6. Christ is Victor - I Am Who I Am - Tim Mackie (The Bible Project)

all right so today a lot of things going on today it's Resurrection Sunday and it's also we've reached a point in our teaching series that we've been in for a long time so if you're part of door hope you've been here we have been we're right in the middle of the series exploring what the word God means to a Christian to a follower of Jesus because the word God is actually quite unhelpful unclear word and a lot of different people mean a lot of different kinds of things when they use that word God and so we're taking three months to explore the character and the identity of the Christian God and what we mean when we say that word is Christians and we're discovering that that the word God for a Christian is Jesus centered and the God that Jesus reveals to us is a God who is Father Son and Holy Spirit the one true God who is all three and perfect unity and harmony and so we're we've been in this part exploring God the Son and today we're exploring Jesus as the Son of God the risen the risen King because He is risen oh so that's what we're that's what we're doing today so I encourage you grab a Bible if you have one and open it up to the New Testament to Paul's letter to the Romans the book of Romans we're going to look at the first sentences of Paul's letter to the Romans today if you don't have a Bible we're going to have some of the key passages right up here on the screen as well Paul a servant of Christ Jesus now just sorry I can never get very far except so remember that as is Christ Jesus is a last name it's not know Mary Christ right there Joseph Christ so it's a title the Jewish title that means anointed Royals Messianic King so say king or Messiah in your minds when you when you read that so Paul a servant of Messiah Jesus called to be an apostle which is a commission Herald and announced there and set apart for the gospel of God or the good news that is of God so this is Paul's letter we spent a whole part of our last fall as the community studying another one of Paul's letters to the Ephesians so Paul was a rabbi who stayed a rabbi but became a rabbi who gave his allegiance to Jesus as Israel's Messiah and before that he had been a persecutor and even conspired in the murder of followers of Jesus because he thought the whole movement was so screwed up but then you have this radical event that transformed him from a persecutor of this Jesus Movement into a Herald and a proclaimer of it and look at how Paul identifies himself he's riding a group of people he hasn't met before and he does he actually does what a lot of us do when you first meet somebody or you introduce yourself to somebody say like hi I'm Paul and what's the safest question you can ask somebody right after you meet them what do you do for a living right and so which is actually kind of screwed up we think about all right because what you're communicating is like the most important thing I could know about you right now upon first meeting you is your real identity which is what you do during your work day right so anyway so that so Paul however it does identify himself in terms of his vocation it's calling that he's been called to become this Herald and his whole life is dedicated and set apart for this one purpose and that is to be an announcer of the good news or the gospel and so what Paul's going are doing this letters explore that the basic story and all of the implications of this message right the good the good news and for for Paul and the whole New Testament for the Scriptures and for a Christian the gospel is not just you know offering another way to think about spirituality it's not it's not advice it's not here's a way that you could become a good person something like that the gospel is an announcement it's an announcement of something that has happened connected to a person a historical person Jesus of Nazareth and something that he did and that happened in his life and in his death and resurrection and this announcement demands a response when you hear this response you can't just respond to be like oh that's interesting whatever it actually the story itself demands that you do something with it either ignore it or refuse it or respond to it in some in some way that's what good news is it's an announcement about something that has happened and he goes on to explore and really summarize what is the gospel Elysium he's going to explore a much more detail on the chapters that follow but in the next two sentences look at how he summarizes it and actually we're just going to have it up here on the screen and all and I'll read from that so he says this is the good news that's from God he says it was proclaimed through his prophets in the holy scriptures that are about his son who was born from the line of David according to his family lineage the son who was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Holy Spirit through his resurrection from the dead and then he named this son with three different names right here Jesus of Nazareth Messiah the king of Israel our Lord the Lord of all nations and of the heavens and of the earth amen and they men so this is a really majestic summary unfolding everything that he's he's about to say here and the good news is about this person Jesus of Nazareth and it's about a story that leads up to him and to his life and his death and his his resurrection and it's all connected to the fact that he's not just some random guy who comes out of nowhere to understand the good news you need to understand the story that leads up to him and what and what actually happened and so this has always been interesting to me when I became a follower of Jesus as a young man that it raised a question for me which is okay so here's here's a guy 2000 years ago on the other side of the planet he lived he died and it's the claim is that he rose again from the dead now that's