He is risen. He is risen indeed. Let's say that one more time with all of our heart. He is risen. He is risen indeed. That's right. We're worshiping King Jesus together today. I've got to celebrate and be so thankful to God. You know, a year ago, this time, this place was empty. And I know God has brought us through a lot in the last year, and it is just so good to see this place full and together as a church family. We're just returning to life in so many different ways. Can we give God thanks for how he's sustained us? As we look ahead next week, we're going to start a new series and the series is about listening to God. That comes up so often in conversations. How do you listen to God? What is God saying through his word and through the Holy Spirit? We're going to dive into a series. What is God saying looking at the prophets? And we have some booklets that we're handing out next week, physical and also digital copies, where you can write down the different passages of scripture in there. You can write down, we're using an acronym SOAP, which is, here's the scripture, what are the observations, now what's the application, and what are the prayers during this time that we wanna pray? And you can put that in the booklet. We'll give out those copies next week. And really, we're listening to God together as we move forward in God's word. That's where we're going today. King Jesus, our risen King. I want to read from 1 Peter to kick this off. This is chapter 1, verse 3. Peter is just overjoyed because of the reality of the resurrection. Peter says, He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade, kept in heaven for you. Let's pray. Father God, we give you praise. Lord, you are worthy and we worship you together, not just here, but in our lives, 24-7. We live, work, learn, or play. We want to honor you, abide with you, Jesus. In Jesus, we thank you that you are risen, that you are alive, and we look forward to your return. God, right now, today, we pray for your resurrection power. God, for people in this room or online right now who have not sensed hope in a long time, we pray for your resurrection power. God, we pray for people that are feeling stuck in a relationship and school maybe is so difficult right now. We pray for your resurrection power. God, where there's, in families, tension, or marriages, where there's conflict in our lives, we pray for your resurrection power that we would be instead forgiving, we would be kind, we would pray for those who hurt us, and we pray for restoration. God, we need you, we need your resurrection power, and we pray that you would move, transform our lives today. In Jesus' name, amen. Jesus is the risen King. And you say, well, what does that mean? What does it mean that Jesus is our living hope? And what is the impact during the week, Monday morning, Friday night, this reality of the resurrection? And so we're gonna dive in to three game changers, three life-changing facts that we wanna celebrate together today as we honor our King. And the first one is that the King's resurrection is real. Nothing's more important today. The king's resurrection is real. The angel said he is not here, he is risen. And I can't think of three more powerful, important words in our lives than he is risen. It is the core of our faith. If there's no resurrection, all of this is meaningless, the Bible says. But he is risen changes everything. It changes your life for eternity more than any other three words. He is risen. And this is a reality. This is our King. But the concept of king in our culture can sometimes be lost, and we come up with different metaphors, like we say, well, kinda like the president, but that really falls short of the meaning of the king, and we think about different kings in our culture. Sometimes we say Elvis is the king, or King James, LeBron, or we say he's the goat, and we use greatest of all time, goat, in many different contexts, but that all falls short when we consider who Jesus is and his kingship. Now, to appreciate this, we really need to build up from the Old Testament and take a look at the history of being a king in the Bible. Now, the Israelites, about 3,000 years ago, wanted a king. And they took a look around at the other nations, and they had kings, and they were envious. And they said, we want a king like the other nations have kings. But this desire and this direction was not coming directly from God, because God was their king, and they took the king for granted. It's easy to take God for granted. It's also easy to look around at other people and start to become envious and jealous and say, well, I want that. I want that. But what you can appreciate is that for the Israelites, there was a sense, a very legitimate sense that they need to be led. And we have that same sense that life is not designed for us to grab the steering wheel and call the shots. But we need a leader. We need to be led by Jesus. We need to follow Jesus. That's where we're going to have joy. That's where we're going to have fulfillment. That's what we're made to do. They wanted a king, and God granted them a king. The first king was Saul. Kind of selfish. He got caught up in himself, full of himself. And God said, I'm going to raise up a second king, another king, a king after my own heart. His name was David. He's considered maybe the greatest king the Israelites had. And David had his fair share of mistakes, flaws, terrible decisions. But God's grace is greater than our sin. And David learned from that, and David was seeking God. He wrote many of the Psalms, and he became a man after God's own heart, willing to do whatever God wanted him to do. And God gave David a promise. God said to David that one of your descendants, someone in your lineage, will be a king forever. And David said, who am I? That not only am I king, and not only have you forgiven