Transcript
Man, what a great thing to celebrate Jesus. In the midst of Fell's Point, we've been feeding the neighborhood. God's been providing now for four years. This morning I had a little bit of extra time when I got up this morning and something prompted me to just watch through the first virtual Covid Easter service where there was no meeting in person and so it was just recorded and there's pictures of us just starting to bring in the food into the center just the early, we were right there, right at the early stages of getting into the large volume of food from Amazon and sending it out, and God's allowed that to grow to now be something where we're distributing between 750 to 1 million worth of food every month out of that center. It's crazy. Isn't that awesome? And did I say this? Oh, I didn't say this because I wasn't here last week. I was guessing tomorrow else. Do you know that we did the math and because it's ran all by volunteers right now, we just basically pay for that truck. We, for each household that we serve, it's over a hundred dollars worth of groceries. It's about three days worth of groceries for a family of four. We pay 37 cents for that. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Yeah. Amen. 37 cents.
Yeah, it's crazy. I think it's $13 a pallet is right now our costs, so yeah, it's awesome. Now, that wasn't our plan. We just kind of accidentally, God just opened up these doors and we've been trying to steward over it, and some of you we know because you've come over and gotten food, and then a lot of us have been blessed after church by that food, so yeah, it's awesome. Marvin led us in the reading of the first half of the Resurrection story, and he got us all the way up to verse 17 and it says there where Jesus, he turns to Mary and says, don't clinging to me. Jesus told her, since I have not yet ascended to the Father, but I go to my brothers and tell them that I'm ascending. Go to my brothers and tell them that I'm ascending to my Father and your Father and my God and your God.
Then we get to verse 18 and it says this, I'm going to read from verse 18 through 32 just to get through the chapter. I want this to be in our hearts and minds as we reflect on the resurrection. This morning, Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord. I have seen the Lord, and she told them what he had said to her when it was evening. On that first day of the week, the disciples were gathered together with the doors locked because they feared the Jews, so this is Sunday night, they're all together, the disciples are freaking out, the doors are locked, and Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, peace be with you. Having said this, he showed them his hands and his side so that the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord, Jesus said to them, again, peace be with you as the Father has sent me.
I also send you after saying this, he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them, and if you retain the sins of any, they're retained. But Thomas called Twin, one of the 12. He was not with them when Jesus came that Sunday night, so the other disciples were telling him, Hey, we've seen the Lord, but he said to them, if I don't see the mark of the nails in his hands, put my finger into the mark of the nails and put my hand into his side. I will never believe a week later, his disciples were indoors again and Thomas was with them. Even though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them again and he said, peace be with you. You notice he likes that whole peace be with you thing, huh?
Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here and look at my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Don't be faithless, but believe Thomas responded to him, my Lord and my God. Jesus said, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name. Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you so much for this scripture and as we look at it for the next few minutes this morning, we ask that you would speak to us by your spirit. Some of us can say that we know you, God, that we've had a relationship with you and we've been baptized, that we've been going to church, we've been reading the Bible and we're ready to hear from your spirit and then others of us.
We haven't ever gone to church. This is like the scariest place ever, and we don't know what these people are singing about, and Lord, no matter what we ask that you would just speak whether we know church or don't know church or know Jesus or don't know Jesus. Would you speak this morning in our midst and we ask this in your name? Amen. Amen. Let's talk a little bit about the resurrection. As people are learning about Christianity, there are a number of misconceptions that arise with the resurrection and I want to walk through them. Some of you may not normally go to church, and so when you hear about this idea that Jesus died on a cross and was raised from the dead, you may be able to relate to some of these what we would call misconceptions or these ideas. The first is doubt.