pretty remarkable yeah that's something like that would happen in our world but what what about that event there are a lot of remarkable events in human history you know what is it about that person and that event that constitutes an announcement of good news with demand the attention and a response from every human everywhere because that is the claim right right here and so what what is Paul explaining here why is this of relevance to every single human being and he begins in a few places he says its proclaimed through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures and what he's summarizing there is a storyline his point is that whatever happened with with Jesus you know here if you've been raised around the church or whatever you're just like oh yeah the good news it's about Jesus need I for my sins and he was raised and so on if you haven't grown up around the church you know and if you you know you just don't know any of this so some guy 2,000 years ago died of cleaners raised and I'm supposed to do something about that you know what it just doesn't connect like what's how does it follow and Paul says here's how it all comes together to really grasp why this man's life death and resurrection matters for you desperately matters for you and I and every other person in the planet right now he says its first of all that it begins with this story in in the Holy Scriptures now we've done this a few times already in this series to understand Jesus you need to understand the story that flows up to him and so come on let's just do it again come on all right humor me here don't humor me I think we'll learn something so so this is the story that the Israel Scriptures he means the prophets the holy scriptures he's talking about that the Hebrew Bible or what Christians call the Old Testament Scriptures and they tell a story where Jesus and what happened with him is the good news that's the climactic event and so Israel scriptures here's what's interesting the Israel scriptures Old Testament it doesn't begin with Israel it actually begins with the story of all of all humanity and humans are end up here because of the love and the creativity of Israel's God who is the creator I know Jesus reveals God to be as this eternal community of the one god who is Father Son and spirit who from eternity past have been others centered in self giving love and honoring one another and creation in the world you and I find ourselves in is the outflow of their generous creative love and these human beings are made to reflect in the image of this creator and they're made to reflect the creator's goodness we're we're earthlings we come from the earth but we also have this amazing capacity for relationship and for covenant and love and compassionate and kindness and so what's the purpose point isn't that humans are made with a purpose and that purpose is to both know and be received by the creator's love for me and also to reflect that out towards other human beings and if you know if you if you recognize if you believe that there is a purpose in the universe we're not just molecules bashing into each other randomly right so if you really believe there is a purpose it's so intuitive you know it has something to do with other human beings and how you treat them right and if you don't think that there is a purpose for existence or whatever my guess is that you're probably really bothered by that so even that absence of a purpose makes you aware that you wish there was one which should raise the whole question well maybe there is one and I'm just not choosing to acknowledge it and so here's what human beings are called to do they're called to fulfill this purpose of mirroring this other centered love back into the creation and towards other human being how's that one going for you just complete others centeredness self giving love generosity compassion towards your fellow human beings sounds like fun 2040 and so right yes exactly so it's not going good for me and it hasn't been for a long time and as far back as I can remember and so we laugh at we laugh about that but it's true and so the Scriptures evaluation one of the words that the Scriptures used to describe what's gone wrong with us and how we don't fulfill our our purpose the good religious words you're probably familiar with it it's the three-letter word right sin sin and whatever sin might be as ambiguous as God at this point it could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people here's what this this word means in Israel scriptures that Paul is referring to right here sin to sin is to is to fail the word means to fail to fulfill a purpose there's a really great story in Isreal scriptures in the book of Judges it's about a little cadre of warriors that are slingshot experts right which just some I'm certain that subculture exists in Portland yes I'm just I have a hunch you know and they have a convention and it's in one room at the Red Lion or something like that and Josh with the president so say all right so so their sin and failure so their slingshot experts and there's this little line about them that says these guys were so awesome and they were so skilled that they could you know put a stone in their swing and swing the stone and it says they could sling it if something as small and thin as a human hair and it says and they would fling their stone and never sinned this is the word it's the word that's used no word it can be used in a non-religious way in the Hebrew language and it just means to fail to fail to do what you are purposed to do and this is the diagnosis one of the diagnoses that the Scriptures give of the human condition is that where we've were failed we're a failed project which we don't fulfill what we're purposed to do and in this vision what we're purposed to do is both to receive the Creator God's generous love and to reflect that out towards other human beings and