Easter | Resurrecting Hope

Our teaching text comes from Luke 24. You can stay standing as we read God's word tonight. The teaching text is from Luke 24, verses 13 to 35. Now that same day, two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. And they were talking with each other about everything that had happened. And as they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them. But they were kept from recognizing him. He asked them, what are you discussing together as you walk along? They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them named Cleopas asked him, are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there these days? What things, he asked. About Jesus of Nazareth, they replied. He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what's more, it's the third day since all of this took place. And in addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning,

but they didn't find his body. They came and told us that they'd seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it, just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus. He said to them, how foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets had spoken. Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all of the prophets, he explained to them what was said in the scriptures concerning himself. As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going further. But they urged him strongly, stay with us, for it's nearly evening and the day's almost over. So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks and broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, were not our hearts burning within us while he talked to us on the road and opened the scriptures to us? They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem, where they found the 11 and those with them assembled together and saying, it's true. The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon. Then the two told what had happened on the way

and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Good evening. Sadly, my wife got COVID this week. And so she's watching online. So, babes, I love you. So sorry about that, missing Holy Week for the COVID. Also wanna say hello to everybody in the balcony tonight. It is wonderful to have you up there in the balcony. We see you. If you have not been to church in a long time, not been to church in a long time, or you've never really been to church, it can be a disorienting environment. I'm originally from Australia. When I first moved to the United States, I remember going to my first Super Bowl party. And it was really a cultural event. I didn't know the rules of the game. I didn't know any of the teams in the game. I did not care about the outcome of the game. And so I'm observing people high-fiving and groaning, and I'm watching people hug. I don't have COVID. I'll take a little water. Just preaching a lot this week. Thank you. Bro, that was so fast, Keith, and thank you, thank you.

Wow. No, we're good, mate, we're good. And it was a wild event, just watching people cheer, clap. For a team I could not care less about. And then several years later, I've become a US citizen. I'm living here in New York, and the New York Giants are playing. And I end up after church at a bar in Chelsea with a group of strangers. And this was the year that I was diagnosed with COVID. here that the New York Giants were way behind and in an act of the providence of God, start crawling their way back, and they turn it all the way around and they win the Super Bowl, and I am hugging strangers. I'm looking at people saying, we won, baby, we won. And it was a beautiful journey from, I don't know what they're excited about, I don't get this and don't understand this, to this is the story of my life. I say that because if you're at church tonight, you may be looking at all these people clapping and cheering and thinking, I'm glad your guy won. I mean, he beat Deck, good for you. But you may not feel an understanding or resonance about what's happening. Well, I just wanna say I'm glad you're here and I hope that over the course of time, this will start a journey of faith for you that ends up at that place where you too can rejoice

and receive what Jesus has done as victory for you. This, you've come to us on a great Sunday. This is Easter Sunday. And three million or so New Yorkers and two billion or so people around the world will gather today to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is probably the central event of the Christian faith that really distinguishes and gives meaning to the life we live and what happens after the grave. And it's really worthy of deep consideration. NT Wright said this, what we believe about life after death directly affects what we believe about life before death. I don't want to go from a happy introduction to a pretty morose, you know, this quickly, but you will die and you will have to face death. Every single one of us will die. And what you believe about what happens after, right when you really wrestle with it, impacts how you live before you die. Some people are sort of confident materialists. They're just like, hey man, this is all there is. What we can see, taste, touch, and feel, and you're gonna die and don't worry about it. There's nothing after death, enjoy your life. Other people feel pressure from that idea. If this is all there is, every moment's got a count. Now, something happens after you die. Sometimes people have a vision of sort of like optimistic spiritualism,

like I don't exactly know, but I bet there's like a benevolent universal force maybe that we merge back into. Maybe you grew up in sort of a fundamentalist religious home where you sort of had these visions of wrath and hell. You're deeply concerned about whether or not you're gonna be good enough, have you done enough to get into heaven. It matters what you believe. Christians believe that Christ died on the cross to pay for the penalty of our sins, rose again in the middle of human history, and what God done in Jesus, he will do with us if we trust in him. We too will rise to newness of life. Something happens in this life because of Jesus that gives you confidence in the life after and peace now. Now, I want you to feel the weight of this. This is a serious claim. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. So this is not like, hey, you do you, and I'm glad that makes you happy. I'm not interested in a happy delusion. In fact, he raises the stakes. He says, if it is only for this life, we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. Not only do we believe a delusion,

