Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 24:1-12
Take your Bible out and find Luke chapter 24, Luke 24, you know Easter rolls around, it's always a big Sunday at church, I have two services today so that we can fit everybody in and everybody wears a new shirt or the new dress or the new shoes or whatever. And as a pastor when Easter rolls around, I always get this feeling or this temptation or this thought to say we need to do something big, it's Easter, we need to make a big deal about it, do something big. And usually I end up just reminding myself when I start to think that, first of all remind myself that we're not here to entertain you, we're not here to put on some performance, we're not here to put on some kind of show, we're here to talk about what the Bible says, we're here to worship God in spirit and in truth, we do that every Sunday of the year and Easter should be absolutely no different in that respect. And also remind myself when Easter rolls around and I start to think what am I going to talk about Easter Sunday, there's only one thing to talk about, there's only one story, there's nothing new, there's nothing to add, there's nothing to tack on to the end of it, it's the same old story. And I meet with a group of guys and we do Bible study and I was reminded this week we were studying in Philippians and Paul says to the church in Philippi, look, for me to say the same things to you is no trouble for me and it's good for you. And that's true on Easter Sunday. We just say the same things we've been saying over and over and over again, we just talk about the same old story and we believe that it's true. And there's no trouble on our part to sing about, to preach about the exact same thing and it's good for you and it's good for me to hear the same thing and to sing the same things because our hope is in Jesus Christ and it's the story that we celebrate each and every week and it's a story we certainly celebrate on Easter. So we're in Luke 24, there's an outline in the bulletin, if you want to follow along on the outline we'll work our way through that. It is kind of hard to believe we're now in the last chapter of Luke. If you've been around the last couple of months you know that we started in Luke 1 in section by section, passage by passage we just worked our way all the way through the gospel and now many months later we're in the very last chapter of the gospel of Luke. If you haven't been here I'll just fill you in briefly, very quickly, on some of the things that we've talked about. The Gospel of Luke is a book written by a man named Luke and it's a book written to tell the story of the life of Jesus and he begins with Jesus' miraculous conception with the promises and the promises, prophecies that the angel made to Mary before he was even born and it culminates, we saw last week, in his death, in his sacrificial, substitutional death on the cross and Luke is a good writer and one thing that good writers do is they sort of give you clues about where you're heading before you actually get there and Luke has been dropping clues all the way through his story that are really not hard to miss and what Luke has been trying to tell us all the way through is Jesus is going to die, Jesus is going to die. After Jesus preached his very first sermon in his hometown in Luke chapter 4, this is what we read, they, that's the men of his hometown, they rose up and they drove him out of the town and they brought him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built so that they could throw him down the cliff but passing through their midst he went away. Right from the beginning he's been laying this out, Jesus is going to die, these guys want Jesus dead. There's two chapters later in Luke 6, Jesus has a confrontation with the religious leaders and it says that the religious leaders were filled with fury and they discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. All the way through, this keeps coming up, they want him dead, they don't like him, they're making plans, they're scheming, they're plotting, they're in cahoots together against Jesus and you know that he's going to die, here's the craziest thing, even though from the beginning you know how it's going to end, that he's going to die. This is not a tragedy, it's not a sad story because all the way through the gospel of Luke this one note rings over and over again, Luke 19, 10, the son of man came to seek and to save the lost, he's on a mission to rescue his people and that means he's going to die and he knows that from the very, very beginning and so last week we saw the culmination of what Luke has been building up to, Jesus dies on the cross, that was last week. This morning is Easter Sunday and we're talking about the resurrection and the big idea of our passage is really simple. The resurrection of Jesus is proof that Jesus accomplished his mission of seeking and saving the lost, it's proof that he accomplished what he came to accomplish, it's like a stamp or a seal of approval saying he did what he came to do, it's proof. Look in your Bible at Luke 24 starting in verse 1 and we're just going to read this story, verse 1 to 12, Luke 24. The Word of God says this, "On the first day of the week at early dawn they went to the tomb taking the spices they had prepared and they found the stone rolled away from the tomb but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus, well they were perplexed about this behold two men stood by them in dazzling apparel as if they were frightened excuse me as they were frightened and they bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them why do you seek the living among the dead? He's not here but is risen. Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise and they remembered his words and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven to all the rest, who was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles but the words seemed to them an idle tale and they did not believe them. Peter rose and ran to the tomb stooping and looking in he saw the linen clasped by themselves and he went home marveling at what had happened, let's pray. Father this is a familiar story. This story is the foundation of what we believe and who we are and Father we want to hear this story this morning from the Gospel of Luke we want to hear it and receive it with the authority that comes with your word and Father we pray that you would help us to understand the significance of what Luke is saying help us to understand how it might apply to our life today. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Start off showing you a picture. This is a picture of my dad's dad on the right, the guy on the right. He was in the Marines so that's my grandpa, we called him grandpa bill, he passed away a few years ago and he was a tough guy and he wanted to make sure that you knew he was a tough guy and so one of the things he liked to tell people when he met them or was getting to know them is that for a brief time he held the Marine record for the most sit-ups done in an hour and he was really proud of that, he said I could crank those sit-ups out man and just hold my feet and I could just knock him out and he was proud about how many push-ups he could do or how much weight he could lift, he's just a tough guy. But he's also the guy, grandpa bills, the guy in our family and you have somebody like this in your family, I'm willing to bet. He was the guy in our family that was always telling a story, always cracking some kind of joke and telling some kind of tale and sometimes he would tell this story and you just look at him like I don't know if that really happened or not, I don't know if you're shooting a straight, I don't know if you're making that up as you go along but he's always telling a story and it was always fun to listen to his stories and here's the one story, I could tell you lots of funny ones, here's the one that I thought about this week, used to tell a story about his granddad, so this would be my great, great, great granddad and that's him on the right there, his name was William Weirdie and he was a police officer in Chicago a long, long time ago, he was a police officer in Chicago during the Al Capone days and there was some great stories about that, I don't know if they're true or not, but they're great stories and grandpa bill used to tell this story is one of our favorites and he says, so once upon a time, he always, you know, start a story appropriately, once upon a time, grandpa William died, he died and back then in Chicago a long time ago, they did funerals differently than we do them today in West Texas and embalming things were different and how they did different things with the funeral process was different and so how they did it in Chicago was pretty simple, you died at home, Dr. Corner, somebody came to the house and said, yep, he's dead, so William died at home and the guy came over whoever came and said, yep, this guy's dead and at that point the body just stayed in the house, kept it in the home and family members would take turns, staying up with the body and sitting with the body, you didn't leave them alone, that was just how they did it and so they're sitting up with William and like I said embalming and things were different so you're kind of on a clock, right, the clock is ticking, the body is there and you kind of got to move things along and if you're a police officer in Chicago and they're very staunch Catholics the way that they did their funerals was pretty simple, as soon as you could the Chicago PD and the funeral home would come by the house to pick up the body and they would load everybody up and you'd have a police escort, if you were a cop, first you would drive by the police station in Chicago and they would do a drive by and then they would take you to the church where they would have the mass and you would leave the church and you'd go to the cemetery and they would bury you there, so that's just sort of how you did things, so the story goes William dies and he's in the home, people have taken turns sitting up with him and it's the day that the PD and the funeral home is supposed to come pick the body up and they're just sort of all there ready, they're all there waiting and as they're sitting there in the house William gets up, just sits up, not like he had a twitch and his muscle spasm or something, he got up and he wasn't dead, he was up and he was talking to people and his funeral was canceled, call it off, the guy's alive, so he woke up and so Grandpa Bill's telling this story, I've heard it so many times, he's telling this story and in my mind there's about three possibilities, okay, one possibility I guess is what my grandpa really, really believed and that was that great, great grandpa where he was dead and he came back to life, okay, I believe in miracles so I'll say okay let's put that on the table, give my granddad the benefit of the doubt, second option, my granddad's totally full of it, did not happen, nothing even close to that ever took place, that is also on the table as a very real possibility, third possibility because this story's been passed down is that he wasn't really dead in the first place, whatever he had or whatever happened he wasn't really dead and he just sort of woke up just in the nick of time. We