There are those that the resurrection is this thing that's kind of this magical or it's thrown into the story. Any good Disney story, of course, the hero needs to appear to have superpowers, but it didn't actually happen. There are those that kind of, that's when they hear of the resurrection. That's kind of the camp they're in. They're like, well, of course those Christians, you got to throw that in there if it's going to be a good story. There's another camp that kind of minimizes this thing, this resurrection. The resurrection thing is it's cool. I'm so glad the dead guy that I like that he didn't stay dead. It's like a cool trick that has to be kind of a part of the story, and there are Christians that kind of see it as like, well, I like Jesus's teaching, and there's that cool trick that he did at the end there where he kind of rose from the dead. There's another group that kind of symbolizes the resurrection. They emphasize symbolism over substance. Some people perceive the resurrection as purely symbolic representing concepts like Hope New beginning or the triumph of Good over evil. They see it as an inspiring myth, not as a literal event with real world consequences.
Another group is kind of moralistic in their interpretation. This group, they view the resurrection as a moral lesson that we can kind of derive some ideas from. For instance, the rising from personal challenges or coming alive in new ways of thinking. It's has this kind of inspiration that we may derive from it. That one's like, and some of these we see in that one, we see that kind of in Frozen when, what's the lady's name in frozen? Elsa? Yeah. When she experiences kind of personal transformation, that's her resurrection, her resurrection moment. Another kind of misbelief is this idea, this selective belief. There's this tendency to accept parts of Jesus's story that are comfortable and they align with personal beliefs while dismissing the miraculous elements like the resurrection or the implausible. This is if you're familiar with the Good Place, that TV series, the Good Place, it's kind of selective.
It kind of draws from different spiritual themes and different religious camps, but the miraculous, it's like, oh, no, that's spectacular and we're going to edit that out of the Bible. There's another group that's the historical revisionism. This group would say that this view suggested the resurrection story was a later edition by the early church to give more authority to Jesus's teaching or to align with existing religious beliefs. This kind of was popularized with the Vinci Code. It's kind of where we see historical revisionism, but you've probably heard that you've seen it. Maybe you've seen a National Geographic where they sit down all the scholars with all the letters behind their name, and oftentimes this is the position that is proposed by these people who are supposedly smart. And then there's the Spiritualization. This is kind of like the Star Wars idea. Some interpret the resurrection as a purely spiritual event suggesting that Jesus rose in spirit but not in body. This view tries to reconcile the miraculous nature of the resurrection with a more naturalistic worldview or a secular worldview like emphasizing the physical, but it conflicts with early Christian claims of a physical resurrection, so you'll get that idea.
I can't think of a really great example of that. Well, I guess Star Wars you kind of have, when a character dies, they're still somewhere around and you get a hologram or a ghost appearance of them. We have another one that's like exaggeration over time. The idea of the story of the resurrection was you remember Big Fish, the movie Big Fish, where it's kind of like the more he told the story, the bigger the fish got. Well, so this is kind of like some people think we hold this view of the resurrection only because it's evolved over time. And the last one, I know these are a lot, but this another one is this idea that, well, the resurrection story was really kind of served this political purpose to give the early church leaders who had political ambitions more authority. So there's a political motivation kind of saying it's not All of these things kind of deemphasized the fact that Jesus was bodily resurrected from the grave after three days.
So let me just kind of respond to this, and if you have friends that struggle with the resurrection, these are just kind of the four ways that we respond to these questions. The first is just simply the historical reliability of the resurrection accounts. We have four gospels that talk about the resurrection and their eyewitness accounts. We also have writings around this time that lend credibility to those historic accounts. The second is just the eyewitness testimony. The third is the consistency with the Old Testament prophecy. The fourth is the empty tomb. The fifth is the alternative. Explanations lack credibility, so like the swoon theory, some of the other ideas that have been proposed that the body was stolen or the swoon theory. All of those are just very difficult to kind of, the more you put 'em together, the more the idea falls apart. And the last real argument for the resurrection is that as its centrality in how cord is to the Christian faith, you have people that died for this reality of the resurrection.
