Hey, welcome to One and All.

Thank you for being here.

This is our Easter sermon, and if you've been wanting to take notes or you do take notes, I want to encourage you to download our One and All app.

From there, we have a sermon notes tab designed specifically for you to follow along the sermon and to get all the information in.

Let's jump into the sermon.

Well, happy Easter, everybody.

I am in John 20 and 1 Peter 1.3.

John 20, 1 Peter 1.3, we'll get to both of those momentarily.

Really want to encourage you, though, to turn there so you can follow along in the text.

Every time we come to Easter, the one word that comes to my mind is hope.

And believe it or not, a movie that comes to my mind is a classic called Shawshank Redemption.

And it's because there's a scene in the movie, and if you've seen the movie, you've got Andy and Red.

Andy played by Tim Robbins, and Red is played by Morgan Freeman, two great career actors.

And of course, they're in this prison.

They're trapped in this secluded concrete prison.

Everything has been stripped away from them.

They have no rights.

And anytime they want to enjoy something, that's taken away from them as well.

And suddenly you find Red and Andy out on the yard, and they're talking about the deeper things of life.

And suddenly Andy Dufresne, who's the more educated one, in the movie at least, He wants to talk about music, and he says, you know, Red, that's the beauty of music.

They can't get that from you.

He says, haven't you ever felt that way about music, down deep inside?

And Red says, quite just innocently, he says, you know, I played a mean harmonica when I was a younger man, but it didn't make much sense in here.

Andy responds by saying, here's where it makes the most sense.

You need it.

You need to play the harmonica so you don't forget.

And Red says, forget what?

And Andy says, forget that there are places in this world that aren't made of stone, that there's something inside that they can't get to, that they can't touch, that's yours.

Red says, what are you talking about?

Andy says, hope.

Hope.

Martin Luther King said, we must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

But the problem is we have lost hope, at least in much of the West.

Robert Putnam, Harvard University, a political scientist said, who's not a Christian now, so he has no axe to grind.

He says, I've surveyed the American landscape.

Suicide is up.

Depression and anxiety are up.

People in the West are not having children anymore.

The birth rate is less than the replacement rate.

One word defines us in the West, especially America, and it's this word hopelessness.

Things are bad and we don't see it ever getting any better.

And as someone who's, you know, I was born in 1964, but I'm sure there are people who will hear this, go all the way back to the 50s and 40s, maybe even late 30s.

And the reality is for those of us who've lived most of the last century, or at least a significant part of the end of it, realize that for 1500 years, man, where did hope go?

Because hope used to be a definitive word in American and in the Western culture.

And in order to answer that question, we have to talk about where it originally came from.

It's not always been.

So if you go back to ancient Chinese culture, Babylonians, Hindus, Greeks, the Romans, in ancient times, they saw history as cyclical.

It just went round and round.

But at the same time, they believed that...

as history and knowledge increased, human life would get better.

So the Greeks especially believed in human knowledge, and that as human knowledge grows, our lives would get better.

And as a result, Western culture began to develop a linear view where history and people and life would just keep getting better and better and better, stage by stage, generation after generation.

And then in the middle of the 15th century, the dominant view of the Western world believed that history is not cyclical.

It's actually going somewhere, that there is a God who's overseeing everything, and this God would someday bring history to an end, where evil would be put down, defeated, and everything would be made right.

And history shows us that they got this idea around 1500, the European mind, that is.

They got that because of the influence of the Jesus movement all the way back in the first century.

So the Western world had been impacted.

It had changed its way of thinking because of the impact and influence and transformational power of the Christian message.

Then around 1750 to 1900, the Enlightenment came in.

The intelligentsia moved away from belief in God, belief in Christ as the centerpiece of history.

But they didn't let go of the idea that history was improving and that life was destined to get better with the advancement of human knowledge.

So the secular idea of progress became even more powerful at that point because of two people.

And I know this sounds a bit like a history lesson, but we can't rediscover hope if we don't know the source and origin of hope.

So two people came into proximity, but also they became prominent in their thought and ideas.

The first was Hegel, who was a German philosopher.

And he says the whole spirit of the world is unifying.

That as we increase in knowledge and science and technology...

that would enable us to bridge the gap that exists between humanity.

And that technology would one day, believe it or not, he said, enable us to travel.

We will no longer be restricted.

And because of that travel, we will meet one another.

And when we meet one another, we will realize there's no use in wars, that wars ultimately will cease.

