Christopher: Just as the resurrection turns the crucifixion into the exaltation of God and turns the burial into the descent of the bridegroom to his beloved and turns the wounds into heralds of peace and joy and love, so too it will transform all our life under the fall into blessedness. That's the hope of the resurrection.
Caleb: The following message was recorded at King's Tree Church. May the spirit use it to help you see, savor, and sing the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
Christopher: We, the rest of us here, we are in the midst of something of a something of a break on our walk through the epistle of first John but as I've tried to be clear, it's it's not really breaking us off from from our focus because what we're looking at in these last two sermons and then today to finish us out is the death, the burial and the resurrection of Christ and this is not taking us away from John because one, everything he says in his epistle comes from this, comes from this three part drama through which we are saved and God himself is revealed as who he is. So everything John's saying is drawing upon the things we've been talking about. The death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. And we've been looking at it through the lens of John. We've been asking ourselves how does John, the beloved disciple, see these things because I wanna see them the way he sees them.
And what we've seen over the last two weeks, if you can recall, first we saw that John presents Jesus' death on the cross as the supreme revelation of who God is. And he presents, we saw last week, his burial in the grave as the divine bridegroom coming down into his people's death to make them his own. So lifting up on the cross, the enthronement of God in glory. Descent to the grave, the pursuit of the bride to make her his own. And in both these instances, obviously, a radical transformation of perspective has taken place because you don't just look at a cross, the ugliness of a cross with a crucified man on it and say that's a throne of glory.
You don't just do that. You don't look at a grave where someone's buried and say this is where the bridegroom is seeking his bride to make her his own. That those are not natural ways of thinking these things. To think of the lifting up of Christ in shame as glory, the burial of the body of Christ as God's entrance into the wedding chamber, How does this happen? How does this transformation happen?
And that brings us to the point of today's sermon which is the resurrection. The resurrection. So everything we've seen in the last two sermons has been through the lens of what we're looking at today. We've looked, I've said we're looking at how does John see the crucifixion, the burial and the resurrection, but it might be better to say how does John see the crucifixion and the burial through the resurrection Because it's the resurrection of Jesus that allows the greatest horror imaginable, namely the murder and the burial of God, to become the pinnacle of all beauty, Namely the revelation of God in love and as love. The reason that can happen, the reason that transition can happen is because the one who hung on the cross and the one who is laid in the tomb is risen.
If he's not risen, as Paul says, let's go home, let's quit, there's nothing for you here if Jesus is not risen. If it's just an idea, if it's just a good philosophy, if Jesus is not raised from the grave bodily, Christianity is a sham. The whole thing's a lie. There's no hope. But because he is risen, because he is risen, everything has changed.
And what I wanna emphasize for you today, you you might say, wow, I've heard you say these things before. This is things I've said before but I want to emphasize it in a unique way today because I want to get this single point across to you and to me that the resurrection of Jesus Christ does not merely make up for his death or cover over his death or say, okay, that's done, now we're onto the good stuff. The resurrection of Jesus Christ transforms his death itself into something, into beauty. It doesn't just say, okay, that was bad, now we're covering it and moving to the good thing. It says, that bad thing has been transformed.
So the resurrection is transformative. That's the idea I wanna communicate this morning. And if you think about it, if we say, and and often this is how we think of the resurrection, as if it's a prize given to Jesus to pay for the suffering he had to go through. Oh, you went through all that bad stuff, now you get this. Isn't that great?
As if it's like the hefty settlement that's being given to Jesus to make up for all the suffering that went before. And so we can tend to think, yes, yes, the suffering was horrible, it was bad, but let's get through that because he's alive and he's living forevermore and we don't have to think about that anymore. If that's the way we think about resurrection, then really in that scenario, death wins. Death wins. Because if I say Jesus' death is a horrible thing I don't ever wanna think about, his resurrection has come, and I'm gonna focus on that, death remains back here a horrible thing, unconquered.
Maybe you're not looking at it anymore, but it's it's still there. And if you do look at it, it's still terrible. It's like we've sealed the monster in a room with a golden lock and the lock is pretty and now let's focus on this stuff, but the monster's still there. The horror is still there. Death still has potency.
