1 Peter 1:1-5 + Mark 16:1-8

Discussion Questions

1. Jospeh of Arimathea is described in Mark’s gospel as someone who was waiting for the Kingdom of God. As we live in the already-but-not-yet kingdom, can the same be said of us? How can we wait well?
2. The Christian faith is one of come and see, then go and tell. We came to see today. Now, who can we tell about Jesus this week? How can we prepare our hearts to be ready to share the good news with our neighbors?

1. Easter is a time to reflect on the cross and rejoice in the resurrection. However, this good news is something to continually celebrate, and is just a foretaste of when Jesus will come again to set all things right. In the weeks, months and the year ahead, how can we keep these incredible truths in the forefront of our minds and hearts?

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel, as most of you know, and on Easter Sunday of course, we always go to a text that relates to the resurrection itself. I’m going to take two different texts today. I think we’ve got some Bibles to pass around if anybody needs a copy. If you’re interested in one, raise your hand up real high and somebody will drop one off at your row. There’s a couple back there. Maybe one in the back over there as well.

So, if you’ll turn with me to Mark, Chapter 16 – we’re going to take a look also at 1 Peter, Chapter 1 verses 3 to 5 today. So, we’re going to put those two together and take a look at this thing we call the resurrection. Why is it that for 2,000 years, we Christians have gathered together and focus our attention to remember the cross and celebrate the resurrection? Don Carson is one of my favorite living theologians. He says, “The entire Bible pivots on one weekend in Jerusalem about 2,000 years ago. Attempts to make sense of the Bible that do not give prolonged thought to integrating the crucifixion and the resurrection are doomed to failure, at best exercises in irrelevant.” So, we talk about both of them, the crucifixion and the resurrection because they’re both really critically important.

In just a moment I want to read from Mark, Chapter 16. And so, if you’ll turn there in your Bibles or swipe there on your devices, you’ll be ready to follow along in the text. First, let me pray for the Holy Spirit to bring this to light for us: Lord, You who have caused Holy Scripture to be written for our learning. Grant to us that we might hear, that we might read, that we might mark and learn and inwardly digest them, that we might embrace, ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which You’ve given us in our Savior Jesus Christ who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen and amen.

So, Mark chapter 16. Matter of fact, let’s take a few verses right before it rolls into chapter 16. I’m going to read from verse 43 of the previous chapter where we get the burial of Jesus. Joseph of Arimathea and a man named Nicodemus together are going to bury Jesus. We know this from John, Chapter 19, I believe it is, if you want to read that later on your own. But here we get part of that story, and in John 19, the other part of it.

“Now, Joseph of Arimathea came, he was a prominent member of the council…” What council? This is the council of the Jewish context that the New Testament is written in. So, the New Testament comes to us, and it comes with a context. It’s a religious context, a cultural context and a political context as well. The religious context is Jewish. And so, the Sanhedrin, 70-member council, sort of the ruling authority, governing authority of the religious aspects of life in first century Palestine, first century Israel.

The Greek culture or the Greek language was still spoken. The culture itself would be woven throughout even a Jewish nation like Israel. And then the political context is, of course, the Roman Empire. And at the time that the 1 Peter passage we’re going to read is written, you have Nero as the emperor, and a really brutal, cruel and violent emperor toward Christians. But for now, let me finish just reading here what we find in terms of the burial and the resurrection of Jesus.

“Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the council, a man who himself was waiting for the kingdom of God.” So, there’s a character sketch there of him spiritually. He’s actually waiting for the kingdom of God. He’s eager. And you read the other gospels, you read Matthew, you read Luke and John, and you find eventually that this guy was a secret saint, a secret believer in Jesus, if you will, and that explains why he’s about to do what he’s going to do.

So, he was waiting for the kingdom of God. He gathered up courage and went in before Pilate and he asked for the body of Jesus. So, the body of Jesus is still on the cross at this time that Mark is describing here, and Joseph of Arimathea wants to take it down off the cross and give it a proper burial, this body of Jesus. And Nicodemus will be with him as I said, we see that in John’s gospel.

