Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] So I just want to talk to you for a few minutes about hope.
[00:00:13] Hope is something that we all desire.
[00:00:17] So however you come in with this morning, I just want you to consider for a moment, like where you need this thing called hope. Okay? Here's what hope is.
[00:00:24] Hope is. Is the assurance of a better tomorrow.
[00:00:28] Let me tell you what the message of Christianity is not. The message of Christianity is not that a better tomorrow means health, wealth, and prosperity.
[00:00:39] That's not what the message of Christianity is. And it doesn't mean that health is bad. It isn't. It doesn't mean that wealth is bad. It isn't. Doesn't mean that prosperity is bad. None of these things are bad. It's just not the message of the Gospel.
[00:00:52] A better tomorrow means that as Christians, like, if you're a follower of Jesus, you can have hope that your days will. That your future could not be brighter than it is today.
[00:01:06] Like the future that you have secured, that we're gonna talk about throughout the duration of our time, could not be brighter than it is today. If you're a Christian, as it's been said before, the only hell you ever experience is now.
[00:01:24] And if you're not a Christian, the invitation for you is open today.
[00:01:29] The great news of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is this, that heaven and relationship with God and forgiveness of sins is available to you.
[00:01:41] You don't have to be a church person. You don't have to have it all together. You don't have to have lived a good life. None of us have, according to God's standard, the invitation to heaven. Heaven is open and available to anybody in the room who has not yet put their trust and faith in Jesus. And for those of us who have, by the grace of God, the resurrection reminds us that there is a better tomorrow.
[00:02:01] And it's not health, wealth, and prosperity, as we'll talk about in just a moment. So hope is the assurance of a better tomorrow. And hope is found in a person.
[00:02:13] So I, by the grace of God, came to faith. I became a Christian at age 21.
[00:02:18] I was a senior in college. I didn't grow up in the church. For those of you I don't know who haven't heard my story, I didn't grow up in the church.
[00:02:25] My mom died when I was 7 years old. She was 29.
[00:02:29] She died when I was 7 years old of breast cancer and never knew my biological dad. He left before I was born, experienced a lot of abuse leading up to about the age of 13, was adopted by my grandparents on my Mom's side. It was amazing, amazing day. And then when I was 16, my grandfather.
[00:02:45] So by the time I got Into College at 18, my view of God was extremely bleak. Like, Christian friends would tell me all the time that God is both loving and powerful. And in my mind, because of my experiences, I was like, that's impossible.
[00:03:00] He might be loving, but he's not all powerful because he didn't have the power to stop those things. Or he might be all powerful, but he's not loving because he chose not to. It didn't make any sense to me.
[00:03:11] And then, at the age of 21, miraculously, by the grace of God, as is the case for you, if you're here today and you're a Christian, it's a miracle that you're a Christian.
[00:03:19] You're not a Christian because you just decided one day to stop living for yourself and following Jesus. You're a Christian because of the grace of God. And it was by the mere grace of God that when I was 21, I felt compelled to open a Bible, an old, dusty Bible that I hadn't opened in years that had been gifted to me by a friend.
[00:03:37] I opened the Bible, I began to read about the person of Jesus. And he was just. He was utterly compelling to me.
[00:03:44] And specifically Matthew 11:28, Jesus says, Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon me and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
[00:03:59] And so I had a friend who was a college pastor at the time, who knew all about my shenanigans and how far from God I was and how stupid I was. And it was all true. And I called him one day and I said, hey, I think I like Jesus now.
[00:04:16] And he was like, man, what? Like, let's go out. So he took me out to coffee and he began to explain the gospel to me. And here's the reason I share this with you. As he began to explain the good news to me about this reality that over 2,000 years ago, the God of the universe, the God who created all things, sent his only begotten son, God, from God, light from light, to take on human flesh, to be born of a virgin, to live a perfect, obedient life by the power of the spirit, to die on the cross in my place for my sins, and on the third day, to be resurrected, triumphantly defeating death and sin on my behalf. When he shared that good news with me, I was like, I want that so bad?