If the resurrection is just covering it, making up for it, don't think about it anymore. Then death remains potent. It's just we don't think about it. And if I think of Jesus' resurrection that way, I'll probably think of my own that way too. I'll probably think of my own in something like this.
Someday I'll get to heaven and I'll forget all the bad things that happened to me here. Someday I'll get to heaven and I won't have to deal with all this anymore. All all the sorrow and brokenness will be behind me and it'll just be happy. But if we think about it that way, again, the sorrow wins because it remains sorrowful. It's like now I'm happy in heaven.
Don't remind me of that. It's so sad. It's so hard. I just wanna focus on the happy thing. Well, then the sad thing won because it's still sorrowful.
It's still there. It's still bearing its weight. It's just you're not thinking about it, and to not think about something doesn't mean that thing is defeated. It just means you're not thinking about it. Close the door on the flooded basement doesn't mean your basement isn't flooded, it just means you're not thinking about it but the problem's still there.
So the resurrection doesn't just close the door and say, oh okay, let's go move on. The resurrection fixes the basement, heals it so you like to be down there so you can actually go there and rejoice. It heals the broken thing. It heals the dead thing. It turns, as we've seen, the cross into glory.
The resurrection transforms. So if you think about a seed that goes into the ground and dies, the resurrection doesn't say, oh, I'm sorry that seed died. Here's the new one. It's really better so just enjoy this. The resurrection says that seed that's in the ground, I'm going to give it back to you and it blooms into a fruit bearing tree and the resurrection says there's your seed.
There's the very seed that died and look at it, it's turned into this tree and feed upon the fruit and rejoice. That's what the resurrection does And I'm not just saying this because this is the kind of thing I say. I'm saying this because I've seen it. It's in the shape of the gospel. It's in the shape of John's gospel.
Remember what we said. John is the only one who saw Jesus crucified. He saw it happen. He heard that last breath come from the body of our Lord and our God. And you might expect, okay, he's gonna be the one then who either presents the crucifixion as terrible because he was actually there, or he's gonna be the one who glosses over it and focuses on the resurrection because he doesn't wanna think about that.
But he's actually the one who lifts up the cross and says, that's glory. He's the one who does that. He's the one who says, I'm not gonna obscure it. I'm gonna put it front and center and say, look at the glory. Look at the beauty.
Look at the love. So far from causing John to put away the cross, the resurrection causes him to focus upon it as it's been transformed, as it's been turned now into beauty because the resurrection is transformative. It's not just paint over the top. It's not just a present here, so stop thinking about that. It takes the worst.
It takes the broken thing and it heals it and gives it back to us beyond our imagining. And it's not just true for the crucifixion, it's true for everything in the crucifixion and that's that's you and me. That's everyone who is united to Christ, everyone who's trusting in him. That's what I wanna look at this morning. So we're going to, our kind of base text is going to be John chapter 20 verses 19 through 20.
I'll read that briefly for us and then I'll pray and we'll look at some of these things together. John chapter 20 starting in verse 19. It says, on the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, as far as they know Jesus is still dead and his body has been stolen or something. The door is being locked for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, peace be with you.
And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side and then the disciples were glad or more accurately rejoiced. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Let me pray. So, father, I pray that today by your holy spirit, you would grant Jesus to stand in our midst and to show us those wounds, to show us the wounds that he bears in his body because of his love and to show them to us in his own risen hands and risen side and that we, father, would be able to say with the disciples that we have seen the Lord. And I I pray father where there is fear, you would bring peace.
Where there's sorrow and brokenness, you would bring joy. Where there is burden, you would bring relief. Where there's hardheartedness, you would bring softness and humility. Father, I ask that where there are, perhaps long sealed rooms, you would open them and and heal what's there. Where there are bonds or chains or addictions that you would break them.
Lord, pray that you would do work infinitely beyond my little capacity here as I speak, because you would cause Jesus Christ to be seen. And you would help us who are made for him to say, here is my Lord and my God, and to find our soul satisfied. So, father, come by the Holy Spirit and do what I am unable to do in the lives of everyone that you've brought to this place today according to your goodwill, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So this is the part I've talked about before in Easter messages and the like, but but I wanna set it before us again because I need it set before me again as well.