Well, Pilate wondered, verse 44 says, “…if Jesus was dead by this time. Summoning the centurion…” This was the professional executioner who oversaw the crucifixion of Jesus. You read about him elsewhere as well. He seems to have come to understand something about Jesus that a lot of other people would not see about Jesus when he says, “Surely this man was the son of God” as he pierces him with a spear and water and blood come out separately, indicating that he indeed was in hypovolemic shock and dead.

So, this Pilate is wondering if Jesus is actually dead by this time. Verse 44, “Summoning the centurion, he questioned him as to whether Jesus was already dead.” In other words, “You, professional executioner, tell me, verify, is Jesus actually dead? This man wants his body. Is he dead yet?” Well, ascertaining from this centurion that it was so, he granted the body to Joseph. Joseph bought a linen sheet, or he brought that with him, took Jesus down from the cross, wrapped Him in the linen sheet, laid Him in a tomb which had been hued out in the rock, and he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.

Been over there six times in Israel myself. There’s a site that’s commemorative. We don’t know if it’s literally the tomb of Jesus or not. It could be it. A lot of the things at that site have been dated to that time period of the first century, but to get a taste and a flavor of what that’s actually like, it’s pretty amazing. If you haven’t been there and you’d like to, you can go online. You can see there are lots of photographs of this particular site. But it’s a tomb that is basically dug out of the side of a rock and there’s a giant round stone that gets rolled across the entrance of the tomb.

Well, verse 47 says, “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses were looking on.” They’re watching Joseph of Arimathea, and we know Nicodemus also, bury Jesus in that tomb and roll the stone in front. They were looking on to see where it was like. They were looking on to know where it was that the body was laid. Verse 1 of Chapter 16: “And when the Sabbath was over [so a couple days later] Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James…” Now these are the two same people, even though now it says mother of James, not mother of Joses. James and Joses were brothers. It’s the same mother, same Mary. “Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices that they might come and anoint him,” meaning Jesus. They come expecting Jesus not to be alive. They come expecting Jesus to be dead.

We know from studying Mark’s gospel, I walked through it in my Timeless Teachings Podcast recently, and in Chapter 8, verse 31; Chapter 9, verse 31; and also again in Chapter 10, Jesus actually tells His disciples He’s going to be arrested, He’s going to be killed and He’s going to rise again from the grave, as He had told them in advance three different times that that would happen. Now in the moment, now after having followed two men carrying a body, a dead body wrapped in linen, to a grave and rolling a giant stone across the entrance of that tomb, now in that moment it’s almost hard as it could be to imagine that they could hold onto that thought of Jesus. “Here He is dead. We saw Him die at the cross, we saw His body buried. Now we’ve come because we’re expecting Him to be dead like He was when we last saw Him, and we want to honor His dead body with these spices.” That’s the way they would do it back then, 75 pounds, maybe 100 pounds of grave clothes and spices. And so that’s why they’ve come on the first day of the week. That’s Sunday. That’s one of the reasons why church often, around the world since then, meets on Sundays because Jesus rose on Sunday.

“And early the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. They were saying to one another [the women were] ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?’.” Great question. I mean, they saw the stone get rolled in place and then they went home. Now they’ve come back early in the morning, and they intend to get into that body of Jesus, the dead body of Jesus, to honor it and yet, “Oh yeah, that stone.” So, they start talking about who’s going to roll that stone away. They were saying to one another, “Who rolled away the stone?” Verse 4, “Looking up, they saw that the stone had already been rolled away. It was extremely large.” I like it that Mark gives us that little bit of detail as well. Probably weighed a ton, if not a ton and a half. Some scholars will recommend, or suggest rather, that that’s how much it might have weighed entering the tomb. “They saw a young man sitting at the right wearing a white robe and they were amazed.”

I love the word amazed, although I feel like “astonished” is another way to translate that same Greek word. And I like “astonished” maybe a little bit better. Why? Because we’ve overused amaze in our own day and time. Everything’s amazing. Have you noticed that? Everything’s amazing. Man, Lou Malnati’s pizza, that’s amazing. Can somebody amend me on that? Yeah. I mean, that game was amazing. Did you see that game? That was amazing. And you – you are amazing people. I’m watching you come in here. I’m just going, “Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing.” The choir? Amazing. The choir is amazing. Yeah, really amazing. There’s so much that’s amazing. And yet we’ve all had experiences in our lives sometime along the way where something was super amazing, like way far above our regular use of the word amazing. So, I like “astonished.”

