Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] In 35 years of ministry, there's probably one circumstance that always rises to the top of my mind in terms of one of the most challenging seasons that I walked through because of a decision that I'd made in and around our church. It impacted a lot of people, and I didn't realize how deeply it was going to impact people.
[00:00:21] Some people were completely angry, Some people were frustrated, Some people were just disappointed. But the reaction was pretty significant. And like I said, it kind of caught me off guard. But I started to have a few conversations with people and it just let me know kind of the level that people were feeling about this.
[00:00:40] Later that night, it was right before bedtime, and I made the horrible mistake of opening up my phone and looking at social media.
[00:00:49] And if you know anything about social media, if there's stuff out there on social media about you, it goes to the very top of your feed.
[00:00:58] So I see this negative post, and then of course, I'm going to start reading the comments. And I read a comment and another comment and another comment. And finally I just said, I have got to put this down. This is not good for my soul. Now I just need to go to sleep, right?
[00:01:15] All this stuff just churning in my mind.
[00:01:19] Well, I finally do get to sleep. I wake up the next morning and I just think, you know, this is probably all going to blow over.
[00:01:26] Open up my phone. Text messages from good friends of mine. Hey, Bob, just want to let you know I'm praying for you. Totally out of the blue. Hey, Bob, I just want you to know I really love you.
[00:01:39] I'm just thinking, okay, this is probably taking on a life of its own.
[00:01:45] The next day I. I go to work downtown. Sometimes I'll just sit and work on the things on a table outside the co op on a beautiful day. And as I was sitting there, I could see someone that I know as walking down the street and make eye contact with him. They actually turned their head away and walked by me as I sat there.
[00:02:05] All those experiences just caused the blood to rush out of me.
[00:02:11] It just felt like such shame. It's like I wanted to hide. I was just like, is everybody thinking negatively about me?
[00:02:18] So much shame, wanting to hide. There's a term when this happens to you. It's called getting canceled. Now, maybe it wasn't on the scale that some people get canceled, but this is what it means to be canceled. It means that people withdraw from you socially, professionally. They marginalize you publicly because there's something that you've done with or something that you've said that they find objectionable.
[00:02:46] I've got to tell you, those feelings that I felt touched my deepest fears.
[00:02:53] Could I be canceled in this life?
[00:02:57] Could I be marginalized by people that I love and care about?
[00:03:02] Rejected?
[00:03:04] Could I find myself in a place where I'm unloved, maybe even condemned?
[00:03:11] If there was a bright spot in this moment, it was the time where I knew what I needed to do. I've got to do everything I can to drown out the voices of everybody else in this world. And I've got to lock in on the voice of Jesus. What is it that Jesus would want to say to me in this moment? I needed him, his voice, to be the loudest to speak to my deepest fears.
[00:03:37] Here's why I share this with you. Friends, what we are celebrating this weekend, Easter weekend, the life, the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus.
[00:03:51] It has the answer to those deepest fears.
[00:03:55] There is good news and hope in the resurrection.
[00:03:59] What I want you to hear is that the voice of Jesus would say to you that he didn't come to cancel people. Jesus came to cancel sin.
[00:04:10] Jesus didn't come to cancel people. Jesus came to cancel sin. Here's how I love how the Apostle Paul says it in the book of Colossians. He says this, God made you alive with Christ.
[00:04:23] He what?
[00:04:25] He forgave, what did he forgive?
[00:04:31] How many? Not a couple. All of them having canceled.
[00:04:38] Canceled. This is what Jesus came to cancel. Not people. He came to cancel the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us. He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.
[00:04:56] Paul is telling us Jesus came to cancel.
[00:05:00] He didn't came, but he didn't come to cancel people. He came to cancel sin.
[00:05:06] And Jesus himself was canceled for us.
[00:05:11] What we're gonna do, friends, is we're gonna look today at just one New Testament sentence, one testament from the Apostle Paul, where he looks back on the truth and the reality of the resurrection. And he gives us three reasons that that gives us hope in this world. The hope that God can redeem and buy back everything that is broken in this world and broken in our lives.
[00:05:37] Here's what Paul says.
[00:05:39] Philippians, chapter three. Starting in verse 10, he says, I want to know Christ, yes, To know the power of the resurrection.
[00:05:52] You see, Paul's making a connection here.
[00:05:55] The connection that he's making is if we want to experience the power of the resurrection, we need to know Christ.
[00:06:05] We need to know Christ.
[00:06:07] And if you know things about the Bible, what you know is that What Paul is talking about here. See, he's not talking about knowledge.
[00:06:15] Oftentimes when we think about knowing something, we think intellectual. When Paul is talking about knowing, he is speaking specifically relational, not intellectual, relational. He's talking about an experience of the person of Jesus. The person and the presence of Jesus.