At the same time, Hegel come upon the scene, so did Darwin.

And Darwin, of course, the natural cycle in his mind is to exclude the weak.

So if you leave the weak behind, the strong will become more prominent.

So he says, naturally, whether you intend to do it or not, history will discard the weak in favor of the strong and stronger organisms.

And as a result, the world will get better.

So from 1750 to 1900 was the heyday of the whole idea that the future is going to get better than the past.

History and the human race at least is going to make progress.

Well, all of that worked up until the early part of the 20th century.

Then we had a very bad 50 years.

World War I, a pandemic.

Did you realize we had a pandemic in 1918?

The flu.

Depression in 1929.

We had World War II, not humanity's finest hour.

And during that time, the early part of the last century, the whole idea that history is getting better, that we should have a hope for the future, went right out the window.

Now, most of you, unless you're in your 90s, you won't remember anything about that time.

In fact, since 1950, other than what happened just recently in 2020, since 1950, we've not really had, by and large, a depression or a pandemic or world wars.

We've had conflict, but not world wars.

So as a result, in the latter part of the last century, there became a revival once again, that life is going to get better.

One generation will have it better than the previous generation.

And then out of Silicon Valley came this idea that technology was going to be able to solve everything.

As knowledge, science, technology increases, life will get better and better, and humanity will solve all of its problems.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to utopia.

First of all, pandemics now happen.

Because of globalization, because of an advancement in technology, we're no longer limited.

We can travel, which means when a virus begins, it can travel all around to humanity, where before it could be somewhat contained because of our restrictions.

So globalization brought a pandemic, and quite frankly, I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but it will continue to bring more pandemics, and next time it may not just be 1%, it might be 10%.

The second thing is, if you lived any amount of time in the last 10 or 15 years and noticed what's going on globally, you know that there are rogue states and terrorist organizations that would very much love to detonate nuclear bombs or dirty bombs and bring down their enemies or at least bring down the entire banking systems through some type of hacking.

And three, we've now begun to see where technology is concerned that perhaps we've created a monster.

Technology can lead to a surveillance state.

It can lead to fake news.

It can undermine democracy because people don't really know what to believe anymore.

In fact, even in the movies and the arts and the past science fiction was based on the premise that things would get better and better, a kind of utopia.

But presently, I noticed some of the things that the next generation is watching, and it's more of a dystopian future than a utopian.

Go back to what Robert Putnam said at Harvard University.

Suicide is up.

Depression and anxiety are up.

The birth rate is down.

No optimism or hope for the future.

Now, here's the question quickly.

We've got to do this.

Number one, why?

and number two, why again?

What's going on?

And I believe there are two reasons.

Number one, it's the problem of human nature, and two, the problem of ultimate oblivion.

What is the problem with human nature?

Well, the secular idea of human progress was based on the assumption that as knowledge increases, life will get better.

It assumed, though, that people would use the knowledge properly.

It assumed in the goodness of mankind.

So when you look at pandemics, nuclear war, volatility of the banking systems, These things did not come about because of our lack of knowledge, but because of an increase of knowledge.

Because if increase in knowledge was wedded or inextricably tied to righteousness, where people would share their power and their wealth, where they would love their neighbors as themselves, where they never thought about exalting one race over another, then yes, increased knowledge would ultimately lead to historical progress.

But there's only one problem.

Man is basically good, but it's behavior that lets him down, right?

Man is basically good, it's only his behavior that lets him down.

Think about things like Auschwitz.

In Auschwitz, the Nazis were incredibly advanced in technology.

They used the latest and the greatest technology possible at the time to perform with great efficiency, and they were far advanced in other cultures, to commit experiments on human beings.

They were supremely organized to destroy hundreds and hundreds of thousands of lives every week.

And the reason the world had great difficulty in believing the news of the atrocities coming out of Germany and the West...

was they asked the question, wait a minute, how could such an advanced society, advanced in science and technology, as well as music and art, advanced in knowledge, be capable of such horrific things?

Because they thought as humanity progresses, that obviously it's going to get better and better.

But in this case, it's getting worse.

The whole idea of human progress is based upon the idea that humans are going to use their knowledge for good.

They are not.

Secular society says our real problems come from the outside.

Jesus says our real problems come from the inside, and we need a transformation.

Now, why is there a crisis of hope?

The problem of human nature, but also the problem of ultimate oblivion.

The secular world today says something that no other culture has ever said.

They say there is no God, there's nothing transcendent, there is no supernatural, there is no afterlife, and we're all here by pure accident.