This image really is the whole sermon. The image we find here in John chapter 20 is the whole thing I'm trying to say. Here's the image. The hands of Jesus held out with the wounds of the crucifixion torn into them. The side of Jesus with the mortal wound opened in his side, him standing here, and the response of the disciples being joy.
That's the dynamic that I'm trying to get my soul around and invite you into. The wounds displayed, peace and joy are the response. And you might say, well, course. You know, of course, it's Easter morning. Of course, they're rejoicing.
But think about what's going on here. We we we take things we've heard in the faith so long without thinking perhaps about what's really going on. What's Jesus doing? What are those wounds that he's showing them? It's it's not like these little little dots that you get sometimes in a in a flannel graph.
These are the wounds of the nails that tore through his body. These are the wounds that were beaten brutally into the body of the beloved one. This is the this is the opening torn into his vital cavity by the spear. These are vicious images, vicious reminders of his agony, of his shame, of his death, of his loss. You don't just show, you know, let me show you this, the pit of my suffering and the ugliness, the indignity of my death.
To put it in our own category, imagine you had a family home where where you built friendships and relationships and memories, and then in an accident it burns to the ground, and you're standing in the midst of the ashes. You don't wanna be there. This is hard to be here, to be in the midst of the place I love burned to the ground. That's that's not a comfortable place to be. Think about going to the scene of the accident.
You don't wanna be here. You don't want to be here. Think about looking into the coffin at the this this is this is where my sorrow is. I I don't wanna dwell here. I don't want this in front of me.
This is painful to have in front of me, and perhaps it's painful even now as I mentioned these things. We don't wanna see it, But imagine for the disciples, the trauma of hearing and seeing the nails put into Jesus' hands, pounded into his hands. Imagine for John, my my master, my teacher, my lord, my God, hanging on the cross, the last thing I wanna see is those wounds. It's the last thing I wanna see. And he comes and shows it to them.
And you from that perspective, you're gonna think they'd say, Lord, no, no, I don't wanna think about that. I don't wanna see, I don't want that here. That's what might be natural to our thoughts, but what's their response? They rejoice. They look into the pits of horror and rejoice and have peace.
Their fear is turned to peace and their sorrow is turned to joy. That's shocking. That's that that transition there, that surprising turn, that's the heart of today's message and it's the heart of this whole series because that turn there that makes the wounds joy, that's the same thing with the cross becoming the throne and the grave becoming the place of fellowship with God. This transition has happened and the wounds of crucifixion which are the emblems of death and the witnesses of grief when they're set before the disciples eyes they become changing fear to peace, changing sorrow to joy. Again, think of the impossibility of this.
You go to the place where the event happened, where this is where that great sorrow, that great pain, that great brokenness happened. You go there and you weep for joy. That's strange. How could that be? You stand in the midst of the burned out house and all you feel is peace enveloping you.
That's strange. And let me just pause to say something there. Can you imagine, perhaps you have, you go to the very place, you unlock all the doors and you go into that very place where the horror is, the fear resides, the pain is, and you weep for joy, doesn't that mean death is now powerless? If if that happened, if that happened, wouldn't that mean this whole thing is bereft of power? It would.
And if the disciples can look at the wounds of God and rejoice, what horror has not been defanged for his people? What what grief has not finally been told you go this far and no further for his people if the wounds have become joy? We'll we'll press into that a little bit more. How can this be though? That's the question.
That's the question. And the answer is, it can be the simple answer, though there's no simple answer for this. It can be because those wounds are in the hands of the risen one. They're in the hands of the risen one. So just as a the head of a wolf snarling atop the body of a wolf at your window, it's terror.
It's horror. I don't wanna deal with it. But the head of a wolf severed and held in the hand of the hunter is a witness of victory. So too, the wounds of crucifixion in the body of the dead Jesus are horror, are terror, are witnesses of final defeat. But the wounds of crucifixion lifted up in the hand of the risen Jesus becomes a herald of victory over death, becomes an emblem of the depths of his love, becomes the declaration, see death born and overthrown.