[00:06:32] And that, and that alone, Paul would say, is what's going to allow us to experience the power of the resurrection.
[00:06:42] And those first disciples, they came to know Jesus. They came to know his heart. They came to know what was important to him. I want us also to look at one verse, a post resurrection account given to us by John.
[00:06:57] 1 verse John 20.
[00:07:00] Starting in verse 19, it says this, it says on the evening of the first day of the week.
[00:07:07] John's talking about Sunday, he's talking about Sunday evening. The resurrection was Sunday morning. This is Sunday evening when the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders.
[00:07:24] I want to pause right there for a moment.
[00:07:27] Let's just think about this for a second.
[00:07:30] The church of Jesus, the movement of Jesus that has moved all the way around the globe is continuing to move around the globe. Moving across our valley, around the world. Started with 11 men locked in a room, frightened, frightened for their life, hiding.
[00:07:53] Here's what happened. When those Roman soldiers came and, and took Jesus, what did the disciples do? They took off.
[00:08:02] Every one of them ran because they were afraid.
[00:08:08] Here's what's interesting. We don't know exactly what happened with all of the disciples in those hours after they ran. There's not a record of those things.
[00:08:17] We don't know what they might have been feeling.
[00:08:21] Maybe they felt guilty for running away from Jesus in his time of need.
[00:08:27] Maybe there was incredible confusion, like this isn't how we thought this was going to end. Maybe there were doubts, like, I wonder if Jesus really was who he claimed to be. We don't know what they were thinking because none of that is recorded.
[00:08:41] But we do know one thing.
[00:08:44] They came back.
[00:08:48] Oh, they ran, but they came back slowly.
[00:08:58] One by one, they came out of hiding, out of some of the dark shadows of Jerusalem. They all came together and they gathered in that upper room.
[00:09:10] From all sections of the city, they appeared.
[00:09:14] Why?
[00:09:16] What were they hoping for?
[00:09:18] I kind of wonder if there's maybe just some hope in numbers. Like we're all hurting, we're all scared, you know, when you're in those places, you don't want to be alone. You want to be with other people that might be experiencing the same thing. I don't know why they Came back. But I do know they came back, but they were locked in a door with fear.
[00:09:45] Ever been there?
[00:09:48] Ever been there? Have you?
[00:09:50] As you've tried to walk with Jesus, you can have these great, powerful moments of great commitment, great resolve. Jesus, I am all in for you.
[00:10:01] But then in a moment of fear and panic, insecurity, doubt, we run away.
[00:10:12] But here's what we know.
[00:10:15] They came back.
[00:10:20] But as they sit in the room, the weight of the room feels the reality that they have betrayed their master.
[00:10:31] There's guilt, there's shame, there's regret.
[00:10:38] They do hear rumors that there's been a resurrection.
[00:10:44] Would they want to see Jesus right now?
[00:10:48] What would Jesus say to them in this moment?
[00:10:53] What would he say to their fear?
[00:10:57] What would he say to frailty?
[00:11:01] What would he say to their failures?
[00:11:06] We don't have to wonder, because this is how the verse continues.
[00:11:11] It says, jesus came and stood among them and said, peace, peace be with you.
[00:11:24] That's what the resurrection came to do, to bring peace. Jesus didn't come to cancel people.
[00:11:32] Jesus came to cancel sin, to redeem, to give hope to people that were scared and frail and broken. And he came to redeem us too.
[00:11:46] Why didn't he get angry?
[00:11:48] They had failed.
[00:11:52] Why didn't he dress them down in their failure?
[00:11:57] Why?
[00:11:59] Because they came back.
[00:12:03] Yeah, I'll say it again. They ran, but they came back.
[00:12:08] There's a word that we use in the Bible about running away and coming back. It's a word called repentance.
[00:12:15] It means you know that you're running away. You turn around and you come back to him.
[00:12:20] Nothing invites the presence of Jesus into a person's life more than a repentant heart.
[00:12:27] As long as we quit running, quit walking away, come back to him. Jesus will be right there. A tomb cannot hold him in. When there are repentant hearts that he wants to meet, a locked door can't keep him out. When there are repentant hearts that he wants to meet, their sin collided with the Savior and the Savior won. Jesus didn't come to cancel people.
[00:12:56] Jesus came to cancel sin.
[00:13:01] And friends, that's the best news.
[00:13:03] Because it was true for them and it was true for us all. Jesus says, come back.
[00:13:12] Stop walking away.
[00:13:13] Come back to me.
[00:13:17] Paul gives us a second reason that we can have hope in the resurrection, he says, and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.
[00:13:31] This is what I love about the Bible, is that it's just gut level, honest. Paul can say in one breath the power of the resurrection. Is experienced in knowing Jesus.
