Easter 2026

So a wealthy, connected man goes to the authorities and asks for permission to take this body and to put it into a family tomb. It was his tomb. It had been carved out of the rock, and he gets permission, and with the help of a friend, he does just that. And then they roll a stone in front of that tomb, and that's it, and he walks away. Now, there are Roman guards that are posted there to prevent any kind of funny business. There are women who saw all of this happen, and this now is pretty much the end of Friday. It's Friday afternoon, late, right before sundown, right before Shabbat, Sabbath. And that's... Well, wait a minute. Some of you are, like, slowing down. You're moving too fast. Like, who are we talking about? Like, whose body? If you're new here, you're going, who are you, right? So let's just... Let's take care of the least important of those questions. Me? My name is Greg, and I'm blessed to be one of the pastors here at The Crossing. Now, we are a church with many physical locations around the St. Louis area. And then we have folks that are joining us as individuals and families and house churches around the country, and honestly, around the world. And today, we're going to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. Now, let me just say hello to those of you who are joining us online. We're so glad that you're here. Those of you who are in Overflow, in our hub, who are in Overflow, then in our loft, we're just so grateful that you're here. For those of you who are at Fenton and Overflow at Fenton, we're at a place now where they literally had the fire marshal just shut the building down at Fenton.

There is no more capacity in the building. They're asking people to come back for the next service. How about that? I want to say hello to those of you at Mid Rivers, those of you at Grant's Trail, those of you in Overflow at Grant's Trail. We're just grateful for this moment that we can gather together. You see, we're doing this here. We're doing this around the world, but our volunteers and staff have served so many people. Will you help me in just thanking a whole bunch of people who have pulled this thing off? Now, I want to give a special shout out to our kids' ministries because they are doing such an important work. I have some intel, some inside information from an almost four-year-old and his parents about how things go there. Last night, after church, he tells his parents, Jesus is alive. Did you know that? And then, just to make sure that they got the timeline right, he said, he's not still on the donkey. That was last week. I love that at every level, the story of Jesus is being told around here, and we're going to tell his story today. And that means, as you've already heard, we're going to participate in a tradition that goes back a long way. We'll do it in just a minute. It's where a leader stands up and says, Christ is risen, and everybody responds with, he is risen indeed. So, some of you remember that. We'll go back over that again. Christ is risen, he is risen indeed. Okay, all right, all right.

So, that'll be it later. Don't forget that. There was one service where we went over that, and when it came moment, it was like, and they had forgotten. So, don't forget that, okay? If you have questions about any of this, because we're about to tell this story, we love helping people. You just heard that. We love pointing you towards resources. I think maybe the next action step for many of you would be to take our short-term class called Explorations. You can ask whatever you want. You can get answers. Honestly, that might be the step. I will tell you, at some of our sites, this class fills up. So, you might want to grab a friend and say, hey, let's do this together and see where it goes. But we're at the end of chapter 27 of one of the Gospels. Those are the first four books of the New Testament, the biographies of Jesus. And we're at the end of chapter 27 in Matthew. Jesus has been executed. He's been buried. The Roman guards are posted. The women know where everything is happening. And that's it. Now, we're going to turn the page to chapter 28. And I don't think it'll surprise you what we're going to talk about. I don't need to give you a spoiler alert on this one, do I? I mean, you know what we're going to talk about. It is the core of our faith.

Everything hangs on this. If this isn't true, everything falls apart. But if it is true, it changes everything. So, let me pray for us. And then we're going to turn the page and go to Matthew chapter 28. Father, we come before you now. Lord, we need peace. We're praying for peace in this world. We're praying for peace in our own lives, in our own hearts. Father, for some of us, as things keep crashing in, we need a glimmer of hope. Lord, I pray that you would remind each person here today that you haven't forgotten them, that you're still at work. Lord, for those of us who know this story so well, for those of us who are barely in the door, for those of us who have so many questions, Lord, I pray now in your sovereign, beautiful name. beautiful way that only you can do. Would you reach to each of us with this one story that changes everything. We'll give you all the glory. It's all because of you, Jesus. In your name we pray, amen. So we're gonna read now from Matthew chapter 28. But first, how about we collectively, we'll do this a couple of times, just a kind of a collective confession. Here's the confession, see if you agree with me. Sometimes we miss details. Have you noticed like it's like, oh wow, I did not pick that detail up. Now, some of us are a little better at this than others,