know that that was an issue in old days, we know because when we've exhumed some bodies we've found scratch marks on the inside of a wooden coffin and so somebody back in the day invented this thing, you ever seen one of these, it's called a safety coffin, somebody got a patent for this thing and they put a little hole in the top and they tie a string around your wrist and the string goes down and the string goes up, up through the dirt and that's your headstone and they put a little bell on your headstone, in case you wake up you don't have to claw your way out, you just ring the bell and this is the term, this is where the term comes, you are saved by the bell, saved by the bell, you thought that was a TV show. So here's the thing when you come to loop 24, there's a lot of really so-called smart guys, okay we'll call them Bible scholars because that's what they like to be called. A lot of smart guys that come to loop 24 and they say that didn't happen, I know it's written there but it didn't happen, we know that things like that don't happen, miracles don't happen, people don't come back from the dead, so they say whatever happened it wasn't this and they come up with all sorts of explanations or theories, so you got some guys that say he wasn't really dead, he was just sort of out of it, it's called the swoon theory and they put him in the tomb and a few days later he swooned back to life, came back to life or woke up, not back to life because he wasn't dead but he just woke up a few days later. You have some other people who say you know I think they probably just got confused about where they put the body and he was over there and they came over here and they saw it was empty and they got really excited and they just assumed he's alive, you know the theory? Some people just say you know these apostles just made the whole thing up, they come out of this deal as leaders of a church and they just made the whole thing up to sort of get power and influence and to fleece people of their money, etc, etc, it's just a big story that they made up. You know as you think about all these different explanations, if you use your brain none of them really make a lot of sense and I'm not telling you it's easy to believe that a man came back from the dead, I'm just telling you all the explanations that people give for what really happened in Luke 24 don't make a whole lot of sense. And so what we're going to do this morning is just listen to Luke, not going to try to outsmart the Bible, we're not going to try to outthink the Bible, we're just going to listen to what Luke has to say, we're going to think about what Luke says in light of some of these theories, I'm going to talk about what happened at the resurrection, I want to explain to you the significance of it and then we're going to wrap up and I'm going to try to apply it to your life. So this is on your outline, just a few details, we can't talk about every detail, there's a lot of interesting things that took place but just some of the big things that Luke mentions, okay. First of all Luke says a group of women went to the tomb early on the first day of the week which was Sunday, group of ladies wake up early, they go to this tomb, they're going to visit the body. Now to be really clear, some of these scholars say, look it was early, Luke says it was early. One of the other gospels says it was still dark and I'm just telling you what these scholars say, alright this is not your pastor, this is just some of these scholars, it's a group of women, they got lost, they went to the wrong place, they went to the wrong tomb, it was dark, they're very upset, they've probably been crying, the sun's not even up yet, they're very emotional, they just went to the wrong place. Luke says this up in verse 55, Luke 23, 55 if you just look up the page a little bit, the women who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb and how his body was laid, they knew where the tomb was, they were there a few days earlier, they saw it, they saw him put Jesus in it, there's no confusion about that. Even if you wanted to say that the ladies got lost which is pretty arrogant on your part 2,000 years later to assume that you know that a bunch of women got lost when you weren't even there. But assume that they did get lost, they went to the wrong place, don't you think as soon as they went and got the disciples, the apostles and they take them to this empty tomb that they would have said, ah, ladies, you're in the wrong spot, he's right there and there he is, it doesn't hold a whole lot of water, so these ladies go early, they go to the tomb and Luke tells us that they're carrying spices, that's not something we normally do, we go to visit a cemetery and we take flowers, these ladies go visit a cemetery, they go to the tomb and they take spices. And just to be real blunt, it's because decaying bodies smell terrible. And when you buried one of these bodies, they didn't embalm them like we do, so they take all these spices and they wrap the dead body, the corpse up in all these spices. In fact, did you know the gospels tell us that when Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus buried Jesus, they used about 75 pounds of spices when they wrapped him up, so take his body, they take strips of cloth, they put the spices, pack them in all around him and wrap him up in cloth. So let's just go back to that idea that he wasn't really dead and he woke up a few days later. You're telling me, you want me to believe that a man has flogged half to death, forced to carry his crossbeam through the streets of Jerusalem and up a hill, crucified by professional executioners, stabbed in the