And someday the sun is going to die, and everything will go away.

We are a temporary blip in the history of the universe.

So no matter what you accomplish or don't accomplish, everything's going to be forgotten.

Nothing's going to be remembered.

You can convince yourself of tiny little meanings and tiny little purposes, but ultimately nothing really matters.

Oblivion.

Most of you won't remember, but there was a movie in the 70s called Annie Hall.

And in the movie, there was a little boy by the name of Alvy who was nine years old and very smart.

And once he discovers the universal breakdown and all that human life will be destroyed in the death of the sun, he decides there's no real reason he should do his homework.

And in the movie, you're supposed to laugh, but it's hard.

Brian Green, who's a secular philosopher, says, if the immediate demise of humanity would render life meaningless, then the same would be true even if the end is far off.

Human beings try to take comfort in symbolic transcendence, the idea that what What we do will live on in our work or in our lives of our children.

But the reality is, in the end, whether you live a life of goodness or a life of cruelty will make no final difference at all.

And then C.S.

Lewis, coming in from a Christian perspective, wrote an essay called Living in an Atomic Age, because he lived a time when the atomic age was beginning to prosper.

He said if nature is all that exists, that is no life and no God, then all of human nature will eventually die in the death of the sun.

Humanity will turn out to be an accidental flicker.

and there will be no one around to remember it.

No doubt atomic bombs will or may cut short its duration, shorter than it might have been, but if the whole thing, even if it lasted for billions of years, will have to be so infinitesimally short in relation to the ocean of dead time that proceed and follow it.

Then he says, does it really matter if it ends a little bit early?

See, both are saying the same thing, one from a secular humanist point of view, the other from a Christian point of view.

If ultimate oblivion is where we're headed, it does render us hopeless.

Nothing you do, good or bad, will really make any difference at all.

Now, if human nature and oblivion is the only reality, then there is no reason to have hope and we just need to be honest.

And this is what the West is teaching our children.

And that's why there is an epidemic of hopelessness.

So here's what I ask you.

We've come together on Easter.

Where does our hope come from?

Why should we be hopeful?

Why should we ever expect anything better?

And the answer is you shouldn't unless Easter is true.

Unless this explosive event in history actually happened.

You see, if Easter is like the Easter bunny, a figment of our imagination, then nothing ever changes and there is no hope.

You can tell yourself there's hope, but there's no hope.

But if Easter happened, if the resurrection of Jesus Christ happened, Happen in real time and real space.

Then everything changes.

Nothing can remain the same, including you.

And if you know the story of Easter and Good Friday, you know that it doesn't begin with Jesus.

It begins with God.

I always like to recall the story of Apollo 13.

In the 1960s, on a Christmas night, Christmas Eve, the Apollo astronauts had gone through the dark side of the moon.

They had fired their rockets to be on their homeward journey.

They got a glimpse.

Of the universe that no human eye had ever seen before, they fired their rockets, earth rises over the horizon of the moon, draped in this beauteous mixture of blue and white, garlanded by the glistening light of the sun.

At that point as they reported back to headquarters, no lyricist gave them the words, no historian, no philosopher, no musician.

They simply responded by looking at what they saw with four words, in the beginning, God.

The only plausible explanation for this universe is God.

And we're told in Scripture, For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

And regarding the Son, we're told this, For God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, made His light shine in our hearts to give to us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God displayed in the face of Christ Jesus our Lord.

God has revealed himself, his will, his purpose, his redemptive plan for the world in the face of Jesus Christ.

And it's in that face as he hangs on the cross that we learn something about God that is essential to this whole thing of hope and eternal life.

We learn as Jesus is on the cross that yes, God is love that he would send his only son, but he's also a holy God, a righteous God, which requires him to separate himself from all sin.

And we've asked the question time and time again, how can God remain holy and separate himself from sin while at the same time remain a loving God and bring sinners close?

And the answer is Jesus, God who created and sustains all things, sent his son Jesus to die on the cross so that the requirements of the holiness of God have been met and that sin has been punished, but also the requirements of God's love have been met in that instead of punishing us.

He gave the life of his own son to be the lamb who takes away the sins of the world.

And then to make sure, this is important, to make sure you and I don't miss the message.

To ensure that this isn't just someone who's claiming authority and claiming to do something that is life transformative.

God causes his son to rise from the dead and at that point everything changes.

Do you know the story?

I want to make sure that if maybe this is your first time hearing the story, that at least you get a chance to hear it in John 20.

