Death is the next phase in eternal judgment. When Jesus died, he took the sting of death into himself so that when you and I go into death, there's no more judgment, no more sting left for us. It's not really even death. It's transition into a new life. Welcome back to the Summit Life podcast with J.D.
Greer. As always, I'm Molly Bedovich. I don't think you realize how much we love hearing from you. Recently, we received an encouraging letter about what God is doing in the lives of some incarcerated men through Summit Life programming. Here's a piece of that letter.
I can write pages upon pages of God's enduring and preserving grace in my life since that day, but for the purpose of this letter, I want to highlight two of them. The body of believers that I'm a part of in my cell block, and the Summit Life broadcasts that have become a mainstay in our spiritual development. The Lord was kind enough to put me in a room where a core group of Christ followers meet daily to read and discuss the word. And over time, I've become a sort of facilitator for the group. Every message JD preaches is drenched in gospel truth and is clearly delivered with the intent of glorifying Jesus and helping broken, sinful people like myself to grasp his heart of gentleness and lowliness in unwavering love.
The most important gift you receive this season may not be wrapped at all. When you support Summit Life in December, your generosity sends a Bible to someone in prison, someone searching for hope. Your gift puts scripture where it's needed most. Visit jdquer.com. Each gift equals one Bible.
We're nearing the end of our teaching series through the Gospel of Luke, and today Pastor JD walks us down the path to Jesus' tomb. Let's join him right now in the book of Luke. Luke twenty four. On the first day of the week, very early in the morning. They came to the tomb bringing the spices they had prepared.
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb. They went in, but did not find the body of. The Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men stood by them in dazzling clothes.
So the women were terrified. And they bowed down to the ground. Why are you looking for the living among the dead? asked the men. He is not here, but he is risen.
Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee saying, it is necessary that the Son of Man be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and then rise in the third day? And they were like, oh yeah. Oh yeah, he said that. Verse 9: Returning from the tomb, they reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them were all telling the apostles these things.
But these words seemed like nonsense to them and they did not believe the women. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb when he stooped to look in. He saw only the linen claws, so he went away amazed at what... had happened some at church and guest jesus is risen amen Hey, ma'am. The heart of Christianity is not a new approach to morality.
The heart of Christianity is not new insights into spirituality or the nature of the universe. The heart of Christianity is a dead man who walked out of a grave and changed everything. And I know, I know some of you have a hard time believing that. It seems to you maybe like it's wishful fairy tales that people have invented who cannot cope with the harsh realities of life. And that's...
That's what today is all about. Y'all, what I can't help but notice as I read this passage is the sense of wonder. That pervades it. Did you notice those kind of indications of wonder and unbelief all through those verses? Verse 4, for example, says that they were perplexed about this.
Verse 11, their words seemed like nonsense to them, and they just did not believe it. It was almost like it was too good to be true. As in, imagine you were going through your grandfather's assets and you learned that he had bought a few hundred dollars worth of Apple stock in the early 1980s, but he forgot to mention it to anybody. And now it's worth like $500 million. Just too good to be true, right?
That's how they felt, just a million times more intense. And so what they heard seemed like nonsense to them. You know, sometimes we read these ancient texts and we just assume that people back then were a lot more gullible. They didn't have all the sophistication that we have in knowing about medicine and knowing about death and those things. And so they were probably more likely to believe in a resurrection because everybody knew somebody that had been resurrected from the dead and all, right?
But that's just not true. They knew how death worked. Most of them had seen more dead bodies up close by the age of 12 than most of us will see in a lifetime. And when somebody was dead, I mean, dead like I saw the man's heart punctured by a spear and blood gushed out of it like it came out of a fountain kind of dead. They knew that you didn't come back from that.
Plus, they knew that a Roman garrison had been established to guard the tomb.
So the report that the body was missing seemed like nonsense to them. The point is, these women who came to the tomb that morning were not looking for a resurrection. They were not starry-eyed, gullible, miracle-seeking groupies who showed up with lawn chairs and paraphernalia for Jesus to sign or hankies to wipe on his body so that they could go do miracles. In fact, verse 1 tells you what they showed up with. Showed up with spices.
And when Luke says spices, by the way, don't think garlic, oregano, or Lowry seasoning, salt, the greatest of all the spices. That's not what we're talking about. These were spices that were used to preserve dead bodies. And there would have been a lot of them, by the way, and they would have been very heavy. Again, the point is, they didn't come to the tomb that morning expecting to meet a living, breathing Jesus.
