We continue in our series Follow The Son from the Gospel of Mark. This week Pastor Andrew Pack preaches from Mark 12:18-27. This sermon draws attention to a big question. What happens when you die? As the answer to this question gets unpacked we learn that Jesus is alive, Jesus makes dead people alive, Jesus makes living people live, and Jesus will make living people who have died live again.
Transcript
Good morning, my name is Andrew Pack. I’m one of the pastors of Trinity Church, which is fun to say. If you’d please go with me to Mark’s gospel in chapter 12, to the words written by Mark, inspired by the Holy Spirit in verses 18 and following. If you have a Pew Bible in front of you, it’s on page 797. If you don’t own a Bible, A, we’d love you to take that one and keep it, but I’m also told that reportedly we have nicer ones, so you can have one of those. But if you don’t want to ask for one of those, we’ll give you one of these, but you should ask for one of those, because we’d love for you to have it. But there it is. This is God’s word to us from Mark chapter 12. And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection,
and they asked him a question saying, teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. There were seven brothers, the first took a wife, and when he died, left no offspring, and the second took her and died, leaving no offspring, and a third likewise. And the seventh left no offspring. Last of all, the woman also died. In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife. Jesus said to them, is this not the reason you are wrong? Because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised,
have you not read in the book of Moses in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him saying, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please join me in prayer. Jesus, we pray to you now, not because you are an idea or a concept or a shadow of what God could or the divine could be like, but because you are God in heaven and you are alive. Where two or more are gathered in your name, there are you also. We are the people who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. We don’t come together to talk about ideas, but to live in union with you and in communion with each other
by the power of the Holy Spirit. Lord, we have some big ideas to talk about as we talk about how you are the living God of the living and that we are the living. But Lord, this is only possible by your power. And we can only ask for your power because you’re alive. And we can only ask for your power because we’re alive. And so, heavenly Father, please glorify the name of Jesus and show us Jesus by the power of your spirit and by the power of your word today. And I just pray for us as a people that we would just have such great joy, that there’d be a joy that overflows from us as your people in Portland, that we would be light in the darkness because that’s who you’ve already made us to be. So Jesus, we pray these things for your glory
The Sadducees’ Challenge
and for our joy in your name, Jesus Christ, amen. So I grew up in Bellingham, Washington. A quick synopsis of what Bellingham is like. It’s just shy of the Canadian border. So it’s one part like overly liberal academic, we always say county, but y’all would say country or perhaps hick to describe that part of who we are. On the other side, we’re one part hippie because we’re the old place where people went from Berkeley and their kids were kind of the hippie vibe. And then on top of that, we’re sort of, in 2022, we’d say punk, but if we’re being technical, it was sort of like jam band, shoegaze, dream pop, post-grunge, but it’s just easier to say punk. But no one was really doing punk when I was in high school, but there it is. But anyways, I had a good friend in high school
who made this observation. They said one time, well, and we were talking about the greater things of life and the universe, and I wasn’t a Christian, and I was thinking these big thoughts and trying to figure life out, and I said, well, I just think whatever happens to people is whatever they think happens to them. So I think Christians go to heaven and I think Buddhists go to nirvana or reincarnate, and I think whatever, so on and so on and so forth. And it sounded really nice. And it sounded like this kind of harmonization of all these different world religions, except for that doesn’t actually make any sense. It is not cohesive in any way, shape, or form. It just sounds really nice when you’re listening to the dark side of the moon, sitting in a big bag chair and burning incense, right? It sounds deep, but it’s not.
