We welcome all of you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to Dayspring Fellowship for our corporate worship service this morning. It is a joy to see you all on this beautiful February morning, and I want to encourage you to open up your bulletin with me and see that we are continuing on in our Sunday school hour at 945 every Sunday morning through Samuel. We had an excellent lesson this morning that I encourage you to find and download, listen to from Sermon Audio. You can go to our website if you were providentially hindered from joining us for worship this morning. And just also want to point out, if you're on your way in your car to get here and it's 9.45 and you're not here yet, one of the things you can do if you have a smartphone that's Bluetooth connected to your speakers, is just go to dsf.org, and right there, the first thing you'll see is the live stream. And you can listen to it on the way in. Let's see. Place among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. That's where I was when I pulled up into the parking lot. And then I was just able to walk in and continue hearing the excellence. lesson, so that's something just to be aware of if you're stuck in traffic and not here yet. We also want to direct you to next week's sermon passage, so I'm excited that we're back in the Gospel of John. Next week we're going to be in John chapter 20, verses 11 through 18. It's this tender passage of the risen Lord Jesus appearing for the first time to one of his disciples, and that disciple is named Mary, and so we're going to look at that wonderful encounter next week. I just encourage you to be reading and meditating on that passage throughout the week in your family worship time or your private devotion time in preparation for our worship together next week. and then across the page there you'll see that in this new year and on into 2026 on the second Wednesdays of each month we're going to meet up here for a brown bag supper in the fellowship hall starting at 5 45 and then make our way into this room at 630 to be blessed by hearing of the testimony of a Dayspringer. And our focus on testimonies isn't that story that ends with, and then I believed in Jesus and became a Christian in the end, but testimony to all that God has done in your life, not only to save you on that day, but ever since that day as well. We're gonna glorify God in his work in our individual lives. So I encourage you, if you want to share your testimony, you're not yet signed up and on the schedule to do so, just let me know and we'll get you into March of 2026, I think is where we're at on the calendar. Also notice that the Ladies' Brunch and Bible study is back on this month, and so that'll be this Saturday, February the 8th. right over here in the Fellowship Hall at 10 a.m. This is a great blessing to our Dayspring Sisters. They will be bringing a brown bag brunch and studying the Gospel of John. I think they're in chapter 11, and so that's gonna be a blessing this Saturday for the ladies. Also this Saturday, for parents of young children especially, High Point Baptist Church from 8.30 to noon is hosting a parenting seminar that will help parents moving from just barely surviving to thriving as parents and raising up your children joyfully for the kingdom. That will also include child care that's available. You can see the link in the bulletin if you want to be a part of that, or if you know of young parents that would benefit from some very solid teaching from wise parents who have brought up many a child in the fear and admonition of the Lord. We also have the wedding shower for Leslie Mercado this month, and so that's coming up on the following Saturday, February the 15th, over here in the fellowship hall, 11 a.m. Ladies, you want to mark your calendar for that and to be there. My Sandra is up in Canada, but she'll be back in time to help with this wedding shower, and you can Reach out to her for any details related to it. Also, the annual business meeting is always the last Sunday evening of February. And so, you know, many, many churches have a business meeting every month or fairly regularly throughout the year where the whole church gets together and makes important financial decisions and other decisions. We only do that once a year. That's been our tradition here. And so we really strongly exhort you, if you are a Dayspringer, your name is in the directory. That means that you're committed to this local church and you're united to us to be there on that one annual business meeting. each year. So it'll take place February the 23rd right here in this room at 6 o'clock p.m. And we also ask you to submit your anonymous planning cards by the end of the morning worship service on that February the 23rd. So all you have to do is place it in the offering plate there. You don't need to put your name on it. This isn't a pledge card. This is a planning card. for the elders to be able to plan and just estimate how much is going to be given to the work that God is doing here at Dayspring, our local ministry, as well as the missionaries. that we support. I've always loved how we do this. We decide individually how much we're going to give to Dayspring and how much we're going to give to individual missionaries. And then what we do as elders is we count up how much has been planned to be given to our missionaries. And whatever that amount is, We write a check every month for our missionaries for that amount, whether you give or not. And we just trust the Lord that that number is going to be sustainable and something that we can continue to provide to our missionaries. We also don't lower year by year the amount that we give to our missionaries. And I have heard from all of our missionaries how astounded they are, and how well-supported they are, and how unique our giving to missions is in this church. It's a larger percentage of our overall budget than your typical local church is. So for such a small little body, we have a huge global impact for the gospel. The final thing is that in this year, in the summertime, there's going to be a conference called the Bunyan Conference. And you've probably heard me speak about the Bunyan Conference. in years past. This is a great conference and I just want to encourage you to think about, pray about, actually being there physically in person in Tennessee on June 22nd through the 25th. It's going to be a fantastic conference this year. We're going to be focused on Israel and prophecies and things related to Israel. I think it's going to be a great learning experience. We have some fantastic speakers, and I don't think anyone has ever attended the Bunyan Conference and thought, boy, that was a waste of time. It's just a delight and a joy, and we are so well hosted by this church, Grace Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Sasser's, Bill Sasser has pastored that church with his wife Lynn. We're friends of Jackson and Barbara's going back decades. He's pastored that church for 50 years and he's so beloved and they, the ladies of that church know hospitality well. They cook for us and host us. It's just wonderful. So I want to encourage you to Be there. The conference itself is free. You just have to get there. And I'll have more details as we get closer. But I do want to just point out that the speakers are going to include, among others, Dr. Joshua Griever. Josh was a good friend of mine. He's gone on to become a great New Testament scholar, professor, and author. Our own missionary to South Africa, Paul Karstens, who we got to have fellowship with this past summer, he'll be coming back this summer for this conference to be a speaker. And so it'll be a great opportunity to encourage Paul and to enjoy fellowship with him. Once again, Pastor Blake White, who is a good friend to this church and to myself. Same with Pastor Gary George. I'll be speaking and many, many others. So I want to just put that on your radar. As we begin worship this morning, if you could turn with me in your red hymnal to hymn number 277. It's 277 in the red. You can hold your place there and please stand together for our call to worship. Our call to worship this morning comes from the great sixth chapter of the first epistle to Pastor Timothy. Paul writes, Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time. He who is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see, to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. Let us sing together. ♪ Christ the Lord is risen today ♪ Alleluia ♪ Sons of men and angels say Alleluia ♪ Raise your joys and triumphs high Alleluia! Sing, ye heavens and earth, reply, Alleluia! Vein the stone, though watch the seal, Alleluia! Christ has burst the gates of hell, Alleluia! Death, claimed vain, emits its rise. Alleluia! Christ has opened paradise. Alleluia! Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia! Where, O death, is now thy sting, Alleluia! Once He died, our souls to save, Alleluia! Where thy victory, O the grave, Alleluia! Are we now where Christ has led? Alleluia! Following our exalted Head? Alleluia! Made like Him, like Him we rise? Alleluia! Ours the cross, the grave, the skies? Alleluia! Let us pray together. Our great sovereign God and merciful Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning asking for you to come here to meet with us, acknowledging your son Jesus Christ to be our risen King. And so we come in his name as the family that you have adopted as your own. We thank you, Lord God, for cleansing us, for forgiving us, for saving us and adopting us, for loving us, for sending us the Holy Spirit of adoption into our hearts to bear witness to you and to apply your living word to our lives. So we come to you as your children today to praise you, to love you, to honor you, to seek your face, and to worship you in spirit and in truth. Please meet with us now and grant us the ability to glorify you today. We pray that you would comfort the hearts of your people today in all of their various circumstances, that you would give to us the assurance of the righteousness that has been counted to us from Jesus Christ's own personal righteousness. Meet with us, Lord, as we partake of the Lord's Supper. Cleanse our souls as we come to you, repenting of all of our sins today. We pray, Lord God, that you would remind us afresh that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And we pray, our loving Heavenly Father, that you would work in our midst with our visitors and those who are online, that you would unstop every ear. that it would be your voice that we hear speaking eternal life into existence as your word is read and proclaimed today. Lord, do your sovereign work by your Holy Spirit in each and every heart. We pray, Lord God, that in all things you would ensure that you receive for yourself all the glory, all the worship, all the honor and praise. In Jesus' precious name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. Good morning, everyone. Please turn one page over to the left to 276. Up from the grave he arose. In the grave he lay, Jesus my Savior, Waiting the coming day, Jesus my Lord. Up from the grave he rose, With a mighty triumph for his foes, He arose, a victor from the dark domain, And He lives forever with the saints to reign. He arose, He arose, Alleluia, Christ arose. Vainly they watch His bed, Jesus my Savior, Vainly they seal the dead, Jesus my Lord. Up from the grave he rose, with a mighty triumph o'er his foes. He arose, a victor from the dark domain, And he lives forever with the saints to reign. He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose! Death cannot keep His prey. Jesus, my Savior, He tore the bars away. Jesus my Lord. Up from the grave He arose, With a mighty triumph for His foes. He arose a victor from the dark domain, And He lives forever with the saints to reign. He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose! And because he lives, if we trust in him, we too shall live, and we will rise to meet him. All right, now please turn to hymn number 281, I Know That My Redeemer Lives. Our Redeemer lives. Glory, hallelujah! What comfort this sweet sentence gives. Glory, hallelujah! Child, on, pray on, we're gaining ground. Glory, hallelujah! The dead's alive and the lost is found. Glory, hallelujah! He lives, he lives, who once was dead. Glory, hallelujah. He lives, my everlasting head. Glory, hallelujah. Shout on, pray on, we're gaining ground. Glory, hallelujah. The dead's alive and the lost is found. Glory, hallelujah. He lives to bless me with His love. Glory, hallelujah! He lives to plead for me above. Glory, hallelujah! Shall not pray onward gaining ground. Glory, hallelujah! The dead's alive and the lost is found. Glory, hallelujah. He lives, all glory to his name. Glory, hallelujah. He lives, my Jesus, still the same. Glory, hallelujah. Shout, want, pray, onward, gaining ground. Glory, hallelujah. The dead's alive and the lost is found. As you can tell, I'm not with it this morning. Good morning. I'm reading from 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 12 through 21. Now, if Christ is proclaimed raised from the dead, how come some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found no misrepresentation of God because we testify about God and he raised Christ whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope, in this life only we are all people most to be pity. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by man came death, and by man has come also the resurrection of the dead. Amen. We celebrate that death and resurrection every Lord's Day when we celebrate the Lord's Supper together. We do this every single week after the pattern that we find in the book of Acts, where the early church would gather on the first day of the week, on the Lord's Day, not on Sabbath, but on the first day of the week, and they would devote themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship and to the prayers and to the breaking of bread, and so we have communion every Lord's Day. And as you see on the table, we do this in remembrance of the Lord Jesus Christ, of his sacrificial death and triumphant resurrection. from the dead for us. And this is the Lord's table. It is not Dayspring's table. And so you don't just have to be a Dayspringer to partake of this, but you do have to belong to the Lord. And so we want to make it very clear who this applies to. You know, that death and resurrection, it applies to all who have believed into Jesus Christ and have become united to him by faith alone so that his resurrection is your resurrection and his death is your death. Colossians 3 makes it clear that if you're a believer, I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but you have died. Did you know that? You died. You died when Christ died. You died in him. And you've been raised from the dead. You were resurrected in Christ when he was It's a glorious truth, and we reserve this sacred meal, which can be a dangerous meal, right? We reserve it for those who are united to Christ. So you're not thinking of yourself as a good, respectable, upstanding, righteous person who deserves to be in the presence of God. You know none of those things are true about yourself, and you are therefore casting yourself, even this very moment, on the Lord Jesus Christ as your only hope, as the one who lived the righteous life that you've utterly failed to live before God, and he did that as a substitute for you. in your place, and you're trusting in his sacrificial death that he died as a substitute for you in your place as well, taking on his own person the very wrath of God against all of your sins that you deserve from God so that you could be reconciled to him. And so you have trusted in that, you've relied upon that, not on your own works, but on Him alone." So you are one who has been saved by God's grace alone, His sovereign grace alone, through faith alone, the faith that He has worked in you and given you alone, in His Son, our Lord and King and Savior, Jesus Christ alone, to His glory alone, right? We don't get any of the glory. We have nothing to boast about. but it's all His glory. And so that's the first and most important thing that we ask of you to partake of this meal. The second thing is we ask that you're a baptized believer, but we do leave the details of your public baptism up to your own individual conscience. So as you look to Scripture, if you're able to answer in the affirmative, have I really been obedient to my master, the Lord Jesus Christ, in baptism? And then finally, we ask that you not be under church discipline from your local church where your membership resides, the church that you've united with so that we can respect God's work throughout the world as he continues to build his church sovereignly and unheeded in his purposes for his kingdom. And as we prepare our hearts for the Lord's Supper, we're going to ask a question of one another. It's a song that we're going to sing, and the question that we're going to sing to one another is one that, if you're a believer, you should answer in the affirmative in your heart. Were you there? If you would turn with me in the red hymnal to hymn number 260, 260 in the red, as we ask one another, were you there? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there? Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there? Were you there when they nailed Him to the tree? Were you there? Were you there when they nailed Him to the tree? Were you there? Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they nailed him to the tree? Were you there? Were you there when they pierced him in the side? Were you there? Were you there when they pierced him in the side? Were you there? Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they pierced him in the side? Were you there? Were you there? When they laid Him in the tomb, were you there? Were you there? When they laid Him in the tomb, were you there? Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they laid him in the tomb? There when he rose up from the dead, were you there? Were you there when he rose up from the dead, were you there? Sometimes I feel like shouting glory, glory, glory. Were you there when he rose up from the dead? Were you there? Well, every week at this time, we proclaim together the Lord's death until he comes. But I want to make the case to you this morning that we don't just proclaim his death at this table, but that we also proclaim his life. even as we remember his sacrificial body and shed blood. And the Bible often speaks about Jesus's death and his cross as a type of theological shorthand for his whole entire redemptive work. Jesus's incarnation, birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, his current reign and rule, and his future coming again, that entire complex of events which make up the story of the gospel. On the one hand, we proclaim his life here at this table because it's Jesus's perfect life lived in our place that provides the very basis for our justification and for him to be accepted as that spotless sacrifice on the cross for all of our sins. But on the other hand, it's his ongoing life, his resurrection life, which is the sovereign God's stamp of approval that the blood that he shed, the body that he gave, was fully accepted by God as a sacrifice, as payment in full. Right, that it expiated our sins, that is removed our sins from us, that it propitiated God's wrath, that it actually redeemed God's people. Which is why the Apostle Paul says to the Corinthians in the passage that Ellen just read for us, that it's not enough. It's not enough that Jesus died for us. The resurrection is also essential. Jesus had to rise again. Paul says that if there's no resurrection from the dead, then Christianity, it's all in vain. Everything that Paul lived his life for and the hope that we have that causes us to gather together each Lord's Day here, all of that, pointless and void if Jesus has not been raised from the dead. And the reason this would be the case, Paul argues, is that if there's no resurrection of the dead, that means that not even Jesus has been raised, and if Jesus has not been raised, then our eternal hope is just a fairy tale. It's just a make-believe, it's a lie. You and I, we would still be in our sins, we would still be condemned before God, And everyone before us who died in Christ, believing in him, trusting in him, whom we believe are now in the very presence of the Lord, they would have actually perished and faced God's wrath. Why? Well, because the fact that Jesus now lives, that the risen Jesus reigns, that the living Jesus is coming back again to gather his own to himself and to set all things right in a new creation. That is the very seal of approval that God has given, that the body and the blood of the Lord represented here at this table were accepted. and is effectual and will be protective on the last day for all who are trusting in him. And so I speak as to sensible people. Judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break Is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Whoever therefore eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. Brothers and sisters, let's take a moment of silence before the Lord to examine ourselves. Our good and heavenly Father, we thank you that in your great love, you sent your only Son to live for us, to die for us, and to live again for us. We thank you for reminding us at this table of our virgin born, obedient, crucified, and risen Lord, who now reigns in glory, interceding for us at this very moment. and who will come again. And so we ask that you would now bless these elements here that represent his body and his blood. Bless this bread. Bless this cup. Set them apart for their holy use. Bless all of us in partaking of them to do so by faith alone, in Christ alone, to his glory alone, and so in a worthy manner. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way also, he took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it. in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. This is the body of our Lord, crushed for our iniquities. Sister of the Body of Our Lord. Cantrell's The Body of Our Lord. This cup is the new covenant in Christ's blood, shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins. This cup is the new covenant in Christ's blood. Blood of the Lamb shed for our sins. Please take the insert in your bulletin. We'll be singing See What a Morning. See what a morning glorious, bright, With the dawning of hope and Jerusalem, Folded the grave close to, filled with light, As the angels announce Christ is risen. See God's salvation plain, Wrought in love, born in pain, Paid in sacrifice. Fulfilled in Christ the man, for he lives, Christ is risen from the dead. See Mary weeping where he is laid, as in sorrow she turns from the empty tomb. Hears a voice speaking, calling her name, it's the Master the Lord raised in life again. The voice that spans the years, speaking of stirring hope, bringing peace to us, will sound till he appears, for he lives. Christ is risen from the dead. One with the Father, ancient of days, through the Spirit who flows faith with certainty. Honor and blessing, glory and praise to the King, crowned with power and authority. And we are raised with Him, death is dead, love is one, Christ is conquered. And we shall reign with Him, for He lives, Christ is risen from the dead. And we are raised with Him, death is dead, love is one, Christ is conquered. And we shall reign with Him, for He lives, Christ is risen from the dead. Hallelujah. Please turn now in your red hymnal to number 788. Page 788 in the back of your red hymnal. We're gonna read responsibly the great and prophetic 16th Psalm. Please stand together. Keep me safe, O God. For in you I take refuge. I said to the Lord, you are my Lord, apart from you I have no good thing. The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods. I will not pour out their libations of blood or take up their names on my lips. Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup. You have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Surely I have a lifeful inheritance. I will praise the Lord who counsels me. Even at night, my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. My body also will rest secure. Because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let the holy ones see decay. You have made known to me the path of life. you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. Let us pray together. Our gracious, merciful God and heavenly Father, how we thank you that you have been faithful to all of your promises, that you sustain all of your people, and that even your Old Testament scriptures show us that the Christ must rise from the dead. We lift up to you Our President Donald Trump, and pray, Lord, that you would bless him with the joy of repentance and faith unto eternal salvation. We pray for the end of this violence and wars in Europe and in the Middle East, and for the end of hostilities and divisions, that you would fill your people across the world with faith and love, that you would not allow them to turn their hearts inward, but outward in love toward others, especially the most vulnerable. Lord, we thank you for your mercy to our church this week. We thank you, Lord God, for giving us so many opportunities to bear witness to you. We lift this local body up to you, Lord, and we pray for those in need. We think especially of our a dear beloved sister, Sarah Garcia, that you would draw near to her and her weakened state there in the ICU, Lord, that you would minister to her body and that you would provide her with excellent care and that you would completely heal her, Lord, if it's If it's healing her here in this life or bringing her to yourself and healing her perfectly, we entrust her life to you and we thank you for your grace and all of the evidences of your power that we have seen in her gloriously saved life. We pray for my father that you would that you would lift his spirits and that you would minister to his body, that you would allow his doctors to find just the right way to manage his pain and that you would help him in the healing and rehab process, that you'd be with Marie. We pray the same thing for her, Lord, that you would manage her pain very well and that you would provide her with excellent rehabilitation and care to get back onto her feet. We lift up to our world, Father, and we pray for those who are ministering in your name. We lift up all of our missionaries, especially