towards God love God love human beings who were made in God's image just like you ours the two great commandments of Jesus summed them up and so were were failed and we fail in all kinds of ways right I fail I'm a failed human being surprised huh so are you and we fail in all kinds of ways we fail in the things that we that we do all right so I have all kinds of of impulses and motivations and desires and I end up thinking things or saying things and doing things that I I'm not just not proud of them I'm ashamed of them and you do these things too and so we failed by what we do but we also fail by not doing what we know we ought to do and so there's all kinds of ways that I know I should express love or generosity and compassion towards other human beings or towards my family or something and I don't do them and whatever I'm lazy I'm selfish I haven't had my coffee yet Oh pepper you know and I so I fail in in both ways and in the Christian tradition these are called that the sins are the failures of comission the things that I commit that I do but also the sins and the failures of omission the ways that I know I should be a human being but that I don't because I fail I choose not to I'm lazy him selfish or whatever and so we're failed we're we're failed human beings that that's how the story of Israel Scriptures begins and it gets even more complicated because of course my own sin and failures never stay just within the boundaries of my own life right and neither do yours so let's say you have you know you have like angry neglectful dad right here and you know is his failures and his deep character flaws and failures are those only affecting his his like experience on planet earth right here now sale yur spill over into other people's lives and so that's going to set you know however many children are in the situation that's going to affect spouse and maybe this is the first second and third spouse and so on and that's all going to create wreckage here too and then that's going to begin this chain reaction of failures and Mike habits of these all pick up from so and so and then all of a sudden it's like this cascade and this is this is the way the Bible tells the story as you go out from from the garden story it's that humans just keep giving in and keep failing and these pass on and compound in this whole big chain reaction right here and it's the sticky web of human sin and failure and none of us none of us have escaped from it and if you think that you have you're in the height of denial it's just like go talk to your roommates about it like you know like they're they're fully aware of your failure as a human being I might have just broke a little piece of something I'm not sure the failed move upon my part okay Laska not going to think about that so so that's how Israel's story began so here's here's how the story goes then as God chooses one man a guy named Abraham and says I'm going to bring and create out of you a family a distinct wholly separate family God says he's going to come dwell among them personally he's going to invite them into his presence and give them his special written will and instruction so that they can at least become the kinds of human beings as a light to the nation's and so on and how does this how do they do how do these humans do yeah I mean and it's not a surprise to us of course because they're humans right and so they have inherited and perpetuate all of the failures that the rest of humanity does in song and so then God chooses one particular man out of Israel family a guy named David and he says from you David is going to come a line of kings and there's going to come one particular human king who's going to act in in righteousness and in justice and he's going to save those who are oppressed and bring a kingdom that's going to last forever and ever and and how did they would do as a human being I mean we're talking deep character flaws right so right some murder right and an adultery and and so he's clearly got this thing going on and so to all of his funds to do even worse than he did if that were possible and and there you go there you go that's that's the story that the message proclaimed through the prophetic holy scriptures and so what Paul is saying is this story was always meant to point forward and to show the human need for some one who can be the kind of human being that none of us are capable of being and Paul says that guy is the son it's Jesus because remember he was born from the line of David that comes from the family of Israel that comes for all humanity and he was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Holy Spirit through his resurrection from the dead and the good news before it gets to Resurrection Sunday the good news involves these crucial hours of Passover and of Good Friday where Jesus comes in his words and in his deeds claiming to be Israel's creator and Redeemer God come to be the kind of human that we are incapable of being and his whole life reflects others centeredness and self giving love and he talks about the love that the father has towards him and the love he has towards the father communicated in the spirit and he's come to joined deity and humanity in one covenant relationship and so Jesus in the in the Passover meal that he celebrates right before Good Friday with his closest followers he told them exactly what was about to happen he was going to he was going to give his life as a ransom for many he was going to as in his own words give his life as a ransom It was as if Jesus far the whole collective history of the failure and sin of humanity just rushing towards him that night and he intentionally chose to step in front of this is rushing train wreck of human history and sin and allowed to crush him that was his claim and so what we celebrated on Good Friday in the cross is this moment where if this story is true Jesus is claiming to step in the way to