They came expecting to find a cadaver. They weren't looking for a miracle, they were looking for closure. The story was over. It was time to anoint the body and to move on. Check out Peter's response in verse 12, in fact.
Luke says that when Peter got to the tomb and he saw it was empty, he walked away. Dazed, confused, not really sure what it could all mean. It wasn't like, I knew it. I figured something like this would happen. He was David.
He was confused. In John's gospel, John, another one of the apostles, tells us that he also ran with Peter. In fact, let me just read you what John says in John 20, verse 4: the two. That is Peter and John. We're running together, but the other disciple, that's John referring to himself, outran Peter and got to the tomb first, by the way.
Why did John point that out? That he outran Peter. What relevance does it have to the story? None. Just that whenever you're a guy telling a story and It involves you besting another guy in a feat of strength.
You always include that detail, okay, even if it's got not germane to the plot at all, but. He outran him. Verse 5. Stooping down, though, John saw the linen claws lying there, but he did not go in. He couldn't even bring himself to go in.
It was like he glimpsed something too good to be true.
Something so wonderful that it took his breath away.
Something he couldn't let his heart entertain for fear. That his hopes would be crushed again.
So he stood outside the tomb and he refused to go in for fear, for fear of being disappointed. Do you see the theme here? Nobody's expecting a resurrection. Everybody doubts it. It seems like nonsense.
It's just too wonderful to be true. And by the way, I have to point out the irony of God choosing women to be the first ones to testify to these things. You say irony, how?
Well, in the first century, the testimony of a woman was not considered valid evidence in court. Josephus, for example, the Jewish historian, tells us that the witness of multiple women, even multiple women, would not be acceptable in court because of, quote, his words, not mine, because of their levity and hysteria. Sure enough, by the way, Celsus, who was an early Roman critic of Christianity, he mocked the gospel accounts of the resurrection because they depended so much on the testimony of women. He said, he said, these women were clearly, again, his words, not mine. They were clearly hysterical females deluded by sorcery.
And so none of their testimony should be considered adequate.
Now, obviously, today we know that that's not at all a fair assessment of women. It's quite misogynistic and bigoted. But here's the question. In that day, if Luke was making up stories to bolster a fairy tale, why would you choose women as your first witnesses if you were making the things up? If you were trying to invent evidence, you wouldn't choose those whose testimonies were considered to be the most unreliable at that time.
No, the gospel writers reported women as the first witnesses because that's what happened. And it was God's way of embedding into the story a clue for you and I 2,000 years later that these are not made-up stories. But the main thing I'm trying to get you to see is that for everybody who heard these things, this was just not something they expected. They weren't expecting or looking for a miracle. And when they found evidence of it, it still seemed like nonsense to them.
It just seemed too good to be true.
So the question is, what was it about the resurrection? That made it too good to be true, or made it seem too good to be true. I'll give you four things. I think they're pretty straightforward. Number one.
Number one: if the resurrection is true, it means that Jesus has redeemed us from our sins. You see, the Apostle Paul explains in Romans 4 that Jesus' resurrection was the verification. That God had accepted Jesus' sacrifice as the payment for our sins. Think of it like a receipt. When you are shopping at Walmart and you pay for your items.
They give you a little receipt and tell you to hold on to it so that when the kind elderly gentleman stops you at the door, you can show him that receipt and say, This is the proof that my items have been paid for. The resurrection, Paul explains, is the proof, the validation, the receipt that God has accepted Jesus' death as the payment for our sins. It means the redemption work. Look down at verse 21 in chapter 24. Two of the disciples later that afternoon are walking along this dusty road to Emmaus when they are suddenly joined by a stranger who starts to walk with them.
A stranger, by the way, who turns out to be Jesus incognito, but they don't know that yet. And the stranger asks them why they're so depressed. And so they explain to the stranger that they were just devastated by Jesus' death. Here's what they say: You see, we were hoping, we were hoping that Jesus was the one who was about to redeem Israel. See, the Old Testament prophets had promised.
that God would send a redeemer, a deliverer, and they had always assumed that that would be a political redeemer, a warrior king who would end injustice and bring peace on earth and end world hunger. And for a while, it certainly looked like Jesus could do all of that, right? With the miracles and the feeding of the 5,000 and the walking on water and whatnot. But then when he died, well, they just naturally assumed that he failed. The Redeemer of the world wouldn't be killed by the evil world powers.