but we all miss some details. Sometimes it's because we're really familiar with something and we just walked past it and thought we knew what we were looking at. Sometimes it's because we were given an assignment and you're really serious about a task. When somebody gives you a task, I'm gonna get it finished. And then you miss all of the other things that are around. It's kind of like this famous experiment. It's called the door test. Daniel Simons, a psychologist, did this way back in the 90s. So that's the quality of the video here. The guy on the left is a part of the experiment. He's asking for directions. The guy on the right is giving him directions. He's like, yeah, so you gotta go up here and then you got, okay. So now here comes the experiment. A door walks in front and he switches out with that guy and the guy doesn't even notice it. 50% of the time they did this experiment, they didn't notice that somebody had changed. Even if you went from a man to a woman, people didn't notice. So intent on the task that they missed some of the details. Now, why would I tell you that? Because we are going to now read God's word. I'm gonna read for you Matthew chapter 28. Some verses there.

That's the task. Don't miss the details that are in front of you because I'm gonna ask you a question about them in just a second. So here we go. Matthew chapter 28. We'll start with verse one. After the Sabbath had dawned on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake where an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, do not be afraid for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He's not here. He has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples. He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him. Now I've told you. So the women hurried away from the tomb afraid yet filled with joy and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them.

Greetings, he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee. There they will see me. That's the story. What did you notice? You see, we do this around here. If you're new, we're gonna talk to each other and you're gonna talk to me. So here's how it works. I want you to just hang out with some people around you. Make sure that you include somebody sitting next to you. If they look like they're by themselves, invite them in. What did you notice in this text? What seems like an interesting detail that you would like to talk about? Sites you know how to reach us. Pastors are gonna be asking in each of the rooms. What do y'all wanna talk about? What are you noticing in this famous passage? Go ahead, talk to each other. Okay. Okay. Okay, I'd love to hear, like, maybe what's a word, what's a detail that seems curious to you, something we should pay attention to. Anybody got anything over here in these sections? Yes. So, go tell my disciples. Part of this is you got to go let the disciples know. Jesus is alive. Did you know that? I mean, that's going to be their message, right? So, somebody here said something. Go into the Galilee. So, what is that all about? Because there's a part of us that, if you know the story, it seems like Jesus hangs out

in Jerusalem for a while, and he's appearing to all of these guys. Let's come back to that, okay? Because I think that's really important. Anybody over here, anything that you're noticing that you want to talk about, that you got questions about that's interesting? Anybody here in these middle sections? Greg, the sites are asking what's up with the earthquake? What's up with the earthquake? How many of you talked about the earthquake? It's been the thing that people have been sort of curious about. First of all, I think there's the presence of the supernatural. Something's going on here, okay? So we'll come back to that. But there was also an earthquake at Jesus' crucifixion in Matthew, we see that the earth rumbled at his death. Now, what's happening here? Well, the apostle Paul would tell us that this broken world that is not as it should be, it's not as it was created, groans and longs, even the world longs to be restored. So there's that. There's one priest way back in the 1500s who said, the earth trembled with sorrow at the death of Jesus and left for joy at his resurrection. Something's going on where even creation itself says, ah, this is what we long for. Okay, so there's that. The supernatural is something

we should probably talk about. Did anybody talk about the angels? What did you guys talk about over here? Anybody got anything for me over here? You guys didn't even talk about it, did you? You're making plans for brunch and, oh, okay, yeah, man, yeah. Oh, so he appeared to the women first. Look at you, man. So yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. So let's talk about the supernatural, Galilee, and the women being pretty featured in this. Let's go back to the supernatural. First of all, we are telling you upfront, just by the way we opened the service, that we believe there is more than this physical universe. When you heard Rachel, when you heard other people at each of the sites say, there is a creator God who made all of this, we're saying that there's a God who's more than the physical universe. There's a God who did this, and that means we're in the realm of faith. Now, some of you at this point are going, yeah, that's why I'm kinda out. I mean, I'm barely here. I'm doing my friend a favor for being here, but I'm a fact guy. I'm not a faith guy. Well, I would respectfully say to each of you