me and shown me so much grace and mercy, but now this, the Messiah, is going to be in my lineage, one of my descendants, and he's going to rule and reign forever. And it was a messianic prophecy. Now we fast forward about 1,000 years, 2,000 years ago for us, and there were Magi. We don't know how many. Of course, people like to say three. The Bible doesn't say three. But the Magi came from a distance, and this is important because they came knowing that a king was born. And they wanted to honor this king with gold and frankincense and myrrh. And it tells us that Jesus is not only the king of the Jews, Jesus is the king of the Gentiles as well. And all nations will be represented in heaven turning to Jesus. But you know, with that news that a king was born, Herod the ruler at the time was threatened, and he decided that he would just start wiping out and killing kings. He was trying to eliminate this threat in this ongoing king. But it didn't stop Jesus from being born, prophet, priest, and king, and God, and our king humbly came to earth. Now, here's an important verse from the Old Testament, Zechariah chapter nine, verse nine. And the Bible says, your king comes to you. Now we celebrated that last weekend, Palm Sunday, because that's the declaration. Your king comes to you on a donkey. And Jesus rode in on the humblest of animals into Jerusalem on a donkey and they said, Hosanna, the highest praise. Also, Hosanna, rescue us. Your king comes to you. Don't miss your king. And I want to tell you today that God is speaking to you. Your King comes to you. Jesus knocks on the door of your heart and you make a decision if you want to open up your heart fully to the King. But our King knows us, loves us, pursues us, and our King comes to us. Many people missed the king 2,000 years ago because they had an expectation that the king would come with military power, and he'd be a leader of the government, and he'd be a revolutionary to overthrow Rome, and maybe there would be prosperity and money for everyone, and this is the image they had, but Jesus was born in a manger. He was a carpenter for so many years, and eventually he would go to the cross. Now this is what makes Jesus so unique, and it's sad they missed the king at that time, because Jesus is a benevolent king. There's no leader or king or president that ever could compare to Jesus because he is good. Everything about him, what he says and does, his whole being, he is fully God, fully human, and he is good. And even though he's flawless and holy and sinless and wonderful, They criticized Jesus. They crucified Jesus. They took a crown of thorns, jammed it on his head, and he was bleeding. Our king, the king of kings, had a crown of thorns stuck into his head and with blood that came down. This king, king of the Jews, king of the Gentiles, was crucified in love for us. Now, there's four reactions back then, and there's four reactions today that you might consider regarding the king. Some people try to deny Jesus and his kingship. And you might be here today, and you've been kind of skeptical. We are honored that you're here, and you're even considering Jesus, and you came to church today. Many people deny Jesus. Growing up, I denied that Jesus was the king, but that never changed the fact that Jesus is the king. Now a second option is to try to dictate. To say, I know Jesus is the King, but I'm gonna call my own shots. I'm running my own life. And I tell you, if you go down that road, you will never really have deep, full peace in your life or your heart. Now another option is to dilute this and say, now Jesus, yes, he's the king and I'm going to take some of his teaching and I'm going to follow him, sort of, kind of half-hearted, halfway, but I got some other things and I'm going to kind of dilute stuff and I'm going to tell you that that diluting will never lead to true satisfaction. It never will. But then the fourth option is to devote yourself to the King. And when you devote yourself to the King, that's what you are made to do. That's your best self. That's when you'll come alive. That's when you'll have joy and you'll sense that closeness and love with God. Devote yourself to the King. Many people miss the reality of Jesus, the King, His resurrection, and we live in a culture where there's a lot of hype, there's manipulation as well, there's a lot of noise, and there's a lot of things to sort through. So I brought a visual to kind of represent that, and a lot of people They're hungry. Spiritually, we're all hungry. And it's like, where are we going to turn? And it's easy to have a mouth full of religion and not much Jesus. And I think that's illustrated through fruit by the foot. How many people here have ever tasted fruit by the foot? Yes, yes, that's a good turnout today. Now this fruit by the foot is king size. So I'd say that's a little liberal with the term, but king size, you get the idea. Now, when you consider this fruit by the foot, I've got to say as a parent of four, Lori and I are blessed with four kids, which parent does not want their kids to eat more fruit? Right? I mean, what parent doesn't want their kids to eat more fruit? So fruit by the foot, we're like, oh, this is great. This sounds good. The kids are eating fruit. The kids want fruit. Well, let's take a look at what we've got here. At our house, we like to play games. I enjoy games. So I said to the kids, all right, fruit by the foot. Tell me, kids, what do you think is the first ingredient in fruit by the foot? Now, because when I open the box, I don't see a lot of fruit, but I'll just go by faith. That's what they tell me, fruit by the foot. So let's take a look. And this is cherry and orange flavor. And so I say, kids, cherry and orange. What do you think are the first ingredients in fruit by the foot? And they guess cherry and orange and orange. What do you