but we're missing out on all the pleasure the world has to offer. So I want you to see the stakes are high. So Christians, knowing how high the stakes are, come up with apologetic arguments to show why the resurrection is worth believing in. They believe because they think it is a serious interpretation of the history of the story of Jesus. It's about a deep philosophy. They try and understand the biblical claims and facilitate an existential encounter. They wanna take serious this claim that Jesus rose from the dead, and they will put forth a series of facts to promote this. They'll say things like, most historians, most credible historians, believe there was a person named Jesus who was crucified by the Roman Empire. He's not a mythical figure. He's not an invention of the church. Most historians, credible historians, believe there was a man named Jesus who died. They also believe that the resurrection appearances are what gave birth to the Christian faith. It wasn't something written in later to explain what happened to the body. This was the shock that kicked the church off. They also talk about the great transformation of the disciples. How do you take fearful disciples,

and then they willingly give their lives as bold martyrs? Would you do that for a lie? They talk about how to construct a convincing. and how the Christian resurrection narratives are not really that convincing compared to other ways that stories are constructed. Why would you put women who used to have demons in them as the primary witnesses for Christ coming back from the dead? Why would you, or how do you make sense of the explosion of the church? How did the church go from 120 people in a room on the day of Pentecost to bringing the Roman Empire to its knees in 300 years without a violent revolution? They did it by suffering love. People say, well, that alone is a miracle. Some people say the fact that worship shifted a day, or the calendar of history is split in two. Many people will say these are proofs for the resurrection of Jesus. It's historically serious, it's philosophically weighty, it's existentially satisfying, and so a lot of Easter sermons are all about that. I don't wanna talk about that today, okay? I wanna talk about something else. I wanna talk about the resurrection of hope. I wanna talk about how Jesus brings hope that has died back to life. We as a society need hope. Only 15% of Americans believe that today's children

will grow up to be better off than their parents. I mean, think about that. 85% of parents are sort of parenting from the paradigm, it's gonna get worse from here on out. So I wish you all the best, good luck. 85%, 40% of US high school students report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, according to the CDC. We've been told there's no God, religion is a joke, so just, there was this bus campaign that the Humanist Foundation put on in London because they were so sick of religious messaging in London, and here's what it says, there's probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy yourself. And they put these signs all over buses driving around London. And I just wanna say, with all due respect, our wage is far from settling into a comfortable unbelief. Lot of pressure, lot of stress. So we need hope, we need hope. And that's what we find in this passage today. These disciples of Jesus had hoped that he would be the Messiah, but their hope has been destroyed. They're walking away from Jerusalem, which was the city of hope. They're walking away from a man they believe the Messiah, that they put their hope in. And there's even rumors from some of these women that they struggled to believe

that said Jesus was back from the dead, but those rumors weren't enough to keep them in Jerusalem with the disciples. They said, no more sunk cost bias here, we're out. And they were heading to Emmaus, a village seven miles away. And then Jesus encounters them to confront their lack of hope. Now, you know this, but hope is central to the Christian tradition. We can't live without hope. Christians have these chief virtues, they're theological virtues. And I'll give you the first one, faith. Yeah, that's right, no trick questions here tonight, folks, just me. Faith, hope, and love. What's in the middle? Hope. We cannot live without hope. Romans 15, 13 says, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may overflow with hope. Hope is central to what we do, but I think hope is misunderstood. It can be a little vague, so I just wanna unpack what hope is tonight. I wanna show how hope dies, and I wanna show how Jesus resurrects hope. So there was a professor named Charles Snyder