We're told that on the first day of the week, this is verse one, very early in the morning.

So the Greek actually says, as they saw the son.

The women, and the reason I mention the Greek is the Bible was originally written in Greek and Aramaic.

So you'll hear me make those references.

The women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.

they found the stone rolled away.

In the original text, it's not simply that the stone was rolled back up into the trench.

It's that someone had taken the stone and literally thrown it to the side, thrown it away.

Which makes sense when we read verse 3, they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

While they were wondering about this, of course they would be wondering.

They would be wondering, where is the body?

And second, who on earth would be strong enough to take this huge stone that would have weighed thousands on thousands of pounds and just took it and flinged it into the forest like a frisbee?

No one says, none of the women say, oh my goodness, it's a resurrection because they're not expecting a resurrection.

And they say to themselves, let's go find Jesus.

And they're just staring at an empty tomb and they're loaded down with all these spices.

And Mary probably says to Martha, you know, is this the right tomb?

Let me see that map.

And so they're trying to find Jesus.

Suddenly two men in clothes that gleam like lightning stood beside them.

In their fright, the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, why do you look for the living among the dead?

And if you were married, you're probably thinking because we thought he was dead.

And the angel says, he's not here, he is risen.

Let me spell it out for you ladies, Jesus has risen.

That's why the stone is laying over there like someone picked it up and threw it to the side.

That's why there's no body in this cave, he's not here.

But notice what happens.

They go and tell the disciples, but the disciples, we're told, did not believe the women because their words seemed like nonsense.

Again, they weren't thinking of a resurrection.

That's just something that you don't do.

Peter, we're told in verse 12, got up and ran to the tomb.

Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away wondering to himself what had happened.

Again, the original word is blepo, which means he's processing what on earth happened.

Once again, the reason Peter's having such a hard time is people don't typically just walk out of the grave.

When you're dead, you're dead.

It's not like Princess Bride where you're mostly dead, you're actually dead.

And if you're dead, there's no return.

But Jesus appears to them on numerous occasions because he knows they're going to have a hard time believing this.

And then the scriptures tell us, the trusted historical document of Matthew and Luke tell us that he appeared to over 500 people on separate occasions.

And so as we trace the story of the gospel into the book of Acts then, we learn that the disciples began to realize that their greatest enemy now has been defeated.

And it turned them from wimps into spiritual muscle men.

They were ready to take on the world and to die for this truth.

Paul says, where, oh, death is your victory?

Where, oh, death is your sting?

This is the Bible's version of hit me with your best shot.

Come on, death, do your worst.

The lower you lay me, the higher he'll raise me.

Before this event, by the way, hope was defined as something that might happen, maybe, but probably not.

But after this event, the word hope totally changed.

It became to mean a profound certainty.

And it's a profound certainty because it is based on something that actually happened in history.

Now, please hear me on this.

This Easter, no matter what's happening in your life, no matter what setback that you've had, Jesus offers something incredible to you, a profound certainty, not just about something that might happen, something that will happen in the future, and not only something that will happen in the future, but something that can happen in you and to you right now.

Let me describe quickly what he offers you.

Hope, but number one, he offers you a reasonable hope.

A reasonable hope because it's rooted in history, not mythology.

There's no explanation that has ever been offered in 2,000 years of sneering skepticism that can satisfactorily account for how the tomb came to be empty, how the disciples came to see Jesus, and how their lives and worldviews were transformed, how the church kick-started this great movement that would take over the entire Greco-Roman world, why the cross is still the most recognized symbol, in all time, in all humanity, and why the Bible is the most read, most purchased, and most life transformational book in human history.

By the way, I found out this week, somebody told me that then I kind of did a little homework.

There's a new theory about Jesus'resurrection. Remember, these theories have to come about because what we know to be a proven fact historically is that the tomb is empty.

So historian scholars have to come up with a reason why the tomb might have been empty.

And a new theory is that Jesus had a twin.

That one Jesus died, but the other real Jesus, or the twin Jesus, came back to life, or actually never died in the first place.

When I see these theories, it reminds me that if you have a pre-commitment to disbelieve something that is historical reality, no amount of evidence is going to change your mind.

And that's sad.

Because it makes all the difference in the world.

Because since we know that Jesus...

rose from the dead historically.

It means that God's plan in history will succeed and that he indeed is Lord over all.

And that when Jesus said in John 11, though a man might die, yet though a man dies, yet shall he live.

When Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2, 9, that no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.

And when John writes Jesus'words, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life, then that means because Jesus rose from the dead, we can take this, we can take him at his word.

That it's true.

Though a man die, yet shall he live again.

Christianity is not like other worldviews or religious systems.

Jesus does not say, consider these things.

Perhaps this is the way things may work out in the end.

Let me suggest that there might be life after death.

Let's have a symposium and talk about all matters of life, death, and the afterlife.

Jesus lets his walk.

Out of the tomb, do his talking.

He walks out of the tomb and says, death is dead.

So the hope that he offers you is reasonable because it's rooted in history.

Second, he offers a full hope.

Every other religion offers an alternative to ultimate oblivion.

Our secular Western world is the only culture in history that has said to everyone, when we die, there's nothing.

All other cultures, all other religions have said that there is indeed something, we just don't know what it is.

Hinduism, Buddhism, Eastern religions claim that we do live on, but we don't live on as persons, with personhood.

We're kind of like a drop of water back into the ocean of all souls, which means there's no love.

Islam says you do live on after death, but you live in this kind of ethereal paradise.

You live in a spirit kind of world, but there's no body.

It's only Jesus who says at the end of time, God is not simply going to take us up to heaven, but he's going to create a new heaven and a new earth and give us new bodies that are conducive to this new heaven and new earth where we will have feeling, love, perpetual wonder, joy, and community.

Let me ask you something just quickly.

What are your best moments?

What are the best moments in your life?

For the Christ follower and even for those who haven't followed Christ that have sensed the voice of God periodically in their lives, one of the greatest moments is when you sense the presence of God.

It is beautiful, it's astounding, and you wish you would never lose it.

Other great moments, best moments of our lives are when we're doing something with our friends, when we're in community and we're experiencing some beautiful scenery, or maybe it's a vacation, or maybe it's just Tom spent together talking, conversing, discussing life.

And then ultimately, also with our families, our grandchildren, our children.

Those are precious times.

Those are the best moments.

Jesus says that's just a foreshadowing of what you're going to have in ultimate community, in ultimate love, in ultimate friendship for all of eternity.

Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon called Heaven is a World of Love.

And he says the greatest happiness we can know is to be loved by another person.

He says, on earth, the greatest love relationships, though, are like a pipe so clogged that only a little water or love actually gets through.

But he says, in heaven, all those clogs are removed and the love we experience will be infinitely, inexpressibly greater than anything we've ever known.

Our earthly loves are darkened presently by the fear of losing the other person, which can sometimes make us so controlling that we drive the other person away.

He says, but in heaven, and he says, also, there are other things.

In the human experience that can reduce our ability to love, lack of transparency, lack of trust, selfishness, envy, all of those things, but he concludes his famous sermon by saying this, and I quote.

All the things that reduce love in this world to a trickle at the bottom of a riverbed are removed when we get to heaven, where love is an endless deluge and fountain of delight and bliss flowing in and out of us infinitely and eternally.

And that's why you've heard me say numerous times that the Christian hope is not a consolation for the life that you've lost.

It's not where you say, okay, you had a tough life.

Let me, door number two, your consolation.

No, the Christian hope is the restoration of everything that you've lost.

In reality, the life you never had, but you always wanted.

And Jesus tells us it's a material world, one that represents God's creative genius.

And it's a world of love and acceptance and community forever and ever.

Nobody offers you that.

Only the one that came back from the dead to tell us how it is.

Our hope is full of hope.

It's not a spiritual oblivion.

It's not an impersonal hope.

It's not about going to heaven without a new earth as our dwelling place.

We have a reasonable hope.

We have a full hope.

And third, we have a realistic hope.

Now follow me quickly here.

Hegel, the German philosopher, Darwin, Marx, they all believed that history was going up, up, and up, and everything was going to get better.

Man, that's not only unrealistic, that's empirically unverifiable.

It just doesn't work like that.

Unfortunately, sometimes that sneaks into the theology of the church.

But Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth, and when he came to earth to do the will of the Father, things got really tough for him.

Think about the week of passion.

It is a week.

If you were on Good Friday, if you went to a Good Friday service, you'll remember how he suffered and what he endured.

But the reality is his entire life was like that.

The Bible tells us the Son of Man did not even have a place to lay his head.

He was chased, pursued by those who constantly wanted to kill him.

It's important that you know that if you follow Jesus, it doesn't mean that you're never going to have any problems.

Does it mean that we never suffer?