See steadfast love declared. See the victory etched into my own flesh. That's what these things become because he is risen. So the very thing that was horror here is now victory, is now joy, is now hope, is now beauty. And here's the point, the added point that we need to see to bring this home.
Right now this is just okay, theological, interesting, kind of philosophical out there in the distance, but this brings it into us. The wounds of our Lord, Christian, if you're trusting him, the wounds of Jesus are your wounds. That's the key to see. The only reason the body of our Lord is pierced is because of us. Because of us.
Remember what it says in Isaiah 53. Let me read it for you. In Isaiah 53 it says, he was despised, he was rejected, he was a man of sorrows, he was acquainted with grief, But why? That comes in verse four. Surely he has borne our griefs.
So his grief, why is he grieving? Why is he weeping blood in Gethsemane? Because of your grief. He's weeping in that and over that. He's bearing that.
He carried our sorrows. Why is he burdened down onto the cross, falling on the way to his to his crucifixion? Why is his back wounded? Because of our sorrows, not just generally, but that one, that specific one, this one right now, this one you're going through, the one that will break upon our life this week, he bears those, really bears those in a mystery but in truth. He carried our sorrows.
He was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. Why is his hand wounded? My sin, my rebellion, my brokenness. And upon him was the punishment that brought us peace. When he says peace to you, it's because I was crushed.
So I can now come and say peace to you my disciples. And then with his wounds we are healed. So that's crucial to get here. When Jesus holds out those wounds, it's not just wow, look at Jesus' wounds and what they've become. It it ought to be there's my wounds.
See yourself there. That's what it means to be united to Christ. It's not just this metaphorical spiritual language. His wounds are yours. His his pain is yours.
He makes it his. He's united to us. Flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, spirit of our spirit, we're united to him. And so what he bears, he bears for us. So what that means is think think of our grief, our sorrow, our sin, and see it in him.
Think of your sin and the punishment it deserves. There it is. There it is in his wound. There it is in his side. So his wounds ought to become for us, Christian, something of a window into our entire life under the fall.
As you look by faith now into those wounds, see born in them your specific grief. See in them that crushing loss. See in them your chronic pain. See in them your decades given over to lust or given over to addiction or given over to selfishness and all the brokenness it's wrought in your life and in your family and you think, I can never make up for it. See it in his wounds.
He did bear it. See it there. See fears worse threats coming true. So I want this to be personal for you because it is personal. We look and we see there it is, born by him and then, that's what scripture says, our brokenness is in him, then that means where his wounds have gone and what has happened to his wounds is what is happening and will happen to all of ours.
The transformation worked upon his wounds such that they were the pinnacle of horror and have become the supreme witness of love, that is going to happen to everything he's carrying in those wounds. And what's he carrying in those wounds? All of my woundedness, all of my brokenness, all of my failure, everything that I've borne. So what happens to his wounds happens to ours. Here's an take riff on the seed analogy I used earlier but in a little bit of a different way, just as when you bury a seed in the earth, it will grow up into a fruitful tree.
So too, when an agony or a sorrow or a sin is bored into the flesh of Christ, it will bloom up in his resurrection into a fruitful tree that bears witness to his glory. As it says in Isaiah 55, where there were thorns there will be myrtle trees. Where there were thistles there will be cypresses and it will make a name for the Lord. Our thorns go into his flesh and they come out as flowering trees to our joy and to his glory. So just as the resurrection turns the crucifixion into the exaltation of God and turns the burial into the descent of the bridegroom to his beloved and turns the wounds into heralds of peace and joy and love, so too it will transform all our life under the fall into blessedness.
That's the hope of the resurrection. And I'm not saying, hear me on this, I'm not saying good is coming so good that you will forget the pain. There's a there's a meme that goes around that I I don't think is helpful and it's a picture of Jesus standing there asking for a teddy bear from a little girl and he's got a she's crying holding it and he's got a bigger teddy bear behind his back. And the the idea being, I'm gonna take this thing you love so much and I'm gonna give you something different and better. And and okay, put it on Instagram, whatever, but I I'm clinging to my child, to my something I love, and I don't want it just taken and give me something else to make it better.