that you do live by faith, no matter who you are. It's just a matter of what do you place your faith in. So there's a Nobel Prize-winning physicist named William Phillips who says he looks at the universe and it's so unlikely, it should have never happened, but there is this unlikely, orderly, beautiful universe that gives life to galaxies and stars and planets, and eventually human life. And he said there are really good scientists that will look at all of that evidence and come to the conclusion that there is an intelligent God who made all of this, who created a universe with all of these life-giving properties. He said there are also intelligent, really smart scientists who look at the same evidence and remain atheists. They come to different conclusions. But his punchline is this. He said both conclusions are positions of faith. You see, I want you to know as we tell this story, I'm gonna say things to you that I don't think we can deny, but I can't fully explain them. There is a God who created all of this, and there is a spiritual realm. And so what we're going to do is we're gonna keep our minds open, our brains working, because there's evidence, but we're also going to open our hearts to a fuller faith because I think that's where the life that we long for, that's where it's found.

Now, we get to this idea of women, and they are so prominent in the story. If you look at all four Gospels, there are like three or four things that are in every one of these when it comes to the resurrection story. First of all, Jesus is resurrected, obviously. Second, they all mention the empty tomb. That seems logical, because if the tomb isn't empty, this story has no legs. I mean, if you could go back and find the dead body of Jesus, there is no Jesus movement. So there's that. There's the idea that he speaks and appears to each of the disciples. But the thing that all of them include is that the women were the first to experience the resurrection. I can't even tell you how controversial that was in the first century when they're writing these Gospel accounts. You see, I'm not defending this at all. In fact, I'm lamenting it. But in those days, women in the ancient world were treated with very little respect to the point where their testimony wasn't often even allowed just because they were women.

So why would you then, if you are writing the Gospels and you're telling these stories, why would you have women be the eyewitnesses? It does you no good to say that unless you are committed to telling the truth. These guys aren't spinning the stories. They are telling you the truth. Richard Bauckham is a noted expert in the resurrection, and he says when you read these things, they don't sound like legends. They sound like eyewitness accounts, even if it makes the disciples a little uncomfortable. You see, there's something in history called the criterion of embarrassment. What that means is you can usually tell in history if somebody is spinning a story or if somebody's laying it on a little thick or if somebody's like embellishing things. But one of the things that you begin to find is that if you are doing that, you're not going to include embarrassing details about you. Like if you're gonna spin a story up, you're gonna make you be the hero. But in every one of these gospels, the women are the heroes. The women are the first at the crucifixion. They're the only ones at the crucifixion except for one disciple, and they're the first at the resurrection.

But there's one woman above all that is kind of, she's mentioned, she's called out, and it's Mary Magdalene. Now Mary Magdalene, we're told in Luke chapter eight, is a woman that Jesus healed of seven demons. What does that mean? It means her backstory is dark, it's broken, it's demonic. There was a demonic presence in her. Jesus heals her. She loves him. She's grateful. She follows him now. She's one of his students. There are women that are with these disciples, following them around. She's valued. He elevates her status. He is her friend. He is her teacher. He is her Messiah. But now he is gone. He is dead, and she's the first at the tomb. Why? Well, she's there to finish the job that they couldn't finish on Friday afternoon. She's there with other women to complete the burial process. The customary process was that you would put spices in these strips of cloth that you would wrap respectfully around the corpse,

and you did it to stave off the smell of decaying flesh. Now, that's graphic, but that's why she was there. But she's the one who experiences the resurrection. So why is she called out? Well, first of all, let's just celebrate, as my Jewish friends would say, let's celebrate her chutzpah, because this woman has a bunch of it. But secondly, Mary Magdalene, if there's anybody here who thinks you're too far gone, if there's anybody here who's made the kind of mistakes that you think nobody else has ever made and God couldn't possibly forgive you, if there's anybody here who thinks you will always be on the outside looking in, I want you to meet Mary Magdalene, because she would tell you there is always hope, there is always grace, and, and, watch this, it all changes on one word. Now, I want you to just look at each other, just tell each other the most liberating, powerful, beautiful word. You get one word, one word in life. Now, we're at church, it's Easter, so I'm taking Jesus off the table. You can't say Jesus. But what's the most beautiful, liberating, powerful word? You get one word, tell the people around you real quickly, and then I wanna hear what your answers are. All right, so somebody tell me, somebody tell me your word.