The Redeemer of the world was supposed to overcome, not suck him. The resurrection, however, showed them that Jesus was attempting a different kind of redemption, and he was successful. You see, in addition to prophesying that a warrior king would come who would bring peace on earth, the Old Testament prophets also taught that our sin had incurred a penalty. Go all the way back to Genesis 3, the first sin, the Garden of Eden. God had said that the soul that sins will die.
Die. Every single one of us have repeated the pattern of the sin in Genesis 3.
Now, bears took the form of eating forbidden fruit off of a forbidden tree, and we haven't done that. But every single one of us has repeated the same thought pattern that they went through, which is basically, I am wiser than God. I know better than him how I should lead my life. I know what's good and what's not. I should play the role of God in my life.
God, you shouldn't be in charge because I know better what's best for me than you do.
So I'm going to be in charge of my life. A lot of times we think of sin as these grossly immoral acts, and it certainly gets there, but sin at its core is simply rebellion. Cosmic treason. It's mutiny. And all of that brought a curse of death on every single one of us.
The cross of Jesus. Was Jesus redeeming us from that curse? That's why Isaiah, the prophet, had said, Isaiah 53, that God would lay on Jesus, the Messiah, the iniquity of us all, and that the price for our peace with God was going to be placed on his head. I used to explain that to my kids like this. I'm like, say that this book right here represents your sin.
This book represents your sin, and this is you. This is your sin. This is God up here. It doesn't matter how much you try to get close to God, how many times you pray, how often you go to church, how much you give in the offering, how many commandments you keep. Because no matter how close you try to get there, that sin is always an obstacle between you and God.
Now, some of you are like, well, that works for my kids, but J.D. You don't know my sin, right?
So now this is yours. Right, let's just start flipping through this book and imagining what's on the pages. And this is the story of that relationship you wish you'd never gotten into. Here's the story of that series of mistakes. And here's that broken, that, that, that broken promise and that broken trust.
And all this stuff between you and God, and you can try and try to get close to God. But the point is, no matter how close you get, how hard you work, there's always this obstacle. What Isaiah 53 is telling you is that God took our sin, our iniquity. And he laid it on Jesus. Right, and when Jesus died, he put it away forever so that there's nothing that remains any longer between you and God.
That's what the death of Christ was. It was redemption. It was Christ taking the curse in our place so that the curse was gone because it had actually been laid on Jesus. That's why the Apostle Paul says in Corinthians that when Jesus died, he took the sting out of death. The sting of death is not the pain of death, it's the curse in death.
Death is the next phase in eternal judgment. When Jesus died, he took the sting of death into himself so that when you and I go into death, there's no more judgment, no more sting left for us. It's not really even death. It's transition into a new life. Do you know, by the way, that a honey bee cannot sting you twice?
That's because when a honey bee pushes its stinger out, It ruptures the bee's digestive tract, which leads to a quick and certain death. Death put its stinger into Jesus. And when it did, the internal workings of death itself were disrupted, and death itself died. You see, at some point, the honeybee of death is going to come for each one of us. But if Jesus has taken that stinger already, then your death is not going to have any curse in it.
There's no sting. In fact, it's not really going to be even going to be a death at all. It's a transition to new life. Number two, if the resurrection is true. It means that the power for new life is here.
You see, our sin, Scripture tells us, not only put a curse over us. It had released a curse into us. Death is not just something that you're going to encounter one day. Death is at work in you right now, Jesus said. And that shows up in the form of addictions.
Hate and selfishness in our hearts. Codependent relationships, dysfunctional relationships, anger and idolatry, and ruined relationships. Many of you, if you were honest. You got that brokenness in you this morning. And you've tried to clean it up and you tried to change and you tried to do better, but Be ran as none of it's really worked.
There's still a darkness in you that you just cannot overcome. Jesus' resurrection means that there is a power in the world that can overcome that in you. It is the power of resurrection from the grave. The way Paul says it's like this: 2 Corinthians 5:17, if any man is in Christ, He's a new creation. Not a reformed creation or a cleaned up creation, but a new creation.
All things are passed away. Behold, all things have become new. By the way, that word behold in the Bible is always the indication that a miracle is about to happen. You never say behold, like, you know, behold, look, I did the dishes. Behold, it means God is just doing something.