I don’t get astonished that much. I don’t use that word very much and I’m sitting here looking at these words here on this page. “These women enter the tomb expecting to see the dead body of Jesus, but what they see is a young man sitting at the right,” verse 5, “wearing a white robe and they were amazed [astonished].” Okay, either one works. Either one is legit, but I’m going to say astonished. “What are you doing? Who are you and what are you doing here? And where have they taken my Lord?” That kind of stuff, those kinds of words might come up.

But this man in the white robe… And by the way, this is not a terrycloth spa robe. Mark is trying to say to us, “There’s something very special here about this person.” So often the kind of language they would use to describe an angelic appearance. Dressed in white, clothes so bright you could barely look at him, that kind of thing. And so, this young man sitting there, who is not Jesus by the way, dressed in white, and evidently amazing and astonishing the women who are standing there said to them, “Do not be amazed.” I like that word. That’s always curious to me because we have these automatic reactions so often, don’t we? And so often it’s like, “Hey, don’t do that. Wait a minute. You don’t have to do that.”

Often people are afraid when an angel appears or when the Lord speaks. I kind of get that. I mean, if the Lord spoke right now, I would kind of – “Whoa.” You know? I mean, we all have watched those TV shows that are using those devices where it’s, “Gotcha!” It’s kind of that same device right around the corner and something jumps out around the corner, and you think to yourself, “That was really cheap of them to do that.” You’re kind of mad, but you jumped out of your seat and threw your popcorn all over the living room, didn’t you? Yeah, it happens to all of us. But they were amazed just like you would expect if you encountered some kind of angelic being. And the angel says, “Don’t be amazed. You’re looking for Jesus the Nazarene…” How do you know that? “…who has been crucified.”

I’m so glad he affirmed that because we need to know that. And here’s what he says. “He has risen.” And if he was here today, we would all say He has risen…Indeed. That’s right. Yeah, indeed is a great word. You hear it a lot on Easter Sunday, don’t you? Yeah, you should say it at lunch a few times when you go. When the waiter says it, “So is that what you want?” You go, “Indeed.” And they won’t know what you’re thinking about, but you’re thinking about the resurrection of Jesus, you know? They’re thinking about, “How do I get a big tip out of this person?” I don’t know.

“He has risen. [He has risen indeed.] He is not here. Behold, here’s the place where they laid him,” this angel says to the women. Now I love this, “Come and see.” Now it’s “Go and tell,” right? Verse 7, “Go and tell his disciples and Peter.” That’s interesting. Why that? I thought Peter was a disciple. The angel doesn’t say, “Go and tell the disciples and Matthew.” The angel doesn’t say, “Go and tell the disciples and James or John.” There’s 12 to choose from. Why Peter? Why is it “and Peter”? Because the last time Peter saw Jesus, Peter denied Jesus three times, and the rooster crowed and then his eyes locked with Jesus’ as they brought Jesus through the courtyard at Caiaphas’ house. And Peter is riddled with shame. He feels like such a failure.

If you think you’ve ever failed, if you’ve ever been ashamed of something you’ve done, and you know you disappointed God, and you know broke God’s laws and dishonored somebody in addition to God himself; that’s where Peter was at this particular moment. But this angel knows what’s going on. “All of heaven’s been talking about how we will restore him at the Lord’s instruction. We will restore that one. He will come back home.” And so, the angel says to the women, “Go and tell his disciples and Peter.” I say, “And Jim.” I’ve done it too, I need it too, right?

“He’s going before you,” the Lord is, “He’s going before you into Galilee. Tell those disciples that. And there you will see him.” I love these promises, “just as he said to you.” That’s the angel reciting what we now call Chapter 8, verse 31; chapter 9, verse 31; where Jesus said He would rise again from the dead. That’s the angel quoting Jesus saying, “Just like He said he would.” Yeah, love that.

