Easter at Kingdom City Church

Easter is an invitation to pause and ask yourself: “Is all that I’m seeing all there really is and all that’s available to me? Or is there a greater reality that I’ve yet to see or take hold of?” 

When Jesus was raised from the dead, he reversed the curse of sin and opened up a world of new possibilities for the world and for us. Yet, so many of us wander and cope through our lives and settle for less than Jesus died and raised to give us. 

Through the power of the resurrection, we believe God wants to awaken (or reawaken) a God-consciousness in all of us who have been stuck with our heads down and souls busy. The question is will we pause long enough to lift up our eyes and see Him? 

• Click here to see Norman Rockwell's "Lift Up Thine Eyes" painting.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, my name is Steven. Thank you for joining us on Easter Sunday. It's so great to see so many new faces and old faces. I serve on the hospitality team. So hopefully that coffee was great and y'all got blood oranges and your water. But I will be reading today's scripture. Okay. We will be in 1 Corinthians 15. We'll be reading 1 through 8. Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preach to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved. If you hold firmly to the word I preach to you, otherwise you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to the apostles, and last of all, he appeared to me also as to one abnormally born. This is the word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

All right. Well, good morning. Let's see. Well, in the next hour and a half, what I'm wanting to do. I'm just kidding. Just kidding. Welcome to Kingdom City Church. You had no idea we went four hours. Just kidding. There's a famous artist named Norman Rockwell, and he painted a famous painting called Lift Up Thine Eyes in the late kind of 1950s, early 1960s. And it's this painting of a crowd of people walking past St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in New York. And what's something that you notice maybe about this picture? Everybody's heads are down, right? And you notice what's the sign. What is there a sign above them when what does it say? It says lift up. All right, it says, look up, lift up thine eyes. This is an amazing painting that kind of the first time I saw it, it really captivated me. And I don't know what Norman Rockwell was trying to accomplish. I don't know whether he was trying to capture something that he physically saw or whether he was utilizing some creative imagination. But I do think it powerfully portrays the spirit of our age and maybe even the reality of our own souls. In our cultural moment, the goal of secularism, the culture that we kind of live within, the moment that we live within, is to simply wipe God from our consciousness, to just keep us from looking up, to keep your eyes down and your life bent inward toward yourself, to eradicate the divine from consideration, despite, despite the innate human search for meaning and transcendence that lives within all of us. And maybe this is you. Maybe you look at this picture and you find yourself in it, head down, busy, anxious, hustling, striving, coping, just making it through your life. Well, today, Easter, is an invitation to lift up thine eyes, to look up, to pause and ask yourself is all that I'm seeing all that there really is and all that's available to me? Or maybe, perhaps, there's a greater reality that I've yet to see or take hold of. Right off the top, I want to tell you our goal for this day, and what we kind of believe is the goal of Easter on the Christian calendar is to simply awaken or we or reawaken a God consciousness through an encounter with the resurrected Jesus. We believe that Easter is meant as a revolving moment on the calendar to force your eyes to look up, that you may be awakened or reawakened, and that God may once again be on the forefront of your conscience. This is what the Apostle Paul is addressing in this text that Stephen just so beautifully read. He is saying, look, some of you are actually ignorant of God. And sometimes when we hear the word ignorant, there's a bunch of different kind of thoughts that may come to mind that maybe he's being insulting, but ignorant simply means you are ignoring God. He's saying you're ignorant of God. You're walking around as if he's not even part of your reality, part of the orientation of your existence. And he's telling them, he's challenging them that they need to lift up their eyes because something has happened. He says, something has happened. And if this thing actually happened, if it's true, then it changes everything. Even though Paul is technically writing to a church in this text, many of these people were operating in a chronic state of unbelief. That maybe they could write what they believed out on a piece of paper, but the way their lives were operating was in a chronic state of unbelief. Maybe they would call themselves Christians, maybe they would call themselves followers of the way, maybe they would call themselves followers of Jesus, maybe they would identify with some kind of faith background, but their lives were, were, were operating in a state of unbelief. Their eyes were down and they weren't lifting them up. And even coming up with various theological beliefs to water down the claims of Christ. This is one of the things that Paul hits on throughout this chapter is that they were actually creating theological beliefs to make the, to make Jesus a little bit more tame, to where it wasn't