who spent his career at the University of Kansas studying hope, and he put forth what he called hope theory. And he said that hope requires these things to be valid hope. The first is you gotta have a vision. Now, this is important. This means that when you look forward, something in your heart rises, and you have an expectation of good. There's a future orientation. Second, you gotta have pathways, which means it can't just be a pipe dream or a wish. There's gotta be plausible ways that you can get to it, and you've gotta have an agency, which means you have to be able to take meaningful action yourself to accomplish it. And that if any of these three things breaks down or are not present, you don't have hope. You can see this. You can see this. If you have no vision, but you've got a ton of options and a ton of power, you're not gonna get anywhere. If you've got a ton of vision but no way to actualize it, even though you have a lot of power, you'd be frustrated. And if you've got vision and a way to get there, but you don't have any power to bring about any change. it's going to produce tremendous frustration. Hope theory. I wanted tonight, if you're really, really honest, really honest, if you were to sit down

and just put three little comments on a piece of paper and just ask yourself, what's my vision? What am I giving my life to move towards? What power am I relying on to achieve the vision that I have? Hope. And here we have, in this passage, the disciples' loss of hope on the road to Emmaus. Look at verse 19. Jesus walks up to them and we read this. Jesus says, they're talking about something. Jesus says, what things are you talking about, he asked. And here's their reply. About Jesus of Nazareth, he was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death and they crucified him. And then you read these words. But we had hoped that he was the one that was gonna redeem Israel. And what's more, it's the third day since all of this took place. If hope is vision plus pathway and agency, they said their hope is gone. They had no vision. Jesus, the Messiah they were trusting in, is dead. They have no path to national freedom and the removal of the Romans because their political leader is gone

and they have no agency. They're not gonna go start a revolution. They know that they are not the Messiah themselves. They are experiencing the death of possibility. Renee Janoff-Boltman has an explanation of how hope is created and how hope dies called The Assumptive World's Theory. And she basically says what we do is we take hope, which is vision, pathway and agency, and we construct a world in our hearts and in our heads that we try and live in to get that hope to come true. You probably know how this works. When you're a little kid, when I was a kid, there was a movie that came out in Australia called BMX Bandits, okay? And it was about these kids riding BMXs and like stopping crime and just epic childhood stuff. And I remember thinking to myself, if I could just get a redline BMX, any time my parents were hassling me, I could just escape. And if I was riding this BMX, like all the girls in the neighborhood would be like, yo, is that John Tyson on that redline BMX? I had all of these, I had this world. So my life vision was BMX plus freedom to become the man I'm always destined to be with my little legs driving me into the division of my dreams. You probably had something like this.

Maybe it was different if you were a girl. Struggling. When you become a teenager, high school, you build a world. If I can just get on that team, if I could just make it in the theater, the theater group, if I could just get on the team, whatever it is, you build these worlds and in that world, you put your hope. New York, everybody is walking around with an assumptive world in their heads. You moved here with an assumptive world in your head that you put your hope inside of it. Something that you're like, if I can just get this, this will be the thing. And what happens, she says, is that these assumptive worlds get destroyed and we experience the death of a dream and we experience a profound existential crisis when our assumptions about our hope are shattered. Maybe you've experienced this. You thought there's that person that if you can just find this relationship and you get it, that this is gonna, it's gonna deal with your loneliness. It's gonna make your life worth living and then when you find out, when someone breaks up with you or it ends, you're kind of like, I had this whole world built. I had a vision and we had these pathways

we're gonna walk down and we have these plans we're gonna do it again. It's all taken away from you. That's what happened to them when it came to Jesus. They had a world and a vision and it all disappeared because their Messiah was crucified. We can't live without hope. We can't live without it. And so often we come up with false hopes. What's your little assumptive world look like? What's the thing that you are putting your hope inside? In New York, it could be increasing in influence, finding a place to live. That person, it could be therapeutic resolution of your childhood wounds or trauma. It could be success in your field or industry. It could be getting a rent-stabilized apartment. It could be anything, but in your heart, you're like, if I get that, then I'll have hope. But these things are so fragile. They're not big enough if they get destroyed. It's a fragile hope. Even if you get meaning out of it and there's joy in it, it's fragile if you build a world that can fall apart when your object is removed. This leads to the experience of the death of hope. The loss of hope is a crushing reality. Have you ever had a dream die? Here's what psychologists tell us happens