“And then they went out,” these women did, “and they fled from the tomb,” verse 8, “for trembling and astonishment had gripped them.” I like it that they translated astonishment there. “And they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.” Their hearts were literally thumping out of their chests, their eyes were bugging out, their minds were fully blown. And as they’re running along, they’re still trying to process, “Did we just see what we thought we saw? Did we just hear what we thought we heard? Oh, my goodness, I thought Jesus, our Lord, our savior, our master, our rabbi; we thought He was dead. No, we knew He was dead. And now this angel has told us this.”

And they’re running and running, and they’re processing and processing. They’re not telling anyone while they’re running. We know later from the other gospels that when they get to the disciples, they tell them all. Some of the disciples dismiss them and tell them they’re just being hysterical, that they’re just sort of, they saw something and thought they heard something, and they had not really done that. So, it’s really fascinating to me to read all four gospel records around this time of the year. And I encourage you to read Matthew and to read Mark as well again and to read Luke and John on the resurrection. It’s really astonishing to read as it is.

All right, now I want to give you the entire sermon outline in advance because I know some of you are thinking about where you’re going to eat lunch and if you’re going to make it in time. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to look at our living hope in the resurrected Christ and how it’s philosophically reasonable, historically credible, how it’s globally beautiful and personally transformative and we’re going to do it all in 10 minutes, okay? So, pray for me.

First, philosophically reasonable. Listen, I know that we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God. I admit, fully admit that. So, it’s a matter, an act, of faith to believe in either direction. Do you understand that? In other words, even if you’re an atheist, you’re exercising faith to believe that. You may not want to admit that, but it is true. You have not been everywhere in the universe. You do not know everything there is to know. And so, I declare that it is indeed an act of faith either way. We can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God nor the resurrection event itself. But man, there’s some pretty good reasons to believe it happened, and I want to share those with you.

If the same God that reveals Himself in the Bible is indeed the sovereign being of all creation, the creator of everything that ever came into existence… And most people including a bunch of scientists, believe that the universe had a beginning… I suggest to you if it had a beginning, it is not unreasonable to believe it had a beginner. Who’s the beginner? What do you call the beginner if there was a beginner, if there is a creator God? I’m convinced it’s philosophically reasonable to believe it’s the same eternal being who designed and created and established the observable universe that we can see with Hubble, with the James Webb Space Telescope, this same observable universe with its space/time continuum, its estimated 1 trillion stars and it’s 2 trillion galaxies. Again, just in the observable universe.

It’s the one who also created this dust ball sized planet that we inhabit along with 8 billion other self-aware, intelligent carbon-based life forms called people – you and 8 billion others, all of us individual, unique minds. I mean, you are not number 450,000 of you. You are unique. Your fingerprint is unique. Your mind is unique. Your personality is unique. And that’s amazing. Now, it’s the same God I’m saying that did that, that did all of that in the heavens, that did all of that right here in this room with all of you individual people.

If He can do that and He can create individuals like you… And by the way, each of you have in your DNA 215 million gigabytes of data, each of you. And your data is largely similar to the data in the person next to you, but there’s some unique markers that make you yourself and not them. Some of you’re going “thank you that I’m not them,” and that’s okay. But to know that each person in this room, each person on this planet, that each person who’s ever lived on this planet is a unique individual with a unique DNA signature, that’s pretty mind-blowing. Any being that can do that, man, a resurrection seems to me to be pretty easy, doesn’t it? Walking on water seems pretty easy if you created water and you created gravity and you created air. Man, I think the resurrection of Jesus is philosophically reasonable. I really do.

“The New Testament writers speak as if Christ’s achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe. He is the ‘first fruits’, the ‘pioneer of life’. He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so. This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history has opened.”
C. S. Lewis, Miracles

It’s philosophically reasonable to believe that a God that can do all of that other stuff can do this. I would argue that. I can’t prove it to you, but I think this is pretty persuasive for me. It might not be for you, but it is for me.