so radical to believe that there was actually a first century carpenter in the middle of a no-name town called Nazareth, who was actually the Son of God, who lived a perfect sinless life, who died a death that atoned for all the sins of humanity, who raised from the dead, and was now the way to be reconciled to God and to have eternal life. They said, you know what? That's a little tough to believe. So let's maybe water this down a little bit. Let's let's maybe try to tame these claims. Because when the gospel of Jesus is, and when it was preached in its entirety, there was a plethora of responses just like there is today. The religious Jews would scoff at the idea of a God who would die in the place of sinners in order to extend them love and grace. The philosophical Greeks would laugh at the idea of an actual bodily resurrection. In Acts 17, Paul is in Athens proclaiming Christ in the Areopagus, and they are all leaned in. They love to exchange ideas, and they were all leaned in listening to what Paul had to say until he mentioned one thing: the resurrection. He makes the claim about Jesus' resurrection, and the next verse says, and then they began to scoff at him. They made fun of him, they rejected him. But that text also goes on to say, but there were a few others that were curious and wanted to hear more. And then he said, And even some believed and followed. And I believe that that's going to be some of us in this room today. Because the claims of Jesus, specifically his death and resurrection, have this field-leveling ability to expose the degree of our belief or unbelief. To expose the degree of our belief for unbelief. When you're standing before the claim that Jesus is the Son of God, that he lived a perfect life, that he died a death that we deserved in our place, that he was actually buried, and that he actually raised from the dead, and he can actually make a way for you to have a relationship with God and experience eternal life. That is a field-leveling claim that will expose the reality of our belief or unbelief. Some of you in this room are resistant, some of you are curious, others of you are desperate. And yet all of you are one encounter with Jesus away from everything changing forever. Whether you are resistant, curious, or desperate, you're an encounter with Jesus away from everything changing forever. But I want to start here. Why is the resurrection of Jesus good news? Why should you believe this? Why does it matter? Well, Paul actually does this in this letter to the church in Corinth and specifically throughout this chapter. He he kind of goes on to say, as people are trying to tame down these claims to say, you know what, maybe there's actually not a resurrection. Jesus is just, he's a really, he's really good. And if you live your life for him, he gives you a really good life. And it doesn't really matter about the resurrection or about an afterlife. It really doesn't matter about any of those things. Just believe and follow Jesus because he's good and he makes you better at life. And Paul asks, kind of asks this question. He says, Have you actually considered the ramifications of doing this? Do you think that watering down the gospel watering the gospel down and trying to humanize it and make it more easily believable is actually helping things? And he actually goes on to tell us what the reality is if Jesus hasn't raised from the dead. He says, if Jesus isn't raised from the dead, he says, your ministry and message is useless. Your faith is powerless. You're still dead in your sins. You have no hope in death. You have no transcendent purpose in life. And ultimately you should be pitied more than anyone. If Jesus hasn't been raised from the dead. You have to remember who Paul is writing as someone who has endured all kinds of persecution for the sake of his ministry to Jesus. Paul was actually stoned and left for dead outside city walls and had to be dragged back in by some friends where he continued to preach. He was shipwrecked multiple times, trying to sail to different continents so that he could preach the gospel to people who had never heard it. He had been snake-bitten. He had been abused. He had been arrested. He had been, and he would eventually be martyred. And he's saying, if Jesus isn't raised from the dead, all of this is useless. All of this is meaningless. What we've been doing for the past six months is meaningless. What we're doing right now is meaningless. It's useless. What my life has revolved around for the past decade is useless, is meaningless if Jesus isn't raised from the dead. He says, you're wasting your time. Ultimately, anything done in the name of Jesus, any sacrifice made out of obedience to Jesus, any suffering endured for the sake of Jesus, it's all the waste if he is dead and in the grave. Second thing he says is your faith is powerless. Why? Because your faith is only as effective as it as it's in something that's true. Right? If Jesus didn't raise from the dead, then your faith is in a lie and ultimately in something that can't save you. It doesn't matter how much or how little faith you have if it's in something that isn't true. If it's in something that isn't trustworthy. It doesn't matter if you confidently plop down in a chair that's got a broken leg. Your trust means nothing if it can't support the weight. And there's many of you in here today that you have, you you have this faith in Jesus. And what how how much of a waste would it feel like your life was? If you've been obedient to Him, if you've sacrificed for Him, if you've literally oriented your