die in in our place and that's good news the death of this Jewish Messiah is good news now again that may seem very strange to you what does that died to how's that idea make any sense well this story begins to help you make sense because he claims that he's coming in as the whole of humanity is representative and that's his claim and that's what we celebrated on Friday that's what we remembered and that's what was reversed and what we're celebrating today in 1968 there was a there's a neighborhood in North East Jerusalem and 1968 they were clearing ground to make way to build some new some new apartment and as they're excavating this hillside they came across the kind of unearthed cave and as they unearth more of it they realize well this is like a human made cave hewn out it's and then they discovered the tomb it was a big family tomb hewed out the hillside that had become covered up and there were all of these kind of holes in the walls and so on with boxes in them and these boxes were full of bones human bones and there was one box a stone box where the bones in that box made international news just a couple days later because the box had a name inscribed on it and the name was you hoping on been cold or John is how we'd say it hippin he was right you're hoping on you hoping on right or you know on so so they found this guy's bones in this box and one particular bone is what is what made all the news because they found this they found his ankle bone and and shattering right through anklebone was a huge iron nail let me show you pictured it's because it's so just so remarkable and horrifying right on the right here you see the actual bone and on the left you see a reconstruction of the foot and where that where that nail would have been going through and what they discovered were the bones of a Jewish crucified man the tomb the bones everything dates precisely to the decades around Jesus's lifetime and what's fascinating and even it's horrifying is what it is is look like what's wrong with that nail right there the hair is bent it's bent right there and so archeologists the best they can surmise is that this guy Yochanan was getting getting nailed to a large you know beam or post as the Romans did and that it must have hit a knot or something and the nails didn't penetrate the wood it just bent in on itself and dude you're not getting that thing out of there and so there's Jochen on with the bent nail in his ankle and presumably they just had to put in a different one that they eventually pulled out after they after they took him down that's horrifying why is it that this man's public execution by the Romans is good news but that man's public execution by the Romans is horrifying news it's one more story of what humans do to each other in violence and in fear destroying each other that is the human tragedy and what makes this man's crucifixion different than that man's crucifixion and Paul says it's this story leading up to him but it's also what happened on the third day after he was crucified not let Josh explore that so when we hear this story I don't know about you but I'm immediately struck with the fact that human history is marked by countless individuals who came with messages that tried to help humanity deal with that word with sin with failure there countless great men and women who have lived throughout human history who have explored how it is that we can improve our existence and come up with many means methods ways of living to help us overcome on some level this failure problem this sin problem but none of these great leaders ever are we told raised from the dead to the uniqueness in the gospel and I would say that there are many many many religions and many religions with incredibly helpful ways of living but there is only one gospel because religion in its essence is humanity's effort to reach the divine in our own self-effort I just finished reading one of the most profound books I've read in the last couple years by the the Jewish rabbi Joshua Abraham Heschel called man's pursuit of God a philosophy of religion and I'm not joking some of the best content I think I've used it in the last six sermons I've given all the way up until the last extremely disappointing chapter because Heschl's recommendation for overcoming this problem is greater piety greater effort on on dedication and devotion in training the mind to to cause us to live differently amongst each other and that's ultimately how he gets at the human dilemma of separation between God and man and so for us question is how could the the cross be good news when obviously for the the foot that we just looked at it's clearly such horrific news and the reality is this is that in order for the good news to be truly good news we have to see and feel in the depths of our being just how bad the bad news is because I want to just take this idea of failure further because the Bible doesn't simply declare that mankind fails we know that but the failure has accumulated something it is brought something upon humanity that is terrifying and that that thus in the collective sin of humanity is brought about not merely failure on the individual part but literally destruction and ultimately death to our world and to our kind and the scripture declares that failure yes it is to miss the mark and I heard a great illustration that I've used many times by a preacher when I first became a believer that that sin is not so much a measurement of how bad we are it's not defined by the little things that we do wrong but it's essentially a measurement of how good we are not it is us lined up with the perfections of God and we're the failure is felt most fully it's the incredible state in which the human heart if it was honest with itself recognizes as Lady Macbeth did that we could not withstand close scrutiny that if you were to truly share with the person next to you all that you were actually