Paul Carstens, Lord, as he makes several long journeys across Africa, equipping your church with solid teaching concerning you and your gospel. Lord, be with Marilyn and the children while he is away to protect them and encourage them and remove any anxiety that they have. Lord, we praise your holy name for healing our dear sister Candice of these gallstones and gallbladder attacks. Lord, we thank you that you have preserved her baby and her life, and we just marvel at your glorious provision and answer to the prayers of your humble people. We pray, Heavenly Father, that you would strengthen the marriages here of this congregation, and all of the families here, that you would bring our lost loved ones to saving faith in Jesus miraculously as you miraculously transformed and saved us. And Father, we thank you that you continue to speak today as your spirit works in our hearts and you apply your unchanging word to our lives. So we call upon you again today that you would be at work in our hearts by the power of your spirit to receive your living and active word in repentance and in faith in Christ so that we would faithfully serve you as your people, forsaking all other gods. We pray, Lord God, that you would bring your eternal kingdom to its glorious fullness, that Jesus would return soon so that all Israel might be saved and the whole earth might be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. as the waters cover the sea. In Jesus' name and for his sake we pray, amen. Well you may be seated and it is the first Sunday of the month and so our older children are going to stay with us and listen well and hopefully take really good notes. Please turn with me and your copy of God's sweet and a life-giving word to the Gospel of John, Gospel of John and to chapter 20. I said last week how blessed we are here at Dayspring to have so many men whom God has raised up from just this little flock to be able to just excellently teach and preach God's Word. It's been a rich few weeks here just hearing from the Lord speaking to us through Jonathan, through Bill, through Ken. I'm so grateful to God for these Dayspring men and these messages, and I'm equally grateful to God for the privilege and the pleasure I have of diving back in to the Gospel of John with all of you. After a long pause in our series together, today we're finally resuming our Gospel of John series, in which we're going to be looking first at the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and then his appearances to his disciples in various ways, all of which happen here at the very end of the book of the Gospel of John. So just by way of a reminder, it's been a long time, so remember last year how starting in chapter 18 and running through 19, this is what we looked at last year, in those two chapters you've got the story of really just several hours on this Friday morning of Passover week. So during the wee hours of the morning, Jesus is taken first to the house of the priest, he's taken to the palace of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. A trial is run on kind of two different fronts, right? There's the Roman trial and the Jewish trial. Finally, Jesus is condemned and flogged and mocked and dragged outside the camp, outside the city, where he's nailed to a cross and he's crucified, right? By the end of chapter 19, Jesus from Nazareth is thoroughly and truly dead. And the soldiers, they pierce his body with a spear, and then they turn his corpse over to some secret followers of his. Those secret followers, Nicodemus and another man named Joseph of Arimathea. They wrap his body in a linen cloth, they bury him in a tomb that had been cut for Joseph himself, and that's it. At the end of chapter 19, if the book of John ended there, that's a very bleak situation. That would be a very tragic and a very sad ending. to our story, but if you remember back just a little bit further into chapter 19, all the details that kind of suffused it, if you remember John's main point through all of the events that take place through to the crucifixion of Jesus, the thing that the Apostle John seems really at pains to get across to you and to me as his readers is that none of this, right, the trial, the flogging, the mocking, the crucifixion, the crown of thorns, the spear in the side of his corpse, none of it just happens to Jesus. Nobody takes Jesus's life from him. No, he lays it down of his own accord. And from the very moment he's arrested, he says, I am. And the soldiers are knocked down to the ground and realize, you know, we're only gonna be able to arrest this man if he allows us to arrest him. So through his arrest and trial and crucifixion, even after his death, even after he's hanging on the cross dead as a corpse, everything that happens, is completely under His sovereign control and completely is happening in fulfillment of specific promises made by God to His peoples centuries earlier. And it's all a part of the plan. It's really the very climax of the plan that God's been unfolding since the very beginning, since Genesis 3.15, and God's promise there to deal a skull-crushing defeat to Satan through the bruising of the seed of the woman. That's how the curse would be reversed, and God has been working all of that out for thousands of years, so that by the time you get here to John chapter 20, at the very beginning of chapter 20, Jesus, the seed of the woman, Abraham's promised offspring, the lion of the tribe of Judah, David's promised son. He is well and truly dead. He's dead. His body has been pierced with a spear, wrapped up in clothes, placed in a tomb. And then comes Sunday morning. In the wee hours of Sunday morning, that's where we pick up the gospel. Look with me at John chapter 20. You'll be helped to follow along. I'll be beginning in verse 1. Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark and saw that the stone was taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him. So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and believed. For as yet, they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes." Now, that is a short story, but it is an extraordinary little short story. I mean, on the one hand, You're talking about the most important event that's ever happened in all of human history. And yet one of the things that people have always noted about the resurrection story is its brevity, right? John wastes absolutely no words telling us what happened. Yet just like so many other parts of this book that we've seen, for all of its brevity on the one hand, the story is also, on the other hand, just incredibly detailed here. It just includes some extremely specific stuff that said even about, for example, bodily movements. I mean, you've got the repeated references to running. You've got the reference to stupidity. all of that, all these bodily movements that are described in great detail that you just wouldn't get from somebody who was telling the story, you know, from afar. You only include these kinds of details if you were there, right? And in fact, that's exactly the case. John, he's not telling the story from a distance, having interviewed eyewitnesses or something like that. He was in fact There, he was an eyewitness to these historical events. In the story, he's the one that's called the disciple that Jesus loved, or the other disciple, right? There's three characters in this story, right? Mary, Magdalene, and the apostle Peter, and the other disciple, the one that Jesus loved. The other disciple is John himself, who wrote this book for us. There are other things to notice here, too, just sort of at a broad level. Do you notice how much movement there is in this little paragraph? Like everyone is going somewhere, and usually they're going there, right? Fast. I mean, just look at it. Look at verse 1 and look at all the movement words you've got. Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw, verse 2, so she ran. and went." Two different movement words there. She tells Peter and John, they take him out of the tomb. Verse 3, Peter went out, and they were going toward the tomb. Verse 4, both of them were running together. The other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb, right? They're moving, and they're moving quick. And in fact, the first time that you have a verse that doesn't have a movement word is verse 5, stooping to look in. He saw the linen cloths lying there, but he didn't go in. So it's almost like as he stoops down to look into the tomb, there's this moment of bated breath. It's the first time in the story that nobody's moved. What's going to happen? And then it all picks back up again. You get these three movement words all in a row. Simon Peter came right from behind, following him, and went into the tomb. It's just like, whoosh, go, go, go. There's an urgency here that you can see even in the words of the story. There's other themes here as well. So look, for example, at verses 5 through 8. You see all of those uses of the word saw there in 5 through 8, right? Stooping to look in, he saw. Then Simon Peter came following him, he went into the tomb and he saw. And then verse 8, the other disciple also went in and he saw and believed. All this emphasis on And what's really interesting there is that all three of those uses of the words saw, they're all the same English word, all of them are different Greek words underneath, all three of them. Slightly, slightly different Greek words for seeing or looking. Another thing, notice how John plays with exactly how these people interact with the tomb. There's definitely a progression to it, because as you go through the story, the people involved, they're getting closer and closer with every step to the tomb. So, for example, at the beginning, Mary, she goes to the tomb, but she doesn't look into it, right? She just sees the stone's been rolled away. and then she goes away. She doesn't look into the tomb. John gets there and he looks, something Mary didn't do, but he doesn't go inside. Peter doesn't just look inside, he actually goes physically into the tomb, but he doesn't believe. John then goes in physically, and he believes. So you see there's that progression there. That's deliberate. John is doing that for a reason that we're going to talk about. These characters, they go from not looking, to looking, to going in and believing. There's a progression that's happening there. So we're gonna talk about all of that later. But here's the point that John is trying to get across to us in this story. The main idea is this. Jesus' tomb was definitely empty. That's what he wants you to see. Jesus' tomb was most definitely empty. And that's enough for you to recognize and to trust him. as the resurrected Lord Jesus. His tomb was definitely, for sure, empty, and that's quite enough for you to recognize him for who he is and to trust him as the resurrected Lord of all. So just in terms of structure, we already saw there's a lot of movement, and I think that's kind of the best way to break it down and understand it. So here are the three major movements that are in this story. First is Mary going kind of back and forth in verses 1 and 2. She goes to the tomb. And she goes back to town to tell the disciples what she's seen. Then second, in verses 3 through 7, you've got Peter and John rush to the tomb. They have this kind of foot race, and they go to the tomb in great haste. And then third, in 8 through 10, He kind of had the last movement of John, breathless, going into the tomb and believing. So with those three divisions, the sermon has three points this morning. Just looking at each one of those three movements and seeing the responses of each of these three people. So here are the points of the sermon. Super simple and easy for a change, easy to write down before I even finish saying them. Point number one, Mary ran. Nothing super insightful there, right? Mary ran. Number one, Mary ran. Number two, Peter examined. I'll explain that in a bit. Peter examined. And then number three, John believed. John believed. So those three points, Mary ran, Peter examined, and John believed. And my hope and prayer this morning is that as we together, as we take this passage inside of us, whether you're a Christian or not, that by the end of this sermon, by the end of our service today and our time together on this beautiful February Sunday, that you will marvel once again, maybe for the very first time in your life, at what God for you in Christ has done. And if you're not yet a Christian, we are so glad that you're listening. I want to be as straight up with you as John is straight up with you in the writing of this book. My hope and my prayer for you is that by the end of our service today, you will, in fact, decide to trust Jesus Christ and become a Christian. It's why John wrote the book. This is what he wants from you in writing his whole book. He wants you to size Jesus of Nazareth up, and he wants you to decide. Yeah, I mean, given what John says here, given what these eyewitnesses say, given the empty tomb, I believe that Jesus really is who he says he is. I believe he can do what he says he came to do. I believe he can actually save a wretched, ruined sinner like me from the wrath of God for all eternity. I hope, friend, if you're not a Christian, that you will be. I pray that by staring full in the face of the fact of the empty tomb, that it will lead you to your own resurrection from the dead. So let's jump into this together. Point number one. Point number one, Mary ran. That's what she did. Now, she did that on the surface, but there's a deeper sense, I think, in which she ran as well. And that's what I want to focus on. So this first movement of Mary going and coming, it happens in verses 1 and 2 here. If you just kind of look at it at the highest level, you can see the movement. This woman, Mary Magdalene, which means Mary from the village of Magdala, she's going to Jesus's tomb, which she does, and then she quickly, she turns around and she runs back to town in order to tell Jesus's other disciples what she's seen. That's the first thing that happens. Now there are a couple of interesting things to note here, just right off the bat in verses one and two. First thing I want you to notice, is that John here, he timestamps this as happening on the first day of the week. You see that in verse one? First phrase, on the first day of the week, these things happen. That strikes me as super interesting. Why? Well, it's interesting because throughout this story, several different times, the way that Jesus himself has talked about and predicted and timestamped his resurrection is as happening not on the first day of the week, but on the third day after his crucifixion. So you get three or four times in the book where Jesus says, look, I'm going to be crucified. I'm going to be handed over to the Gentiles. They're going to kill me, but on the third day, on the third day, on the third day, I'm going to rise again. That's how Jesus himself dated the resurrection. So why does John date it as the first day of the week, rather than saying, you know, on the third day after his death, early that morning, Mary went to the tomb? Why doesn't he do that? Well, it's even more interesting when you realize that all four of the gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all four of them do exactly the same thing. They don't say on the third day. They date it as happening on the first day of the week. Why? Well, the reason they do that is because Christians have always recognized from the very beginning that if Jesus really got up from the dead, then everything is different now. There is something entirely new, something entirely amazing that has happened in human history. And life as we've always known it, it just cannot go back to the way that it always has been. If Jesus got up from the grave as a flesh and blood man to live forever, then we have been catapulted into a brand new age of resurrection. And in a very real sense, this really is day one of the new age. That's why they did this in their gospels. It's also why we Christians have, for 2,000 years now, we've always met together as we are now, not on the Sabbath day, not on Saturday, but we've met for 2,000 years every morning of the first day of the week, Sunday morning, or as Christians have called it for 2,000 years, the Lord's Day. The Lord's Day. We do that because the reason that we're gathered together here on a Sunday morning is to remember that it was, in fact, on the first day of the week that Jesus rose from the dead. That's why, by the way, we also don't offer you as Dayspringers We don't offer you other options for coming to church, right? Other times when it's maybe more convenient for you, like a dozen different options for services scattered from Thursday night to some, you know, Saturday night service. We don't do that for you because there's a reason Christians gather together on the morning of the first day of the week, on the Lord's Day. It's because that's when the resurrection of Jesus happened. And the resurrection of Jesus is the most fundamental, it's the immovable boulder in history around which we as Christians organize the whole rest of our lives. We're not, as elders of Dayspring, we're not that interested in making things convenient for you to come worship the Lord of the universe and giving you alternatives so that you can fit church, you know, into the nooks and crannies of your busy life. Quite the opposite. What we want is for you as a Christian and as a follower of the King of Kings and the risen Lord of Lords to have to accommodate your busy life to the Mount Everest of Jesus' victorious resurrection from