In fact, what we’re gonna see today with Jesus is we’re actually gonna see a conflict of what we would call worldviews or narrative identities. There’s two different stories of reality that Jesus and these cats called the Sadducees are living in, and we kind of see them come to a head. And in this, we need to understand that the gospel of Jesus gives us a unique narrative identity. God made everything good, and human beings broke it. God came to save and to fix in the person of Jesus. He came to live the life we can’t and die the death we deserve to give us life, raising from the dead as the first fruits of the resurrection. And unlike sort of what I was taught from TV as a non-Christian kid, what heaven is like from like toilet paper commercials and Philadelphia cream cheese commercials about harps and clouds and things,
God has a much bigger plan than a disembodied sort of we’re all gonna play golf forever, which doesn’t actually sound like heaven, sounds like another place, where the people of God will rise from the dead and be in restored bodies with our creator forever and ever in a world that’s made the way God always intended it to be. But the amazing thing about the gospel is unlike our sort of utopian drive we have that if we could just make enough robots or AI or whatever to make the world a better, perfect place, we could just keep revising society till everything’s perfect and whole, we actually need to understand that actually, observationally, when we look outside just on our drive here to this building this morning, sort of social engineering and utopia is not really working out for Portland right at the moment. And in fact, when we try self-help,
it doesn’t really work out for us either. We actually need God to come from outside of us to redeem us and to save us, to forgive us for our sins and make us right. Now, this is the distinction between a gospel-centered narrative identity, a gospel-centered story of reality, a gospel-centered worldview in every other world religion. Every other system is about how we work our way to God or nirvana or some kind of French existential state of self-actualization. I muster it up from inside of myself, and the one question I have to ask about mustering that up from inside of ourselves, when we have a real, quiet, and honest moment with ourselves, how is that working out for us? I think in a moment of honesty, we actually realize we need some intercession, and that’s what Jesus came to do, to live, die, and to rise,
but also that he’s making this world new. Now, he has a different worldview than these cats we’re gonna see in a second called the Sadducees, and really, we’re going to try and tackle one of the great sort of philosophical world questions. What happens when I die? This is a question that everybody I know cares about. This is the question that’s driving transhumanism and cryogenics and singularity, all sci-fi stuff, or what used to be sci-fi stuff still feels a little sci-fi, but the nerd messiah, if you will,
Jesus Confronts False Worldviews
but Jesus gives us something else, so here’s our plan. Here’s how we’re gonna approach the text. We’re gonna unpack the text, and then we’re gonna look at our big idea, which, mind you, is a little redundant, but maybe you’ll remember it because it’s redundant. We’re gonna look at the big idea that Jesus is the living God of the living, and as we kind of turn the corner after we walk through the text, and we look at this big idea, we’re gonna see four things. We’re gonna see that Jesus is alive. We’re gonna see that Jesus makes dead people alive. We’re gonna see that Jesus makes living people live, and we’re going to see that Jesus makes living people who have died live, or alive, again, so here we are.
Mark 12, starting verse 18, and Sadducees, we’ll talk about them in a second, came to him who said that there is no resurrection. Here’s one of the amazing truths about the Bible that you can never miss. We don’t need gurus, though it is helpful if you want to exegete the text to study Greek and Hebrew, yawn, right? It is helpful. Greek is helpful. Systematics are helpful. Deep theological study is helpful, but the Bible gives us everything we need for life and godliness. You can be the most mature Christian on planet Earth if the only thing you have is the Bible. Now, I’m not, you know, my other job is seminary professor. I’m not decrying study. That would be foolish, right? But what we need to make sure we understand is there’s not varsity, junior varsity, and what you have is in the word of God,
and the word of God is in your hands, and this is even demonstrated here. He gives us everything we need to know about the Sadducees to understand this whole thing that’s about to happen with them and Jesus, namely that they don’t believe in the resurrection. Now, from Acts chapter 23, we also find out that the Sadducees don’t seem to believe in angels and demons. Now, outside of this, there’s this cat named Josephus who wrote in the first century, which is this whole interesting other thing, and as far as he’s concerned, they also didn’t believe in the afterlife. Now, Josephus is tricky because Josephus was a Pharisee, and Pharisees didn’t like Sadducees, and so you have to kind of take Josephus’ comments with a grain of salt a little bit given he did not like these guys, and he had the chance to write the history about them.