when you lose hope. Number one, you get angry, and then you feel like you fall into a pit of despair, and then you just experience apathy. I think many people feel like that in New York. They're smiling on the way to work, or they just keep pushing, but underneath, there's an anger or a despair, a kind of apathy. Their hope is gone, though their lives are busy. This is the disciples. Look what it says. They stood still, their faces downcast. They've walked away from Jerusalem. They've left the disciples. They've deconstructed their faith. They've left the community that they know, and there's rumors of hope, but they do not want anything to do with them. They've stopped. Their faces are downcast. This is the good news of Easter. Jesus doesn't come to make the shiny, happy people feel better. Easter is about finding people with their faces cast down, with their hopes that have been destroyed. Into this, Jesus brings true hope. This is not toxic positivity. It's not like just giving affirmations over yourself that you wish would be true. It's not vague spirituality.

It's not circumstantial optimism. Jesus doesn't be like, oh, sorry, guys, that was a bit of a screw up the cross. Let me just run, get the Romans real quick, and then maybe you'll accept me as your Messiah. None of their circumstances really change, and God doesn't give them an iron wheel to go back and save themselves. No, God comes from outside into their shattered world, into their destroyed hopes to meet them. Now, pay attention to this next little section here, because this is how Jesus resurrects hope. Three things we see in this passage. The first one is this. When you're at your lowest, you will get a revelation of the heart of Jesus. Look at verse 15. Jesus himself came up and walked along with them. Now, where are they walking again? They're walking away from Jesus, and Jesus is walking with them while they're walking away from him. Now, I just wanna note that you can pick any other religion in the world, and I promise the God of that religion will not walk with you when you walk away from him. This is a distinctive of the mercy and of the heart of Jesus. A lot of times we think, the place that I could be near God is,

what if I'm one of those people down the front jumping up and down or waving my hands? That's where God is. But, and you may think, I'm struggling with doubt. You don't know what I've done. I feel like my world's fallen apart. My life is collat. If you just lift your eyes a bit, you may find that this is the closest you've ever been to God, not the furthest away from him. It's kind of amazing where Jesus found people. You know, every Easter, I wake up, and it's just, I get a little bit of a, I don't know how to explain it, but it's just like, it's just a little hesitation because in 2011, the church that I'd started was featured in the New York Times Metropolitan section. So they did like a, they embedded a reporter from the New York Times in our church as we were starting a church in the East Village, followed us around everywhere, wrote down all the prayers in our prayer meetings, talked to a bunch of people in the church, and then wrote a report about us to talk about how, can we bring that up? To talk about how the evangelical squad was invading Manhattan. And not like, it could have been worse, theoretically, okay?

Like, it was a tough article. And not, so once this article went out, a bunch of other minor magazines started picking up on it. Newspaper, it was called The Village Voice. Talked about everything happening downtown. And The Village Voice picked it up and then there's a guy named Perez Hilton. Have any of you heard of Perez Hilton? So Perez Hilton finds out about this church, Planet of the East Village, and he does not seem that excited about our church being here. And all over the, like literally from around the world, my friends are like, hey man, found you online. Perez Hilton was, and I was like, great. Who said that no press is bad press? That's never been in Perez Hilton's blog. Every Easter I'm like, God, get Perez Hilton. Get him. Now, two weeks ago Perez Hilton got really sick and was hospitalized. Now if I was God and I had someone pinned down like that that said a bunch of stuff about the church, I'd be like, I wanna have a word with you. Now I got you. But the most amazing thing happens. Perez Hilton, when he's in hospital, has an encounter with God. And if you watch the video, you can watch the video. Next, let's get to it.

Perez Hilton apologizes for selfish behavior after finding God amid medical scare. I didn't care who I hurt. Now he's on a repentance tour making things right because God's love transformed him at his lowest moment. Now, here's why I say it. I don't say that to show that God answers prayer 15 years later, friends. That's not why. I show that because all the mercy of Jesus, when someone who hates the church and mocks God when he's down, God doesn't judge him for being down. He offers him mercy. In the place he thought he would get judgment from God, he finds the kindness of God. That's what happens. So if you're at a place where you feel like you've screwed your life up or you've walked away from your faith or you're struggling to believe or anything like that, I just wanna say to you, slow down and look around because you may be getting ready to have an encounter with Jesus' heart. Second thing that Jesus does when he meets these disciples is he gives them a revelation of his word. Now, part of the problem they have, if you go see a therapist, a therapist will do a lot of things, but one of the things they'll do