Secondly, this living hope that we have in the resurrected Christ, I think it’s philosophically reasonable, but I also think it’s historically credible. We must not subscribe to the anti-supernatural, chronological snobbery of moderns who look back through time and say, “Oh, those quaint people from the first century. Oh, those uneducated people, not scientific like us.” We can’t do that. Do you understand? They knew more than you and I know, most of us, about what dead looks like. You know why? They were up close to dead. We aren’t as nearly as up close to dead.

All of our wars now are fought with button pushing. They fought wars with swords up close, real close. They knew what dead looked like because they didn’t just call one of three dozen funeral homes when somebody died and ask them to come get the body. Now they knew what dead looks like, the historical credibility of the fact that Jesus was actually dead, literally, physically dead and then also literally, physically alive, I think it’s really, really credible.

A.N. Wilson was a believer when he was a little kid, became an atheist, and then later in life became a believer again. He’s English, a UK writer and a newspaper columnist. He said this,

“Easter confronts us with a historical event set in time. We are faced with a story of an empty tomb, of small group of men and women who were at one stage hiding for their lives and at the next stage brave enough to face the full judicial persecution of the Roman Empire and proclaim their faith in a risen Christ.”
A. N. Wilson

So, you can go online, and you can find all kinds of treatments on the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. No one that’s alive today was there except for Jesus Himself. So, we don’t have eyes on empirical evidence. What we do have though is historical evidence. You and I, we believe a whole lot of things based on historical evidence. We believe that George Washington was the first president of the United States. How do we believe that? On a mountain of evidence. And I suggest there’s a universe full of evidence for the existence of God. And that the evidence, the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is quite substantial as well. There’s the empty tomb. If He didn’t rise from the grave, if they wanted to disprove His resurrection, they could have just produced His body. And that never happened.

There’s a story in Matthew, Chapter 27 and 28, I think it is, where there’s a conspiracy between the soldiers that were guarding the tomb and the religious leaders to actually hide the fact that Jesus had risen from the dead and to lie about it, to say that the disciples came and stole the body. Why did they need to concoct that story, that conspiracy? Well, because Jesus had risen from the dead and the soldiers would be put to death for letting their prisoner, their dead body prisoner, get away. That’s the way it was in the Roman Empire. You failed in your mission, then you got the punishment. And so, they go to the religious leaders, and they tell them what happened. And neither group would believe that Jesus, right there they wouldn’t believe that Jesus had risen from the dead or that they should bow to Jesus in any way. And so, they lie about the whole thing.

Matthew tells us that that same story is being promulgated throughout the region in the days following. But the medical realities are real. Jesus did. I mean when you think about the scourging, a lot of people never even survived this. They wouldn’t survive the scourging, much less the cross itself, much less the spear in the side. So, the notion that some people say when they try to refute the resurrection, they’ll say, “He just swooned. He just fainted.” No, he was really dead. These people knew what dead was like. The Roman centurion knew how to execute people. It baffles me that some people might believe those kinds of questions about the resurrection.

The eyewitnesses too, of course. There’s so many of them. The Apostle Paul talks about them in 1 Corinthians 15, over 500 people that saw the risen Christ again. And then the radical transformation of the disciples of Jesus, once bound by fear, now bold in faith. If the whole thing had been faked, one of them would’ve recanted at some point, one of them would have said, “Nah, we made that up. We just wanted Jesus to look good.” But no, they all go to their deaths declaring that Jesus had risen from the dead. And then who can explain the wildfire-like spread of the Christian Gospel throughout the Roman Empire? They’re persecuted heavily for the first 200, 300 years of the church. I mean, it’s horrible what goes on under Nero and what continues on through some of the following emperors until Constantine.

But the wildfire-like spread of the Christian Gospel in spite of the opposition it received, who can explain that? There wasn’t a sword drawn or a bow and arrow fired on the side of the Christian Gospel toward others. There’s no coercion to believe, to convert to Christianity. People simply shared the Good News, the Gospel about the resurrection of Jesus and that if you believe and place, your hope and your trust and confidence in Him, you can have a living hope and life everlasting.