So when Paul gets to the end of that verse, he's like, hey, all things have passed away. Behold. All things are becoming new. The newness in your life is not you resolving to be better. It's not you becoming more religious, being a better person.
The newness is the release of his resurrection power in you. That means this morning that Jesus is not only able to forgive every sin because he died for all of them on the cross, he can release you from the power of every sin because he resurrected from the dead. And he can reverse and restore whatever sin has ruined.
So let me tell you about one of the women that came to the tomb that morning. Her name was Mary Magdalene. You might have seen her referred to there in that story. Mary. When she first meets Jesus, the Gospel of Mark tells us she had seven demons, not one.
Not to seven demons. That is Mark's way of saying that she is hopelessly consumed by the demonic. I mean, think for a moment about a life with seven demons. I mean, it would have been a disaster. She would have looked like she was mentally ill.
Scripture says she'd been a prostitute. She had destroyed every relationship in her life. Her parents didn't even want to talk to her or about her. Everybody thought of her as beyond redemption. She'd ruined every relationship and alienated everybody she'd ever been close to.
I mean, just imagine her life before Jesus, hopeless, destitute. Who hires somebody with seven demons? She's outcast. She's forgotten. She's given up on.
But in Luke 8, she falls at Jesus' feet and she finds. Healing. She's the first one to go back to the tomb alone. And evidently there was a small garden area near the tomb and And she was in it weeping. It was there that Jesus appeared to her, the first person he appeared to directly after the resurrection.
Mary. And through her tears and in her rage, she doesn't recognize him. Again, she's not really expecting a miracle. Through her tears and her rage, she thinks he's the gardener, so she starts yelling at him: hey, where'd you take his body? Tell me where you took his body.
And John says he speaks her name, calls her name Mary. And immediately she recognizes him. What an incredible moment. The first person that Jesus appears to after being resurrected is a former prostitute with seven demons, and he calls her by name. I'm pointing that out because he's doing the same thing with some of you this morning.
Don't miss the significance, by the way, of where they are either. Right, where are they? She came to a grave looking for a dead man instead The living man found her in a garden. That grave to garden is a metaphor for her life. She had been in a grave of seven demons, and now she's in a garden of new life in Christ.
And that's the first person Jesus appears to, and it's because it's teaching something to you and to me. I don't care what's going on in your life, I don't care what kind of sin, what kind of demonic activity, even if that's what it is. I'm telling you that there is more forgiveness in him than there is sin in you. There is more healing in him than there is sickness in you. Right, if you listen right now, he's calling your name.
It's not gonna be audible. I mean, you're not going to hear voices or anything like that. It's this sweet draw in your heart. Just beckoning you to come right now. Listen, maybe like Mary, you are literally struggling against spiritual forces.
Maybe it's against addictions or sinful habits you can't break, relationships that you've ruined. Mary says to you this morning, I know I was there. I had seven demons in me. But the gospel truth is that there is more grace in him. and more power in him than there is death in you.
There is no struggle. There is no addiction, no brokenness that his power cannot heal. He can turn your graves into gardens. That power is available to you today if you will receive it. Number three.
Number three, the resurrection means... That if it's true, one day, one day, every sad thing in our lives is going to come untrue. The Apostle Paul calls Jesus' resurrection the first fruits. of the new creation. A taste of what is to come.
You see, back in those days, Farmers weren't always sure how a crop was going to turn out. They lacked all the tools that we have. They couldn't take the seed and look at it under a microscope and see if it was good seed. And they didn't know all the things about crop rotation and soil, so they couldn't analyze the soil. And they didn't have all the almanacs and all the weather predicting patterns.
And so they just weren't sure.
So, when those very first fruits appeared, they gave an indication of what the rest of the crop was going to be like. Right now, and it's the prettiest time in North Carolina. For those of you that are new to our state, it's because those first flowers on the dogwood tree are here. Right now, by the way, it's bad news. It only lasts for a few days because there is a sea of yellow that is coming that is going to cover everything, and it's awful.
But for about three or four days, maybe a week, it's just like heaven on earth, temperature and beauty and all that stuff. Those dogwood flowers show you that a sea of green The new creation of spring is on its way. The resurrection is the dogwood flower of the new creation. It is an indication of what is to come. Listen, y'all, there's nothing more terrifying.
Nothing that feels more final to us than death, right? I know that some of you have dealt with Death this year. You're sitting here broken with sadness over somebody that That you've lost. This year, maybe it was expected. Maybe it was a mom or a dad or a grandparent or maybe it Maybe it wasn't expected.