side, taken down, wrapped up tightly from head to toe with 75 pounds of spices laid on a rock inside a hole in the ground, which was then covered by another rock. And you want me to believe, three days later, he just woke up, took it all off and moved the rock out of the way. That's a pretty fantastic theory. Don't miss the fact that these women, as they're taking spices, you understand this, just may seem obvious, so just make sure we're on the same page, these women are taking these spices, they're going to finish the job. Look up in Luke 23, verse 55, "The women came and they saw where they laid his body so they know where to go." And then if you look up in verse 54, it says, "It was the day of preparation and the Sabbath was beginning." So you've got Joseph and you've got Nicodemus and they're wrapping up the body, but the Sabbath starts and they can't work on the Sabbath. And so they just sort of stop in the middle of what they're doing. They use the 75 pounds, but a few days later, the women are coming to finish the job. Listen, these ladies are not walking to the tomb saying, you think he's there or not there? What's the over-under? You want to place a bet? Is he there or not there? Is it going to be empty or is it going to be full? What's going to happen when we get there? They're just going with a bunch of potpourri to put it on Jesus' body because they know he's decaying and it's going to stink. They're going to finish the job. They're taking the spices. It's early. And they get there and Luke says they don't find Jesus. Instead, Luke says they're met by two angels, two angels at the tomb. And the next detail is also interesting. They're met by these two angels. And then Luke says, "The disciples do not believe the women." So this is how my mind works. Okay, I'm thinking about these theories people coming up with to explain all this stuff. Two angels at the tomb, the women find the angels, meet the angels, and the disciples don't believe the women. So you got these guys saying, the disciples made the whole thing up. They just make the whole story up to get power and to get influence and to get whatever. First of all, that's kind of strange that when they make this story up and bend it out of thin air, they send a couple of women to be the first witnesses. It doesn't seem that strange to us, but in Jesus's day, the testimony of a woman was not exactly well respected or well thought of. Nobody would really believe that the women knew what they were talking about. But when they make this story up, they make the first witnesses not credible. And then as they make this story up, remember it's the apostles, the disciples making it up, they make themselves look like idiots. I mean, Jesus in this story has been telling them exactly what's going to happen. And as they make the story up, they write themselves into the story saying they didn't believe it. They didn't buy it. There's an interesting detail. Look in your Bible at Luke 24, verse 11, it says, "The words seem to them an idle tale." You remember Luke was a physician, and that phrase, "Idle tale" is actually a medical term. You find it in medical texts from the ancient world. And what it means is somebody is out of their mind crazy and sane, and they're babbling like a fool. It's an idle tale. And Luke says, "Look, these guys, they heard the testimony of the women, and they just thought they were crazy. They didn't believe it for a second. They thought the whole thing was just insanity. It's not a made up story, it's what really happened. Everybody's skeptical, and then look at verse 12. Peter rose and ran to the tomb. They listen to the women, they say, "There's nothing but crazy talk," and then Peter gets up and he runs to the tomb. You know, we talked about Peter, sometimes Peter was the guy, a lot of times Peter was the guy who acted first and thought second, right? We laugh at him because he's always doing stupid stuff, saying stupid stuff. I think in this instance, Peter actually thought first and then acted second. I think he listened to the women and he thought to himself, "That's crazy talk, I don't know about that." But then I think he started to run things through his mind. He started to think about some of the things that he had experienced with Jesus. And I made a long list, I'm not going to give you all of them, let me just give you a few of the things Peter experienced with Jesus. In Luke chapter 5, there was a man who was paralyzed and Jesus healed him with just a word. He just healed a paralyzed man. Luke 7, they're walking into a town and there's a woman coming out in a funeral procession and her only son has died, meaning she's now a widow and Jesus just reaches out there to the boy, touches him and he comes back to life. Peter saw that. Luke 8, they're out on the waves and the wind and the boat sinking. And Jesus is the guy with Peter standing right there who talks to the wind and he talks to the waves and they do what Jesus tells them to do. Luke 8, Peter was there right next to Jesus when they walk up to a cemetery and out comes a demon-possessed man, start naked, cutting himself, bloody all over. He's been breaking chains, nobody can control him. And this guy, Bull rushes Jesus and Jesus just looks at him and casts the demon right out of him, doesn't even flinch. Peter saw that. Peter was there when Jesus took him and a few others up into an upper room and there was a dead little girl and Jesus just reached out and healed her, brought her back to life. She was dead, brought her back to life. Luke 9, Peter was there when an entire crowd of people came to listen to Jesus preach and they didn't have anything to feed him and