees this picture on a wall. And he goes, is that your picture? And he goes, yeah. He goes, you paint it? He goes, yeah. And then Matt Damon's like, boom, I'm on it.

He's there. And it shows this super close-up with this light on his face. What he doesn't know is that Robin Williams' wife had just died of cancer, and he had sat by her bed, and he talks about that later on in the story. And he was drinking, and he was in an incredibly difficult spot of addiction and grief and trying to survive. And Matt Damon says, if you remember the movie, he says, this is all over.

He goes, this is a Wendell Holmes ripoff. And he starts making fun of his picture. And then besides that, he goes, you know what? I think this guy out to sea, because there's a guy rowing a boat in a storm. He goes, I bet that's you. Yeah. He goes, yeah. You're in a big storm. And he goes, the waves are crashing over, and you're getting ready to go down, and you're not going to survive, and you're terrified.

And Robin Williams is like, you can see him in the background, and it is hitting. Matt is just disemboweling this guy's emotions right in front of him. The scene ends, and he tells him to leave after that, and then they get together later on in the story. And it's an incredible thing as Matt finally, you know, they form this relationship. It's just so powerful how it happens.

But as I was watching that, I realized that it speaks about where we are as a culture in so many ways. There are so many people in need of hope at this moment. I would say that if my faith is wrong, and I do have faith that Jesus died on the cross and loves me and believes in me, that even if I was wrong, I would still do what I do. Because someone in the world has to speak hope to the world.

And this is what Jesus did. And this is why these three people, at the risk of their own lives, show up at a tomb in the middle of the night, before the dawn, waiting for Christ in any hope that he might raise from the dead. And I believe that like in that scene of that movie, there are people that feel like they're in a darkness. And not only are you in darkness, you're waiting for the light, but that light hasn't come.

And there's other that are like, have a stone or an impediment in our life, and that stone, you realize at some point, you can't move that stone. You've tried for years, and the stone isn't being moved. And you know it. And you know you can't move it. And someone has to roll that stone away. And others are like, I just need to see the light. I just need the light, and I need life, and I need to breathe again.

This is the story of the gospel, and the story of Jesus Christ. What I want to do today is this. In the same way that everyone's different, I'm not going to do like an altar call. Hey, stand up, come forward, accept Jesus. I know people do that. They've been doing it for the last 200 years. It's kind of modern and new compared to Christianity. What Jesus did was often different.

He saw you for who you are, and then he would meet you where you are as an individual. Because he created, he doesn't see you all as a monolith. Some people, he would say, follow me right now. And some of you are like Peter, right? Some of you are hearing this, and you're like, I'm running to the front as soon as this is over, and man, come. There's going to be an opportunity.

Some of you are going to hang out at the tomb. You're going to be like, whoa, I'm more like John. I need to look at this for a second before you believe. We have an opportunity to do that. We have a thing called the next step table at the back where you can go, and you can find out more about Jesus and following him. Others might be, hey, this isn't for me, or I just want to keep coming back.

And I want to give you that opportunity today. We're going to have our prayer team come forward. If you want to stand, if you would. First thing I would say is this. If you need prayer today, and we had so many, I mean, it was just packed up here at first service. If you just need prayer, or this resonated with you, you're like, hey, I feel like the guy in that boat, or that woman, and you just need prayer.

You need someone to pray for you, to give you hope, who believes. The people that are going to be up here in the front, they're going to pray with you and pray for you. Please come forward as soon as the service is over. They will pray for you. If you want to know more about Jesus, we have this little book called The Case for Christ. We want to give it to you.

It's in the back. Just go get the book and read it. It's pretty awesome. It'll tell you more about Jesus. Or if some of you are like, hey, I'm just going to stick around. I have this atheist that comes to church here, and he said to me, I don't believe in God, but whenever I come to your church, it's the most inspirational hour of my week, so I'm just going to keep coming.

And I was like, say, give Jesus an inch, he'll take an eternity. That's how he works. You know what I'm saying? It's really about you, and what you want. I want to ask that you bow your heads, if you would. Bow your head and close your eyes. And I did this in the first service. Guys, if this resonated, and you need Jesus in some way or another, maybe you know him, you just need more of him, will you just make eye contact with me?

Just look up and make eye contact with me. You just want more. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. You want more. Jesus is here for you. If you want him, he's here for you. Bow your heads again. Let me pray. I was probably three dozen, four dozen people who looked up at me, and they're somewhere in their life. We're all dealing with so much, some with darkness, God, and all these things.

Jesus, I just want to say, I love you so much, and I want to first of all pray for each of these people. Wherever they are, God, that you would meet them, that you know them by name, and you called Mary by name, and then she knew it was you, and she said, Rabbi and I. Rabbi and I. She said, Rabbi, and she knew it was Jesus, and Jesus says your name to you.

I want to bless them and pray for them. If you extend your hands, I want to bless you now. I bless everyone before we leave. Extend your hands. Then after the service, you can come forward for more prayer or go to the back. Lord, I want to pray for each one here, Lord God, wherever they are. I bless you. In a world full of curses, this is a place where you're going to be blessed, and I want to bless your family.

I want to bless your mental health. I want to bless your emotional health. I want to bless your physical health. I want to bless that you would know Jesus, that the face of Christ may shine upon you, that the roads that you walk would become wider, that more margin would be in your life, that you would know God, and then like John, you would say, I am the beloved because Jesus loves me.

I pray blessing upon you. I pray blessing upon your family. I want to send you out of here blessed in a world full of curses that tells you you're not enough, you're no good. We say you are enough for Jesus, the ruler of the universe, and so God bless these people. For those that should come forward, let them know. For those that need a little more time, a little more like John, whatever it is, Lord God, meet them here and may this Easter change you like no Easter has ever changed you before.

And we send you out now as an army of God's consolation and love in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. We love you guys. God bless. Amen. Amen.