Maybe it was sudden, tragic. The death of a spouse or a brother or a sister or even a child. Maybe you're afraid of your own death. Right? Because by the way, apart from Christ, you really should be.
Because it's not a question of if, it's just when, it's just a matter of time. We'll return to our teaching in just a moment. You know, this time of year is really critical for ministries like Summit Life as we close the books on another year. And I think for a lot of people, it's kind of surprising because they don't really know what all is involved in funding a ministry like this. Podcasting is just one of those things that unless you're involved in the industry, you probably don't realize what goes into producing these programs, as well as our daily radio show and other free resources we make available.
When you give to Summit Life, you're making sure that cost doesn't get in the way for anyone who wants to learn and grow through these messages.
So we would love it if you joined us today in that mission. Visit us online at jdgreer.com so we can enter the new year with boldness and confidence and reach more people with the gospel.
Now let's get back to the final moments of today's message on summit life. Here's Pastor JD. You know, I did that 23andMe thing where you, it'll give you, one of the things it gives you is it analyzes your genetic makeup and it gives you all these percentages based on your genetic makeup.
So for example, I'm only 30% likely to lose my hair as I age. I'm 40% likely to have mid-digit hair, which is the hair between your knuckles, which I understand is a pretty rare trait. Do recessive genes is what it requires, and I've got it. It told me that I was 73% likely, 73% likely to not have a fear of public speaking, which I thought was affirming, right? Other things that I found encouraging in this report, I have, it said, the genetic makeup of an elite power athlete.
Just tell me what it says. Discouraging was that it said I had 40% more Neanderthal DNA than the average human. I don't even know what that means, but I feel like it can't be good. Of all the different things, and there's like dozens and dozens of others kind of predictions like that. The one prediction that's not in there, what it doesn't give you is the percentage of your probability of death.
Because that's been holding steady For the last however long humanity's been here at 100%. It's coming for all of us. Right, the question is not if, it's when, and that death feels devastating to you. It feels permanent. Feels like you're losing stuff that you'll never get back.
I don't want to be depressing this morning, but.
Some of you get a taste of that even as you age, right? You feel like you're losing stuff, you're never going to get back. I'll go ahead and tell you, okay, things in my body are not improving. I do not get better looking and stronger and healthier every year. Things are getting worse.
And that's depressing. I feel it at the gym. Every year I've put in the same amount of effort and the results I'm getting back are smaller and smaller. Same effort, less results. I don't even do that thing I used to do when I was younger where you count your body fat content because I'm just like, what's the point?
It's depressing. Your body is aging. And you can't reverse that and you're going to die. But if the resurrection is true, It shows us that if we are in Christ, none of that is ultimately true. There's this great reversal ahead.
And a day is coming when God is going to remove the curse of death entirely from our lives. He's going to undo every injustice. He's going to heal every hurt. On that day, he says, he's going to wipe away every tear. He's going to make all things new.
To use the words of J.R. Artolkian, the writer of the Lord of the Rings, on that day, he's going to make every sad thing come untrue. One of my favorite sections of scripture are those end chapters of Isaiah where God describes for Israel what that day is going to be like. I love, love these passages of scripture. Listen to this: the wolf on that day, the wolf is going to lie down with the lamb, the cow will feed with the bear, the infant will play near the cobra's den.
The mom's going to be looking out the window for her five-year-old son. He's like, oh, he's just with his snakes. They're just hanging out, they're playing, they're wrestling in the cover's den, no problem at all. It's creation working in harmony the way that we've always longed it to work together. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain.
How about this one? Isaiah goes on to say, This is what the sovereign Lord says on that day. I'll give a signal. I'll give a signal and they will carry your little sons back to you in their arms. They will bring your daughters on their shoulders.
Then your heart will Tremble. And rejoice, because the abundance of the sea will become yours, and the wealth of the nations is going to come to you. All the beautiful things of the world are going to be ours. There is no pleasure, no beauty that is going to be withheld from us. And on that day, we'll be so happy that we tremble.
Can you remember the last time you were so happy that you trembled? Honestly, I can't. I think it probably was when I was four or five years old. Every sad thing comes untrue, and here's where it gets even more amazing. All that death and sadness that we went through.
are gonna become a part of our story. The story of our victory, so that our victory is going to seem sweeter and richer for having gone through all that. How do I know that? Because Paul says that in the resurrection, death will be swallowed up in victory. Then we'll just be expelled, or it'll be swallowed up.