So all that to say, listen, if you're just kind of here at church for the first time or you're exploring religious ideas or spiritual ideas, the idea of the teaching of the resurrection from John and from Matthew, mark and Luke, all of these accounts, it is central. It is central to the Christian faith that we believe in this bodily resurrection. And what I want to do is I want to connect it with us this morning and I hope that you'll be open if you're considering Jesus as a personal savior. I want to explain how the resurrection is seeded and it intersects with your personal life.
The Bible teaches that there is this problem of alienation. Alienation. Now, what's another word for alienation? Separation. Separation. What else? Estranged. Yeah, being estranged, being lonely, being alone, separated, yeah. All of those are is this idea of alienation. The Bible says that you and I are born alienated from the chief relationship that we were created to have. We were alienated from God that you and I are separated from being a friend of God and it's because of our moral condition. The first humans decided to run away from God's plan, and every human who has been born since then has fled from God's plan for their life. They have rebelled. And so God being perfect and holy cannot be in a relationship with unholy humans, and yet he created you because he absolutely loves you. In scripture, we see this reoccurring theme of humanity's alienation from God.
It isn't just about distance. It's not that you're physical and God's spiritual and you can't see him, but it's this deep spiritual separation that is caused by sin. Now, the symptoms of that come up in all kinds of ways, which I'm going to show you here in just a second, but it is evident on a daily basis. You may not know it. You may be facing anxiety in your life. You may be facing deaths in your life, deaths in relationship, suffering in your life, and you may not know and recognize that that's connected with your alienation from God. But the Bible teaches that God loves you, designed you to be in a friendship with God, where you can talk to him, the creator of the universe, you can talk to him about your worst days and he loves you, wants to hear about it, and he has the power to intervene in your life, in your psychology, in your physical body, in your family, in your romantic relationships, in the midst of your kids' lives, in the midst of your finances, where your vocation is at in your academic aspirations.
Jesus is able to be present in your life in those things, but yet you're born alienated from God and God didn't want you to be alienated. He wanted to be in a relationship with you, but how do you solve the problem? Some people say, well, you know what? I'm just going to be better so that I'm more lovable by God. I'm going to give about five hours a day or five hours a week. Let's just start simple five hours a week and I'm going to take care of the poor people in my neighborhood and then maybe God will like me and I can be a friend of God. Or you know what? Instead of being like all those bad people who they lie and cheat and steal, I'm going to be honest with how I deal with finances. I'm going to kind of clean up my act a bit.
And some people think that by just being better, that they can bridge that alienation gap and they can step back into what they were designed for to be a friend of God. But the Bible says that everyone has fallen short of the glory of God and that there is none righteous, no not one, and that the wages of sin is death. That you and I are born in this alienation and we cannot bridge that chasm. In fact, the harder you try, some people they're running to, they're trying to run away from their brokenness through their job or through relationships or through substances. And the harder they try to run away from their alienation and brokenness, the further they are going away from God and yet they're desperately in need of a relationship. That friendship with God. The Bible says that when we sin, when we rebel against God, that there are these five deaths that occur in our life where physically we, our life ends.
So there's physical death, but not just that. We see in Genesis chapter three, when the first humans rebelled against God, they experience relational death and conflict. So our rebellions against God, it affects our relationships with one another. Your life have. Are you in conflict with people around you? Are people upset with you? Well, that's because there's this rebellion. It might not even be you, but there's this general rebellion against God and his plan, his way of doing things, and there's death that comes into relationships, but there's also psychological death. We see in Genesis three, these first humans as they rebel against God, they experience deep shame. And some of you are here this morning and you want to be a friend of God, but yet you're haunted by a sense of shame over the things you've done in your life and you're like, I can't get over that chasm because of that shame.
God would never have me. I'm glad you're here because Jesus has a word for you this morning. But there is also this ecological death. This is this sense of that you are designed to live in this body, in this world that God made, and yet there's this broken relationship between your environment and you as a person. It doesn't always work together. And so we see storms and chaos. We see nature harming humans rather than cooperating with the flourishing of humans. And the fifth thing is a spiritual death. That's your spiritual alienation from God. You're designed to be a friend of God and yet you're spiritually alienated. So that's all a bunch of bad news, but Jesus, who is this Jesus guy? How does this tie in with the resurrection, the alienation? This alienation, it has real consequences. It leads to broken relationships, personal despair, distorted view of purpose in life.