[00:04:55] What do I need to do?
[00:04:57] And then he gave me an invitation.
[00:05:00] And the reason I bring all this up to you today is because of this. Easter is an invitation for you.
[00:05:06] It is an invitation for you.
[00:05:09] I could tell you all day about the wonderful person of Jesus and all that he's done for you, but you must respond.
[00:05:18] It's not enough to just know things about who Jesus is.
[00:05:21] It's not enough to just go to church and go to Bible study and learn a lot of theology. All that's really good and wonderful.
[00:05:28] But you have to make a decision.
[00:05:30] And that decision is a decision that has eternal weight to it.
[00:05:35] It's the most important decision you'll ever make in your life.
[00:05:41] And so the Gospel is good news, the resurrection of Jesus is good news, but it necessitates a decision.
[00:05:48] Jesus Christ did not come to the earth in order for you and I to remain on the fence, to be indecisive about who he is, to be neutral about who he is. He never gave you that option.
[00:06:03] He never gave me that option.
[00:06:05] And so Easter is a reminder of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
[00:06:09] It's a message of hope that there is a better tomorrow for those who are in Christ. And it's an invitation.
[00:06:16] So that's where we get to. In John 14:6, Jesus is in the upper room with his disciples, preparing to go to the cross to die. And as is custom for Jesus, he knows he's about to go to the cross. He knows he's about to suffer excruciating, painful, physical death, as we talked about on Friday night, and spiritual death, the second death that the Book of Revelation talks about.
[00:06:37] Jesus is about to go to the cross and bear the sins of the world.
[00:06:42] To become sin, to be sin on our behalf, to become the curse on our behalf. He knows that this is about.
[00:06:50] And so you would think rationally, like, Jesus has every reason in the world to be worried, but he isn't.
[00:06:55] And so while he's in the upper room with his disciples, it's the disciples who are worried. And it's Jesus who's comforting.
[00:07:03] And as Jesus is comforting his disciples in preparation for his death, preparing them for his death, one of his disciples asks this question. And again, it's the most important question that we could ever ask, that could ever be answered. And he asked us, how do we know the way to the Father?
[00:07:23] Okay? And so if you were here on Friday night for Good Friday service, we talked about how the worst thing that could happen to you in life is not cancer, okay? The worst thing that could happen to you is not the loss of a child or infertility or depression or struggle with whatever addiction.
[00:07:46] Like, those are tragic things, lamentable things.
[00:07:51] But the worst thing that could ever happen to you, friends, or happen to me is separation from God.
[00:07:58] There's nothing worse than a human being made in the image of God, being separated from God.
[00:08:04] And so on the positive side of that, there's nothing better than in the universe than to be reconciled to God, to be brought back to God. And that's what Jesus death on the cross accomplished on our behalf. So when Jesus disciple was asking, how do we. How do we know the way to the Father? This is how Jesus answers. And he he answers in three ways that are just, in many ways, so indicative of who he is as a person.
[00:08:31] This is how Jesus reveals himself.
[00:08:36] John 14:6. He begins by saying this.
[00:08:39] He says, I am the way.
[00:08:43] I am the way. This I am statement is reflective of what happens at the very beginning of the Bible in Exodus, chapter three, when God appears to Moses in the burning bush in the wilderness. And Moses said, hey, if I go before Pharaoh and I tell Pharaoh to let my people go, for you to let the people of God go, what am I gonna say? And God says, tell him that I am, that I will be with you. God reveals himself, says that Moses said to God, if I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, what is his name? What shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I am who I am.
[00:09:26] And so when Jesus reveals himself in this way in the book of John, he's identifying himself with. With no one short of Yahweh himself, the God of the universe.
[00:09:37] Jesus says, I am this is me. I am the God of the Book of Exodus. I am the God of creation in the book of Genesis. I am, I am the way.
[00:09:51] I love that. John, inspired by the Spirit, uses the definite article. He doesn't say that. Jesus doesn't say I am a way.