So, there you go, so much wonderful historically credible evidence for the resurrection. If I had more time, we could go into some more, but I need to go on. Globally beautiful. What do I mean by that? The living hope and the resurrected Christ is globally beautiful. It unites a bunch of us across national lines, people groups, skin color, all kinds of walks of life, all that sort of thing. It unites people like nothing else does. When Christ is first, I mean when Christ is preeminent, even here, even in the United States, even in an election year, you see people united by Jesus who would be natural enemies in other categories of life. Do you think that’s true? I think it’s true. I think it’s remarkable. I think it’s fascinating what the Lord has done.

“Christianity is the largest and the most diverse belief system in the world, with roughly equal numbers of Christians in Europe, North America, South America and Africa, and with a rapidly growing church in China that is expected to outgrow the church in America by 2030 and could include half of China’s population by 2060.”
Rebecca McLaughlin, The Secular Creed

The fact that Jesus died a criminal’s death on the cross means that the invitation is for you, for me, for all of us, the fact that Jesus was born in poverty, the fact that Jesus grew up. We only have four chapters of the 89 chapters in all four gospels devoted to the first 30 years of Jesus’ life. I guess we know hardly anything about Him and those early years. A little bit, but not much. It all focuses on that last three-and-a-half years, and even really focuses in on the last week of His life before the cross. Then we get a little bit of information about what happens after He rose again.

But the beautiful thing about the church is that when you all place your hope, your trust and your confidence in Jesus and in nothing but Jesus, in Christ alone as we just sang, then you watch what the Lord can do, how beautiful it is that He can put unlike things together. And He does it in nature. I mean, that’s true. I love springtime. I’ve been to Radnor three times this week, man. I love springtime. I love the that leaves are starting to come out. I love fall as well. All the yellow leaves, the brown leaves, the red leaves, the orange leaves. I love all of the variety and diversity of God’s creation.

But there’s so much greater glory going to God for what He can do between people like you and me, us and the other churches right up the road who claim the name of Jesus and churches around the world that claim the name of Jesus. See, this thing isn’t just limited to one particular group that lives in that country or grew up with that bloodline. No, this thing is much bigger than that, and that’s why it’s so beautiful, and I agree with Rebecca McLaughlin about that.

Fourth and finally, our living hope in Christ is philosophically reasonable, historically credible, globally beautiful, and personally transformative. This is where the rubber meets the road for you as an individual. Here I am, one of 350 people in this room or however many we are, and it matters to me. It matters to you. I’ll seek to persuade you by telling you this. The cross of Christ and the resurrection that we talk about every single year, that you’ve heard about, that some of you walked in here thinking, “I kind of know all about that. Let’s just do this,” check the box and go to lunch. I got to stop us, man.

We got to stop for every little aspect of it because like Kim said, “This cross right here, you see that little hole right there? That’s a symbol of here’s where you put your nail.” This is where you nail your nail. And when we did that on Friday night it’s because we were saying Jesus took my sins to the cross, and they were nailed to the cross. See, that matters to me as an individual as well as to me as a part of a church, as part of the global church as well. The cross of Christ, the resurrection of Jesus, these are the two biggest events since the creation event that have happened. Because the cross and the resurrection, they are bigger than all your sin – all of it!

See, there’s life coming out of here. That’s a symbol of that. That’s what we’re saying in the Gospel. The crossing the resurrection are bigger than all your brokenness. They’re bigger than all of your mistakes. They’re bigger than all of your regrets here in this room. The cross and the empty tomb, they’re bigger than all of your anxieties, and I know some of you have some. And they’re bigger than all of your addictions. I mean, think about that. What’s got a grip on you? The cross and the resurrection. Way bigger. Way bigger.

The cross and the empty tomb are bigger than anything you don’t have and bigger than anything you do have, frankly. The cross and the resurrection are that big. And they’re bigger than anything that you think is wrong with you that might make you unlovable because you know what the cross and the resurrection say? They’re God saying, “I actually love you in spite of your sin, in spite of your foolishness, in spite of what’s been done to you and in spite of what you have done yourself in rebellion against God.” The cross and the empty tomb prove God’s unrelenting love for you and the power of Christ to save you.