It's like wandering in a labyrinth with no way out, and yet the resurrection is celebrated every year because it is God's answer to your alienation. From him, Jesus came and lived that moral perfect life that you and I couldn't live, and all we did was rack up a whole list of indictments in God's courtroom that we're guilty, guilty, guilty of, and yet we needed to have our record expunged. We needed to be found not guilty in order to enter into that friendship with God. And so Jesus came and he died the death that we should have died. He died on the cross to pay for our sin so that we could be forgiven, but if he just died and stayed dead, the work would not have been completed. There was a need for that sacrifice to be verified and validated by heaven, and that's what happened three days later, the resurrection into this landscape of alienation and despair. Easter speaks a powerful word, resurrection. It's not merely a miraculous event in the annals of history. It's God actively stepping into our plight in Christ resurrection. God is making a way where there was no way. Look at John 20 verse 19. We read this when it was evening on that first day of the week, that Sunday night, the disciples were gathered together with the doors locked because they feared the Jews. Do you remember rewind the Bible? If you know the Bible and you've read even just the first three chapters, do you remember people hiding?
That's pretty important, right? In the Genesis three story, Adam and Eve, they rebel against God and they're afraid. Now, in this case, these disciples, they're not afraid because of anything they've done, but they're afraid just because of their environment. There's fear. And what happens? What happens in Genesis three? God speaks. He says, where are you here? We have Jesus. He speaks, but doesn't just speak. He shows up. He shows up. And what does he say? Peace. What does he say? Peace. Peace be with you. Listen, Jesus does this so that you can have peace in your life, but he doesn't just do it. In verse 19, look in verse 21, Jesus said to them again, what peace be with you? As the Father has sent me, I also send you, Jesus keeps speaking peace over them. Peace over your life. Peace. Peace. Look at verse 26.
A week later, his disciples were indoors again, and Thomas was with them. Even though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood amongst them and said, peace be with you. There's this breaking of the power of alienation. Do you see over and over again that the risen Jesus comes and he is present with his disciples, and as he's present, he's saying, I am calling upon you to have peace. May there be peace with you, but he doesn't just say that. Remember the verse, he says, he breathes on them. He says, receive the Holy Spirit in John 13, 14 and 15 and 16, he teaches about the spirit. You see, Jesus says, I'm going to go away 50 days, 40 days after the resurrection, Jesus ascends up to heaven. And then 10 days later is the day of Pentecost where the flame are on the top of the heads of the disciples and the Holy Spirit baptizes them.
But Jesus has taught these disciples that he's going to go away, but he is leaving his spirit with those who are his disciples. And the spirit speaks this word over your life this morning, peace be with you by raising Jesus from the dead. God wasn't just displaying his power over death. He was addressing our alienation head on, your alienation head on. God designed you to be his friend. God wants to be in your corner. He invites you into his victory. He wants you to be on his winning team. He wants to lead you in victory after victory after victory, not yours, his victory. He is like, come and be a part of my story is the invitation. Come on, come and be in the midst of my story. Come and enjoy the victory. God wasn't just displaying his power over death. He was addressing our alienation head on the resurrection bridges the chasm between humanity and God offering reconciliation and a restored relationship.
I want you to see something in two Corinthians in two Corinthians five 17. It says, if anyone is in Christ, he is what? A new creation. A new creation. And this is good news here because what the old has passed away and see a new has come the old, your old has passed away. There are things that are old that are in your past. There are things that you're embarrassed of, ashamed of, disappointed in that you regret. And this is the Bible speaking to you. If you are in Christ, then you are a new creation. The old is passed away. The God who loves you, the God who wants to be your friend, the God who has done all the work to wipe away your guilt through Jesus, he comes and he makes you new. The question though is if it's that good, how do you get into Christ?