life and made shifts on the calling and the direction of your life for the sake of Jesus, if you got to the end of your life and it was all a sham. That's useless faith. Useless, powerless faith. If the object isn't trustworthy, then your faith is futile. It's worthless, it's powerless. And if Jesus hasn't been raised from the dead, then he's not trustworthy. Third thing he says is you're still dead in your sins. He says, Man, if if there is a God, if there is a God and He is holy, then you need to be pure and perfect to have a relationship with Him. And without a perfect substitution, you are hopeless because you know and I know. If you look deep within yourself, you're the one who's inside your mind, you're the one who knows the desires of your heart. There's some rotten stuff in us. And there's some stuff that, like, it's stuff that we don't even want to want. We do things that we don't want to do. We desire things we don't want to desire. And then the flip side is true. The things that we want to do, who we want to be, we're not able to do, we're not able to be. How many of us have have not been great husbands and yet you long to be a great husband? Not been a great parent, and yet you long to be a great parent. Not been a great, a great mom or a great teammate, and you long to be a great mom. Like we know that we're broken. And Paul says it's because it's because sin is a problem. And he says, man, if there's if there's no one who has who can actually conquer our sin, if there's no one who's actually been a substitute, if there's no one who's actually looked death in the face, who's paid for sin, who's got up out of the grave so that we could have freedom and have life, then we're hopeless. We're still dead in our sins. The reality is, is you need a Christ. You need a rescuer, you need a savior to take your place and pay for your sin, to take the curse of sin and pay for it, that salvation and rescue may be possible. And if it's not Jesus, then it's no one. Because no one else has made this claim. And it's still up to you to do what you can't do, to save yourself and climb your way to God. And ultimately you're on a treadmill exhausting yourself but going nowhere. And it's hopeless. And you feel that. The reality is you're unredeemable if Jesus isn't raised. The fourth thing he says, you have no hope in death. You have no hope in the face of death. If Jesus is just a dead teacher, then he's no help while you're standing next to a graveside. A risen Savior is our only hope. If there isn't one, then death is the great enemy of our lives. If he is risen, then death is just the chapter of our lives. If he's not risen, then death is the great enemy of our lives. No matter how much you earn, how much you accomplish, it's always there breathing down your neck. Irvin Yalom once said, despite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety. It's always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind. And the evidence of death, Dineshda Souza, says this. Is death the end or is there something more? This is the ultimate question. It's been the defining issue for entire cultures, from ancient Egyptians to the present. In truth, there is no more important question that any of us will face. It's the issue that makes every other issue trivial. If you have doubts about its significant its significance, simply go to a hospital or a funeral or talk to a parent who has recently lost a child. You will discover very quickly the apparent normalcy of everyday life is a sham. Death is the great wrecking ball that destroys everything. And Paul says, if Jesus isn't raised from the dead, then we are powerless before death. Fifth, he says, He says, You have no transcendent purpose in life. Like, if there's no God who made you, loves you, and is committed to your good, so much so that he stepped into the story to rescue you despite your brokenness, imperfection, and neediness, then what is life? Why, why are you here? Why are you alive? Why are you breathing? And why does it matter? Where is the world going and what is our role in it? What's true? What's significant? The resurrection of Jesus is proof that God sees you, God loves you, God is committed to your good, and God is ultimately redeeming and healing all things. If he hasn't, then none of this ultimately matters. That's why Paul goes on to quote an Epicurean philosopher. He says, If Jesus hasn't raised, we might as well eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. He's saying none of this matters. Don't lift your eyes, there's nothing there. Keep your head down and cope through life if Jesus hasn't raised from the dead. Sam Harris once said that the gospel of atheism, the good news of atheism, is that nothing happens after death. There's nothing to worry about. There's nothing to fear. When after you die, you're a return to the nothingness you were before you were born. He says, Death, therefore, is not the problem. Life is. Because he realizes that if there is no God, and if after this there is just nothingness, then this span that we have on this rotating ball in the middle of space means absolutely nothing. And so life is the great problem of the atheist. And then the last thing he says is that ultimately we should be pitied. That if you actually are staking your life on this, then you should be pitied if Jesus hasn't raised from the dead. Gary Brashears once said, Apart from the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is no Savior, no salvation, no forgiveness of sin, and no hope of resurrected eternal life. Apart from the resurrected, Jesus