Who Do You Say That I Am? "The Risen King"

Over the last few weeks, as I've been preparing for this message, something that just keeps coming back. Something that I think a lot of people feel, but we don't necessarily say out loud. I think days like today can feel a little disconnected from real life. I mean, you look around and people are dressed a little nicer than normal. There's a sense of celebration and energy and joy.

And we're singing songs about victory and sonship and salvation. And yet most, if not all, of us will walk out of here right back to a life that doesn't feel like that all the time, that doesn't feel all dressed up, doesn't feel maybe as joyful as we want to feel, not as put together as we wish it were. And for some of us, this has been a really hard year or a really hard week, or maybe today was just a really hard day.

And there's still that diagnosis, and there's still that broken relationship and anxiety and grief. Grief and bills and questions that still haven't been answered. And sometimes moments like this can just kind of feel like a pretend break.

Like we step into a room full of light for just a little bit, and then we're right back out into a world full of darkness.

And if that tension, like, if you feel that tension today, I want you to know that you're stepping into the Easter story, exactly where Jesus disciples stepped into the Easter story.

The people who walked closest with him felt that tension in real time, the build up and the letdown. After three years of following Jesus, everything seemed to be building towards this incredible climax, like it was all on the way to something fantastic. Jesus is performing miracles. The crowds are growing. He raises a guy named Lazarus from the dead.

And then we get the powerful scene of Palm Sunday. He enters Jerusalem and the city erupts with excitement. People are laying down and waving palm branches. They're shouting and celebrating and declaring him to be the Messiah, the king who has come to rescue his people and finally make all things right. And the momentum is explosive.

Like, this is it. This is the moment. Everything changes. Everything comes together. Everything that they hope for, everything they think Jesus has come to do.

It finally feels like it's happening.

And then all at once, the whole thing comes crashing down in a fiery explosion. And Jesus is arrested. He's put on trial, and he's beaten and mocked, and he is nailed to a cross.

And as he breathes his final breath, what looks like a house of cards just comes tumbling down and he dies.

This makes no sense.

We saw what he did. We Heard what he said. This can't be happening.

What do we do now? And just like that, everything they thought was happening, everything they believed that God was doing, seems to be destroyed. And surely this is not the plan. Surely they couldn't have been wrong about all of this. But he's dead.

And immediately they go into hiding. And they're fearful and confused and disoriented. They're trying to make sense of how something that felt so right and so sure could go this wrong. And they're not only grieving the loss of their mentor and teacher, they're grieving the loss of this dream, this promise that they really believed that he just might actually be the Messiah. And so they're drowning in grief with nowhere to take it.

From the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. Despair.

It reminds me of a day I experienced 15 years ago.

A good friend of mine, Bill, he asked if I would perform the wedding for his stepson and his fiance. And over the next several months, I got to really know Greg and Summer so well. They were a beautiful couple. They were making so much progress as we met together, and everything was in the works. Friday came, and everything was prepared.

The speeches were written, the food was ready, and we did the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner, and Greg and Summer, they were skipping down the aisle and laughing. Everyone was laughing.

And everyone went to bed that night. And the next day, we're all getting ready, and I get a call from Bill.

And right away I know something is. Something's wrong. And Bill says, josh, you have to get here right now. And I thought, oh, no. Oh, no, they must have gotten in a fight.

And one of them is, like, going to call the wedding off.

And then Bill said, the sheriff's deputy is here. He wants to talk to you. And I thought, oh, my gosh, what is the worst possible thing that could have happened? They got in a fight, and he got so angry, he hit her or something. That's the worst thing I could think of.

And the sheriff's deputy gets on the phone and he says, Mr. Brown, I am so sorry to tell you. Greg was in a terrible motorcycle accident. And he was pronounced dead at the scene four hours before he's supposed to be married.

And it just sucked the wind out of me.

So I gathered some things and quickly went to where the family was. And we all realized there's no time to tell all these people that are coming to this wedding. Somebody has to go.

And so Summer's dad and I stood in that parking lot, And one after the Next, beautifully dressed, happy, smiling people got out of their car. And again and again and again, I had to say, I'm so sorry. Greg was in a terrible car, motorcycle accident. And he didn't make.

Was the worst, darkest hour of ministry that I have ever had to experience.

What was supposed to be a day of celebration had turned so quickly into a nightmare of grief.

The sting of death was so sharp.

And how do you move forward?

What do you do? What do you say?

And I remember opening my laptop, and on my desktop were two Greg and Summer's wedding and Greg's funeral.

In an instant, I went from preparing for their wedding to preparing for his funeral.

That is how I imagine that the disciples felt that day as he was arrested and crucified and laid in a tomb. Everything they had hoped for was dead. The one they believed in, the one they trusted, he was dead. And they were left with the same questions. How do we move forward now?

What do we say? What do we even do now?

Jesus was placed in a tomb just before sunset on Friday, which is Sabbath. This means that all of his followers were confined to their homes. They couldn't work, they couldn't travel. And I can only imagine that night, what it must have been like, the anguish on Saturday night, Friday night, Saturday, Saturday night, he was dead. Not unconscious, not hiding somewhere.

They watched him breathe his last breath. They watched a spear go in his side and blood and water flow. And so the disciples are locked in a room. They're terrified that they'll be next. They're not gathered in faith, and I imagine the women are just champing at the bit.

They've gathered spices, and they want to go, but they can't go. And they just want to go, but they can't go. And doubt has to be creeping in.

He must not have been the Messiah. There's no way. The Messiah can't die. What kind of God allows something like this to happen? And there's no voice from heaven, and there's no clarity and there's no peace.