Because he says, if anyone's in Christ well, who's in Christ? That takes us back to our story. That takes us back into our story. But before I look at the story of Thomas, before we close with his story, I want to share my own story. My testimony is that I grew up in the church. I was a 13-year-old who hated the church. My dad was a pastor. I would come just like my boys. They would come, we'd set up church, we'd be there, we'd be around these church people, and I didn't like 'em. I think the main thing I didn't like about Christians at that time was they were emotional. We had a church time where Christians would talk about, here's what happened during my week. And people would cry, and I'm not really a crier, not a lot. And I'd be like, why are you crying?
Stop crying. I don't like, you're making me feel uncomfortable. Why are we doing that? And so as a 13-year-old, I really was like, man, I want to be an actor or a baseball player. I just want to get out of here, be successful in life. And I really had a plan to not really be in the church. And at 13 years old, I went and I did a three week vacation to visit my grandpa, who wouldn't. He also is a pastor, can't get away from these guys. And he said to me when I got off the plane, he lived in Hawaii. He said, listen, Josh, I am so glad you're here for three weeks. I have all these Bible studies planned that we're going to do together and I'm going to pay you a hundred dollars if you'll memorize a hundred Bible verses. And I thought, that is not how I really planned to spend my vacation in Hawaii.
And that doesn't sound very exciting. But my grandpa was pretty intimidating. So I thought, okay, I better go along with it. And I told him, listen, I have a bad memory. I'm diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. I can't remember more than four digits, so I dunno how I'm going to memorize a hundred Bible verses, but we'll try. And he put me at a card table in his garage in the morning with three by five cards and he said, let's just start with the verses. Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd. You grew up in the church. So he was like, we'll just give you credit for that. And then the Lord's Prayer, there's another five or six verses right there, and then you probably know John three 16 will give you credit for that. And the shortest verse of the Bible is Jesus wet. So you got that one down.
There's another. But pretty soon it is like I had about 40 and I needed 60 more to go every morning. I'd get up, I'd sit at that table and we did these index cards. I was pretty much about myself writing out these verses and then just repeating them, trying to take four or five a day, just repeating them and rehearsing them. And then he'd test me. And I memorized the last Bible verse. I memorized the last Bible verse as I was going to the airport, and I remember he wrote me out a check for a hundred bucks. I don't know what I did with it, a hundred dollars, but something crazy happened. All of a sudden I had these verses in my head, and even as I was there in Hawaii and I was driving around town with my grandpa and he was counseling people and he was preparing his sermons to preach, and he was raking up the leaves in the parking lot of the church.
My heart did this little change thing and it started to open up. And I was like, oh, that's weird. I kind of liked the church. And all of a sudden as I was thinking these verses would kind pop into my head and it was like, I don't have to provide the other. You ever talk to yourself and you kind have to provide both sides of the conversation. That's a little awkward. And people think you're crazy if you tell 'em that's what's going on, right? Well, these bible verses provided the other side of the conversation and I felt like, here's God speaking to me. There was a sense of God's presence with these verses that were in my head, and I just was converted. The Bible talks about being converted or being born again. It's this thing where just your heart opens up to Jesus as the Messiah, as the Lord, and you yield your life and you decide like, I'm ready.
I want to follow Jesus. Now, some of you have already made that decision because your heart is open and others of you are for the first time hearing that that's how it works, and that's what happens. And you need to make that decision this morning. You just need to kind of listen to what God's laying on your heart. You see, God actually works in us in Ephesians, he talks about the eyes of our understanding in our heart being opened and what might be even happening now this morning is just kind of like your heart's opening up, like the shutter on a camera, taking in the spiritual light, and you're realizing that Jesus didn't just die 2000 years ago, but he's raised today in heaven advocating on your behalf so that you can be a friend of God. He absolutely loves you. He did all of that on the cross so that your guilt and your shame and the death that you were bound to could be removed so that you could have life.