is reduced to yet another good but dead man and therefore is of no considerable help to us in this life or at its end. Plainly stated, without the resurrection of Jesus, the few billion people today who worship Jesus or God as God are gullible. Their hope for a resurrection life after this life is the hope of silly fools who trust in a dead man to give them life. Subsequently, the doctrine of Jesus' resurrection is without question profoundly significant and worthy of the most careful consideration and examination. And the question we have for you today is have you looked up to actually carefully consider? And this is this is to both the person in here who would claim to be a believer as well as the person who would claim not to be a believer. Have you actually looked up? Have you actually lifted thine eyes to consider the reality or the possibilities of what a resurrectionless story means as well as what the resurrection means? If true. That if Christ hasn't raised from the dead, it's it's not just that the ministry and message of the church is useless. It's that anything you strive for, anything you leverage your life for, anything you dedicate and devote your life to, it's meaningless. Your striving is meaningless. It means that you you have there is no faith for you. There's nothing that you can cling to, that you are, you are enslaved to the reality of your circumstances. If your circumstances are good, maybe there's a little bit of levity in life. If your circumstances are bad, you're hopeless. And you feel the weight of that. Your life goes up and down based on the reality of your circumstances. You have no buoyancy when it comes to your life. You are still dead in your sins. If this is the reality, you have no hope in death, you have no transcendent purpose or direction in your life. And you ultimately should be pitied and you should pity your life if Jesus hasn't raised from the dead. And I think Paul's whole goal is to force them to feel the weight and the gravity of that. Because what happens to us in our cultural moment and what the temptation of our lives is, is that we become like these people whose heads are down on the ground and we are simply distracted through our lives. And we have no idea that we're actually living a resurrectionless reality. We're living our lives disoriented. We're living our lives with no goal, with no purpose, with no with no hope, with no means, with no power, but because we're so distracted, we don't have to feel the weight of it all. And there's so many people that when life stands still for just a moment, when they get a diagnosis, when they stand at the foot of a grave, or when they look in the mirror and realize that 50 years have passed by. Something's happened. And what is this news? It's this that God has entered the world, the human, the cosmic human story, as well as your personal story in Jesus Christ to achieve a salvation that you could not, we could not achieve for ourselves. This is the good news. Paul, Paul, Paul says it, he starts out with in the very in the very beginning of 1 Corinthians 15 because there's so much confusion around the gospel. And he's saying, No, no, I want to make clear for you what the gospel is. I want to make clear for you what the good news is. I want to make clear for you what this royal pronouncement is, is that Christ has died for our sins. Christ was buried, Christ was raised on the third day, and Christ has appeared to eyewitnesses. This isn't some hidden secret. Christ has appeared to eyewitnesses. There's so much historical documentation on the reality of Jesus, his life, his death, and his resurrection, that many of the historical books and documents that we look at as trustworthy pale in comparison. And Paul wants them to know is that you don't have to try to create some simplified, humanized, watered down version so that it's more easily believable because the good news of the actual story is that good. That Christ has died for our sins. That, yeah, you had some stuff in your heart, in your story that has separated you from God. It brings you a lot of shame and it's it and it adds a chasm between you and God. And he says, Jesus took everything that separates you from him, put it into his body, and died for it, paid for it, sacrificed for it, so that you wouldn't have to pay for it or earn or strive anymore. He says, Christ was buried. Why is this important? He's wanting to say two things. One, it's important that you know that Jesus actually did die. He wasn't just crucified and then somehow survived, which is a ridiculous thought. But he actually died so much so that he had to be buried, because that's what you do with dead bodies. But he also wants it to be clear that the reason Jesus is buried is because it's beautiful imagery that what Jesus took into the grave with him stayed there. And so for you, if you put your faith and trust in Jesus, that means everything that you are responsible for the sin, the shame, the pain, the brokenness, all the things that you do regret, all the reality of the pain that's within you and that's throughout your life. That if you put that on Jesus, he gladly takes that, dies for it, takes it into the grave, and then guess what? He don't bring it back out. He leaves it there. And it's important that you know that. Why? Because the temptation of our lives is that we try to we try to pick up what Jesus has tried to leave behind. Some of you say you believe and you're still trying to pay them back. And he's saying, leave it there. Leave it there.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