But that’s the framework. So these Sadducees are folks who have power in the temple. They’re part of this Zadokite priesthood thing. They’re part of the priesthood thing in Jerusalem, and they have kind of a lot of political and sort of religious power. Now, Jesus here, Jesus here does something unique. As we’ve worked our way through Mark’s gospel, what has Jesus done when he meets adversaries? Often, he does this sort of rhetorical jujitsu, and they ask him a question, and he throws it back. Jesus, and I think this is because he is nearing the cross, doesn’t ask these dudes any questions this time. He’s just gonna set them straight, but here we go. And Jesus came, and the Sadducees came to him, that’s Jesus, who stated there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question. So we have to understand what the Sadducees are, but before we even can make sense of this question,
we need to think about this word resurrection for a moment, and what’s happening here, and what we know as Christians. I alluded to the Philadelphia cream cheese phenomenon. You know what I mean, where when people think of heaven, they think of clouds, and harps, and everything’s nice, and I have what I want, and I get to ski forever, or golf forever, and usually when people describe heaven, it’s two things. One, it’s disembodied, and two, Jesus isn’t there.
That doesn’t sound like heaven to me, not just because I don’t wanna golf forever. Heaven is where Jesus is. That’s where I wanna be. I wanna be with Jesus. I wanna be with Jesus in this life. I wanna be with Jesus in the next life, and I wanna be with Jesus forever and ever because he has saved my soul and given me life and life in abundance. Now, the Old Testament, as Jesus is going to point to in a second, the Old Testament arguably points forward to this, but what’s unique in history is that no one thought that the Messiah was going to be the one to raise from the dead. They thought that everybody was gonna raise from the dead, that there was an understanding there was gonna be this general resurrection, and here’s what happens in the resurrection according to the text we saw read earlier,
1 Corinthians 15. It’s not just a disembodied, sort of weird second-life state forever, but that Jesus is going to make this world that is totally broken, totally new, and that we’re gonna have new bodies, or really, in a sense, these bodies, but in such a new way that they’re new bodies, if we read 1 Corinthians 15 correctly, and there’s a lot we could unpack about that, but what we need to understand is that God gave Adam and Eve a job to do, and they didn’t do it, and so Jesus came and did it. They were given the job to be fruitful and multiply, to create God-glorifying culture and God-glorifying community, and to this, they fail. They rebelled against God and didn’t do what he said, and when we’re outside of Christ, we fail at this too. We make self-glorifying community and self-glorifying culture, but our call is actually to make God-glorifying community,
and the new covenant, that’s the church, which is, yes, made up of families and singles, and this people of God who are the family of God to make a God-glorifying culture so that when Portland thinks about Trinity Church, they think about a people who give of themselves to help other people follow Jesus. They think of an illuminated people who are after the gospel and love people who are really, really different than them, that when they think of us, they think of a people who are so full of charity and goodwill and kindness that people who think everything we think is stupid can say things like, well, I don’t believe anything they believe, but those are the people who can help you. Those are people who will love you. Those are people who will serve you, but we don’t do it to earn points like Buddhism.
We don’t do it to earn points like sort of a world where we just put it on Facebook so we can give ourselves a pat on the back and everybody likes it. We go, yay, me. We do it because Jesus has saved us from ourselves and made us alive together with him, and the way he’s loved us, we can love others, even our enemies. But as we turn to this idea of the resurrection, we see in Hosea 6, chapter two, we hear an allusion to the Messiah being risen, something the Sadducees are rejecting. In Hosea 13, 14, we have that quote that Paul’s quoting, except for it’s Sheol in most of your translations. Sheol, where’s your sting? And Paul in the New Covenant says, death, where’s your sting? Because Sheol is the word for grave, and grave is death. There’s a, you know, that’s what’s happening there.
I don’t know why I had to do this, but that made it work in my brain, so there it is. But there’s something to this resurrection that says that death doesn’t have a hold on us, which, by the way, if you’re not afraid of death, you are a dangerous person in a dark world. And I would just commend you. We have nothing to fear in this world because we are held tightly by Jesus, not height, nor depth, nor powers, nor principalities, or anything at all of creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. If you just took that sort of seriously, how would your life look different this week? Just a little bit. And maybe all the way. I would encourage you to do all the way. Serious.