[00:10:01] He doesn't say I'm one of many ways.
[00:10:04] He doesn't say, you can do Islam and you can do me at the same time. He doesn't say that you can choose moralism and you can choose me at the same time.
[00:10:13] He's not a way. Jesus says, I am the way. This is both an inclusive statement, meaning that it's available to all people.
[00:10:24] In John 6, Jesus says, anyone who comes to me, I will never cast out.
[00:10:29] It's inclusive.
[00:10:31] Anyone doesn't matter who you are. Anyone who comes to me, I will never cast out. John, chapter three. The famous verse, God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life. But it's also exclusive.
[00:10:46] It's exclusive in the sense that Jesus is saying, I am the way, and there is no other way.
[00:10:53] There is no plan B.
[00:10:56] There is no other way to God.
[00:10:58] First Timothy 2. 5 says, There is one God and there is one mediator between God and man. The man, Jesus Christ.
[00:11:09] The sacrifice of an animal couldn't make us right with God.
[00:11:13] The perfect sacrifice, the atoning sacrifice. For us to be made right with God had to be someone who is completely and totally 100% man and completely and totally 100% God.
[00:11:23] There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and man, the man, Jesus Christ. Jesus says, I am the way.
[00:11:33] There was a time in my life I'm a very obsessive person.
[00:11:37] So if you know me well, like my wife does, or maybe a few of my close friends in the church know, like, I'm a very obsessive. I get obsessed about things. There was a moment in my life. This is really random and weird. So I'm just gonna share it with you, many of you. I don't know that I was obsessed with Mount Everest.
[00:11:52] And Sidney at one point even had to come to me and be like, you're not ever considering climbing that, are you? And I was like, no, I would totally die on it. I would not make it to the top. But I was, like, obsessed about Mount Everest. And so I began to watch documentaries and read books and do all these things about Mount Everest. And I watched a documentary that was kind of highlighting the moral dilemma of Mount Everest. And here's the moral. Here's the moral dilemma. It's really summarized in a question that was posed to somebody who's been to the top, a Westerner who's been to the top many times. And the question was this. How many Westerners could survive scaling Mount Everest without the help of a Sherpa, Somebody who lives in that environment, who's accustomed to the high altitudes, et cetera. And the answer was zero percent.
[00:12:35] It would be impossible for somebody who's from the west to scale Everest on their own. It would not happen. That's the moral dilemma.
[00:12:44] You think about this.
[00:12:46] We have this tendency to take Jesus statement about being the way, the only way, and to say things like, well, why would God only make one way?
[00:12:57] Why is there Only one way.
[00:12:58] I've lived a pretty good life. I haven't killed anybody, I haven't committed adultery. I haven't done these things. Like, why would there be only one way? That's a very man centered way to think about these things.
[00:13:09] If you think about this question from a God centered perspective, this is the conclusion you would have to draw. How on earth, why on earth would God make a way?
[00:13:17] Like, why would he make a way?
[00:13:20] What have you and I ever contributed to him but our sin?
[00:13:27] Like friends, we think our good works in and of themselves impress the holy God of the universe.
[00:13:36] How on earth could he ever, why would he ever make a way?
[00:13:40] But he made a way.
[00:13:43] And it wasn't through moralism.
[00:13:45] Some of us in the room, the biggest hangup we have in coming to Jesus who is the way, is not necessarily our badness, but our perceived goodness.
[00:13:57] Like we just think our need isn't that great.
[00:14:00] We live in Texas, we vote a certain way, we live a certain way. We grew up in the church. Like it's easy to turn on the news and compare yourself to everybody else in the world who's doing crazy, wild things.
[00:14:12] But you have to compare yourself to God.
[00:14:15] You have to look at the holiness of God.
[00:14:19] And when you look at the holiness of God and then you compare yourself to the perfection and the purity and the loveliness and the beauty of who he is, you're only left, I'm only left to say what the prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah, chapter seven.