And then he says, Christ was raised on the third day. Because what matters is that he left it there.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

That he got up and he walked out. And he says, Christ appeared to eyewitnesses. People have seen him and they've lived to tell the story. That's why we tell it, is because people have told it. One of the greatest evidences of the resurrection for me when it comes to the way I think about this, because I've had to have my own journey of not needing, I have no desire to believe in, to have any kind of naivete in my life or believe in something that's simple just because it makes life a little more bearable. I have no interest in that. And so I had to do my own battle. And the thing that convinced me more than anything else was the reality that everyone who followed Jesus was absolutely hopeless. On Friday, they watched him die, a graphic, gruesome death that can't even be captured in stories or in films. They saw him, the one that all their hope was in, the one that they had devoted all of their lives to, the one that their future rested on. Everything was dependent on him. And they watched him die. They watched him be buried. And then it says that they hide because they're afraid that the same thing would happen to them that happened to him. They deny him. They go in hiding away from anyone that could find them. And then something happens. Something happens that makes these fearful men and women who had given up on everything, who are in the middle of hopelessness, who were going back to old jobs and old careers, something happened that all of a sudden made them willing to stand in front of the very faces of the people who hurled threats at them, at the very ones who had power to destroy their bodies, look them dead in the face, and testify to the reality of the resurrection. Something happened. And what the scriptures say is that they saw him, that he appeared to them, that they've seen him and they've written to tell the tale, to say, trust me, I wouldn't live my life for a lie. A majority of these would stare death in the face and die some of the most gruesome deaths. And I don't care how committed you are to some kind of agenda, when you are standing above a pit of boiling acid, or getting ready to be crucified upside down, I think at some point you go, hey guys, guess what?