Faith, forgiven, love, hope, grace. Say it one more time. Mercy, surrender, these are all good, salvation, oh my goodness, these are all good words. Gratitude, man, y'all, these are great words. Freedom! Anybody wanna know what my word was? Thanks for asking, I'll tell you. It's a Greek word. And it's one word in Greek, but in English, it's three words, so I guess I cheated. So the angel says to these women, don't be afraid. And that never seems to work in these stories, by the way. But don't be afraid, I know you're looking for Jesus, the crucified one, he's not here. Egyro. Let me hear you say, Egyro. Egyro, he's not here, he has risen. You see, that one word, that one phrase in English is what makes all of your words possible. Forgiveness and hope and freedom and redemption and salvation and grace, it all comes back to that one word, that one phrase, he has risen. It's everything. The women are trying to make sense of it, they're at a place where now they're full of both joy and fear, please note that. Please do not think that these women or any of these folks immediately heard this news and went, yep, that makes sense,

I was expecting that all along. No, they're trying to, they're just trying, what do we do with this, what do we do with this? Jesus, now they meet him. Don't be afraid. It's me. They bow down. That's what you would do in reverence before a king. They begin to worship him. Now people are beginning to see that this is, somehow, this is God in the flesh come to us. Jesus says, now go tell the fellas to meet me in Galilee. And by the way, there's a word there that's different than disciples. He says, go tell my brothers, go tell the family to meet me in the Galilee. So maybe this is a bigger group now. But if you know the story of the resurrection, you know that even on Easter Sunday, Jesus appears in and around Jerusalem to these disciples. He really does. For like the next seven or eight days, Jesus hangs out in Jerusalem and he's appearing to these disciples in different ways because he wants them to get it. He wants them to know. They see him. They touch him. They eat with him.

And then they move to the Galilee, which is where, really, that was his base of operations. That's where he spent a lot of his time in ministry. It was his boyhood home, actually. So they're eventually going to get up there. The next thing I would have you to notice is that there was an immediate change in these disciples. So the truth is, man, you're right. It was the women who were there and the disciples couldn't be found. But after they have experienced the resurrected Jesus, they are willing to die for their faith. In fact, only one of the disciples dies of old age. The rest of them are all executed in the coming years because they will not shut up about the resurrected Jesus. I think that's something to pay attention to because we need to say out loud that there is no eyewitness to the resurrection. Now those guards were close. They saw something happen and then they pass out from fear. But no one saw Jesus

come out of the tomb. As best we can tell, no one saw that. There's no eyewitness. There's nobody going, Yeah, officer, it was 527 a.m. I was cutting through the garden and I saw him come right out. There's none of that. What we have is what sometimes people call evidence after the fact. Now that sounds all legally, like I know. I don't think it's technically a legal term. I don't think it's in Black's Law Dictionary. We have accomplished in this church. I'm sure they will fact check me on this. But it is a way that we sometimes, it's a way that we know if something happened or not. Are y'all married? Which one of you is older? Older. You're older? Okay. Were you there when she was born? No. Was she born? Was she born? Yeah? Yeah? How do you know? You weren't there. She's here. You're experiencing her.

Yeah, you hear her. You just looked so that you could see her. Yeah? You can hear her voice. You've got your hand on her leg right now. Careful, buddy. We're in church. It's all good. It's all good. So you know stories about her. You've heard about her. You have experienced her after the event. So there's no doubt to you that she was born. You see how that works? There is enough evidence for you to sift through this to go, I think that event really happened when it comes to the resurrection. Now some of you are like, yep, I still want to be able to see him, hear him. I want to hang on to his shoulders and go, yes! Jesus even anticipated that when he told his disciples. There will be some who will come to believe, and they won't have as much evidence as you. Blessed are they. Y'all, there is enough evidence for us to look at, and we could go through it. We do go through it. But I think the change in the disciples is one of those things that you want to pay