[00:14:32] Woe is me, for I'm lost, for I'm a man of unclean lips. And when you're put in that place, this is the greatest news in the world. God made a way by sending his only begotten Son into the world to do for you what you can never do for yourself.
[00:14:49] That through faith in him you would be brought back to God.
[00:14:54] Jesus is the way. So I want you to consider this morning, whose way are you on?
[00:15:01] Like, whose way are you on?
[00:15:05] If you're on your way, if you're doing things your way, if you're trying to earn right standing before God by doing things your way, moralistically trying to live a good life, it's only going to end in one of two ways. It's either going to end in utter despair when you recognize you can't do it, or it's gonna end in us being just totally arrogant and prideful and thinking you can do it until you can't. It's a dead end road.
[00:15:34] Whose way are you on? Jesus says, I Am the way.
[00:15:39] I am the way to the Father. I am the way to the greatest reward in this life and in the next.
[00:15:45] So if cancer is not the worst thing that could happen to you, and all of these other terrible consequences of the fall, if those aren't the worst things, then that means the greatest reward you and I have on this side of heaven and into the next is God himself.
[00:15:58] Forgiveness of sins is awesome.
[00:16:01] Heaven is awesome. Being declared righteous in the sight of God because of Jesus is awesome. All of these things are amazing, but they're all secondary to the greatest reward, which is God himself.
[00:16:13] Through Jesus, you get God.
[00:16:18] Jesus says, I am the way.
[00:16:22] But he doesn't stop there. He goes on to say, and I am the truth.
[00:16:29] He is the way to the Father. Faith in him is the way, and he is the truth.
[00:16:39] When Pilate, who was just kind of the head over Jesus crucifixion, when Pilate has a conversation with Jesus, it's a really interesting conversation. In John, chapter 18, Pilate said to him, so are you a king?
[00:16:57] Jesus answered, you say that I'm a king.
[00:17:01] For this purpose, I love this. For this purpose I was born.
[00:17:06] And for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth.
[00:17:12] Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.
[00:17:17] And Pilate said to him, what is truth?
[00:17:22] That. That is the question of the day.
[00:17:25] What is truth?
[00:17:26] Is truth even a thing?
[00:17:28] Is there even such a thing as truth? Is truth objective? Is it relative? Is it my truth? Is it your truth? What is truth? This is the question of the day. And Jesus statement of himself is, I am the way and I am the truth.
[00:17:44] John, chapter 1, verse 14. The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
[00:17:56] Meaning that if you want to know what God looks like, look no further than the person of Jesus. The fullness of God dwells bodily in Jesus. He's full of grace and. And he's full of truth. John 1:17. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. And In John chapter 5, verse 33, John bore witness to the truth. Jesus Christ is the truth. There's a book written called the Anxious Generation where the author says this. He says, my central claim in this book is that these two trends, overprotection in the real world and under protection in the virtual world, are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.
[00:18:42] There's a lot of Truth in that statement.
[00:18:44] Overprotection in the real world, under protection in the virtual world. This is why people are utterly anxious today.
[00:18:52] And so if Jesus says, those who are of the truth will listen to my voice. Remember when Jesus was baptized, the Father from Heaven spoke upon his baptism and said, this is my beloved Son, with whom I'm well pleased. Listen to him.
[00:19:07] Why would the Father say listen to Him? Because he is truth.
[00:19:12] Who are you listening to?
[00:19:15] Whose voice is determining for you what is true about reality?
[00:19:21] If you want to know what full reality is, look at the person of Jesus Christ. He Himself is truth personified.
[00:19:29] The Word of God is truth written.
[00:19:32] He is the Word.
[00:19:34] And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
[00:19:38] Jesus says, I am the way and I am the truth, the risen Jesus through His Word, who is Himself, the truth. Jesus is reality. Listen.
[00:19:52] And then the final thing that Jesus says about himself is he says, I am the life, he is the way to the Father, he is reality Himself, he is truth and he is, he is the life.
[00:20:08] And here's what this means and I want us to just consider this for a moment because I think, I think it's amazing to think about.