God doesn't say, I'm gonna take what's precious to you, give you something better and it'll be fine. That is not what the resurrection says. Praise God. The resurrection says something it doesn't say something so good is coming, you'll forget about the loss. It says something so good has happened.
The loss itself will be turned to blessing. The pain itself will become mercy. The weeping itself will be turned to joy. That's what it's saying. It's saying that room that you've locked and you cannot go into, I'm not saying go into it now, but it's saying the room you've locked and cannot go into, it's not that that wing of the house will be torn down and condemned and burned and you never have to think about it again.
It's that when the light of Easter morning falls upon that room and you unlock the door for the first time in years and go in, wonder of wonders, it will have become the holy of holies of your intimate meeting with the Lord and it will be the most beautiful. It will be the place of weeping joy as you've never imagined. That's what the resurrection says. That's the promise the resurrection makes. And I don't say it lightly because I know I'm speaking beyond my level here.
I'm speaking into lives that have places of pain like this, and you may look at me and say, that's madness. Don't don't don't talk this theological drivel that sounds nice from the pulpit, but don't give it to me because I've been to these places. And I say, okay. Don't take my word for it. Look at the wounds.
That's what I'm saying. Look at the wounds of Christ. Who could have imagined on Good Friday as the hand of the beloved, the hand of God is ribbon through by a nail, bleeding, distorted because his tendons are torn? What disciple's gonna look at that and say, that's going to make me happy one day. I'm going to see that and rejoice one day.
That would be madness on Good Friday, but that's exactly what happened. That's exactly what happened. That hand was held before John's eyes and he rejoiced. He rejoiced because the resurrection transforms the brokenness into beauty. That's the promise.
That's the promise. And and let me be clear pastorally here, I am not saying you need to feel that right now. I'm not saying you need to feel that your loss is just, it's okay now. It's happy now. I'm not saying that just like we wouldn't say that to the disciples at the foot of the cross.
Just like on Holy Saturday when Jesus is in the tomb, it would have been madness for John to say to Peter, you know, it wasn't really that bad, was it? I I did figure I figured out why it happened and and it's okay now. No. On Saturday, be quiet. In that time in between, it's silence and you have to sit in silence and you have to sit under the weight of the whys and the what nows.
So don't hear me saying, feel this right now. It's alright to sit in Saturday, but do hear me saying that we have something the disciples didn't have on Saturday and that is we have seen Sunday come. We have seen it come. We've seen it come with the resurrection of Jesus. We've seen our sorrows turn to joy as Christ is raised from the dead.
We see it by faith. We see it by faith now. But but we also actually have seen it with our own eyes. Many of you here have actually already seen this transformation of sorrow to joy with your own eyes. We have actually tasted it with our own tongues and we've sung it with our own mouths.
It's already here and we've already tasted it. What do I mean? Well, the church really is the body of Christ. Again, this is not just a spiritual saying. In some mysterious way, we are really united to the risen Christ.
We're in him, truly in him, such that in the life of the church, we are already able to tangibly see and taste and sing the transformation of his death into life, of his sorrows into joy, and so of our brokenness into beauty. We can already see it, taste it, sing it, hear. Let me give you some examples. First, we see it. We've seen this happen in baptism.
So you remember a number of months ago when we had the great joy of baptizing Melinda. Melinda Miller was baptized and if you remember when she came, and I talked with Bruce and Melinda about this first, but when she came up from the water, she was weeping for joy. She was weeping for joy and it was beautiful to see. Praise God for that. But consider consider what was happening there.
Consider what we actually saw Because what is baptism? It's going it's joining Jesus in his death. That's what that water is. It represents the death of Christ, and we're going down into it. And so when you go down into the water, you're going down into all the sorrow and the loss and the failure and the sin and the shame and the death and the damnation that Jesus poured.
All that's in the water. That's what's in that water there. That's what's in that symbolically. And so what happened that morning? We saw Melinda, our sister, go down into her sorrows, into her loss, into her shame, into her every fear, into her sin and her own death.