is they'll give you space to name your grief or your pain. So they'll listen and they'll let you talk to get it out so they can understand what it is. And then they'll offer some corrective reframing and some other paradigms to offer truth where there's been lies or a perspective where you've been maybe blinded or wounded so that you can see clearly. And then what they're gonna do is give you agency so you can start to move forward and feel empowered for meaningful change. Jesus does this. This is exactly what Jesus does. Jesus meets with them and says, what are you talking about? And he just lets them go. He lets them name and explain what they are struggling with. And then Jesus corrects their faulty framing of reality. See, their frame was very small. It was kill our enemies, bless us, we win, they lose, glory. Jesus has a bigger vision than that. Jesus wants them to see that he's the Messiah of the whole world and not just their nationalistic religion. He wants his heart to touch their hearts. That's why he talks about Moses and the prophets. The prophets prophesied that the Jewish people were to be the ones that the whole world

would be blessed through. But then Jesus says something fascinating here. And I want you to see this. A lot of times people think Jesus was the victim of a mob. Or as it always happens with every martyr who challenges the system, they get killed by the system. That's not how Jesus died. Jesus says, I lay my life down and I pick it up. No one takes it. So he wasn't a victim of society and this wasn't some idea of God punishing his own kid. No, this was an idea of a partnership in the Trinity to redeem the world where Christ willingly laid down his life. But we read this little phrase that Jesus says to them. Did not the Messiah have to suffer? He wants to reframe their story so that they can make sense of suffering. I think we've got an art piece here. This is by Teresa Magalhaes and the piece is called In the Air. That's not it. It's a room with bubbles. Do we have the photo of the room with bubbles? We're not at Caravaggio yet. And art's subjective. You imagine going through a gallery and you walk in the gallery. Imagine you're walking through a gallery with kids, you know, and then you get into this room

and you're like, oh gosh, this is great. You're a parent, you're like at last. Something fun for the kids and the kids are running around, you know, chasing the bubbles, popping the bubbles. And then all of a sudden the parents grab their kids after reading a little plaque in the corner and they rip them out of the room. It's like, what just happened? Looked like the kids were having fun. Well as it turns out, this is an art piece done by a woman and the water used to create the bodies was water that was used to wash corpses. So they wash corpses in the morgue, she takes that water and she turns it into bubbles. Now you're sitting there thinking, why would anybody do that? She's from Mexico. And saw the senseless violence of the cartels where children were killed in the crossfire and she wanted people to know that life is not just a shiny, happy, bubbly little time, but that death is haunting us everywhere we go. And I wanna say this, the Christian story is not just about a God showing you mercy in your story, it is about a king conquering death because of the cross. Somebody's gotta deal with the issue of death. Somebody's gotta deal with our spiritual enemy, Satan. Somebody's gotta overcome. The first Adam that God put in the world

to have authority and to create the culture of the earth, listen to the evil one and as a result, the authority that belonged to Adam and Eve that was designed to produce society and culture where we would flourish and God would be glorified was destroyed. And so Jesus comes as the second Adam, not to get God's authority back, but to get the authority that belonged to us back. And Christ on the cross takes away the sin that we deserve. And as a result, he is risen again. And now as the new Adam, we are not a part of the old Adam where we die, but a part of the new Adam where we have life. And the Bible says that what God did because of Jesus will be given to us as a gift. Jesus died to take away our sin that we may have life. Now I want you to note this. The phrase that's used here, Jesus opened the Bible to them is used three times in this passage. It's a theology of progressive revelations. Jesus opens the scriptures. Their eyes are opened in verse 31. Now what's fascinating here is that this is a play in the Old Testament where Adam and Eve's eyes were opened because of their sin and all they saw was shame and brokenness. Jesus opens their eyes when they're caught in shame and brokenness to see mercy

and grace of a new way forward. This is revelation about the world being open to them. It's beautiful. But I want you to note this. This is important. It's personal. It's not just merciful and it's not just theological. It's personal. Look at verse 30. He sits at the table with them. He took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, were not our hearts burning within us? Well, he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us. Where did I get the revelation that it was Christ? Where was it? At the table, having a meal, having fellowship. I don't know about you, I love the Bible. I love, I'm a bit of a, I live in my head a lot. The perfect night for me is sitting on a couch while my wife and I are reading deep things, occasionally commenting and sharing the insights we're getting from what we read. Lot of fun to be around us. But they didn't get the revelation that it was Christ in the Bible study.