thinking you would not have friends but the depth of our failure goes so deep that it actually breeds death from the inside out I love Tim's picture that it just is so inner woven so so messy that it's like none of us can escape it not the best teacher who has ever lived escaped it because none of them rose from the dead because death is the final frontier of sin death is it's the most terrifying reality in fact there's a whole book by a famous famous psychiatrist Beckwith entitle entitled the denial of death and he argues that everything we do as human beings is our attempts at burying the fear of death even our love of heroes because we want someone to conquer and escape the thing that none of us will escape and so the outcome of this sinfulness is missing the mark it goes deeper than just failure because it's an affront against the holy God because God to be truly good must be truly righteous which means his hatred of sin is not his hatred of people it is his hatred of the thing that Rob's him of what he has set his heart and his affections upon which is people that God is love but he is holy love and his holy love burns fiercely against everything that is unlovely in the beloved and you my friends are the beloved but you see sins failure is our rebellion against God's sovereign rule as king it's our attempt to say I will be my own king hence we fail sins failure is more than even rebellion against our sovereign king it is a rejection of God's gracious love which he from cover to cover in the Bible I think sometimes we have this wrong idea that mankind fell and God all the sudden became an angry God's we turned his back on humanity man turned his back on God and you have two people that are angry with each other and they refuse look if that's not what the scripture declares what we see is that God determined purposed within himself that human beings alone being made in His image would be his covenant partners in which we would be co-heirs with him ruling over his creation in fellowship with him forever that was his intention and that is what he intends to bring about and what we would argue as followers of Jesus has brought about in the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ because from cover to cover God doesn't turn his back on sin what he does is he gets in front of it but it is we who turn our back on him again and again so the question that immediately arises is how essential is the resurrection to the Christian faith and I would argue this that if our faith is merely a religion the resurrection actually is not essential that is if we want to continue to be nothing more than a failure because who could actually even live up to the teachings of Jesus have you read them someone's like Jesus was just a great teacher I'm like you know what if he was not the son of God he was the lamest teacher that ever existed because what Jesus demands of humanity is an impossibility if you don't believe me on that just simply look at his own teachings in the Sermon on the Mount which was what brought about my conversion in 1998 when I read the words in which Jesus says unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees literally the most religious people of the day you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven I'm like well that sucks and then and then you just go and like and here let me just put the nail in the coffin therefore be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect okay thank you Jesus I would love to be perfect and I remember that point that inner tension in which I wanted to throw my Bible away but when I register little bit further to see that Jesus again and again is actually laying out he is God's Word come to us in human speech and what he is declaring is God's righteous standard is beyond human capability therefore God in His mercy does something that mankind would never have come up with look at all of the religions of the world nobody declares God as the one who enters into his own story to become a suffering servant to get under the brokenness of humanity in spite of the fact that humanity wants nothing to do with him and he says I will fulfill my purpose which is I am NOT content to exist without mankind for myself he gets in to his own story and instead of fixing us from the outside end he comes into the middle of our brokenness and he lives out this life that none of us could ever live which alone qualified him for the death that he died and what we believe is that the death that Jesus died wasn't simply Jesus suffering because of what he claimed about himself we believe that God himself purposed to take death sin brokenness failure anxiety loneliness hurt all the pain of human existence and through the entire life of Jesus we see Jesus in this incredible act of coming into fall in humanity and instead of falling he works out in obedience what we only do in disobedience and then on the cross it says that he who knew no sin became sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God and I like that as Tim was teaching I realized I could replace that word sin and first it's actually in second Corinthians chapter five I could replace that word with he who knew no failure Jesus never failed became failure on my behalf and it chokes me up to even spit that out because my life is plagued by failure and it's a failure that has brought upon me and accumulated through my life guilt and shame and indebtedness and the horrifying reality I remember when I gave my life to Christ was that I could not endure the scrutiny of a holy God's examination that I was guilty and that I didn't need a teacher I needed a savior you see it is until we come to the place in which we realize in the fullness of our hearts that we can not satisfy God in our own efforts nor can we satisfy the longings of our own heart you know I've been meditating on this much lately I am 40 years old next month I turned 