But in the resurrection, we have this life, and in Isaiah 25.8, we hear that death is swallowed up, and that Jesus is going to wipe all the tears from all the eyes. This is a hard thing to imagine. Of course, John picks up on this in the book of Revelation and uses the same phrase when we hear that the dwelling place of God is with humanity once again, which happens again in the resurrection. In Isaiah 26.19, we hear your dead live and corpses will rise. Why is that important? Because these are texts that would have been familiar not only to Jesus, but to Pharisees and Sadducees and all these different folks. And the Sadducees are saying, no, this is bogus. And their whole plan here is to create sort of a angels dancing on the head of a pin scenario. Sort of either God’s all loving and not powerful,
or God’s all loving and not whatever, whatever, set up to try and make Jesus look like a fool and to make the resurrection look like a fool. Well, I guess the resurrection is not a fool, but you know what I mean, foolish thing to believe. As they asked him this question saying, teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. There were seven brothers. The first took a wife. And when he died, left no offspring. And the second took her and died, leaving no offspring. And the third, likewise, and the seven left no offspring. Last of all, the woman also died in the resurrection, which they don’t believe in, right? They’ve set the trap. Thomas has done such a nice job showing us the traps
that people set for Jesus. They’ve set the trap because this sounds ridiculous to them. Last of all, the woman died in the resurrection. When they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as a wife. Now, again, they’re really focused on how things work in this world and in this life. And they think this sounds silly. And this is actually very similar to a story that existed in between the writing of the New Testament and the Old Testament called Tobit, where this kind of a thing happens, where this woman keeps having her fiancees die. And it’s weird and interesting, but that’s probably on their radar as they’re telling this story. And so they set up this thing, and then Jesus does something wild here. Again, what does he keep doing? He keeps asking. We just saw that last week. He asks questions first.
Not today, folks. Jesus is tired, and it’s time to just go for it. I don’t mean that he sinned, of course, but he just goes right straight up the middle. Jesus said to them, is this not the reason? You are wrong. You’re wrong, and let me tell you why. Because you know neither the Scriptures, like we just talked about, Isaiah, Isaiah, and we’ll see even he goes to Exodus, which is where they went, nor the power of God. They don’t believe in what God has attested about himself and his power and his movement in history in the Old Testament, nor do they believe his power in the present tense. And I think sometimes, friends, church, if we’re careful, we can sort of look at them like they’re fools and then not check that in our own lives where we disbelieve the power of God or the things that he has done.
Sometimes we try and clean up the Scriptures in little ways. The word in Jonah is fish, by the way. For some reason, the idea that a whale would swallow Jonah and he’d live in the whale for three days seems somehow more realistic to us than a fish. Real talk, I don’t need a lot of fishes that can swallow someone and they would live in that fish for three days, I just need one. I just need the one. And we look at these things and this is rampant in sort of liberal theological circles. Jesus didn’t really take the bread and make it into a bunch of meals. What he did was this little boy shares his lunch and then all of a sudden everybody else shares the food they were hiding. That’s the miracle. Generosity, that’s the miracle. No, the miracle is that Jesus took a snack pack
and made snack packs for everybody. That’s the miracle. And it’s so odd to me that we would limit what God’s done in the past. And we are, we’re forgetful people. I was thinking about this when we were worshiping together. I was just thinking about all the miracles. I always think of that, I bring that up often. I know, I’ve brought it up before, but it’s worth noting. Your life in Christ is a miracle. And often we act way more like the Israelites who get redeemed out of Egypt and are wandering around the desert being like, why’d you bring us out into the desert to die? Then the people say, like Joshua, hey, God crushed the hegemonic world powers of Egypt. I wonder what he wants to do today.
And I would just invite us in. God’s done amazing things in your life in the past, and if you want to remember the mighty works of God, read the word, but it’s not just that. He doesn’t just say you don’t believe the scriptures, is it? He also calls him out for not believing the power of God as if God couldn’t raise people from the dead, as if God couldn’t do that. How quick are we sometimes to write off prayers or the movement of God or the work of the spirit? Because, well, it was miraculous. And we live in a time and a place where we have this sense that we shouldn’t believe in the miraculous, that it somehow makes us foolish. I mean, I mentioned singularity. We live in a time and a place where people think they’ll be able to download their own minds into a computer.
That honestly seems a little more far-fetched than a man walking on water to me, but I’m a Christian, what do you expect? But he calls them out, but we need to be careful ourselves. God’s worked in the past, and he’s working in the present, and he will work in the future.