When you swallow something, it becomes a part of you, right? When you swallow food, that food becomes a part of you. What Paul is saying is that the pain and the struggle of life become a part of our victory.
So that the final product is better for us having gone through it. One day we're going to see that God used all those things in our lives to make us more like Him. and to increase our enjoyment of him. One of my favorite biographies. This is the story of Joni Erickson Tata.
And it's been out for quite a while, but Joni was paralyzed. as a teenager in a diving accident. If you read the biography, she was brilliant, she was beautiful, she was popular, athletic, she was a great artist. She had it all. She had it all, but she says, as a 17-year-old, I was.
wandering away from God, and God used that accident to bring Me back to himself. She now has lived as a quadriplegic, no use of her arms or legs. When she writes or draws, it's out of a pencil that they put into her mouth. She's lives as a quadriplegic for more than 50 years. In her biography, she anticipates that moment.
Of seeing Jesus in eternity. Let me just read it to you because I can't recreate her words. When I get to heaven, she says. I'm going to push my wheelchair to the throne of Jesus. Notice.
I'll be walking. And I'm going to thank him for every character refining work he did in me. And through me. Because of this wheelchair. And then I'm going to ask Jesus to send this wheelchair straight to hell.
Because it was only needed because of the wreckage of sin. What a beautiful day that's going to be for all of us. My question is, what's that wheelchair for you? What's that wheelchair for you that God's using right now, but is not part of his ultimate plan for you? And he's using it for good, yes, but one day you're going to be able to put it away from you forever.
Listen, over the past 12 months, many of us have wondered where life is headed. I can tell you where it's headed. It's headed to the grave. Vaccine or no vaccine, you're going to die eventually. But the point is your story doesn't have to end there.
Because of the empty tomb, our road does not end at the grave. If anything, it begins at the grave for those who are in Christ. Let me very quickly tell you about one of the other ladies of the tomb that morning. Her name was also Mary. This was Mary the mother of Jesus.
There were actually three Marys at the tomb that day. There was Mary Magdalene. There was Mary the mother of Jesus, and The other Mary. That's literally what Matthew calls her. How'd you like that?
You got your name in the Bible, but you're the other Mary. All right, three Marys. You can see them all together in John 19:25, if you're curious. But for Mary the mother of Jesus. Just think about it.
This was an especially devastating day, right? Because the mother, a mother feels the pain of their child probably more acutely than the child itself feels it. To be a mother who is forced to watch your son executed unjustly, to watch him humiliated, mocked, misunderstood, and tortured. Mary had remained at the cross when everybody else left. Why?
Because that's what mothers do. When everybody else had dispersed, when the crowds had gone home, Mary stayed there alone. I can tell you as a pastor for two decades now, mothers are the ones who sit beside prison cells or in courtrooms. When nobody else is there, mothers are the ones who answer the phone in the middle of the night when you call, or moms are the ones who get up to pray in the middle of the night when nobody else is thinking about you. Imagine Mary's sadness in this moment turning to joy, knowing that her son is not dead and gone forever.
But her son has overcome and ushered her into an eternity where there will be no more pain and no more crying, where the sun never sets and nobody ever has to say goodbye. This seemed too good to be true. But this is what the resurrection promises for all of us whose families die in the Lord. For every mother in Christ who has had to say a tearful goodbye to their child. And see, that leads me to the fourth and final too good to be true thing.
about the resurrection. Number four, if it is true. If it's true, those who wait upon God. Will not be disappointed. You see, the resurrection shows you that in those moments...
Where you feel abandoned? Where you feel like God has forgotten you. Like, maybe he's not even real. And by the way, we've all been there. The resurrection shows you that he has not forgotten you.
Here's a question. Why didn't God raise Jesus from the dead immediately?
Well, why not do it like Friday night at midnight?
Well, how about Saturday morning? Why not raise himself? Why did he wait? The three days until Sunday morning.
Well, in part. It's because that time gap is a metaphor. For what life often feels like now, right? Where's God? Is God even real?
What's he doing? I thought things are going well, and I thought he was going to do this, but then it died. And it feels like injustice is ruling, and it feels like life is out of control. And what's God doing? Are you up there?