It's just silence and fear and grief and disappointment because they don't know what we know.

To them, this was the end. And so when the Sabbath restrictions were lifted, the women gathered spices and they went early Sunday morning to the tomb. And we Read in Mark 16, verse 1, when the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome, bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb, and they Asked each other, who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb? See, all their actions show that they have given in to death.

They come expecting a dead body. And in their grief, they have this practical realization. I mean, we came, but how are we even going to move this stone away? We can't move that. Maybe we came for no purpose at all.

And then we read in verse four. But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side. And they were alarmed. Don't be alarmed, he said.

You're looking for Jesus, the Nazarene who was crucified. He has risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go tell his disciples and Peter, he is going ahead of you into Galilee.

There you will see him just as he told you. Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid at first. They don't know what to do with all of this. They're startled and confused and afraid.

And Mary just assumes that somebody took the body. She goes to tell the disciples, and the disciples don't even believe her. And even though Jesus told them this would happen, even though they had seen him do impossible thing after impossible thing after impossible thing, they cannot get past that. He is dead. They watched him die, completely dead.

But then everything changes. Jesus appears to Mary, then to the disciples, then to more than 500 people over the course of 40 days. He keeps showing up and speaking encouragement, proving that he's alive. And before he ascends into heaven, he places into their hands the immense responsibility of launching what would become the global church. What looked like the end of every dream and every hope and every joy and everything they believed became the beginning of something the world had never seen and has never seen since.

The same men who were in hiding and in fear became emboldened, unshakable. Witnesses in church history tells us that every one of them gave their lives unwilling to say that they had not seen what they knew that they had seen. That Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God and he was the risen Messiah. And over the next 2,000 years from death, the small, fragile, grieving group of followers grows into the largest global movement in history, so that billions and billions of people all throughout time have declared that Jesus Christ is the risen Lord.

The resurrection of Jesus didn't just change their lives. It changed human history. And to this day, the tomb where Jesus Was laid is the only burial place that's famous for what's not there. This is the story of Easter. And I think all this begs the question, what if he is who he says he is?

What if he has actually done what the Bible says that he has done? And what if the promise of the resurrection is not just something that happened then? What if the promise of the resurrection is actually something available to us now? And maybe today you want to believe these things. You want to walk in some sort of resurrection.

You want to celebrate. You want to have the kind of confidence that they have that maybe I have. But when you look around at your life and your family and your situation and your grief and the story that you cannot shake, you feel like there's a lot more Friday and Saturday happening in your life than Sunday morning.

But the promise of the resurrection, as much as I wish that it were the promise of the resurrection, is not that from now on, life will be easy and put together. It's not a promise that the pain disappears. It's not a promise that every situation suddenly works out the way that we want it to. It's not a promise that we won't walk through grief and loss and difficulty and confusion and questions again and again. The promise of the resurrection is that Jesus has overcome sin and death and that he is with us.

Right before the cross, Jesus looked at his disciples and he told them what was coming. And he said, this is going to be the hardest thing that you'll ever experience in your life. And he tells them plainly. He tells them plainly these words from John 16:33, I've told you all these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble.

But take heart, I have overcome the world. And after this, he gives his disciples the great commission to go into all the world, making disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything he commanded. And then the very last words he has recorded in the Bible before he ascends into heaven is a promise, and surely I will be with you even to the end of the age. Jesus promises that trouble is not optional. It's a part of life in this broken world.

But he promises that he has overcome this world and that he is with us. And if he has overcome it, and if he is with us, then when we walk through the darkest moment of our lives, we're not walking alone. When everything feels like it's falling apart, he's still holding it together. When we're sitting in silence on Saturday, wondering where God is, wondering what he's doing. He hasn't disappeared.

He's still at work, right in the dark, even when we can't see it. See, the promise of the resurrection is that death does not get the final word. Sin does not get the final word. Shame does not get the final word. Our most difficult moments do not get the final word.

Jesus does. And because he has overcome this world, there is a kind of life available to us now that's bigger than our circumstances. A life marked by hope, regardless of our circumstances, marked by peace, even in the middle of chaos, and by joy. That doesn't depend on everything going the way that we want it to go. At the beginning of the service, I shared with you what we as a church believe.

We believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died on the cross for our sin, that he was truly dead, that he was placed in a real tomb. And the three days later, he actually, truly, miraculously rose from the grave, conquering sin and death. We believe that he's alive right now. We believe that he is ruling and reigning from heaven and holding all things together in his power, even your darkness. That he has overcome sin and death, and through him, anyone can be forgiven, restored and brought back to God.

That's what we believe. But the question remains, who do you say that he is?

Because what we do with Jesus is the most important thing we will ever do. It's the most important question we will ever answer. Who do we say that Jesus is?

Jesus opened a door that anyone who wants to walk through can walk through.

And the invitation is to step out of this life into a life of resurrection. Not just in a distant future with wings and a halo in heaven, playing a harp somewhere, but now resurrected life, despite everything that's going on around us. And so maybe for some of you today, today's a day to finally say, I believe that he is who he says he is. And maybe today is a day for you to say, I am struggling with these questions that I have, but I want to pursue him. I want what you're talking about.

I want to believe that what you say is real. And if that's you, today, our team will be up on either side of the room, our prayer team, as we sing this next song, they're going to be there. They would love to pray with you and for you and help you step into this resurrected life. And for those of us who already believe, today is a beautiful day to polish up our faith again, reminded that Jesus has overcome the grave. He's not in there anymore.

He is risen. He is alive. He is overcome and he is with us.