The Reality of Resurrection
And it’s a good place to live. He goes on. Because you know neither the power, the scriptures nor the power of God. For when we rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven. Now, this is an interesting text to really spend time with, because I actually think pretty much everything Jesus is saying in these few verses is very clear, and yet kind of perplexing at the same time for us. But I think the perplexing nature of these verses, and again, this is something we need to watch out for as disciples of Jesus, the perplexing nature of these verses is not that it’s not clear. It’s that we don’t always like what it says.
Here’s what I mean. How often I’ve heard people say things like, well, I’m really excited for Jesus to return, but I’d really like to know what it says but I’d really like my kids to graduate high school first. I’d really like to have that first dance with my daughter. I know Jesus might return soon, but I’ve worked really hard on my retirement. It’d be cool to get to do retirement for a good 10 years before he comes back. Then he can come back.
And I think we can go there, and I think what we’re missing there is that we don’t actually understand the ineffable and unspeakable joy that we will have when we live with Jesus face-to-face when we say that. The longer I live on planet Earth when I’m aware and awake to the work of God, the more I just say, Jesus, come. Put this world back the way it’s supposed to be. I can say more and more at 40 with Paul, you know, is it better that I go or that I stay? Well, I’d rather go, but I’ll stay because I have work to do still here on planet Earth, which is weird because I don’t know if Paul actually thinks of himself getting there, but that’s a whole nother sermon for a whole nother day. So my diagnostic questionnaire for us is, are you hungry for the new heavens and the new Earth?
Are you excited for the return of Jesus? And do you live this life every day like this could be the day he comes ripping through the sky? Because I think that really changes what we do, right? We put so much energy into our bank accounts and our social capital and our career capital and the kinds of cars we drive or the house we live or where we live or yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. And I would just urge us to have the sort of talking heads meditation as you walk through your door today. This is not my beautiful house. This house belongs to you. Like one person maybe knew that, maybe not. It’s okay, I don’t mind. I don’t mind using illustrations that only I understand. It’s okay, because it stands. This is not my beautiful house. This is Jesus’s beautiful house. My life is not my own, it belongs to Christ.
It’s no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives through me. How do I steward this life? How do I steward my friendships? How do I steward my relationships in such a way that I let go of me and live more and more into the life that Jesus has given me? How do I live into the belief in God’s word and the power of God on planet Earth? There are simple things we can do, friends. This is not a complex homework assignment. I would encourage you, be a member of a local church. This one or another God-glorifying, Jesus-loving, Bible-believing church. A group of people who say, I belong to these people and these people belong to me, and this is a place where I can give of myself to help other people follow Jesus. These are the people who are gonna keep pointing me back
to the Bible and keep pointing me to what God is doing in the world. It’s not about having a political body for decision-making in the church. It is first and foremost about a people who say, I make it my pledge to you that I will do everything I can to help you follow Jesus and you are doing the same for me, to live in this reality, hungry for the return of Christ. This is why we gather on Sundays together and why it’s so critical that we do so. We don’t just come for like a nice talk with bad references to 80s rock and roll, right?
We actually come to meet with the God of the universe. We come because God is present with us, where two of them are gathered in my name, there am I also. We come because we are needing reminders day in and day out through the confession and through the sermon and through the song and to sing to God and to each other. Just like the longing of Jesus, I’m deeply concerned if not being here with God’s people isn’t a big deal, that you might actually be missing what’s happening when God’s people are here and with the big deal that it is.
Because we’re the people of the resurrection. I’ll get there. Here we go. For when they rise from the dead, they will neither marry nor given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven. So whatever that’s going to be, I don’t think we quite have a clear picture, but whatever is going to be, it means everything’s gonna change, right? Our marital relationships, our relationships to our believing children who are there with us, our relationship even to Jesus as we worship him face to face is going to be radically different and radically, radically filled with joy. Now, Jesus, being a genius, I think it’s been so great that Thomas has pointed out that Jesus is the Lord of logic. Jesus is also a genius, an intellectual titan on planet earth, fully God, fully human, without sin. I mean, imagine your intellect without sin, the noetic effect where sin is in your brain.