I love what Richard Bauckham says,

“As only God can create, only God can renew His whole creation. It started with the resurrection of Jesus – one new thing that changes everything. In lives transformed by the Spirit of Christ, we have a foretaste of the new future.”
Richard Bauckham

Isn’t that amazing? Personally transformative. Why? Because it’s God loving you. If you’ve gone to the cross to get saved, but not remained there to get loved, you need to go back to the cross again and realize it’s His love that motivated Him to go to the cross and die for you. It’s not because you were lovable, it’s because He is a loving God and He loves sinners like me and sinners like you.

Read this aloud with me if you would. This is from 1 Peter 1:3-5. I’ll just make one or two comments about this.

“Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance that is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

There is so much there. We’re going to start studying 1 Peter next week, but just wanted to give you a little appetizer of it. Here is the object of all of our praise. “Blessed be God and Father of our Lord Jesus.” Here’s the measure in magnitude of God’s actions on your behalf. It’s according to His great mercy. It’s not according to you being a good southerner. It’s not according to you going to The Village Chapel. It’s according to His great mercy. That means you can’t run far enough away so you’re now out of His reach. No, He’s always… He’s coming after you. He’s rolling up His sleeves. He is coming after you.

The measure and magnitude is “according to His great mercy.” The impact is that “He’s caused us to be born again to a living hope.” It’s a hope that doesn’t die. It’s a living hope because it’s in a living savior, Jesus Himself. The guarantee is through “the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” That’s just powerful. That last line up there on that slide. That’s the guarantee of it. The security and confidence you can have, “…it is imperishable, it is undefiled. It will not fade away and it’s been reserved in heaven for you.”

Jesus made reservations for you in Heaven, and His name is good there. So, you’re not going to lose, you’re not going to get to the restaurant and lose it. And I don’t trivialize it by saying that. I’m simply telling you it’s not about your performance, it’s about what Christ has done. So, keep that in mind, will you?

The means of accessing it is by faith. The future and fullness of it is, it’s a “salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” And this leads me to my last two quotes, one by Buechner, one by NT Wright. Buechner is,

“Resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.”
Frederick Buechner

It’s great, isn’t it? Think about that. Some of you may be in what you consider to be the worst thing right now. The trajectory for you may be the worst thing, around the corner that you’re waiting for something to happen. I’m there. I’m standing there with you right now about stuff. But because my hope is in the living Savior, it doesn’t matter how dark the storm or how rough the storm gets, Jesus is in my boat and He’s in charge of the storm. He’s in charge of the boat, and He’s in charge of the future as well.

And so, I place my hope and my confidence in Him because even the crucifixion of Jesus wasn’t the last word. The resurrection of Jesus is His declaration, that it was the death of death and the death of Christ. He has risen from the grave to show that He has the power to defeat the worst that can happen to us. The resurrection of Jesus from NT Wright is the only Christian God to the question of where history is going. And that’s because it is His plan. That’s what He in intends to do.

As our friend Malcolm Guite has said, “God takes the worst that we can do to Him and He turns it into the best that He can do for us.” The worst that I could do for God is sin. And my sin put Jesus on the cross. The best that Christ will do for me is to take my sin to the cross and nail it to the cross, to die in my place. Take the wrath of God in my place, to rise again so that I could be offered eternal life in His name. Do you believe this is what matters? And that is how it begins to make a huge difference in your present life as well as your hope for the future.

Let’s pray: Lord, thank You for the resurrection, this event in history, what it means to us now and what it means to us in terms of our eternal destiny. And Lord, as we entered this room, some of us for myriad numbers of different reasons, but perhaps with hard hearts, hardened by all kinds of different things. But Lord, break open our hard hearts, I pray. And then heal our broken hearts as You so often have done. We’ve seen story after story like that here at this church, and we read story after story like that in our Bibles. But Lord, You are good. You love sinners such as we are, and we’re so grateful that You came for us. You didn’t have to. You didn’t owe it to us. We didn’t have a claim on you. You came out of the good kindness and love of Your own heart. So, Lord, soften our hearts, open our hearts to You as we turn to You and respond to You this Easter Sunday. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen and amen.