They got it at the table, a fellowship. Reminding us that all the information in the world is not enough unless you have the encounter with the risen Christ. He wants to meet us where we are. That can happen anywhere. For me, it happened as a 17-year-old at a Pentecostal youth camp. For C.S. Lewis, he had an encounter with God in a sidecar with his brother driving while he's on the way to the zoo. He gets in the sidecar and isn't quite sure that God's reeling gets out and he's like, oh my gosh, I guess that's how it happened. People in this church have had this encounter, this personal encounter, at bars in Manhattan and even at a bar in Brooklyn. Jesus is in the Brooklyn. People have had an encounter. I've had a friend who's had an encounter at a funeral home, had a friend who watched their spouse, his wife got saved. And she was so transformed. He said, if God can do that in a heart like hers, I want him to do it in a heart like mine. Listen, you may have come to New York because this is your Emmaus road where you came to run away from God. Be careful. This may be the very place that you bump into God.

Jesus loves finding people on the road of despair and deconstruction in New York. It's gotta be personal. Back to Caravaggio. There's a picture here, probably the most famous picture of this scene. And this is the meal at Emmaus. If we'll do a little Visio Divina for a minute. Looks like Jesus has been eating cake, doesn't it? Be honest. A lot of food on that table. He painted it, painted it like the fruit's about to fall off and you wanna steady it. And look at the response. They say that this is Luke with the green jacket. Like, Luke's like, what the, he's just about to push up? I don't know, who's this other man who's just like, what? Can't believe it. And here is Jesus looking down with his hand out and he looks like a proper religious figure. Caravaggio painted this when he was young and he was on the rise. He brought a new style of painting through light. And he was sort of the talk of the town. And he used to love to carry weapons. He was getting in fights all the time, getting arrested. Got arrested for throwing food at a waiter. Got in a fight with someone. I think it was over a prostitute. He stabbed someone in the groin and they bled to death.

And he got a murder charge and he had to run away. So he's got all this fame, but he doesn't know about the mercy of Jesus at this point. He's using God to get money for himself. But he becomes a broken man. And if you understand the trajectory of his art, in one of his most famous pieces, he's the beheading of Goliath by David. He paints himself as Goliath's head. And on the sword, it says, humility has defeated pride. He goes on a journey of repentance. Five years later, Caravaggio paints this. This is the second account, next one here. And I want you to note this. Jesus is kind of gaunt. He's older and he's worn out. And there's not as much light. And the reactions are not as strong. And if you were to come to me and you were to say, which one is more beautiful? Without a doubt, I'd say this one, this one here. Do you want to know? Because this is someone who's needed the mercy of Jesus. The other one was a religious show. He just did it because that's where the money is. This one right here, this is a man who needs mercy. And I love this image. And I want to say this to you. You may think, I've got to test, I've done too many things. This perfect life, I've screwed this life up.

Everybody thought I was one kind of person. Turns out, none of it was true. I'm a hypocrite. I feel like my faith has fallen apart. My story will never be good again. The beautiful image you've projected is gone. Who wants a projected image anyway? You know what we want? People who've actually had a personal encounter and are retelling an authentic story of grace. I pick authenticity over fake beauty every single time. That's what Jesus can do. Give us this resurrection hope. So, we started by saying that we need hope. And what were the three things hope was made up of again? What was the first one? Vision, what was the second one? Pathways, what was the third one? Agency. And what we said is that they had built a world in their minds where their hope lived. About Jesus, who was a national figure who was gonna liberate them. And a wrecking ball came through it and their hope fell apart. And then Jesus meets them. And Jesus resurrects their hope. What's that resurrected hope look like? Here's what it is. Next slide.