the dead. And we want you to make it an immovable priority and a commitment to come here every Sunday morning to sacrifice work, to sacrifice soccer games and golf or whatever else, to come together on this day as the time to worship the risen king, because that's part of recognizing your place and his place in the universe. OK, another thing that I want you to see here is look at how John says in verse 1 that Mary came to the tomb while it was still dark. Now, if you've been here for much of this series through John, your ears will probably perk up because you know that John has repeatedly used the images of dark and nighttime and light and morning several different times throughout his book. to indicate the spiritual capacity and the spiritual state of the individuals in the story. So for example, remember Nicodemus, right? He came to Jesus, you remember, at night, because his soul was still darkened. Judas went out to betray Jesus, and John ends the story of Judas by saying, and it was night, period. Judas was in darkness. When Peter betrays Jesus, it's dark and cold. But then immediately after Peter's sin, what happens? The rooster crows, which signals what? The first light of the morning breaking over the hills, right? The day spring from on high. So there's hope for Peter in a way that there was not for Judas. Well, here I think he's doing exactly the same thing when he says that she came while it was still dark. He's not just giving you sort of an astronomical time marker. I think he's telling us about the state of Mary's soul at this point in the events. It was still dark for her. She didn't get it. She didn't understand, which is why she sees even the stone rolled away from the tomb, and she takes off. She runs. You see that? She sees the stone rolled away from the tomb, and she runs. Now, what do you notice in verses 1 and 2? Look at those really closely. First day of the week, Mary came to the tomb early while it was still dark. She saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. She ran, she went to Simon Peter, the other disciple, John, the one whom Jesus loved, said to them, they've taken the Lord out of the tomb. We do not know where they have laid him. What do you notice about that there? What do you notice about what Mary does not do here? Look at it, especially between the end of verse one and the beginning of verse two. What does she not do? She doesn't go look inside the tomb. She doesn't. She gets no farther than the stone being rolled away, and she doesn't even walk up to it. She doesn't stoop to put her head in. She doesn't take a look at what has happened. She just sees the stones rolled away, maybe even from some distance, and she jumps immediately to a conclusion that turns out to be totally false. Did you see that? She jumps to a conclusion. Verse 2, runs to Simon Peter, the one whom Jesus loved, John, and she doesn't say, guys, the tomb is empty. The Lord has risen just like he said. Right, with her disciples replying to her, he has risen indeed. Right, far from it. No one was primed. to believe in the resurrection. We tend to think of ancient people as being sort of gullible and just being ready to believe in incredible miracles. Far from it, right? Just like modern people today, ancient people back then were skeptical and very slow to believe. Mary says, the tomb's empty. And here's what happened. Here's my conclusion. They have taken the body of Jesus out of the tomb, and we don't know where they've laid him. And she's got plenty of reasons to actually jump to that conclusion, that somebody had stolen the body of Jesus out of the tomb. You have several historical sources that show us that grave robbing at this point in the history of the Roman Empire, it was a very real problem. Graves were just robbed all the time. And they would be robbed right after someone was buried. So to walk up to a fresh grave and see that the stone had been rolled away, that would give you the sense immediately that, oh, This is another one of those instances where they've taken advantage of everybody being in the city for Passover and the grave's been robbed. And in fact, Rome eventually made it a capital crime. That's how bad a problem grave robbing had become. So it's not too wild a theory in Mary's mind to think that this rolled away stone that she's seeing signals that grave robbers have been there. And in fact, it's not even an unreasonable response for her to run away, right? I mean, after all, they might still be around. And here she is. She's a woman in the wee hours of the morning while it's still dark all alone by herself. And yet still, she stopped short of really pushing in and looking. And the result was she jumped to the wrong conclusion. They've taken the corpse. Now, given John's really, I believe, meaningful comment that it was dark, it was still dark, and even the way the story plays out with the other people's reactions to the tomb, it's hard to think that in talking about Mary looking at the stone and then running, it's hard to think that he's not making a spiritual point here in the darkness. Instead of pressing in to see the truth, Mary takes a quick look at the situation and runs away. And that's not an uncommon response by people today who are in the darkness, is it, to the claims of Jesus. I bet all of you have had this experience where you sit down across from somebody for, you know, coffee or lunch, or you sit down next to somebody on an airplane, or a bus, and you're talking to somebody in your office, or at your school, or out in the neighborhood, and everybody's content with the small talk. But as soon as you try to take the moment to turn the conversation to talk about the risen Lord Jesus Christ, it's just like the shields go up. They're gone. The eyes glaze over, their head starts to turn, their body language starts to make it very clear. They don't want to be around you anymore. They take a quick look at the situation and they're running. I've seen it a thousand times. Before I was saved, I did it a thousand times. Why is that? Why do people do that? Well, the reason they do that is because, like we said before, if what Jesus says is true, if he really is the Son of God who got up from the dead, then everything changes. If you as a human being stare into the empty tomb, and see the truth that Jesus really and truly got up from the dead to everlasting life, then everything doesn't just change cosmically. You don't just look at that and say, wow, that's incredible, right? Everything changes for you. You can't escape that. Your number one priorities have to change. Your life goals and your ultimate purposes have to change. The way that you live, the way that you interact with other human beings, it has to change. Your friends have to change. Everything changes and life becomes something entirely different. But it's a glorious difference, amen? Because all of a sudden life becomes not just an existence in which you do the best that you can for a few decades and maybe if you're lucky you manage to do some good for some other people around you along the way and then you die. But all of a sudden life becomes a purposeful, eternally meaningful deep, true life with a capital L, right? Lived before God for His glory until this passing age gives way to the ever increasingly glorious age to come and you go to live with, to be with, and to experience the infinite Lord of glory forever in the new heavens and the new earth. You know, if you're hearing my voice, if you're listening to this sermon, then God has you listening. He has you doing that for a purpose. God is sovereign. He doesn't—nothing takes Him by surprise. Everything that happens he is doing for a purpose. And the reason he's got you listening, the reason he's got you hearing me talk about all of this stuff is exactly the same reason that he put all of these other people in this book in the path of Jesus Christ. He's confronting you with a choice. Do you run? Or do you believe that Jesus rose, that Jesus is who he says he is and can restore and save broken sinners like you and like me? All right, remove all of your guilt, all of your shame, all of your sin, freely by His grace alone into His glory alone. If you are hearing this sermon and that choice is in front of you, don't be like Mary Magdalene. Don't run. Look inside the empty tomb and believe. Mary ran. Point number two, Peter examines. He examines. So just making our way a little bit further into the story in verse two, Mary makes her report. It's wrong, right? The body's not been stolen, in fact. She doesn't know that yet. She thinks that that's the case, that that's what has happened. It's enough to get Peter and John on their feet, and they just race off towards the tomb. It's quite literally a race. Verse 3 says, So John, being the younger and faster than Peter, he gets there