And as a 13-year-old, my heart opened to that and I came alive spiritually, and I began to love the Bible and try to understand what does it mean to have a relationship with Jesus? I want you to just enjoy at the end here, the work, the work that God does with Thomas Thomas. He was a twin. We don't know who the other twin was, but he was called twin. He's one of Jesus's disciples, but he wasn't there that first Sunday. He heard about the resurrection, but he didn't see Jesus that first. He had to wait a whole week.
And so the other disciples who were with him said, we've seen the Lord. He says, if I don't see these marks in his hands and put my finger into the mark the nails and put my hand into his side, I'm not going to believe he was pretty confident. So a week later, the disciples were indoors again, and Thomas was with them. Even though the doors were locked, Jesus came and he stood amongst them and he said, peace be with you. But then he turns to Thomas and he tells Thomas, put your finger here and look at my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Don't be faithless but believe. Do you see what Jesus is doing? He's calling Thomas to believe. You see this work that Jesus did by being raised from the dead did not have its effect upon Thomas until Thomas responded.
In faith, Jesus is working here to bring Thomas to a place of belief. So if you'd say to me, Josh, what do I need to do this morning? What's this whole thing about? Here's what Jesus wants of you. He wants you to believe because look what he says. So Thomas responds, my Lord and my God, that's his statement of belief. And then Jesus responds back and says, because you've seen me, you've believed, but then he puts you in the Bible. Did you know you're in the Bible? Here you are. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. Jesus is not here for you to put your hands into the wounds in his hand. You can't touch that wound in his side, but you can respond in belief. You don't see him and yet believe. And what does he say to you? You're blessed.
You're blessed. In fact, the Bible's not just about you believing there, but he keeps going. And John who has written this account, he says, Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, and they're not in this book. But John says, I have written this so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life. What do you have by believing you may have life in His name? Remember that passage out of second Corinthians, that verse in second Corinthians says that Jesus came, if you're in him, you are a new creation. You are given life. So this morning as a church, as followers of Jesus, we're celebrating the resurrection because we're in him. He's given us new life. And here's the awesome thing. If you're not a follower of Jesus yet, if you haven't been baptized, you're invited into the party.
This is an open invitation. You don't have to clean up your act. You don't have to change the way you dress. You didn't have to change anything. You just have to believe, because John says here, by believing you have life in his name. In a minute we're going to pray, and as we're praying, I'm going to ask you, do you need to have a relationship with Jesus? And what I want you to do is if that's you, I just want you to put your hand up in the air. If you have never accepted Christ as your Savior, I want you to make a decision this morning. And maybe you're not ready yet, but I want to call you. I want to call upon you just in your own heart, in the privacy of your own mind and heart. I want to call upon you to consider whether or not you're ready to be a follower of Jesus. After we do that, we're going to take communion together. Communion is for those who have made that decision and have been baptized. We celebrate this meal together to celebrate what Jesus did on the cross on our behalf. But before we do that, let's just bow our heads together.
We've talked a lot about Jesus this morning, and we love you, Jesus. We're so grateful for you. We're so grateful for what you did on the cross. We're grateful for our resurrection. And there's some of you that have been listening this morning to this, and you were brave enough to come to church, and I want to congratulate you. And if you have never decided to follow Jesus, but you're ready, I just want you to put up your hand. All your eyes are closed. But if that's you want to follow Jesus and you've never accepted Christ as your savior, just put your hand up in the air,
Alright? Amen.
Lord, I thank you for those that want to take that step of faith. And I ask, Lord, that you would respond to those that have raised their hand. Lord, I pray that you would give them new life. They've longed, they've lived some life, some of the people that put up their hand and have lived some life, and they're bearing in their body the death part. And I pray that you would come and give new life, that you would just pour your life into their lives. That work of the Holy Spirit, just giving life. Lord, we love you. We love you. I.