attention to. You see, the disciples almost from the beginning, once it settles in, they will now stand up to the bullies and haters. And let me just go ahead and say there will always be bullies and haters in this world. There will always be those who try to silence the gospel. This church is blessed to partner and to be a part of networks and just friendships and relationships with a bunch of pastors and churches and ministries around the world. Robin and I were at, we were with some friends, a group of international pastors about three weeks ago. There was a friend of ours, dear friend of ours, who stood up and began to tell. Now, we heard stories from all over. But he began to tell about his ministry and what they're facing in his country. Now, I'm not going to tell you his country. I'm not going to tell you his name. You've never met him. I've never mentioned him. That's about as much as I think I can say. But he said in their country there is such a hatred towards Christianity right now and it's being sanctioned by the government.

And so people are feeling emboldened to attack churches, they're feeling emboldened to seize property. The large churches in that country are having to disperse and meet in house churches. But even when you gather at house churches, if someone new comes into your midst, you wonder if they're a spy. Are they going to report you to the government? This is all real, this is not exaggerated in any way, this is happening in real time. He said there is one region where there are laws that are just allowing more and more violence towards Christians to the point where in this one particular area, they don't want to endanger their people, so they gather for what they call silent worship. So everybody opens their Bible to a passage, and then you allow God to speak to you. And a leader, and this was the example he gave, a leader will stand up and say, let's sing Amazing Grace. But you sing it silently. You sing it in your head. Nobody's looking around, nobody's celebrating, nobody's hearing the beautiful thing that we've heard all day long. There's no other expressions like we are so privileged and grateful to have of our deaf community. There's no amazing grace, amazing grace. How sweet the sound. It saved a wretch like me. There's none of that. It's silent. Now, this is going to be a big risk. And if you're at a place where you're kind of feeling you need to defend yourself a little bit, you're going to move into maybe a sarcasm thing, or you're going to roll your eyes, you're going to kind of maybe try to make somebody next to you laugh, and I would just ask you not to do that. Are you up for this? I want us to sing Amazing Grace in silence. Now, for some of you, it'll be time to just sit there and consider, is any of this true? For some of you, honestly, it might be a moment to just go, God, thank you for the freedom we have in this country. For some of you, it might be praying for the persecuted church.

But if you're like me, it might be a moment to consider that grace that one of you mentioned a minute ago. So we'll put the words up here. It's a risk. Let's sing Amazing Grace in silence. I know some of you thought that was too dramatic. Trust me, I barely told you any of the details of that story. It's true. It's happening. And some of you are like, well, it does sound like the gospel is being silenced. No. The rest of the story that my friend said is that, yes, people are being harassed. People are being bullied. People are being threatened. And there are even people who are being martyred. He has had to go more than once to families who have been martyred in this country for their faith, for not denying Jesus. And when he sits down with the family, when he sits down with the widow, he said, every time I start off by saying, I'm sorry for your loss. And they interrupt him and say, direct quote, do not feel sorry for us. We get to do this for our Lord Jesus. I'm telling you, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people who are coming to Christ in this area in spite of the persecution. You can't silence the gospel. You tell me, which is still standing, the empire of Rome or the kingdom of our Lord Jesus? You cannot silence the gospel. So there's a momentum that starts to build with these disciples. They eventually get to the Galilee. It's a mountain. We've been talking about mountains. God meets these people on a mountain. Well, God's going to meet them on this mountain. And they begin to realize that Jesus is God in the flesh. It says that they worshiped him, but some doubted.

Really interesting. It's probably more than the 11 disciples. It could be like 500. Paul talks about 500 people at once experiencing the resurrected Jesus. It could be that. We don't know. But there's some people who doubt it. Now, why would you include that detail? Because you're not spinning the story. Aren't you grateful? I mean, I don't know how many some is, but I do know this, there's no mention here of Jesus blowing them up. There's no mention here of him shaming them. There's no mention of him here saying, after everything I've done and you still don't get it? That's not my king. No, he loves them, he encourages them, but now he's gonna drop some truth on them. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Next confession, just quick show of hands, just go ahead, raise your hand. Anybody here have trouble with authority? Like somebody telling you what to do? Go ahead, just raise your hand, it'll feel good. Yeah, okay, yeah. Some of you have so much trouble with authority that you won't raise your hand, you're going, he's not the boss of me. I get it, me too.