I’m not sure what I want to use there, but you know what I mean. Now, what Jesus is about to do here in 26 is fascinating because when the Pharisees and the Sadducees who would often debate about this, and we’ve seen a lot of strange bedflows here in Passion Week, where people who are once enemies are kind of kicking it together because they all don’t like Jesus, but they all don’t like Jesus for different reasons. The same thing is happening here in 26. The same thing is happening here in 26. They all don’t like Jesus for different reasons. The Sadducees are concerned because they get a lot of freedom with Rome and are doing a lot of things they want to do. And if Rome gets win, and there’s a cat who thinks he’s going to be the ruler of the world, they’re a little concerned
that Rome might flip out about that, which they might. But here, when Jesus uses this argument, apparently this was the most common pharisaical response to the Sadducees when the Sadducees would say, there is no resurrection. Jesus is actually using, he could have gone to those passages, he could have gone to Hosea, he could have gone to Isaiah, but he doesn’t. He goes right for the curve ball that the Pharisees use and sends it right at the Sadducees, which is very interesting in the following verses that will come next week.
But as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, so we’re talking about Exodus, the books of Moses, we refer to the five works, and by the way, if you’re not able to make, have not gone to Jan’s study on the five books of Moses, I would implore you, if you can make it 9 a.m. every week for some weeks, be there, downstairs, coffee, it’s good. Jim’s gonna make coffee, it’s gonna be awesome. Hopefully the coffee was made and that worked.
And for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him saying, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. What’d he do there? What’d he do there? He’s doing some funny things with our vocabulary. He is not God of the dead, but of living. You are quite wrong. This powerful phrase occurs in Exodus 3.14, when Moses says, who shall I say sent me? And God says, from the burning bush, tell them I am sent you. Not I was, not I will be, I am, present tense. We’re told in the book of Revelation, Jesus, the God who was and is and is to come. God, we run out of words for this, but God is, God is. God is the God of the living.
God is alive, but not only that, by implication, what he’s saying here, he’s the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They are alive too. Now, mind you, they’re in the intermediary state. That means to be apart from the body is to be at home with the Lord. Death wears your sting, and when a Christian dies, we immediately enter into the presence of God, and in the resurrection, we have our immaterial self and our material self reunited in Christ as he puts everything back the way it’s supposed to be. So there is a grand joy if we die before the return of Christ, that we are before God forever, and someday, when he comes ripping through the sky, the immaterial part of those people are coming with him and the material part of him meet in the sky and he comes to earth and brings peace.
That’s like the smallest way you could say that, by the way. Peace. It’s gonna be massive. It’s beyond measure. It’s beyond our imaginable capability. So what Jesus is saying to them, who really claim this lineage, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he’s saying, God’s alive, they’re alive, and y’all are wrong. You are fools. You’ve missed the whole point. And this is, of course, where if he had a microphone, he’d drop it, and he’d walk out. Thank you, good night. End on a high note.
Living God of the Living
So four things I want us to see from here. The big idea, of course, is that Jesus is the living God of the living. Our triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit, you wanna know the God of the universe? You get to know Jesus, his Son who he sent to earth, and how do you get to know the Father through the Son? By the power of the Spirit, through the word of God, and through the people of God. Jesus is the living God of the living. So four things I want us to get out of this today. Jesus is alive, Jesus makes dead people alive, Jesus makes living people live, and Jesus will make living people who have died live again.
We don’t worship a concept. We don’t worship a dead Messiah. We worship a risen Lord. I have tried to convince many people that the Easter song by Keith Green is the greatest Christian pop song that’s ever been created. If you disagree with me, you’re categorically wrong. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you have to go to YouTube or whatever, and make sure you get the live version where he preaches while playing the piano in the middle. He talks about Jesus healing your bummers and your downers, but most of all, he’s healing you. But most of all, Jesus heals your sin-sick heart. And I cry every time I watch that YouTube video, and that’s why, if I have something big, a lot of times if you see me with headphones, I like to listen to headphones before I preach, I’m probably listening to Keith Green.
Jesus is alive. Why do they freak out? Why do they run from the tomb? Why do they do these things? Jesus is risen. He is risen from the dead. Is risen, not was risen, is risen. We worship a living God. He knows your pains, he knows your doubts, he knows where you’re at, he will meet you where you are at, he will love you, he will serve you, he will be kind to you, and he has made you his own. And he is alive. Cynthia said that so great. He already knows. Go to him. He knows what you need before you ask, but we’re not asking thin air, we are talking to the king, and we are king’s kids, and that king loves us to go to him with our needs and our hopes, and also to change us and make us more like himself.