[00:20:14] Because Jesus has eternal life in himself, because He Himself is life.
[00:20:20] He can impart life to all who believe upon Him.
[00:20:26] He is the life.
[00:20:28] John chapter 1, verse 4.
[00:20:30] In him was life, and that life was the light of Men.
[00:20:36] John 5:26. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And because the Son has life in himself, he imparts life to all who believe upon him. 1 John 5:12 says, Whoever has the Son has life.
[00:20:59] Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. Christianity is about life.
[00:21:06] It's about life.
[00:21:08] Now it's requires a death to get that life.
[00:21:14] So Jesus says, anyone who doesn't carry their cross daily cannot be my disciple. Anyone who loses their life will find it. And what Jesus means when he says that is that we by the grace of God have to come to a point where we die to ourself. We die to living for ourself and trying to be our own Lord and Savior. And we turn to him and believe upon Him.
[00:21:33] And so we experience a death. And on the other side of that death is resurrection, true life living.
[00:21:42] However many years you have on this side of heaven, 80 if you're fortunate.
[00:21:47] And I almost got into a head on collision the other day coming out of my house, I was like, wow, that could have been it, like right there. In front of my house, like any of us at any. Like it's such a short time.
[00:22:03] And if you're living for yourself, it's only going to end in death. And Jesus invitation is to die to yourself, look upon him and live to know true life that's found, that's found in him.
[00:22:18] And so because Jesus is life, he imparts life to those who believe. And this life that Jesus imparts is both now and later.
[00:22:29] It's now in the Ephesians 2 sense which says that we all who are Christians were once dead in our sins and transgressions, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the Spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive.
[00:22:49] And then it says that he made us alive.
[00:22:52] It goes on to say God made us alive in Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places, which communicates this very mysterious reality that in one sense our names are already written in heaven, with Jesus at the right hand of the Father. He has already in one sense seated us with him in, in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus. So right now, if you're in Christ, you've already been made alive, like the Holy Spirit of God has already made you alive through faith in Jesus.
[00:23:24] But the fullness of this life, the experiential reality of the fullness of this life is also going to happen later.
[00:23:35] It's also gonna happen later, which is where we kind of seek to land the plane today on this question of hope. If hope is the assurance of a better tomorrow, than as Christians, here's what we ought to remind ourself. We ought to remind ourself, number one, that you've already been made alive in Christ. You've already been seated with him in the heavenly places, and you can rest in that reality.
[00:23:55] But on this side of heaven, you're going to experience pain, you're going to experience suffering, you're going to experience loss, you're going to experience failure, you're going to experience disappointment. And in the midst of those moments, we remind ourselves of who we already are in Christ. But we also look ahead at the day to come. And here's what God promises us about the day to come. Romans 8:18.
[00:24:16] For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
[00:24:27] Just think about what Paul's saying here.
[00:24:30] For I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth, are not worthy compared to the glory that is to be revealed to us. Paul acknowledges the reality of suffering.
[00:24:43] Suffering is filled with pain and it's filled with ambiguity.
[00:24:47] I remember watching my mom get baptized right before she died. I wasn't a Christian at the time. I didn't even know what was happening.
[00:24:54] But I remember sitting on the upper deck of our church and watching her.
[00:24:59] And not long after that, she passed away. And I still feel pain over that.
[00:25:06] The Bible doesn't shortchange pain.
[00:25:09] As a matter of fact, it's the most realistic religious text on pain there is.
[00:25:15] It doesn't deny it, it doesn't suppress. It doesn't pretend like it's not a reality. It embraces it fully.
[00:25:22] He says, I consider the sufferings of this present time like that's a reality.
[00:25:30] You will experience loss if you haven't.
[00:25:33] And for some of you in the room, you've experienced unimaginable loss, and it still pains you. And it might for the rest of your life, who knows?
[00:25:41] But here's the good news of what Romans 8:18 is promising you is that the glory that is to be revealed to us at the return of Jesus Christ is so weighty that the weightiness of the pain that we experience on this side of heaven pales in comparison to it.