Jesus right here does not tone it down. He says, all authority, all over heaven and earth, Ephesians one says that God the Father places all authority under Christ. When you hear the word Christ, think Messiah. When you hear the word Messiah, think king. Jesus is the king, I tell you, he's the king. And he has authority over the physical universe and over the spiritual realm and he will have the last word. Jesus says, it is my way, my truth, my love, my mercy that is gonna drive the story forward. And that's a good thing. I know why we hesitate, because sometimes when power and authority get next to each other, it doesn't end well. But there's a philosopher, Peter Kreeft, who says if the resurrection really happened, then goodness and power aren't enemies, they're allies. You see, you don't have to worry that Jesus has that much power. Because he's good, I tell you, he's good. And so now he sends them out, there's a whole assignment that he gives them. We talk about this all the time, we won't spend any time on it today. Next week he gives a similar assignment on a different mountain, we'll come back to that. But Jesus says, just go make disciples, tell the story. Baptize them in the name of the triune God. Take a stand for me publicly with this radical,

beautiful expression of baptism. Now, for some of you, that's a question that you have. We're gonna talk about that in a few weeks. Many of you, and you've been talking to us after each of these services, you're saying, I'm ready. When is that baptism service? It's in June? You can start to have those conversations with us right now, if you're ready. We're gonna celebrate like nobody's business. But I want you to know, if the resurrection really happened, then we who follow Jesus, we have a chance to, we have a chance to push back darkness, even by the way we live our lives. Which gets us to one more really old tradition. Goes back to the fourth century. A lot of times we think of candles and we think of Christmas. But there's a candle tradition in the old ancient church at Easter. And that kind of makes sense to me, because if you think about it, Jesus died in a moment of supernatural darkness. The Bible always associates God's work with light. In fact, one of the gospel writers talks about Jesus at the beginning and says the one true light is coming into the world. But on that day, Jesus died on the cross in darkness for our sins. So the Easter story really begins in darkness.

But the truth is, in this world, these days, it still feels dark, doesn't it? Maybe you've got a health crisis going on. Maybe you've got a mental health challenge that you need to reach out for help with. Maybe there's a financial thing that's waking you up in the middle of the night. You're wondering if you're gonna make the next round of layoffs. You've got that one regret that just keeps hunting you down. You've got a friendship that fell apart and for the life of you, you don't know how to put it back together. Maybe you're the one that's being bullied online or in person. Maybe there's a grief that just feels like it keeps trying to wrap itself around your heart. Maybe you look around at the people next to you and you're like, I want the kind of faith that they have. We need what one writer calls a demon-crushing, darkness-killing champion. You see, we need a savior who will call us out of the dark, who will separate us from the dark, who will redeem us and forgive us and restore us and lead us into a different life. It makes sense to me that the Easter vigil would often start in darkness and then move into light. It makes sense to me that the resurrection happened at dawn. Because if you think about it, dawn always pushes back the night.

It almost doesn't matter how dark or how horrible the night was. Light always wins. When morning breaks, night has to retreat. You see, what I would say to you is this, if the resurrection really happened, then all of those words can be ours. Hope, forgiveness, freedom, joy, faith, love, and yes, grace. Now a minute ago, it was hard to sing that song in silence, wasn't it? It seems to me like we need another crack at it. It seems to me if this story is true, that some of us need one more chance to sing of that grace that found us. Would you join me, church? Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I am found. Was blind, but now I see. See, if the resurrection really happened, and it did, if Jesus is really King, and He is, then dawn has broken and everything has changed. We're still in a shadow-filled land, but I want you to know that the last verse of the Gospel of Matthew is for you. When Jesus says, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age. Jesus will be with you. Jesus promises, if you turn to Him, He promises to walk with you in the middle of this life. Not just at the end. Jesus will be there right now, but I also want you to hear this. He says you, I'll be with you. We always bring up this point. It is a plural you. It is, it's hard in the English to translate that, unless as one writer so brilliantly put it, unless you live in the South. Do you know what a plural you sounds like in the South? Y'all.