Number two, Jesus makes dead people alive. And this is the gospel. Ephesians chapter two, verse four. You were dead in your trespasses and sins. We were all dead. Spiritually dead. I need you to remember when you’re trying to love and serve people in Portland, they’re described as dead and blind. Be kind, be charitable. You too were once this way. Of course they make decisions that don’t make sense in light of the Bible. They do not know the love of Christ. We are ambassadors to the city to share this love with them, that they might know the power of the resurrection. Be charitable, be kind, be patient, because guess what, you were dead. I didn’t hear the gospel experientially and say, wow, yeah, I wanna be a Christian. I heard the gospel and said, wow, yeah, that’s really stupid, and I don’t like that at all.
And God worked in my life in so many ways, and he came for me. And if he’s coming for you, he’s coming for you. And so that’s the good news, that if God’s at work in your life, I am confident he is going to save you. If he has marked you out for salvation, he’s coming for you. Then that should be our constant prayer church. Jesus, please bring people into my life this week, you’re going to save. Because the reality is, I wasn’t like, oh yeah, that’s cool, and that makes sense, and you know, when I compare what you’re doing to the other gods in the universe, like in worldviews and religions, yeah, I’m in, I’m in. That’s the most practical, sensical thing. I was literally tying myself under the sink as the life that was my house was burning down around me, and Jesus is kicking in the door and dragging me out
and saving me from myself and from my sin and to life in him, because dead people don’t make moves. Dead people are dead people, and Jesus makes dead people alive people, and this is a gift of grace, and this is central to the gospel, and he doesn’t just make you alive so you can go to heaven and play a heart, he makes you alive so you can have life now and life in the resurrection and life in the new heavens and new earth and life forever, and you can live this life for him.
But there’s more to this gospel. Jesus makes living people live. He doesn’t just pull you out of the grave, kind of dust you off, get you a new outfit, and say, have fun with that, see you when you die. The Holy Spirit enters our lives, enlivens our hearts, and opens our eyes to the truth of the gospel and empowers us to live, vivifies is the fancy fun word to say, but gives us life that we would be living people, empowers our life, he doesn’t leave you alone to seek his face, he fills you with the spirit to live for him in joy. Both in joy and enjoy — that’s life.
Our lives are for him, to enjoy him. Every facet of your life as a Christian is to live in great joy and a new identity. You’re a child of God, you’re loved by God, you’re a new person, you’re being transformed, you’re being changed, and this is God’s doing in your life, it’s no longer I who live, but Christ who lives through me. And here’s the amazing thing, Jesus will make living people who have died live again. I have great confidence that I will be with Jesus in the resurrection, not because of anything I have done, but because I believe his word so desperately, and cling to these words of life as the truth. And I’m confident, because of him, not because of me, oh my goodness, not because of me, but because of him, that I will be with him forever and ever and ever.
How Then Shall We Live
And this whole world’s gonna get put back the way it’s supposed to be. So what do we do with this, right? How do we live into this, right? This is wonderful, this is good news, okay, now what? What I would encourage you, A, Jesus is alive. Pray to him like he is alive. Read his word like it’s not just some book, it’s not Moby Dick, it’s God’s words to you that the spirit makes alive, it is God speaking to you through his word, open it up like that’s true. I guarantee you, real talk, if I had a book, I had a book and it was 100 pages long, or even whatever, I don’t know how long this pew Bible is, 1,000 pages, let’s call it 1,000 pages. If I had a book, and again, this is a thought experiment, and I have this book that was written by aliens,
this is no comment on aliens or the factual nature of aliens or any other thing, but if I had 1,000 pages, I said this is written by aliens to human beings and I put it in your hands, do you think that’s gonna gather dust on your table? It’s not. Something better, even if that was possible. I have words from the living God that have been written and by his forbearance and grace have been translated into your own language in such a reliable and understandable way.