You've already been there, Melinda. You've already faced it. You went down into it. And what was the result? Tears of joy.
Tears of joy. Going down into death and you say, what was that like? I'm rejoicing. I'm rejoicing. So we have seen in our sister Melinda herself became for us a glimpse of what the resurrection does to death.
It makes it so you go down into it and you come up and you say, praise God, I've I've been through everything and I rejoice. We've seen it. We taste it. We don't just see it. We taste it in the Lord's supper.
What does the bread and cup represent? We've got so used to this. What does it represent though? The body of Jesus Christ. The blood of Jesus Christ.
The broken body and the spilled blood. It's so sanitized for us. But why is his body broken? My grief, remember Isaiah 53? My sorrow, my sin, that's why the bread is broken.
Why is the blood poured out? My forgiveness, because I'm a sinner, because of the things I've done, because of my shame. So as we come to the table, as we come to the table, our sorrows, and I don't mean general, I mean specific, I mean that one. Our sorrows, our grief, our sin, it's in the bread because Jesus bore it in himself on the cross. So it's in the cup.
Our tears are in the cup. So next time we do that, hold up the bread as it were and consider that specific piercing loss. It's right here. That debilitating grief, here it is. It's in this.
It's born in the body of my Lord. That life altering sin that I'm still trying to fix all that it broke, it's here. It's born right here. Hold up the cup and consider the tears that you wept until there was no more weeping is here in this cup. Your lake of fire is here in this cup.
That's what that's what's going on here. And then, here's the turn, set them to your lips and what do you taste? Covenant faithfulness. You taste love. You taste, I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.
You taste God himself saying, I am fully given to you in love and you are fully mine. How can that be? How can I taste my grief as his mercy? How can I taste my weeping as his love? Because of the resurrection.
So you've tasted it in the Lord's Supper even if you didn't know it. You've tasted this transformation already. Finally, we've sung it. We've sung it in our hymns. Have you considered how many of our hymns are rejoicing in the cross?
How many times have we stood here and sung about the greatest horror that has ever happened in the universe? The brutal death of God. How many times have we sung about it for joy? Because the resurrection makes that change. Because the resurrection makes that change.
How many times have we sung of the beauty of the cross, the love of Christ at the cross, the glory of the cross? And let me ask you, have you ever been moved by that? Have you ever felt that? Have you ever said, yes, this is beautiful, this is good, this is right? Well, all of our sorrows are in that same cross of which we're singing.
When you sing about the cross, you're singing about everything Jesus bore on the cross, which includes everything you're bearing. All your sin, shame, brokenness, grief, loss, your own death. You're singing about your own death when you sing about the cross. So don't be afraid. You've sung about it a thousand times.
You've sung about it a thousand times. So maybe the loss is so great or the regret is so deep or the shame is so heavy or the fear is so debilitating that you can't even speak about it. Maybe that's the place you're in, but you've sung about it and you sing about it whenever you sing about the cross. The Lord puts those griefs on your lips as already turned to beauty whenever you sing about his cross because he's born it all there. So the cross becomes the song of the church and of heaven, Revelation four and five, by the resurrection.
The resurrection turns the cries of the Lord's agony into the worshipful songs of the Seraphim. The resurrection changes reality. It does this work and whenever we sing about the cross, Christian, we're singing about everything that was born in it. So even though you can't feel it right now and that's okay, if you're in Holy Saturday, that's okay. You say I can't feel it about this specific thing right now but the hymns we sing are already helping you to feel it because you're already singing about it.
You've already sung mourning turned into laughter and weeping turned into joy. So within the body of Christ, that's what we've been looking at here. We see the transformation already with our own eyes in baptism. We taste the transformation already with our own tongues in the Lord's Supper and we sing this transformation already with our own voices in our hymns. We see, we savor, we sing the transformation already.
And let me end now this three part series where we started today And that's by saying again, the resurrection is transformative. That's the whole reason we were able to say that the cross is the lifting up of God in glory. That's the whole reason John is able to say the burial is the descent of the bridegroom in love. It's because of the resurrection. The resurrection is not just the happy thing on Easter, it's not just the ending way out there somewhere, the resurrection is the lens through which we see everything.
