Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen
Hallelujah! Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. Hallelujah!
Today we are celebrating, we are celebrating that our Savior who once was dead is now alive that the stone over the tomb had been rolled away and he has come out.
Today we are celebrating we are celebrating that the death he died has no power over him that he has broken free defeated death forever. And today we are proclaiming that neither sin nor depth nor powers of hell or suffering or disease or poverty or anything else has power over us because Jesus is a lot. That is the resurrection story. The story that Jesus gives us today, the story we are celebrating.
Hallelujah! Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. Hallelujah!
And we all know the story behind all of this. On Friday night, we read the powerful story of Jesus's death, how in his human body, God become man. He suffered. He died in a terrible, horrible way. And then he was buried in the tomb. But on Easter we see that tomb rolled away that Jesus died on a cross and is alive now.
And it relates to our Psalm for today:
“You make known to me the path of life and happiness. There is fullness of joy. At your right hands are pleasures forevermore”
Jesus walks before us on the path of life. That is what we celebrate on this Easter day that Jesus has opened the path of eternal life for us. And he did it by being one of us. That in his story of his death and resurrection, he leads us through the grave to resurrection from the dead, with the promise that we too will rise, even if we die.
Now, it's a little hard today for me to think of all of the celebration and get in the mood when I am looking out at a church full of empty pews. The celebration just doesn't seem like it's supposed to be right. There are no smells of breakfast wafting in With our dodgeball team getting ready to make my belly full, nobody is moving around getting ready to drop easter eggs outside so that the kids can go out and get all that candy and treats. Families aren't going to be gathering together around dinner tables to celebrate making their amazing feast of whatever it is they have every year on Easter.
It's hard to celebrate, hard to get in the mood. Today, Easter just seems well not as exciting.
But it's more important than ever, to shout unto the world that Jesus is risen, to force ourselves to be in that mode because it is a proclamation to the world that it has no power over us. Jesus has shown us the path to life By walking through death, into resurrection.
But I think that this time being at home can actually be good for us when we're thinking about Jesus's death and resurrection, because he has shown us that path to life, the only way that the world has that we can say that the world has no power over. And our present situation is an opportunity for God to help us see that right now, all of the things that we cling to, are falling apart. All of the things that we gather together to build our lives. They're just not working the way we expect them. families can't get together. Stock Markets crashing everything seems to be going bad. There's only one way one thing we can trust. That's the path to life revealed by Jesus who died and rose.
For you see, this Easter season, it reveals that our science just can't control as much as we think we can. You know, we have spent a long time getting used to being pretty good at staving off that we have surgeons who can do amazing things, replace joints and give us years on our life. We can heal diseases that would have killed killed thousands in the past and yet today, we're stuck in some all of that knowledge, all of the years of discovery, all of the scientists gathering together.
There's only one way to proclaim to the world Death has no power over us. And that's through Jesus Christ. The things that we claimed to just can't do it. it all falls away before our Savior, because he is the only one who can heal. The only one who can say the only one who leads us through that entire life because he is risen. We also see many of us, our economic futures are out of joints, aren't they? If you have any retirement savings, you look at the stock market and it was crashing, you must have lost what 10, 15% of your stock portfolio. If you're a young person you probably had mostly in stocks are wiped out.
Now, if you don't have that, it's likely that our economic future Other ways is also shaking. How many people are losing their jobs now? I think I read that there were 6 million jobless claims going out there. Isn't that crazy? Can you imagine what that will be like if this keeps up? Many of us have worked really hard to try to put together a life that we can, we can predict. We work hard. We gather things together. Our money buys us experiences and good things and all of that. And yet now, all of that hard work seems like it's going to go away. People who spent years building businesses might just lose. People who've worked hard and jobs to get promotions and stay there might be gone.
God is showing us these things. These things can't provide. There's only one person who can make sure our future is set up that is Jesus Christ Jesus who leads the way through death into resurrection, and he gives that to you. Jesus is the only one who can lead us through debt into line. This season is also helping us to see that politicians just aren't what we thought they would be. You know, very few people have a lower opinion of politicians than I, but they prove they are even less capable than I expected.
When all of this is going on, we thought maybe our leaders will be able to get out there and get ahead of it and help us and all they can do is say stay home and shiver in fear. None of our leaders really figured Without ahead of time we bungled our hospital system. We didn't get any tests out there. We didn't figure any of this stuff out that we should have. But I wouldn't just blame us in our state in our country. It looks like every country in the world really couldn't handle all of our systems, our politics, our governments, oh, it was shown to be worthless. When all of a sudden, out of nowhere, God sent a disease into the world. It shows us that these things that we get so excited about, they just don't mean much. We get so excited about who's in charge the red team or the blue team and what laws being passed or the next election, which is always the most important election of our lives.
Now it's not a big deal. Who's even talking about it?
All of this falls away.
There's only one thing that can keep us safe. One thing that will give us like, there was only Jesus, Jesus who died on a cross who went into the grave who broke free on this Easter Sunday morning and now lives forever.
This is what we cling to. This is what we hold on to the promise that you will live forever in Jesus. And I have to say, in some ways, I'm thankful that God is reminding me that all my control can do everything. God has reminded me that the only one I can trust the only one who can say is him This season when we consider Jesus's death and resurrection, we can say to ourselves, there is no power out there that can stop us. There is nothing that I can be afraid of because Jesus is raised from the dead. I don't have to worry about disease coming at me. I don't have to fear economic disaster. I don't have to pray and hope that my government leaders are just going to come and save me.
Jesus has already done. Jesus has already risen from the dead. Jesus has already destroyed the power of death for ever. And he's given that gift to you right now.
We can be brave. We can be strong we can be sure and certain that when all of these collapse when everything else in the world goes away, we have resurrection from the dead. We have a savior climbing out of the grave, opening up that path to eternal life. Hallelujah!, Christ is risen, he has risen indeed Hallelujah!
In Jesus name Amen