Jesus just out of thin air makes food for everybody. And I think this time Peter starts to think before he acts and he hears this quote unquote idle tale but then all of these things start running through his brain and he pops up and he runs and he goes to check it out and Luke says he leaves, he goes home marveling at what had happened. Here's the significance of what happened. This is on your outline, if you like to fill in blanks we're going to fill these in quickly. What is the significance of the resurrection? Five quick ideas. Number one, it sets our faith apart as unique. All the verses I gave you on your outline come from the book of Acts which you know by now is Luke part two, gospel of Luke part one, book of Acts part two, they go together. If you want to know what things mean in the gospel of Luke, what better place to turn than the book of Acts and say well how did they understand it? Luke wrote both of them. One thing he tells us is that the resurrection sets our faith apart as unique. And so in Acts 17 when Jesus goes to preach at the Ariapagos and he's talking to all these great philosophers and they're listening to what he has to say about Jesus. The one thing that amazes these philosophers, they can't wrap their brain around it. They want to hear more about it is the resurrection. We've heard about prophets, we've heard about rabbis, we've heard about teachers, we've heard about miracles, we've heard about all that stuff, that's old news. But you're telling me a man came back from the dead. That's what they were talking about. It set Christianity apart as unique. You can go all over the world today and you can visit shrines and tombs of really quote unquote holy people who started religions, movements, faiths. And there they are, dead. The resurrection sets our faith apart as unique. Here's the second thing. What is the significance of the resurrection? It's fulfillment of prophecy, fulfillment of prophecy. You can go back and read Jesus' words in Luke 9 and Luke 18. Jesus himself said, I'm going to suffer, I'm going to die, I'm going to rise. He predicted it. But look what Luke says in Luke 24 verse 25, Luke 24, 25. Jesus said to them, foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken. Why didn't you believe the prophets? Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. He says the same thing over in verse 44. These are my words, I spoke to you while I was with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Peter says the same thing in the book of Acts. Look, everything that happened, his life, his death, his resurrection, all talked about in the Old Testament, all prophesied in the Old Testament, it all came true. Significance of the resurrection, number three, is the foundation of our faith. And I've given you some verses and acts, you can look those up later. There's many I didn't include. What I want you to understand is that when Peter and Paul and the rest of the guys go around in the book of Acts and they're telling people about Jesus, they always make a point to say, oh, by the way, he came back to life, oh, by the way, he's alive, oh, by the way, he rose from the dead. Sometimes we forget that. We go around and we say, oh, God loves you, Jesus died for your sins and we just sort of stop there. The apostles always went one more step and they said, look, this is basic stuff. If you're going to know anything about Jesus, you've got to know this. He lived for you, he died for you, and he's alive. He came back to life and he rose from the dead. That was foundational to the faith. Number four, it's proof that there will be a final judgment. Paul says that in Acts 17, he says, God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world, and if you want proof, all you have to do is look to the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead, judgment will come. Significance of the resurrection, the last idea, shows God's power over death. When you read that last statement, you may think about first Corinthians, but before Paul talked about it to the Corinthians, Peter talked about it on the day of Pentecost, and he said to that crowd, it was not possible for death to hold Jesus Christ. He has power over death. So that's the significance. How does it apply to us today? How does this story that you're so familiar with, you've heard a hundred times, how does it apply to us today? Two very, very simple ideas. The first is this, salvation can only be found in the one who came to seek and save the lost. If you need salvation and you do, the only place to find it is in the one who came to seek and to save the lost. That's Luke 19-10, "The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost." That's Acts 4-12, just Luke Part 2. There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we might be saved. No other name is only through Jesus. The big idea of Easter is really simple. One day you're going to stand before a God that the Bible describes as holy, holy, holy. That's a problem for you and that's a problem for me because we're not holy. The Bible describes us as sinners, not just in the things we do, not just in the things we say, not even just in the things that we think, but in who we are. Sometimes we think about sin and we think, you know, sin, that makes you a bad person, but the Bible goes a step further in that and the Bible says sin makes you a dead person. The wages of sin is death, not just in hell forever, but spiritual death now. That's what Paul said to the Ephesians. You were dead in your sins and your trespasses that you used to walk in. You're dead. You're going to stand before a God who is holy, holy, holy. And on that day, it's not going to