first. John knows that because he's the one who did it, right? And so he writes it down for us. I think it's important to see just the massive sense of urgency. that where Mary Magdalene runs, Peter races, John runs faster. In other words, whatever's happening here is something that demands that it be figured out immediately. There's this driving question in the story. What has happened to cause the stone to be rolled away from the mouth of Jesus's tomb? Everyone is rushing to get an answer to that question. There's a sense of urgency that this thing, it's got to be figured out immediately. And if you've yet to figure it out for yourself today, then I hope and pray that the Lord himself will truly ignite that kind of urgency in you, right? Not complacency, not just, yeah, I've heard this kind of stuff before and now I'm gonna go eat lunch. No, urgency. within you. I hope you'll develop just a sense in your heart that I have got to get this thing figured out now because my eternity hangs in the balance. I would love to talk about this with you if that's true for you today. I'd love to just point you and help you to figure out the empty tomb of Jesus Christ. For those of you who've experienced this sense of urgency, just knowing that your eternity hangs in the balance, and then figuring it all out, right? Seeing it, believing, becoming a follower of the risen Jesus. That's glorious, but you're not off the hook as a Christian regarding this sense of urgency. It should never go away, right? The Christian life is supposed to be marked by a sense of urgency. One of the greatest dangers, I think, of being a long time on this road of discipleship is that it can become something rote to us, right? We can become so familiar with it that it becomes unremarkable. And we can just turn inward and quit facing outward and living for Christ and for his glory. But what happens is that over time, we as Christians, we have a tendency to lose our sense of urgency. We lose our fire to learn about and to love Jesus more. We lose our burning impulse to spend more and more time with the Lord. We can even lose our sense that there's more to this world than we can see with our eyes. Eventually what happens is that we just stop running towards the king. We stop striving for the kingdom, and we just settle into a kind of sleepy, drifting through life. Well, that is not at all, not for a second, how the Christian life supposed to be lived, not in the slightest. The Christian life, it is supposed to be lived with energy and vigor and strength, with bright watchful eyes and a clear, deliberate, daily purpose. Like Paul says, I press on to make it my own. I press on for the upward call of what I have in Jesus Christ. Peter says something very similar. He says, gird up the loins of your mind. And what he means by that metaphor is prepare your mind for action. Get ready to have purpose. Get ready to move. Get ready for deliberate, tactical, and strategic kingdom activity. The Christian faith is a running, a striving faith. Is that how you would describe your own walk, your faith, your discipleship with Jesus? Would you describe your discipleship to Jesus as full of energy, full of deliberate purpose, deliberate action? Or are you the drifting-on-the-lazy-river kind of Christian? I was just at Kalahari's with my family over my vacation and I jumped into this tube and got on something called the Lazy River, and it just takes you, you might not want to go into the cold waterfall, but it takes you there anyway. You're just drifting. I imagine, because we're always at different various seasons and places in our walk with the Lord, I imagine that some of you, some of you need to get off the lazy river today. Some of you need to wake up this morning from whatever form that takes to get going, to get back on the mission. We have a mission. One question to ask yourself is, what was I doing spiritually a year ago that I'm not doing now? Or maybe to put it another way, what sort of unhealthy frames of mind have I gotten a root in my heart in, that wasn't there a year ago. Maybe it's time to re-experience the freedom for which Christ has set you free, and so make some deliberate changes. Maybe it's time to start running the race again. Well, anyway, at the end of verse four there, John, he arrives at the tomb, and then in verse five, he stoops to look. Stoops is another one of those words. It just sparkles with eyewitness detail, right? If you're telling the story from a distance, if you're writing fiction, you don't recount the word stoops. You just say something more generic like, well, and then he looked inside. That's how a historian would talk about it. He just looked into the tomb because that's all we can say. But the fact that John uses this sparkling detail word like stoops, that again tells us he was there. Anyway, John stoops, and he looks in further than Mary got, right? She didn't look. John does look. But still, you see that word saw there in verse 5? Stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he didn't go in. So he saw that the linen cloths were there, and that word saw in verse 5, it's just the very most basic Greek word for seeing something. It's the word blepo, which is all over, not just the Greek New Testament, but all over Greek literature, all ancient Greek literature. It's just sort of the bare act of seeing or looking. just sort of a bare action word. No reflecting or thinking necessarily going on. There's no interpretation that's being given to anything. Bleppo is just light bouncing off of an object and hitting the retina, right? That's all it is. But John sort of saw in that way. But now look at verses six and seven. Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus's head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself. So the apostle Peter gets there, he's surely huffing and puffing because he's slower and he's older than John, but he finally gets there, pushes John aside, actually goes into the tomb further than anyone has gone so far. And he too saw the linen cloths, but he also saw this face cloth that we're gonna talk about in just a second. But that word saw there in verse six, it's actually a different word from the one in verse five. The one in five is blepo, that means just a basic seeing, right? Nothing necessarily more to it, just a basic seeing. that word saw that Peter did, it's something different. It's theoreo. Theoreo, which is where we get the English word theory or theorize. And it means that when he saw the strips of the linen, he thought about it. It made an impact. Now to be clear, and to be very careful, I'm not just working here from, hey, that Greek word is where we get the English word theory and theorize, and theory means thinking, and so therefore Peter didn't just look, but he thought about it. That would be an exegetical fallacy, like when preachers You might have heard say stuff like, well, in the Greek, the word dunamis, which is translated power here, that's where we get the English word dynamite from. And so in the Bible, this word means just this explosive power because of, no, that's completely wrong. But this word, theoreo, in ancient times in the Bible and in other Greek literature, it means to see something and often to think about it carefully, to examine it. And therefore, we do eventually get the word theory from it. And it's not a bare word study that I've done here. We have a context, right? And from the context, you can just see the Apostle John is developing a progression here with 1st Mary. and then Peter, and then finally John. So Peter didn't just look at these things and look away. He examined these things with his eyes, with his mind. I believe he tried to figure out what he was seeing, what it meant. Okay, especially if you're not a Christian. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever done that? Have you ever taken the time and the mental energy to look at the empty tomb of Jesus in history? To look at the historical accounts of the witnesses who say they had all kinds of interactions with Jesus of Nazareth after he had been crucified and risen from the dead. Those eyewitnesses say that they talked with him, that they saw him, that they ate broiled fish with him, that they had long conversations with him over many days, that they put their fingers into the wounds on his wrists and in his side. Have you ever looked at all of that? and really examined it carefully to see if it all adds up? Or have you just looked and then looked away? I mean, really, if you're really serious about examining Christianity. If you're really serious about seeing if it holds up under pressure, that's really what you need to do. You have to examine the resurrection and determine if it's true. Come to an opinion about whether, historically, whether it happened or not. Literally everything about the Christian faith rises and falls on one question. Did Jesus really get up from the dead? Because if he didn't, then come on, let's all just go home, because I personally, I'm not interested in organizing my whole life around just the ethical system of one more ancient influencer who died and stayed dead. There are a ton of those to choose from, and I don't want to organize my life around any of them. But if the resurrection is true, if it really happened, if Jesus really died and three days later got up from the dead, then everything's different. So you have to ask yourself those questions. Have you examined this? Have you thought about it like Peter did? What really happened on that Sunday morning exactly? Something happened. And it changed the whole course of history, right? Changed the whole world. Here we are today. So what was it? You know, I have a really good friend, close friend, some of you have met him, he's been here, who actually wants to think, he wants to think that the disciples are just deceiving us. That what happened is that they all got together in a huddle and said, hey guys, Let's come up with an outlandish story. We will tell the world, this guy got up from the grave. We will steal his body and hide it away where not even the Romans can find it. And we'll convince the whole world that Jesus got up from the dead. And we'll create, by doing this, we'll create this beautiful religion, right? The ends justify the means here. Well, no. I mean, that just rings so hollow, doesn't it? I mean, all of these disciples, they died swearing that Jesus got up from the dead. They didn't just die of old age, these guys. They were killed. They were martyred in horrible ways. One was crucified. You've heard about what that involves. Crucified on a Roman cross, upside down. One of them was dropped in boiling oil. Another one was pushed off the edge of the temple to be dashed on the rocks below. They were all killed in these horrible ways, and yet, to their last breath, they said, we swear by God, this man got up from the dead, and we saw him, and we know. that to live is Christ and to die now is gain. Lives were transformed all over the world. My life was transformed. Most of your lives were transformed, not by the power of the myth or story of a man who got up from the dead, but by that risen man himself bringing us into relationship with himself personally. What happened? What happened on that Sunday morning? Only explanation. The only thing that explains everything is that Jesus of Nazareth really did get up from the dead. And if that's true, If that's true, you need to organize your life around Him. You need to recognize Him for who He is as the Lord and Savior, worthy of your worship, who actually saves people just like you from your slavery, from your darkness, who sits now at the right hand of the Father, bodily, a risen man ruling everything. heaven and earth under his authority, and you need to put your faith in him. You need to experience the power of his resurrection in your life and live for his glory. Mary ran, Peter examined, but third and last point, John believed. John believes. So in verse 5, John stoops down, he looks inside the tomb, he sees the linen cloths. Peter goes further, actually goes inside the tomb where he sees not just the linen cloths, but once he gets in there, he also sees this face cloth or head cloth, probably something like a turban. That's what the cloth is, and it's neatly folded. Then look at verse 8, because in verse 8, John pushes things forward again. Now John doesn't just look and he doesn't even just go in and examine. He goes into the tomb and he sees and he believes. Now that word saw there is the third time that this word saw is used in English. So you remember the first time we saw the word, it just meant kind of a bare seeing, blepo. Second time, it included considering, right? Theoreo. And then the third time here is the different Greek word altogether, horao. Horao, which can mean not just seeing, but understanding. which fits the context here. It's sort of like our word perceive or grasp. It's a seeing with understanding. In other words, John finally gets it. He finally gets it. But what makes him get it? I mean, you go from verses 6 and 7, where Peter sees the linen cloths lying there, the face cloth not lying with the linen cloth, but folded up in a place by itself, to verse 8, where John goes in, and he sees all those same things, and he believes. What happens between the seeing and the believing? Or what does he see that causes him to believe? If what he saw was the linen cloths lying there and then the head covering or the face cloth or whatever you want to call it over to the side folded neatly. Is it about that? That makes him believe? And just look at how much attention John actually gives to those pieces of linen cloth. I mean, he gives those pieces, those little pieces of linen, he gives them pretty much two whole verses here. The whole story is only 10 verses long, so two of them are about the cloths. That's a fifth of the whole story. So what is so significant about that? And why does seeing those pieces of cloth lead John to say, okay, now I believe? Well, consider the details. Strips of linen cloth lying there in order, and the face cloth or the head covering arranged not at all like they would have been if robbers had actually come in and stolen the body. I love what Carson says in his commentary that I looked at just this morning on this verse. Timid at first, he writes, timid at first, the beloved disciple, doubtless emboldened by Peter, entered the tomb and saw the place where the master lay, now nothing but linen grave clothes and the additional burial cloth that had been around Jesus's head. With sudden intuition, he perceived that the only explanation was that the Jesus who had been crucified, the Jesus who had so recently assigned him his mother, the Jesus who had been buried in this new tomb had risen from the dead. John saw the grave clothes of Jesus inside the empty tomb, and he believed. You might say to me, well, man, if only I could see what John saw, then I would really believe. Let me see the empty tomb. Let me see the strips of linen and the face cloth just folded and set up just like he did, and then I'll believe, just like John believed. But you realize, though, that even though John recognized that he's seeing the linen cloths and believing that Jesus was alive on the basis of that, that wasn't enough. That wasn't enough. I know plenty of people who believe that Jesus died and rose again, and yet who aren't Christians. Like Ken Barber, just go back and listen to his testimony from here last week, right? Believing in the resurrection is not the same thing as saving faith in the finished work of Jesus, relying on him for salvation. I mean, just look at the last verse, the second to last, verse nine. For as yet, they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead. He must rise from the dead. I mean, to see and to believe is one thing, and it's good. John doesn't treat it as anything other than good. He saw and he believed, and that's good. But he didn't yet know and understand and comprehend and accept and depend upon why. Jesus had to rise from the dead. And you know, Jesus, he's later, he's gonna say to one of his other disciples, to Thomas, he's gonna tell him, blessed are those who have not seen and yet who have believed. So you today, who have not seen, be blessed. Be eternally blessed by believing on the Lord Jesus, who had to die and had to rise. to become the one and only Savior, to reverse the curse, and to redeem a fallen and sinful people as God's Word had promised thousands of years before Jesus of Nazareth was even born, and lived, and died, and rose again, and ascended to the throne where he now reigns, before coming again soon, any day now, to judge the living and the dead. So don't run. Examine the truth that God has given you and believe, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for eternal salvation. Let us pray. Our Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you that you are the resurrected and reigning Son of God, the King of kings, the Lord of lords. We thank you that your tomb is empty. And no matter how hard archaeologists may look, they are never going to find your bones, because you, O Lord, are resurrected and sitting alive bodily upon the throne of David, ruling and reigning over your everlasting kingdom. We pray that no one this morning would leave this place not believing in you, not trusting in you, not relying upon you for salvation. And so we pray that your Holy Spirit would be active even right now, bringing life to dead hearts and giving resurrection where there is death and giving faith where there was unbelief just before. We pray all of this in Jesus' saving name. Amen. Will please stand together.