Have you forgotten me? The resurrection's answer is no. God keeps his promise to those who wait upon him. You might feel like you're living in a Friday. You might feel like you're living in the darkness of a Friday or the tedium and boredom and loneliness of a Saturday.
But what the resurrection shows you is that that Sunday is coming. He's the waymaker, the miracle worker. He's the promise keeper. He's the light in the darkness. And that means even when we don't see it, he's working.
Even when we don't feel it, he's working. He never stops. He never stops working. And in the Friday and Saturday of your life, I can promise you, God is at work and he has not forgotten you. The resurrection proves that.
It's like I often tell you guys. At any given moment? God is up to at least 10,000 different good things in your life. And you are aware of only at most Maybe three of them. The resurrection assures you that he's going to accomplish all of them.
Friend, if God did not abandon you when our sin had literally crucified his son, You can be sure that he's not going to abandon you now. He'll come through. He'll come through. Hang on. The Lord is good to those who wait for him.
He's good to those who hope in his steadfast love. If you feel like you're in a season of darkness, you feel like you're waiting for God to answer a prayer, waiting for God to bring back a child, waiting on God to heal a hurt or bind up a womb, don't give up. God is up to something good. and soon you will see his deliverance. Psalm 27:13, David says, I am convinced I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Let me translate that for you: land of the living. David is basically saying, I'm tired of all these sanctimonious, pious people telling me in heaven everything's going to be awesome. I believe in heaven everything is going to be awesome. That's not the land of the living. The land of the living is down here on earth.
And right now, while I know it's going to be awesome in heaven, I got people in my life who need help now. I've got some broken relationships. I've got some things in my own heart. I need God's goodness to break in on me. I need God's goodness to break in on her.
I need God's goodness to come in and help me with this situation. And I'm convinced that it's not just in the sweet by and by that God is good. I'm convinced He's good now. And I'm asking God to let his goodness break into the land of the living so I can praise him for it. I need to see his goodness in the Friday and the Saturday, not just the ultimate Sunday.
So, again, four things about the resurrection, each almost too good to be true. Number one, he has redeemed us from our sins. Number two, the power of new life is here and ready for you. Number three, one day every sad thing is going to come untrue. And number four, those who wait upon God will not be disappointed.
Well, no wonder it seemed like nonsense. But that's what these women Coming from the two. or testifying to you today, do you believe it? And some of you are like, well, JD. Honestly, that does feel too good to be true.
Aren't these just hopeful fairy tales? come up for people who just can't cope with the harsh realities of life. I don't see y'all. Just to be transparent, I used to suspect that myself. And because I've been there, I doubt that there's any catchy one-liners that I could give you that would convince you on the spot.
But could I just ask you to consider something? Isn't this what you've been searching for your entire life? Maybe the reason that you've been searching for it your whole life is because it's what you're created for. Maybe the reason that things like this seem too good to be true is because the God that created you is what is his answer to all the things that are wrong. I love how Blaise Pascal said it.
He said, in every human heart, there's a gigantic void. And we spend all of our life doing what? Trying to fix that void. And we turn to popularity and we turn to pleasures and we turn to family, but none of it works because that void is in the shape of God. Maybe it feels too good to be true because you've been looking for it in all the wrong places when it's found in the God of the resurrection.
Do you believe it? Are you ready to receive it? How do you respond to the resurrection?
Well, if you're a Christian. You just rejoice. No, Easter is a yearly time where we just get to remind ourselves of that victory. and that confidence and we're renewed to walk in joy. But see, if you're not a Christian...
There's only one way to respond. That is, you become one today. To receive what Christ has done for you. You see, as I've explained, Jesus has redeemed you from your sin, he's paid your penalty. But in that way, it's like a gift.
It's like any other gift. You have to receive it. John 1.12 says, as many as received him to them he gave thee. Right to become the children of God, which includes forgiveness. The heart of Christianity is not a new approach to morality.
It's not new insights into spirituality or resolves to do better or become more religion. The heart of Christianity is something that Jesus did for you that you could not do.
So behold, He died for your sins to redeem you. To save you. I'll be honest with you. When I first got into ministry, I hated that term, get saved. I hated it because it sounded redneck and uneducated and sounded like a fundamentalist.
I've probably spent the first five years of ministry trying to come up with a different term. I failed. What term were I? I got, you know, I got, I got restored, I got fixed, and like where any of those were going. I got saved.