[00:13:42] But he's also saying that participation in the suffering of this life, in this world is also what it means to know and to follow Jesus.
[00:13:53] Friends, this life is gonna be painful. There'll be suffering and pain and loss with or without Jesus. And Paul is saying, I wanna do it with Jesus. I want to participate with. With him in the sufferings of this world.
[00:14:08] And this is so important for us to understand Jesus. Even though he was the Son of God, when he came to this world world, he did not separate himself from the pain and the suffering of this world. Jesus, friends, he knew what it was like to be canceled. He was canceled over and over again.
[00:14:28] His life and his message were. Was constantly being rejected and misunderstood. Canceled. Just read the New Testament. Canceled. Over and over again.
[00:14:40] He was rejected by his own family.
[00:14:44] The ones that you think you can count on thought he was crazy.
[00:14:48] Canceled by his own family.
[00:14:52] Betrayed by one of his closest friends.
[00:14:57] Canceled.
[00:14:58] Denied by another one of his closest friends.
[00:15:02] Canceled.
[00:15:04] And we've already said it. He was abandoned by everyone that he had given his life to help.
[00:15:11] The disciples, every one of them abandoned him in his greatest moment of need. Cancelled.
[00:15:18] But friends, none of that even comes close to the reality that Jesus was unfairly tried.
[00:15:26] He was innocently sentenced to death.
[00:15:29] And he walked through the physical pain and the humiliation, the public humiliation of crucifixion. Jesus was canceled.
[00:15:41] But that wasn't even the pinnacle.
[00:15:44] The pinnacle of Jesus being canceled was when he stood on that cross, hung on that cross and cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
[00:15:55] That moment when the Father turned away from his son. The Father canceled his own son?
[00:16:03] Why?
[00:16:04] Because he didn't want to cancel us.
[00:16:09] Jesus didn't come to cancel people. He only came to cancel sin.
[00:16:16] And the resurrection. Friends, it's our hope.
[00:16:20] It's our hope that through the pain and suffering of this life, in this world, that we can grab ahold of the hand of the one who walked through anything and everything that this world can throw at you in terms of being canceled. And he said, grab my hand. I will walk you through it.
[00:16:36] I'm gonna say this again so that it's really clear. The resurrection does not promise, but that all of your circumstances in this life are gonna go smoothly.
[00:16:46] But it does give us the hope that we can be redeemed in the midst of it, that we can become with Jesus the kind of people who can handle whatever comes our way.
[00:16:59] Jesus redeems our suffering.
[00:17:03] Jesus sustains us in the midst of our Suffering, that's what Paul is telling us is the hope of the resurrection, the power of the resurrection.
[00:17:14] And then lastly, Paul says this and attaining to the resurrection from the dead, it's not just a hope. Through the suffering of this life, Paul is giving us a hope for all of eternity. Jesus will walk with us in this life, but Jesus is going to walk with us for all of eternity. There is a future hope in the resurrection.
[00:17:41] But here's what Paul wants us to understand. We have to understand the nature of the resurrection of Jesus.
[00:17:47] Because what Jesus experienced in terms of a resurrection is going to be friends, what we are going to experience in terms of a resurrection one day when Jesus comes back.
[00:18:00] Here's how the apostle Paul said it in 1st Corinthians 15.
[00:18:05] He says, But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.
[00:18:09] The first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
[00:18:14] Now, we don't use that term first fruits very often. It is an Old Testament agricultural image that means the very first portion of a harvest.
[00:18:26] It's just a representative piece of a greater harvest that is going to come in the future.
[00:18:33] Paul is saying what we see in Jesus, his resurrection, is just a picture, a taste of what all will experience that are in Christ one day.
[00:18:43] And so that's why, friends, it is important for us to understand what is the nature of that resurrection that Jesus experienced, that resurrection of Jesus. We need to understand that he appeared to the people that he appeared to in a flesh and bone body.
[00:19:01] It was a real body, not some kind of spirit body.
[00:19:08] So many times I think when we think about heaven and the resurrection, we think about spirits and angels and clouds and harps.
[00:19:17] If that's your picture of eternity, you've got to get that out of your mind.
[00:19:21] Jesus was the first fruit. What we will taste will be what Jesus tasted. We will have a flesh and bone resurrection one day. A real body living in a real physical world.
[00:19:34] And that's why the resurrection accounts are so important, because it tells us what Jesus was like when he was resurrected. His body was real. It was real enough to walk and to talk with all of those that he appeared to.
[00:19:49] It was real enough to be recognized. People were able to tell, this is Jesus, I know him.
[00:19:56] He was able to be recognized.
[00:19:59] It was real enough to eat food.
[00:20:03] So excited to eat food in heaven.
[00:20:07] Jesus had a breakfast post resurrection and real enough to say to Thomas, touch my hands, Thomas, feel my scars. Put your hand in my side.