For my wife, if she's really trying to underscore it, it's all y'all. Are all y'all coming over? You need to know in the Greek, this is accurate. Jesus is saying, I'll be with y'all always. What does that even mean? Yes, He is with us individually, but I need you to hear me. The gift of Christian community is that God often speaks to me through you. When somebody texts me and says, hey, I'm praying for you, what is that? It's God reminding me that I'm not alone. When somebody points me towards a scripture, what is that? That's God saying, hey, you should look at this again. When somebody locks arms with me and says, hey, let's do this together. It's God saying, I'm not finished with you. Over and over and over in my life, God has used you and other people to say, I'm not finished. Listen, if you are in a place right now where you are struggling with your faith and struggling with your journey, I want to ask you to take a step into community because Jesus says, I'll be with y'all always, even to the end of the age. And this age will end. There will come an end to this chapter. In a few weeks, we're going to get to the end of this series and we're going to get on that last mountain. We're going to look to those closing chapters of the book of Revelation and we'll get one more glimpse at how God says this is going to finish out and what happens next. And it'll be glorious. And I hope you join us. But right now we live in the in-between time. We live in a fractured and frustrating world. So what do we do? We cling to the truth of the resurrection.

We believe that God is still up to something. You see, if you're looking at some people around here and you're going, how's this happen? I want you to know it's the power of the resurrection that explains the resilience of these people. It's the power of the resurrection that explains their grit and their faith and their passion. It's the power of the resurrection that explains how they can laugh so deeply and yet when something happens. Happens they will they will lament and they will cry openly. We don't hide it We don't pretend that we aren't in heartache because it happens listen to me Christian hope means you can get to the bottom of your grief and not get lost in it Why because the resurrection happened it because sometimes what I need to do is to cling to that truth and cling to a friend who? Reminds me of that truth. I'm telling you because of the resurrection Jesus has the last word we are in the time of miracles We see them happening. We pray for them. If you need prayer, come on. Let's pray for those things Now we have seen miracles all weekend long when somebody comes up to me and says I have turned to Jesus and the culture They came from and the background they came from you would never ever have expected it. I'm telling you it's time It's time. Listen the next miracle for some of you honestly, and I just really it's just a thought The next miracle for some of you is going to be just like continuing the journey just a little bit Honestly the next miracle might be that you come back next week or the week after that and you just kind of try a little bit of a Story with us and see where it leads for some of you. It's going to be turning to Jesus And when you turn to him, he will never leave you nothing can separate you from the love of God that's in Christ Jesus So before the next big pivot in your life before the next big plot twist before the next big triumph Before the next big heartache before the next big highlight reel before the next big shocking thing that you never saw coming Turn to Jesus He's worth it and If you're in the middle of one of those storms if you are in the fight of your life right now Turn to Jesus keep turning to Jesus because I'm telling you he's worthy. He's worth trusting. That's my king That's who Jesus is we say it every Easter, but Jesus does his best work in graveyards I have seen him resurrect hope I have seen him resurrect families and and relationships and marriages and friendships and businesses and Reputations, this is what Jesus does

So as we leave here, can we cling to the truth of that one word in Greek that one phrase in English? That changes everything you remember what it was Are you guys ready for your part because it's about time for us to do this I'm gonna ask if we could at each of our sites now if we could just have our musicians and and singers come out If you're at home right now, and you're watching I would say at this point Scoot the the coffee table back a little bit You see we we were so grateful to sing So beautifully and to hear the church saying man what a gift that is and it was so good hearing you sing amazing grace But I think we need a little more now Okay, it's gonna be a lot more so let me just warn you all right We believe what we're saying around here So some of you now are gonna sing this through laughter. Some of you are gonna cry this through tears, but it's true either way You've heard this song if you listen to the radio if you're on Spotify around here You definitely know this song because it's close to home, but we're gonna now Everybody stand, okay And I'm gonna ask you this may be the toughest thing you do all day long Find what we call the backbeat Two and four that's what we're clapping on. Oh, look at you. Y'all are helping him. Come on out here now Here's what we're gonna do now. I Believe Jesus forgives. I think he leads he restores. I believe in him I'm asking you to sing from someplace deep in your heart. Here it is I'm just gonna give you one last truth about my king. You ready? Christ is risen