do you any good to say, "Well, you know, I was hoping my goodness would sort of tip the scale in my favor, God." I was hoping all those nice things I did for my neighbor and I went to church on Easter Sunday and dropped a little money in the plate and I, you know, I kept my kids out of jail and, you know, doesn't that count for something? Then they're going to tilt it my way and the Bible says it doesn't work that way. Your only hope is a sinner when you stand before the God who is holy, holy, holy is Jesus that he lived a life of perfect obedience for you and he died on the cross bearing penalty and punishment for you and he rose from the dead, defeating sin and defeating death for you. In Jesus there is hope and there is life and there is forgiveness and there is eternity and it's only in him. It can be found in no one else or no thing else. The last idea of application is this. As Christians we must always remember the words of Jesus and specifically I'm thinking about what the angels said to the women. Look at these words. Ladies show up, they got their spices, they think Jesus is dead. The angel says, "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" He's not here. He's risen. Remember? He told you. Remember what he said? Do you remember the words that he spoke to you? Remember, think about it. The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and crucified and on the third day rise. Remember what he said. You know I think if these two angels were just to pop into Odessa, Texas and visit a few churches today, Easter Sunday, I don't think these two guys in dazzling clothing would pop into a church and start to lay out a bunch of proof or argument for the resurrection. There are some great books that have been written about that. Arguments and proof that Jesus really did rise from the dead. Fantastic books. I've enjoyed reading them. I've learned from them. But listen, the angels aren't going to pop in here and try to reason with you. They didn't do that with the women. They didn't lay out all the proofs. They didn't lay out all the rational arguments. They just said, "Hey, do you remember what he said? Do you remember his words? Do you remember the things he told you to do?" I think if these two angels were just to drop in here this morning, I think they would probably look at the church in the United States, typical church like ours, and I think they'd say, "Hey, don't forget what he said. Do not forget the things that he told you." Look, being a follower of Christ is a million miles away from me saying bow your heads, close your eyes, raise your hands silently with nobody looking and pray a magic prayer that's going to send you to heaven someday. It's not what we're talking about this morning. It's not what the Bible's talking about anywhere. Being a follower of Christ is not saying, "Hey, it's Easter Sunday. I guess I better put my new shirt on and make sure I look good and make sure I go to church on Easter Sunday." That's not what it's about. Remember what he said. He said, "The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise." He also said, "The kingdom of God is at hand and you need to repent of your sin." Not a suggestion, it's a command. He also looked at his closest friends and he said, "Look, don't be afraid. Believe in God and believe in me." Again, not a suggestion, not something for your consideration. Believe in God, believe also in me. He looked at his friends and he said, "You need to love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength. And when you do that, you need to turn around and you need to love your neighbor as yourself." That's what I'm asking you to do. It's who I'm calling you to be. He said, "Look, I'm giving you a mission to make disciples of all the nations. You have a role to play in that. I want you to go. I want you to baptize them. I want you to teach them to obey everything I've commanded you. Remember what I'm telling you. Remember what he said." He's saying, "I want you to make me the most important thing in your life. I want to be the pearl of great price. I want to be the treasure that you're willing to give up anything and everything that you need to give up in order to obtain this treasure." That's way different than popping in on Easter Sunday. That's way different than we're going to have a time of prayer, bow your head, close your eyes, secret hand up. It's nonsense. Remember what he said. He wants you. Not just 30 minutes of your Easter morning, he wants you. Let me pray for you. Father, we're grateful for your word and we believe that it's true. And there's some things in here that are amazing and remarkable and unprecedented. And we believe that your word is true. It's our foundation and it's our rock. We have hope because of who Jesus is and what he came to do in seeking us and saving us. We have hope because not only did he die for our sins, but he defeated sin. Not only did he die our death, but he defeated death. Father, I pray for those in the room who maybe are confused about how salvation is found. Father, it's not through a prayer, it's not through coming to church and doing something or showing up, but it's through Jesus Christ. And I pray that that would be very clear to us this morning. Father, and for those of us who know this story and love it and believe it, we've made it the bedrock and the foundation of who we are. I pray that we would leave this place remembering the things that Jesus said, remembering His words, remembering His commandments. Father, help us this morning to see Jesus as more valuable, more beautiful than any other treasure the world has to offer. Father, we pray at all in Jesus' name, amen.