You’re invited in to commune with the transcendent. He hears you when you speak. And not only that, he makes dead people alive. You have a new identity, live in that identity. You’re not trying to prove yourself to God, you’re trying to live as the person that you are in God. You’re forgiven, you’re loved, you’re his, you’re secure. You’re a child of the king, you’re a servant of the king, you’re an ambassador of the king already. Walk into it. This is again why things like church membership are so important. We need other Christians reminding us of this truth all the time, because we are a forgetful people. Jesus makes living people live. How do we live into that? I would invite you, invite. Hope you hear these as invitations. When you get out of bed tomorrow, instead of standing up and checking Twitter, what would happen if instead of standing up,
you threw yourself on your knees on the side of your bed and said, King Jesus, this is your day and I am your servant. Please God, send me your spirit and help me to live for you today. Take hold of everything I have, it’s yours. It’s already yours. Fill me with your spirit, please. He’s a good God who always answers those kinds of prayers. Sometimes they don’t look the way you think they should look, but he is a good God to answer these prayers.
And finally, what does it look like if we take even just some kind of reminder, maybe it’s the stop sign by your house on your way home from work. Maybe it’s some threshold, some doorway you walk through. Maybe one thing, one thing, one thing in your life that you see every day and you made that a prayer trigger. You made that a Christian meditation, not a New Agey meditation, but a Christian meditation where we’re attending to something. And every time you see that one thing, that one time a day, you stop and say, Jesus, come quickly. And you just take a moment to get lost in the transcendent reality of what heaven might be like. So look out the window and just think for a moment, what is it going to be like to be risen from the dead?
I was thinking about this one. What is it actually gonna be like? If I die before Jesus returns, which again, it’s imminent. So I don’t know if that’s gonna be the case. But what is it like to come with Jesus from heaven and have your immaterial and material self reunited as you come to earth and he brings his peace and shalom to planet earth? I don’t know, but I like thinking about it. So if you’re in here today and you’re not a Christian, there’s one way to peace. There’s one way to wholeness. There’s one way to fullness. It’s Jesus. Cryogenics and singularity and politics and whatever and whatever and whatever will always come up short because it turns out that human beings who are building all these things, even with the best intentions, are still broken and bring their own brokenness to it. There’s only one way to something better
and that’s King Jesus. And we’re not telling you to adopt a set of principles or ideas, we’re telling you, meet the King. He will meet you where you’re at right now. Turn to him and say, I want you, Jesus. I don’t even know what this looks like. Help me, help me. And there’s a bunch of people here who would love to help you by giving of themselves to help you follow Jesus. And if you’re in here today and you’re a Christian, you’re hearing these things, you’re like, yeah, I don’t know when the last time I thought about heaven was. And you’re right.
I don’t, there’s a lot of dust on that book. So Satan wants you to feel ashamed. Satan wants you to feel discouraged. Satan wants you to quit. Satan wants you to leave here and say, okay, whatever, whatever, whatever. That’s not what Jesus has for you. Jesus has way better plans for you than you even realize. What would it look like if you just carved out an hour? Open up the book today. I know you’ve got a phone with a timer on it. What if you just set a timer every day to remember to open God’s word and to pray to him? What would have to change? What’s one thing to change today that would set you on that trajectory to a full, enjoyable, enjoying life with Jesus? Because you’re invited into this. Satan’s the one that wants to discourage you. Jesus is inviting you in and saying, come on in.
It’s wonderful here. And if this is more you than it’s not, what does it look like for you to go deeper and press in more and find other people who are discouraged and hurting in this congregation and tell them and help them and fortify them and help point them to the truth? What’s one thing you could do this week to help somebody else follow Jesus? What’s one thing you could do to go deeper into your love and relationship with Jesus? Let’s pray. Jesus, you are indeed the living God of the living. You have risen from the dead. You are risen from the dead.
Lord God Almighty, it is such a joy to know you. And so I pray for us all, Lord, that we wouldn’t feel defeated right now. We’d feel alive, because that’s what we are. We’d be enlivened by your spirit. We’d be enlivened by your word, and we would give of ourselves to love you and to follow you and to help other people do the same. Jesus, we love you and pray these things for your glory and for our joy, and in your name, Jesus Christ, amen.