[00:25:58] Does that make sense?
[00:26:01] Like he's tipping the scales.
[00:26:04] The glory is so much weightier than even the weightiest pain that you and I will experience on this side of heaven. And that glory is the resurrection.
[00:26:16] Because over 2000 years ago, Jesus Christ, when Jesus Christ breathed the first breath after he had died, he gave the final death blow to death.
[00:26:27] Think about his first breath.
[00:26:30] We kind of whitewash the resurrection. We come in and we say the things, but think about Jesus lying dead in the grave, breathless, cold.
[00:26:41] And then the first breath happens, and death is defeated.
[00:26:47] Sin is defeated.
[00:26:49] The victory has been won.
[00:26:51] It's so secure because Jesus took that first breath that the APostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 can say that as Christians, you and I can actually mock death to its face.
[00:27:01] O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? Death is terrible.
[00:27:07] It's absolutely horrible. It's hideous. It's monstrous.
[00:27:10] It's dehumanizing. It's not normal and it's not good. It's terrible. It's the enemy of God. It's the final enemy of God to be defeated. And because Christ took a breath on the third day, we can mock it to its face.
[00:27:24] And no matter what you experience, in life as a Christian, you can have hope on that day because of the resurrection of the dead. There's no body in the tomb today. In the Middle east, people say all the time, like, what if we find the body of Jesus? You're not gonna find the body of Jesus. Jesus is in heaven at the right hand of God. You're never gonna find it. It's a vain pursuit. Keep looking until he comes back.
[00:27:44] We're not gonna do that. We're gonna have hope in him. Today.
[00:27:48] Jesus is alive. And because Jesus has been resurrected, you will be resurrected. You're gonna get a resurrected body. The new heavens and new earth is not a disembodied, spiritual, ethereal place. Isaiah 65, Revelation 21:22 talks about a physical new heavens and new earth.
[00:28:08] You'll get a new glorified body. This cosmos will be resurrected. And it all happened because over 2,000 years ago, the son of God walked out of the grave. It's the greatest news in the world.
[00:28:18] Nothing is without hope in life.
[00:28:21] No loss is without hope. No suffering is without hope.
[00:28:26] Some of you are just. You're like. You're experiencing such darkness. I just. I can't say anything to convince you of this hope. It's gotta be the person in power of the Holy Spirit. But Jesus is alive. And that's your hope, because Jesus is alive. He's ruling and reigning over all things. You think the politicians of the world have any ultimate say over what happens? My gosh. I mean, I find myself watching the news and getting into this place of like, oh, my gosh, what's. Wow, look at that. What's gonna happen? Like, what's gonna happen if this goes down or if we don't get outta? Like, they don't have any final say in what happens.
[00:29:02] We sang that on Friday night. The kings of earth will shut their mouths in awe at the return of the King.
[00:29:09] He's alive, he's ruling, he's reigning, he's in control. He's coming again to rescue you. He said, I'm going to go and prepare a place for you. You can believe upon me and trust me. I'm going to take care of you. He's never going to let you down. He's alive and he's coming again in the resurrection. Praise God for that.
[00:29:27] Let's pray.
[00:29:31] Father, we love you. We thank you for the risen Jesus. Jesus, we praise you that you're alive. We praise you that you're coming again. We praise you that you're going to make all things new and God, that you're going to wipe away every tear from our eyes, every pain we've experienced on this side of heaven and will experience the loss we've yet to experience that we dread. God, we don't like loss. We don't like pain.
[00:29:56] And it's good. It's good to not like it because it's bad.
[00:30:00] But we praise you, God, that you work all things together for the good of those who love you, who are called according to your purpose. And you have a glory awaiting us that is so weighty and magnificent that it'll make all of the suffering that we experience on this side of heaven pale in comparison to it.
[00:30:17] Jesus, help us. Help us. Sing now as if you're alive.
[00:30:21] Christ's name. Amen.
[00:30:38] Sa.
[00:31:03] Sam.