41 and I finally get what I never understood what a midlife crisis was I'm like what is a midlife crisis I remember when my grandfather had one and it was defined by a perm a red sports car and a tattoo of a bunny rabbit on his hand sighs know how some perms are the only thing that hasn't come back from the 80s well I've been growing my hair back so that next week you're going to see me transformed into Kirk Cameron remember that show sway just a type perm you know what what's sick as some of you would be like I think that's a good idea but I think of this what is a midlife crisis why would why do we do dumb things last year from when I turn 40 I'm like I dang it I'm going to get a tattoo of a Fox on the side of my neck that's a good idea and I'm really I'm like I'm going to buy a fast motorcycle and it's what it is is it's that the midlife crisis is the crisis of human identity in the recognition that everything I have given myself to ultimately has brought not brought ultimate satisfaction see it just usually takes you getting old to recognize that everything that you thought would ultimately satisfy your heart will not bring ultimate satisfaction not even the best things you think your children will be your ultimate satisfaction what if they rebel and walk away from you someday they'll move out and you won't have them I've seen families fall apart when they don't have their kids to live for anymore you think your job will bring you ultimate satisfaction what about when your boss hires someone more talented than you and you lose your job you think your health brings ultimate satisfaction what about my two friends in the last three years two men at the age of 40 I think 43 and 45 both with daughters under the age of 13 die of cancer and lose their health and are whittled away by the most disturbing disease that I've personally witnessed with my own eyes and they will never see they never will see their daughters married or walked down or see them graduate or enter into the successes or failures of life they will never continue in their careers that they gave themselves to one a teacher one a doctor but they were confronted with the horrifying reality that sin not only affected our hearts but it says in the scriptures that it actually all of creation groans in a desire from Redemption from the brokenness that has entered into it what brings satisfaction then you see I don't need a good teacher and I don't think you do either I need a Savior who can save me then teach me I need someone that actually can get into my pain take my guilt my brokenness and the judgment that I deserve because in Jesus we have both the sovereign judge who is willing to become the judged on your behalf in Jesus we have the suffering servant who identifies with your most broken part your glitchy ax start of your being he says I understand and I know and I care and what the bad news brings us to this bad news that God the holy God who is without failure he had to become failure that's how broken we were question arises again and again how much does God love us well according to the scripture he loves us more than he loves himself because he gave up the most dear thing to him the father gave up the eternal son to stand in the gap for people that didn't want anything to do with him but you see what the gospel declares and the reason it's good news and not good advice is it's not it doesn't even matter what you think about it or whether you speculate upon it it's authenticity the scripture declares that when Jesus Christ died on your behalf your brokenness was absorbed into his heart his heart broke for yours he tasted hell separation from God so that you could be reconnected to him and he declared something that you actually don't have any right to determine otherwise and that is because of jesus's death life died but then life could not be held by death and his conquering of death and his resurrection declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Holy Spirit through the resurrection from the dead is that that was the father stamp of approval on the sons atoning work son you did not fail and how did you not fail by becoming a failure on behalf of a humanity that is failed but I love I accept your sacrifice and what does it mean for us hope that death no longer will be the final say in our lives because I watched my two brothers who died enter into that unknown reality with the calm confidence that though I may breathe my last year this is merely the beginning of a story that literally never ends not the 80s movie I'm talking a neverending story of goodness for to believe in this message that death did not keep Jesus tells us that he did more than just identify himself with us but he became what a tenacious States the great church father who declared that in Jesus we have the sweet exchange Christ dying as if he had lived our condemned life so that we could live fully as if we had lived his righteous one you want to live you've got to die with Jesus to the lie of who God never intended you to be so that Jesus alone can resurrect you into the newness of life see to believe this message it's good news because to believe this message is to believe that I am NOT alone that God has entered into the brokenness of our world in such a way that there is now through Jesus salvation for every lost dition only he can satisfy the longing of the heart only he can deal with the brokenness of our lives only he can make all things new and I promise you that that event in history is now an eternal active event forever for us and this is why we don't worship a God who is dead Nietzsche was wrong we worship the Living God who is alive for us forever if Paul concludes his little summary of the gospel and he moves he moves forward you can see this is this is such a grand claim and it's a claim that that forces every one of us to respond in some way and it's very easy to see this claim