Does it mean that we never mourn?

Of course not.

In fact, Paul writes to church at Thessalonica, again, a real historical place, and he says this to them, brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope.

So remember, we grieve just like everybody else, but we don't grieve like the rest of mankind because we have a hope based on absolute certainty.

He says, for we believe that Jesus died and rose again.

and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.

And this is the story you see throughout the Bible.

God always seems to take us through death before he can experience, and we can experience, rather, a resurrection.

The Bible says that eventually, yeah, God works everything together for good.

But eventually, God will land the plane and bring justice and judgment and healing and life.

in the midst of all this death and demise.

Yeah, God will bring everything together, but it does not mean that every generation will experience a better life.

However, because our greatest enemy has been defeated, we are able to live with a sense of overarching joy that things are going to change.

We've said in the past, and I love this line, we are Friday people living in a Saturday world waiting for Sunday to come.

I don't know if you know this, but there's a history behind this saying.

It actually came from a pastor preacher who was quite popular in the 70s and 80s by the name of Tony Campalo.

And we've used this before, but I don't think we ever really explained how this happened.

Tony Campalo was preaching on the East Coast.

He was preaching in an African American church.

And Tony writes in his book, The Great Story.

He writes that, you know, these African-American preachers, they just have a gift.

They can get the crowds going.

They are able to do things we white boys could never do.

I love it when he says that because he's right.

There's a natural gifting that comes across in these African-American churches.

There's a vibe.

You know, there's an excitement.

There's a passion.

And he says, he was preaching at this church.

He says, you know, it was me and this African-American preacher, and he said, I had to go first.

He said, I stood up and I knew he knew he was going to follow me, and I just had no idea how it was going to go.

So I knew I had to deliver the best.

And he says in his book, he says, you know what?

I'll have to admit, I was so good, I took notes on me.

So he said, I really delivered it.

And I sat down.

And when I sat down, I looked over to the preacher and I think, what do you think about that?

And he said, this old preacher looked at me and said, sit back, boy, watch how it's done.

And he said the pastor's message wasn't that deep, but he kept repeating this one phrase.

And the more he said it, the more fired up the audience got.

And it was that one phrase, it's Friday.

but Sunday's coming.

Now I wish I could do it in the voice because you can actually hear this audio if you Google it and search long enough.

I wish I could do it like that, but I can't.

But the words went something like, it was Friday and my Jesus is dead on the cross, but that's Friday.

And he would say, Sunday's coming and the crowd would just go after it.

He said, it was Friday.

Mary's crying her eyes out and the disciples are running in every direction like sheep without a shepherd.

He said, but that was Friday, Friday.

And everybody says, Friday, Sunday's coming.

It was Friday and people are looking at the world and saying, as things have been, they shall always be.

You can't change nothing about this world, he says.

You can't change nothing in this world.

But they didn't know it's only Friday.

Sunday's coming.

He goes on and on.

And the more he speaks, the more people get fired up.

And that's Easter.

That's Easter.

We are Friday people living in a Saturday world waiting for Sunday to come.

We have a reasonable hope.

We have a full hope.

We have a realistic hope, a hope that works because it's living.

Now listen.

Let me bring this together.

In 1 Peter 1, I told you to turn to verse 3.

This is an amazing commentary on the hope of the resurrection.

And we're told in verse 3 of 1 Peter 1, Praise be to the God and Father, our Lord Jesus Christ.

In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Now what is living hope?

Well, it's living because it's constantly breathing new life into you.

You may never have, as we've said in the past, an exhaustive understanding of this painful, evil world of suffering.

But what you do have...

is for those who place their faith in Christ, you have a living, breathing hope in you where the Spirit of God constantly re-energizes you with a message that is rooted in history.

When I was in Africa, my days in Africa, and I've told this story often, I met a lady by the name of Gloria.

And Gloria wasn't a Christian, but she continued to come to the church.

And little by little, sure enough, she said, this is the thing that I've been looking for.

This is the Savior that I've been searching for.

She gave her life to Christ and about six months later, she contracted cancer.

So just six months after receiving Christ, her world was torn apart.

Near the end of her life, I took a flight down to Bulawayo from the city of Harare in Zimbabwe just to sit with her in her final days.

And I remember on one occasion trying to comfort her and she finally put up her hand.

She said, Pastor Jeff, no offense, you don't need to comfort me.

She goes, I have seen Jesus in a way that I've never seen him before.

And quite frankly, pastor, you never will either until you walk in these shoes.