It it has to be the lens through which we see all things. That's how John saw. That's how the New Testament writers saw. That's how the earliest church saw. It was a world defined by what we might call a resurrection illumined imagination.
A resurrection illumined imagination. And in light of this imagination, crosses become thrones and graves become wedding chambers and thorns become crowns and the flames of martyrdom become the singing seraphim gathering the saint into the presence of the Lord. It's a it's a perspective that the world cannot share because it doesn't have a creator who died and rose again. But it's this perspective that we're called into and I wanna reclaim it for myself and I wanna reclaim it for King's Tree with all of you and I wanna reclaim it for the church because we ought to see the world. This this vision of reality, this imagine this resurrection illumined imagination, it doesn't see the world through the flickering, buzzing, fluorescent lights of the media as so often people see the world.
You ever been to a beautiful room, flip on the fluorescent lights and it's all green and blue and flickery, ugly? If we live our life illumined by media, that's gonna be the world we live in. If this vision is not lit by the torch of fear, Everything I see is red and flickering and jumping out at me. It's because I'm seeing everything through my fears. Everything through my fears, and the whole world is fear.
This vision is not illumined by the torch of fear, by the fluorescent lights of the media. It's not illumined by the harsh spotlight of my agenda, my focus, my thing that points out one or two things. The worldview I want, the worldview of John, the worldview I'm calling us to is lit by the clear, clean, golden light of the risen sun, of Easter morning, and everything is known through that. Everything is interpreted through that. And please be clear, I hope this is clear, this is not a rosy, smiley, suburban clean vision of the world where every day with Jesus is better than the one before and I'm just great.
That's that's not the perspective that this has. This is a perspective that recognizes hardship of any worldview. The worldview that says my God was pierced to death by the brokenness of this world is the worldview that takes seriously brokenness and doesn't dismiss it. So we take it seriously. We feel its weight, but we feel its weight the way we feel the wounds in Christ's hands, and that's a weight that has turned and is turning and will God has sworn turn to joy.
That's the perspective that that that we're called to here. So in light of this imagination, this imagination is illumined by the crucified Jesus who is risen, who lives now and who is to us a God sworn oath that a day is coming Christian, a day is coming when we will look, you will look into the depths of your greatest suffering. You will, by the authority of Christ, not of me, this guy standing here, you will look into your greatest suffering and loss and shame and you will put your hand over your mouth because all that you will see there is the beauty of Jesus Christ. Looking into the depths of that place I never wanted to go and what can you say? It's the beauty of Christ.
You will hear the story of your life sung over you from the throne and weep for disbelieving joy because you will hear nothing in it except the love of Christ. And the minor notes will be the sweetest witness to that love. The day is coming when the risen Lord will set the cup of all your bitter tears, all your loss and anger and fear and sin and brokenness. He will set that cup to your lips and bid you to drink and as you drink, your eyes will stream with laughter because you'll taste nothing in it but the steadfast love and the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God which is the sweet new wine of our everlasting joy. And when that day comes, then you will say, with the disciples, I have seen the Lord.
That's what it means to see him in truth. Let me pray for us. Father, there is no God. There is no God like you, father, son, and holy spirit. There's no one like you and you declare it in a way that no one could have imagined.
You declare your excellency and your beauty by walking through the valley of our death, by passing through the shadow of our sin and our brokenness and our fear, by going down into the deepest pit, and by rising up again and declaring the deepest places now filled with your presence. So we praise you, father, for the risen Jesus Christ. And I pray that I and my brothers and sisters here, Lord, that your Holy Spirit would work into us at a fundamental level, this resurrection illumined imagination that we would see and feel through the reality of the risen Christ, the crucified one who is raised up never to die again. And as we see through his, through this truth, may you be glorified as we live for his name and hope fully in you. Father, we pray these things in the name of our risen Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Caleb: Thank you for listening to this message from King's Tree Church in Sabina, Ohio. To see more of the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, come worship with us on Sundays at 10AM or visit our website at kingstreechurch.org.