I mean this is a grand story about all humanity and nations that focuses in on Jesus and God's entire purpose was never that the story end right here God's purposes that this grand story for all humanity opens back out that as Jesus is declared to be the Son of God according to the power of God's Spirit the father raises the Sun through the loving power of the Spirit to declare him to be the son of God and his purpose was always to create a new human family of sons and daughters of God who turned to faith in Jesus their Messiah their Lord and find his same victory over sin and over death to be transforming them and what it means to be a part of this family it's it's mystical but it's also actually not that complicated because in a little statement that Paul makes later on in in the letter to the Romans he also talks about the resurrection that's available to us through the same spirit he says they're right here in Romans after eight he says if the spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead if he dwells in you the one who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who is in you God the Father sends the spirit in love and in creative life to rescue and transform and heal the death that the Son of God took for us and the Spirit is is the expression of God's presence that is everywhere available to every person all of the time the Spirit is the member of the father son and spirit who is perpetually with speaking to us speaking truth and convicting to us and mediating God's love to us and so what Paul is saying right here is this is not simply an ancient event that's just good news for all of us this is a message that demands a response from every single one of us to call to come and die as Bonhoeffer said and it's very simple it's really simple it's just acknowledging the fact that this story tells the truth about me I mean what do you and I really have to gain from not owning up to this truth about ourselves so your benefit your roommate's totally stand to gain from this right because they're actually like finally they recognize how screwed up they are right so I mean like what do you have to lose your pride come get off it it wasn't really your pride is going to keep you from owning the truth about who you know you are and the moment that we come to that low point of recognizing like the cross wasn't just some moment that happened in ancient history it was for me like I need this to happen because of the kind of person that I am that's why this happened that's what the story claims and the moment that I'm just willing to own that and then whatever mystical existential way you want to talk about it just grab onto Jesus for dear lives that he's all you got going were you that's it like what do you and I really have going for us look at human history you guys look at your life what do we have going for us really and the good news is that this announcement is that we have one person who is eternally and perpetually for us and we can point to this event of his self giving love for you and for me and that person is eternally available to you and I is recalled to come and die with him on the cross and allow the presence the same Spirit of God that raised Jesus from the dead is the same personal presence of the Creator God who wants to take up residence in your lives and if just grabbing onto Jesus for dear life and he says the moment that the presence of the Spirit who raised Christ from the dead takes up residence in your life all of a sudden Jesus's future becomes your future and whether that's the moment of the grave that you look towards with fear or whether it's the hundred thousand small moments of failure that lay between you and the grave and for every single one of those it's the cross and the resurrection declares that those do not get the last word in your life the grave does not get the last word in jesus's life and it will not get the last word in yours if you wrap your arms and face around Jesus and what it also means is that it means that your addiction it means that your divorce it means that your self-hatred and your eating disorder and the fact that you can't stop watching porn and it means your anger problem it means all of these things they're destroying you but at the same time if you're just hanging on to Jesus for dear life and faith it means those things do not define who you are those things are not your identity there is one person and one truth that defines your future and your identity and it's the Son of God who loves me and gave himself for me and is giving life to my dead mortal body amen are you going to respond the gospel calls us to respond and so Tim and I we're passionate about this it's why we do what we do because we believe fervently or we would not stand before you week after week and tell you otherwise we believe that this Jesus has the power to not only shape your future eternity but we believe that Jesus has the power to shape your present and you may be sitting there asking are you saying to us that Jesus has victory over death and over sin and over brokenness there was this work on the cross then why is the world still plagued with so much brokenness in sin and why do I still often struggle and even believing and why are these why are all these elements of doubt and things coming into my life and hindering me and I think that it's essential that we understand the elements that are involved there is a powerful passage that I want you to just take into your heart today and it comes from 1st Corinthians chapter 15 in which Paul spends an entire chapter declaring the importance of the resurrection he says hey listen if Jesus didn't rise from the dead then we're still in our sin we're still in our failure and we are the most pathetic people who have ever lived he says but if Jesus rose from the dead which he did and is the witness of the Scriptures then something radicalist happened