And she talked about how Jesus had been coming to her almost every night and giving her dreams and a word from God and just lifting up her spirit and breathing life into her even though this tent is decreasing, is in demise.

This is the story I've heard all of my life as I've sat with people who are near the end.

don't weep for me.

It's as if they know death is the beginning of the life for which we're all searching.

My father-in-law, I told you a few weeks ago, Charlie Delaney, when the COVID virus hit, sat us all down around the table and said, don't worry about me, I'm okay.

And I can see as he's getting older that he's getting a little bit more glimpse of heaven and the power and the glory of God, that things mean more to him right now.

He's a little bit more emotional because the reality of those things are becoming more and more true.

And I believe that when we get to the end, God gives us a glimpse of heaven that breathes new life into us, although this earthly tent is wasting away.

You know, this past week I mentioned that I spoke at APU.

For those of you who are listening around the world, that's a God-centered university, just not too far from where we are here in San Dimas, California.

And they called me the Tuesday night before and told me that a young man By the name of Ben Smithy, I believe that's how you pronounce his last name, had passed away and it had devastated the campus because this is the fifth death they've experienced in a short while.

So I decided I would try to encourage the student body and I did as best I could.

You never know how that goes over because you don't know how people are thinking.

But I got to tell you, it made my day when the next morning I received an email.

from Ben's mother, Laura, who had been watching the live broadcast of that chapel service at Azusa Pacific University.

She says, Dear Pastor Jeff, we can't thank you enough for the beautiful sermon you gave at APU, and I didn't even know they were watching, honoring our son Benjamin.

It meant the world to us.

My husband Brad and I were watching it live.

You spoke to our hearts.

We will be sharing it with our friends and family here in Florida.

We will watch it often when we are especially hurting and grieving.

We rest in the peace of knowing that Ben is in heaven and he's happy with Jesus.

His fellow student, Jolly Fisher, our next door neighbor, Tony, and last but not least, his grandmother, Gaga.

I'm assuming all of these have passed away and now they've joined one another.

He says, our pastor, Bernie Kuto, is coming back over for a visit this morning.

I'm sorry Ben never got to know you personally.

We truly thought Ben was in a good place with his recovery.

his sober coach had just spoken to him three days before he died.

He answered a text I sent him the day he died and went to classes all day long.

We will never be able to make sense of this.

Sometimes we are angry with God.

Sometimes we are angry with Ben.

And then she finishes like this.

But as long as we keep talking with God, we know he will walk us through this.

May God bless you and your church family.

I got that and I thought, man, I can't wait on this.

I need to respond.

And so I said, dear Laura.

Thank you for your kind email and for sharing a little about Ben's life.

Perhaps we can meet someday, although I know we'll meet someday in heaven.

I hope you take comfort in knowing Ben is now in a place where we all want to be.

He would not want to return.

Although we miss him, we are certain that all of his struggles have come to an end as he experiences the overarching joy that comes in the presence of the Lord.

In the presence of the Lord, our blessings evermore, we're told in Scripture.

Ben is now experiencing perpetual peace, perpetual joy, perpetual wonder.

I know you are hurting and I pray God give you a revelation of himself that will grant you the peace that passes all understanding.

As with my mother, I am sure that in time, Ben's death, although painful, will bring a smile when you know.

that he is with Jesus.

This is the hope, the certain hope, a hope with profound certainty that we have.

that one day all of us will be with Jesus.

And that place for which our heart has always longed becomes a reality.

But in the passage of 1 Peter, it's not only that, there's something else that is spoken to us that is meant to energize us and breathe new life.

And it comes in verse 4 when we're told, And into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade, this inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

Man, I love this.

I love this because the thing that Andy and Red did not know in Shawshank is that there actually is something that can take all of that away from you.

Beauty, love, your love for music.

No matter what it is, there is something that can take all of that away, and it's death, unless death has been defeated.

And the Bible says this inheritance is kept in heaven for you.

who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of salvation that is ready to be revealed in that last day.

In other words, we're told there's something inside you that no one can get to.

There is something not made of stone.

There is something that is not make-believe or a philosophy or a dream, but something that is connected to history.

That thing in you is shielded by God.

That's why you see an amazing peace in people that are near death who have given their lives over to Christ, because he injects them with power.

It is a new breathing spirit, something that energizes them in the midst of the most difficult circumstances.

And although now...

inside it appears like some kind of dream.

We know that this dream will become a reality when Jesus is revealed on the last day.