Expanded kingdom vision. Their vision was this big. To follow Jesus is to have your vision of what God is doing in the world radically expanded. Jesus expanded their vision. Second, Jesus gave them global pathways, not just nationalistic small pathways. Global mission. And into eternity. How long is the horizon of the mercy of God? It's forever. And then lastly, this is extraordinary. How did they get power to live this? Here's what the Bible says. When you become a follower of Jesus, the Spirit of God comes and lives inside of you. That's what Max talked about in his testimony video, being indwelled. And the Bible says the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us. And that means that what God did in Jesus in raising Him from the dead and giving Him a resurrected body, He will do for you if that Spirit is inside of you. Then you're not left in willpower. You're not enmeshed with someone hoping they're gonna save your life and fix your world. You're not dependent on your career or success or recognition or accomplishment or some position. You've got the power of God to bring you

into the future that God has for you. That is resurrected hope. And no amount of suffering or failure or heartache can destroy a hope that has made its way out of the grave. That's good news. That's what Easter is about. But it's got to become personal. You've got to have an encounter that's got to be personal. 2,000 years ago, Easter happened. Every church, just about in New York City today, will have people celebrating it. But the goal is not Easter in a church. You know what the goal is? Easter in us. He wants to resurrect your hope. He wants to resurrect your stuff. Gerald Manley Hopkins has a poem. It's 35 stanzas long, but right towards the end, there's this beautiful little line. It says this. Let him Easter in us. Be a dayspring to the dimness of us. Be a crimson crescented east. Now, that's beautiful. A dayspring to our dimness. The darkness of depression or despair or anger or heartache. The light of God shining in us. Be a crimson crescented east. This is talking about the blood of Christ. And the east is where the sun rises.

It means because of the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ, hope is on the horizon of your life. And it means that what is dead in your life because of sin or heartache or trusting in the wrong things can be reborn with an unshakable, resurrected hope because Christ himself will come and live in you. The message of Easter is simple. Christ in you, the hope of glory, the gift of God that you cannot earn, that meets you in your brokenness to raise you to life. And if you want that, you can have that tonight. You can have it. All you've gotta do is invite him in. You've gotta invite him in. Do you remember Jesus? And I think Jesus is wanting a free response. Do you remember that Jesus sort of like fakes that he's gonna go a bit further? He's like, thanks, I've really appreciated this conversation about me. I think I'm gonna head off. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You've gotta come in with us. And you could be in church and you can hear about hope and you can have a, hear theology that I've been trying to share with you about Jesus. And you can let him walk on by and you can go down the path of deconstruction to whatever Emmaus means for you.

Or you can hear this and you can say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. If this is really on offer, I want this tonight. You just invite him in. So if you wanna invite Christ in, all you have to say is, Jesus, come and resurrect my life. Thank you that you died for my sin. Thank you that you rose again. The Bible says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, that's like saying you're in charge. It says, if you believe in your heart that God's raised him from the dead, that's a big claim to really believe in your inner being. He's risen from the dead, you'll be saved. It's internal belief in the resurrection and it's confession, this is the story that I'm gonna be a part of. And so if you believe that, just say that tonight, just to the Lord. Just say, put these words on your lips, Jesus, your Lord. Jesus, your Lord. Someone's gonna be your Lord. Jesus, your Lord. And Jesus, I believe in my heart that you rose again from the dead, that I may have life. That's it. And then it's turning around from walking to Emmaus and getting back to Jerusalem with the people of God to join the purpose that he has for you.

So if you wanna do that, you can just say that, yes, Jesus, you are Lord. And I believe in my heart that you have risen from the dead. Maybe you're here tonight and this is a description of you. You've just lost hope. You built a little world in your mind and it's just been destroyed. The vision's gone. There's no pathway to achieve it. Your power's gone. You're gone and you're just stuck. And I believe tonight that God wants to upgrade your vision, open new pathways and give you new power to live into the story he has for you. So would you just maybe put your heads down or in a receptive posture, and I just wanna pray a blessing over you that Christ would come and do that tonight, that you would experience this life and his favor and his power. Jesus, I just wanna say thank you that you are willing to meet us, not in the beautiful places, but in the broken places. Jesus, thank you for your love for us. Thank you that you will walk with us as we walk away from you. And I just wanna pray that every hungry heart would open to you tonight. And Lord, I wanna pray that hope would enter in. And I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.