and this is where I think was one of the passages that really carried both of my dear friends who who passed and gave them the confidence to face the final frontier of physical death was believing the words of the scriptures Oh death where is your victory Oh death where is your sting the sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our King Jesus our God our representative the Lord Jesus Christ therefore and I love this Paul ends with the strange instead of focusing on the resurrection he says the outcome of the resurrection should affect your State he says therefore my beloved brothers and sisters be steadfast immovable always abounding in the work of the Lord knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain in other words the resurrection is not only the future hope of an existence with Christ face to face and it is true that the church has lost sight of the promise that if we believe that Jesus really was the Son of God and that he really died for the sins of the world and he really rose from the dead then we can trust the rest of Scripture which Jesus tells us that he will come again and restore everything that is wrong with what we see and make all things new and yet we're also told that if anybody be in Christ all things are new so what's the what's the deal why is there still darkness why is there still pain why is there still war how do I have this confidence and this is the reality for us we live in an age of grace in which we are motivated by our confidence that Jesus rose from the dead we believe it because he has given us his spirit we believe he's coming back but we are grateful that he has waited only because of his tremendous love to give people whom He died for and resurrected from the grave for they would have the opportunity to respond to that gospel but the gospel sets us free to say yes to God's yes through Jesus on our behalf it's not about you guys making decisions for Jesus it's about you saying yes to the decision that God has already made about you in Jesus what do we do with the pain of the world you know I've I've been falling apart guys I functioned on adrenaline for a half a year and discovered that the limitations of my own body and this week I broke out and one of my the most amazing thing this ever happened to me I got shingles lovely wonderful really to hold all of your babies after the service actually I want to show you right now I'm just joking I'm not going to show you it's so painful right now it should be painful and I'm reminded of my own frailty that though the outward man is perishing why God why I thought you died for all these things why do I have shingles it's like leprosy I'm unclean do I need to wear a sign that says unclean and I was someone found out that I was hurting and they put this on my car last night I don't know who it is one of you thank you Corrie ten booms book don't wrestle just Nestle okay I'm like but nobody wants to daesil me right now to them unclean like I have an ugly rash on me and what my wife said you like ooh ooh you're going to sleep in this bed tonight I'm like I'll wear a a field hermetically sealed suit she's like you leaned into me last night in my sleep and it freaked me out Mike it's not contagious it's just chickenpox anxieties as much at Corrie ten Boom she can write this book remember she was imprisoned by the Nazis she saw her own sister and father killed by an evil regime that could have caused her to question is Jesus Victor but instead she writes at the end of her life is a really really old woman don't wrestle just Nestle and it's true that we take these spiritual truths and turn them into really bad bumper stickers but in a novel I just read every cliche is a cliche because there's profound truth in it and let's just replace that Nestle because I think that would be helpful with don't wrestle with God's love and work on your behalf but accept it and you do it by pushing into Jesus as Tim said and I would encourage you today don't be discouraged by what you see in the world around you this is the interim it's the beginning of a new age which began 2,000 years ago because the moment Jesus rose from the dead all things became new and I want to just leave you with this quote from Carl Bharat which has encouraged me so much and then I want to call you to respond to the decision that God has already made about you in Jesus because here's the thing guys no one is escaping the fact that Jesus Christ is Lord it says every knee shall bow we can either accept his gracious offer and love and surrender ourselves to him and accept him as Savior or we can experience him as judge but we will never escape him not one person who has ever lived as Lord as Lord he is the Lord of all things God has eradicated your ability to be your own judge it's no longer possible all judgment is wrapped up in Jesus you're left with nowhere to go but up really and so here is Bart's explanation one of my favorite books ever written outside of the Bible dogmatix an outline I've outlined it so many times that it's almost not readable but Bart says this and he he gave this in 1948 a lecture in Germany in the ruins of a Seminary that had been destroyed by the Nazis and he says the Easter message tells us that our enemies send the curse and death are beaten ultimately they can no longer start mischief they still behave as though the game were not decided the battle not fought we must still reckon with them but fundamentally we must cease to fear them anymore if you have heard the Easter message you can no longer run around with a tragic face and leave the humorless existence of a man or a woman who has no hope one thing still holds and only this one thing is really serious that Jesus is the victor let's pray you

Channel: Tim Mackie Archives

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Length: 58min 31sec (3511 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 21 2017