[00:20:21] Why was he able to do that? Because it was a real body, a real resurrection.
[00:20:28] But the scripture tells Us also that at the same time that real body of Jesus was in some ways really different.
[00:20:36] It wasn't the same exactly. It was better.
[00:20:39] Is what the scripture calls glorified. A heavenly body, an eternal body, physical, but built for eternity.
[00:20:49] I mean, when we think about what we celebrate at Christmas, God became man. He took on flesh.
[00:20:58] There is nowhere in the scriptures that ever says that Jesus gives up his flesh. Do you ever think about what Jesus is doing right now and how he appears? If he were to appear, it would be in flesh and blood.
[00:21:14] He never gives up himself. The God man that came at Christmas is the same God man that ascended into heaven. And it is the same God man that is going to come back one day as the first fruits to bring all of us into that same place of resurrection, redemption.
[00:21:33] That's what we will experience.
[00:21:35] Here's what the scripture says a little bit later in Philippians. It says, jesus will transform our lowly bodies.
[00:21:43] Our bodies are broken and decaying and subject to sin. We will transform our lowly bodies so that they may be like his glorious body.
[00:21:57] It's the hope of the resurrection, that one day there will be redemption, restoration to this world the way God intended it to be.
[00:22:10] That means that one day, friends, if you are in Christ, when you see Jesus, you will have a body and an experience where there's no aging, no decay, no sickness.
[00:22:24] And I know the question that you're asking, is Bob going to have hair in heaven?
[00:22:30] I don't know. I kind of hope not. I don't like dealing with hair very much.
[00:22:37] But I do know this.
[00:22:39] It'll be a body that is no longer subject to death, no longer subject to suffering, pain, brokenness, loss that we experience in this life.
[00:22:55] That's the hope.
[00:22:56] That's the hope of the resurrection.
[00:22:59] That's the hope of being redeemed.
[00:23:03] Jesus didn't come to cancel people.
[00:23:08] Jesus came to cancel sin, to redeem us and to give us a hope.
[00:23:14] But I've got to take us back to where Paul started.
[00:23:19] All starts, do I know Christ?
[00:23:22] I want to know Christ is what Paul said.
[00:23:26] Do we know Christ? I want to share with you what is probably one of the most famous verses in the Bible. People hold signs up at football games with this verse it, John 3:16. But we're not going to stop there.
[00:23:41] It starts this way.
[00:23:43] It says, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, shall not be canceled, but have eternal life, life with him.
[00:24:01] Whoever believes in Him Again, sometimes in our culture, when we say things like know and believe, we just think about our mind.
[00:24:11] Belief is an action term in the Bible. It means I put my faith, I put my trust, I put my life in the hands of Jesus. The way we say it around here is we go all in when we realize the magnitude of who Jesus is and how worthy he is of all of our life. We take all of our chips and we push them in the middle of the table. We bow our knee to him as our king and our Lord, so that we can know, know him and trust him.
[00:24:43] That verse doesn't stop there.
[00:24:45] It also says what God didn't do.
[00:24:49] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.
[00:24:57] That's just a beautiful way. I believe that John is saying, jesus didn't come to cancel people.
[00:25:04] Jesus came to cancel sin.
[00:25:08] And then he says, whoever.
[00:25:10] Whoever. I love that word, whoever, because it's so inclusive.
[00:25:17] It's not like it's a small group of people. It's whoever.
[00:25:20] Whoever come to him. Whoever believes in him.
[00:25:26] Whoever believes in him is not condemned. But whoever does not believe stands condemned. Oh, because they have not believed. In the name of God's one and only Son, believe in him.
[00:25:43] It's the hope of the resurrection.
[00:25:47] If we're walking away, we can always come back. Ask the first disciples.
[00:25:53] Just come back.
[00:25:56] Put your faith and your trust in him.
[00:26:01] Because Jesus did not come to cancel people.
[00:26:06] Jesus came to cancel sin and to redeem us, to redeem our life, to redeem our suffering and our brokenness, and even to redeem our bodies for all of eternity. Jesus came to redeem us.
[00:26:23] Let's pray.
[00:26:29] Jesus, we're so grateful for what you've done for us.
[00:26:38] Jesus, thank you that you walked through the brokenness of this world and you were willing to be canceled on our behalf.
[00:26:47] That you were willing to take the wrath of the Father on yourself so that we wouldn't need to be canceled. Jesus, thank you for doing that for us.
[00:27:01] Jesus, thank you that you're a God who redeems you. Buy back those that come to you.
[00:27:10] We are so grateful.
[00:27:12] Jesus, we want to thank you. We want to sing about how grateful we are for you. And it's in your powerful and resurrected name that we pray. And all God's people said, amen.