And he goes on in verse six to say, in all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer grief and all kinds of trials.

these have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

So there's no promise that our lives are always going to get better, but there is a promise that the true and faithful will remain and that God will be glorified in all things.

Now I want to finish with this, but I need to lean in here and let me pull this together.

The world has no hope, and it has no hope because it believes in the goodness of man and oblivion.

There's no way you can pass on hope to the next generation with that kind of idea.

Ideas always have consequences, and the ideas of this culture is hopelessness.

But the reality is there's something that happened in history that changed everything.

And when you get it, when you take it on board, it will transform you.

But you can't be transformed on the outside looking in.

And the other thing, you cannot believe that just because there's a resurrection that will come in the end, and because he breathes new life into you now, that you're never going to suffer anything.

Because according to scripture, believe it or not, this is a hard one for Christ's followers to swallow.

But believe it or not, this whole world is not about you.

It's about the glory of God.

And even in your sufferings, God is glorified.

Say how.

Well, I remember when I was a little boy, I had three brothers.

My mother, I was the favorite.

I've said that numerous times.

There were a few times when I was young that my mother, I would wake up like three o'clock in the morning and my mom was hugging me.

And it's because she had had a dream that something drastic had happened to me.

And so when you have a dream so real, you actually have tears in your eyes.

Well, she would run in the bedroom and grab me and hug me.

And I'd say, mom, what's wrong with you?

She goes, oh, honey, it's okay.

Don't worry.

I just had a really bad dream.

I'm the one that's supposed to have bad I had really bad dreams.

She would come in hugging.

And I used to laugh at that until I had children of my own.

And then I had a few bad dreams about Delaney and Sian.

And I found myself in Sian or Delaney's bedroom hugging them because the dream of tragedy was so real.

but you know what?

The reason we go and hug them is because the experience of losing something makes the experience of having something infinitely greater.

You know that?

One of the reasons you'll get down on your hands and knees and worship God in heaven is because you'll realize heaven is not just consolation.

It's the redemption and restoration of everything you've lost.

What does that mean?

Well, take the loss of a child.

How can I say to a mother who has lost a child, whether unborn or born, that when she gets to heaven, God will replace this child to an infinitely greater degree.

The only reason I can say that is because I know the child will be with his or her mother in heaven.

And the reason it's an infinitely greater degree is because she will never have to worry again about losing them.

While you're here, life is volatile, it's fragile.

In the world that is to come, we will have full relationships with God.

without any barriers and without the death cloud hanging over our heads.

That's why Sam Ganji in The Lord of the Rings says, does that mean that one day everything is going to become untrue?

Yes, it does.

You thought you had lost your child forever, when in reality, this wonderful inheritance is waiting on you.

This wonderful knowledge is the reason Peter says, though you have not seen him, you love him.

And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

no matter what life throws at us, folks.

We might be down, but we're never out.

We may lose a battle, but we never lose the war.

We may have to pick up our crosses and the world may try to bury us, but even so, we will march out of the grave.

It may be Friday, but Sunday's coming.

Father, I thank you and praise you for all your goodness.

And I pray as this message goes out in this valley and around the world that it would encourage and comfort those who are struggling.

Perhaps the message of Easter this year, especially this year, is that the resurrection is not some pipe dream, not some record of mythology, but it's something that is rooted in history.

And as a result, we can have a profound certainty.

that those who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be escorted into heaven, a place that is not of mere spirits, but a place that is filled with wonder and love and joy and a new heaven and a new earth with glorified bodies that will experience for all of eternity perpetual wonder.

In Christ's name, amen.

We hope you enjoyed today's sermon.

If you decide to excited that you want to follow Jesus or just want to know a little bit more about who Jesus is, I want to encourage you to go to oneandall.church.com and from there we want to walk with you along this journey.

And if you've been a part of our church or if you are new to our church, we have this podcast called The Daily and what it is is every day, Monday through Friday, we just have a small devotional and we have a time for you to reflect.

I want to encourage you, it's on all of our Spotify, Apple Music.

And also, it's part of our app as well.

It's just a great way to start your day hearing a great devotional, hearing some scripture, so that way you can enjoy your day.

Last thing, if you heard this sermon and you thought of somebody and thought, man, they would really enjoy this sermon or they need to hear these words, I want to encourage you to share this message.

It may be one person, it may be many people, but the more we get to share the gospel, the more we get to see people far from God come near.

and we'll end as we always do with one hope, one life in Christ.