Why? Because I was drowning in the condemnation of my sin. There was no way I could get it off. And Jesus took it for me, and he saved me from eternal condemnation. And I had death at work in me, and he did something to me I couldn't do for myself, and that is, he not only forgave my sins, he gave me new life.
You need to get saved. And then The second invitation is you need to be baptized. You see, baptism, as you've seen. It's like a public profession. It is a public profession.
We always say it's like the wedding ring. It's what declares to everybody that you're following Jesus by your own choice. Which is why you're supposed to do it as soon as you receive Jesus as your Savior. And so there's some of you that are becoming Christians today. And you need to show that by getting baptized.
There's others of you that have been saved for a long time. But you've just never taken that first act of obedience and you need to get baptized. You're like, because this is your profession of faith. You're like, well, I didn't bring any clothes. Hey, listen, we've been doing this for a long time, we got them.
We got modest shorts and shirts, and we can take care of this for you, okay? We've got it, and we just want you to. We'll let you change, and then you can put your dry clothes back on, places for you to change. We can do it today. And you say, well, I don't know.
It's really, is it that important? Yes. You're like, well, I don't feel like it affects my ability to be a Christian. I'm just going to tell you right now on the record, I don't think it's a good idea for you to start your walk with Jesus. telling him which of his commands are important and which ones aren't.
He said, this is what you do when you show everybody that I am. But I am the Lord of your life. You say, well I mean, JD, I got baptized when I was a baby. My parents baptized me. Listen, I want to be very clear.
We respect that. I think that's awesome. But the question I always ask is Whose faith was on display in that baptism? That must be your parents, right? You were...
too little you weren't thinking about anything your parents were exercising faith and that's awesome But did you know listen to this? There are 27 baptisms in the book of Acts. 27. All 27 times. The person believed first on their own, and then they showed that by being baptized.
So, we're not saying that what happened back then was bad. We're just saying that it's time for you to ratify what your parents did. You're like, well, I don't want to bring shame on my parents. I don't want to reject my upbringing. You're not.
What was their hope when they baptized you? Their hope when they baptized you was one day you would grow up and follow Jesus. You get the privilege this afternoon of calling your mom and dad and saying, hey, I got good news. Remember what you hoped for me like 30 years ago or 15 years ago? It happens.
I'm following Jesus now, and I ratified what happened then. I ratified it on my own.
Somebody like uh I don't really want to become a Baptist. I understand that. I genuinely understand that. See, you're not being baptized in the name of a denomination. We're not going to baptize you in the name of Baptist, we're going to baptize you in the name of Jesus.
Every follower of Jesus ought to be baptized as a profession of their faith in Jesus if you haven't. You need to do that today. When we come to moments like this, I sometimes think about my dad. He tells me a story that before I was born. He was newly married, and he was in a service, something like this one.
They gave an invitation for people to come and... Receive Christ. And he had said, I stood, and I was holding on to the. hew in front of me so I could see the whiteness on my knuckles I was clinging so hard. He said we must have sung 982 verses of Just As I Am.
He said, and I got to write a, I knew, I knew. This was a moment. Lisa stepped out in that aisle. And I sometimes think about that moment and how it changed. My eternity.
For some of you, this decision you're about to make is not just going to be. about you it's going to be about your children. It's going to be about their children. I'm telling you, don't resist the Holy Spirit. It is time for you to be serious about.
What Jesus is calling you to. I'm going to lead you into prayer so that those of you who want to receive Christ can do it. And then I'm going to invite you to come forward. And we're going to start that conversation about baptism. And many of you get baptized today.
Every head bowed, every eye closed, if you would. First of all, if you want to receive Jesus, you're not sure that you've received Jesus or. Or you want to? You can use these words that I'm going to give you. You can use these very words, just make sure they come from your heart.
Lord Jesus, I know I'm a sinner and I need to be saved. I receive you right now as my Savior. I surrender to you as my Lord. I'm ready to follow you. I'm ready to follow you.
Say it to him. I'm ready to receive you as Lord. and follow you. Father, I pray for everybody that just prayed with me. I know that this is a moment where a lot of people are going to come to faith.
and express that.
So give them courage, I pray, in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening today. Like we mentioned earlier, there's no resource coming in your mailbox this month because your gift is actually becoming a gift. Every donation in December helps place a Bible in the hands of a prisoner.
Through our growing prison outreach, we are flooding prison cells with gospel truth. Will you join us? Give right now at jdgreer.com. Thanks for being with us today. We'll see you next time.
Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