SPEAKER_02 25:53

Actually, we were joking. Unless it's true. Unless it's true.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

And in the middle of this story, in the middle of this wait, in the middle of this pain, in the middle of this hopelessness, Paul says something has happened. Any Tolkien fans in the in the room? Any Lord of Rings, Lord of the Rings people? I'll be honest with you. I never read a single thing. Never read a single thing. I quote them often, though. I'll just be honest with you. Sky Jatani was once talking about a literary device that J.R. Tolkien essentially invented, and it was something called the U catastrophe. And he says, a catastrophe is an unexpected evil. But Tolkien added the Greek prefix you, meaning good, to express the unexpecting appearing of goodness. He defined it as the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings you to tears. It has this effect on us because it is a sudden relief, as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. Repeatedly in his stories, the U catastrophe occurs just as all hope appears lost. It is the moment the eagles sweep in for the rescue. The riders of Rohan arrive at the battle, or Gandalf the White appears with the breaking of the day. It's that moment where God surprises you with his goodness. It's that moment where you've heard nothing but bad news. But Christ has indeed been risen from the dead. The Eukatastrophe. In one moment, everything changes. Where there was darkness and despair, there is now light and hope because Jesus is alive. It reverses the curse and transforms the story. Our message and ministry is not in vain. Our faith is not powerless. Jesus has reversed the curse of sin. Jesus has conquered over death, and in him you have unshakable purpose and meaning. And living for him isn't worthy of pity, it's worthy of honor. He reverses the curse. In the resurrection of Jesus, God surprises us with his goodness, bringing relief, hope, joy, and life where there was pain, despair, tears, and death. Peter was in the lake fishing until he encountered the risen Jesus. Thomas was in the room debating until he encountered the living Jesus. Paul was hurling threats and persecuting the church until he encountered the living Jesus. And so my question for you, my friend, is this have you had your personal eukatastrophe moment? Have you had the moment where all hope seemed lost and God surprised you with his goodness looking dead in the face of the risen Jesus?

SPEAKER_02 28:41

Have you had your moment?

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Tim Keller says that the essence of Christianity is personal pronouns. He says, if you are here this morning saying the Son of God was born, he died, he raised, he ascended, and he's coming again. That doesn't make you a Christian. It means you memorized a creed. But if you say the Son of God was born for me, he died for me, he was raised from me, he ascended to the right hand of the Father for me, and he's going to come again for me. That's the essence of Christianity. In John chapter 20, and this is where we're going to start to close. In John chapter 20, there's this account. Says in John chapter 20 that Mary stood weeping outside the tomb because she she believed that someone had stolen the body of Jesus. Not even his closest followers believed or were convinced when they saw an empty tomb that it was because Jesus was alive, because they had no framework for this. And so she stood outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. And they asked her, Woman, why are you crying? And Mary said, They have taken my Lord away, and I don't know where they've put him. And at this she turned around and she saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. And he asked her, Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for? Thinking he was the gardener, she said, Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him. And then Jesus said to her, Mary. And she turned toward him and cried out, Reboni, which means teacher. Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord. And what I want you to know, friend, is that he's calling you by name today. He's calling you by name today. I don't know what you're standing over, what you're standing outside, and what you're weeping over today. I don't know what hopelessness you feel today. But he's calling you by name. And the question is, will you lift up thine eyes? Will you lift up thine eyes to see him, the resurrected Jesus, who came for you, who died for you, who raised for you, who is now seated at the right hand of the Father, and who will one day come back for you. He wants to dry your tears and make all things new. In Romans chapter 10, Paul simply says this that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And I think there's some of you here today that you hear him calling your name, you sense him calling your name. Maybe you sense it for a long time and you've been resistant. And what Paul simply encourages us to do is to lift up our eyes to look at him, to finally see him for who he is and what he's done, and to then apply it to our own hearts and say, You did that for me. And to say, Jesus, you're not just some teacher, but you're my Lord. And I believe you are who you say you are. You've done what you promised to do, and you will do what you promise to do. Just weeks before his death, Tim Keller, while dying of pancreatic cancer, said this in an interview. He said, if Jesus Christ really did raise from the dead, if he really got up, walked out, was seen by hundreds of people, talked with them, if he was raised from the dead, then you know what? Everything will be alright. Whatever you're worried about right now, whatever you're afraid of, everything is actually going to be okay. Because you have to remember, we're not just talking about resurrected people. What Jesus promises, and what makes Christianity unique, is we're talking about a resurrected world. There are plenty of religions that talk about a future afterlife, a spiritual, non-material world. You get a consolation for the world we've lost. But Christianity promises that not only are your bodies going to be resurrected, but the world is going to be a material world that is cleansed from all evil and suffering and sin. If Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, the whole world is going to be, and everything is going to be okay. Everything. So my question for you, my friend, is how about you? Have you lifted up your eyes? Have you seen him? Do you hear him calling by name? And what will your response be? Let's pray.