think is the first ingredient? Oh, this church is so smart. You are like three steps ahead on this illustration. You got life figured out. Well, when you open up Fruit by the Foot and you look on the back in the ingredients, the first ingredient is sugar. The prophecy is true. The second ingredient, maltodextrin. And the third, corn syrup. And the kids are kind of like, well, where's the cherry and the orange? Well, there's actually no cherry and orange in this, but there are some other ingredients. We've got locust bean gum. And people say, well, is that what John the Baptist ate? Not quite. He had locust and honey. That's a little different. Locust, bean gum. And then we've got red 40 and yellow six. I'm pretty sure if there's a number on it, it's not a natural food. I don't know. That's how my mind works. A number there. So fruit by the foot. And again, all of us have a spiritual hunger. We do. We have a spiritual hunger. So this is what the kids do. They like to open this up, Tear this thing open and this is what you'll find inside Fruit by the Foot. You've got the fruit by the foot, actually longer than a foot. It lived up to the hype on that one. And then you've got this plastic and you gotta roll it out and separate them. And sometimes our kids will just eat a little bit at a time. And then other times, when the kids really want a sugar buzz, a little sugar shock, they grab the whole Fruit by the Foot and they turn it into one big wad. You know, who wants to go slow when you got all this goodness, right? And I kind of think if they name this sugar by the foot, it might not sell quite as well. And if they named it sugar wad, it really might hurt sales. Like there's no dessert, kids, until you finish your sugar wads. Right? That's how the logic would go. But I'll tell you, the kids will pop that in, and then what happens is they end up picking it off their teeth. In my mind, I'm thinking that's probably cavity causing, but they're downing it. They seem pretty happy to down it, but there they are picking it off their teeth. And I bring this up to say that spiritually, what are you consuming during the week? What are you consuming? There's a whole bunch of sugar wads out there that you could consume. I've never seen so much false teaching, teaching that's off, weird new agey stuff going around. I mean, there's just all kinds of stuff floating around. And what does Jesus say? We need the word of God. The Word of God is what strengthens us, builds us up. We can't live on just physical food alone. We need the Word to nourish our souls. I can easily spend two hours on social media, and that's not wrong to spend it, but it's nothing like just 20 minutes in the Word during the day. What are you, and I'll tell you, garbage in, garbage out in so many areas of life, but where's your spiritual nourishment during the week? Here's another way to think about this. Seattle, second highest of all cities in America in terms of people that are de-churched. And how many people came to church somewhere in Seattle, spiritually hungry, and what did they end up leaving with? Kind of picking their teeth, wondering if they just got a cavity. What do we need? We don't need games. We don't need hype. We don't need entertainment. We need Jesus. We need Jesus. And it's never been more common to do a whole bunch of stuff on the outside, but where's the word? And what about the Lord? And getting close to God in this. And so I'm gonna set down the sugar wad for a second. I'll tell you, the Saturday night crowd, they came up, they got fruit by the foot afterwards, and someone took the sugar wad. They wanted this. Saturday night's wild. You just stay in Sundays, folks. You just stay in Sundays. That's a different crowd here. What we need is to get to the core And 1 Corinthians chapter 15, the gospel. There's so many false gospels. We need to know what is the gospel. Gospel means good news. When you say, I wanna know what the gospel is, this is one place in the Bible makes it so, so clear. Look at what it says, 1 Corinthians chapter 15, starting in verse three, for what I received, I pass on to you as of first importance. First importance, nothing's more important than the gospel. Nothing's more important for your life. It's not compartmentalized to while you're in this building. It's 24-7 connected to everything you say and do, where you live, work, learn, or play, connected to the gospel. It's of first importance that you understand the gospel. Believe, live it out, and share it with other people. I want to say that again. Nothing is more important than you to understand the gospel, own it, believe it, not just your friends believe, but you believe in Jesus, and then share the gospel. Well, what's the gospel? that Christ died for our sins. According to the scripture, he died in our place as our substitute, fully God, fully human, sinless, died on a cross, buried. That means he was dead in the grave, physically dead. Then he was raised on the third day, praise the Lord, according to the scriptures. Then he appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve, After that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and the last of all, he appeared to me also as the one abnormally born. And Paul's talking about his own story. After killing Christians, the resurrected Jesus, he saw Jesus firsthand, changed everything. The resurrection changes everything. Now, 500 witnesses. There's so much historical evidence for the resurrection. If 500 people came up to you today and said, I saw something. You said, oh, you mean you heard about it secondhand? No, no. I saw it firsthand. 500 eyewitnesses. And you think about the billions since then trusting Jesus. Now, 500 witnesses. It wasn't just that they saw the resurrected Jesus, it's the change in their lives. Because before they encountered Jesus, the risen Lord, you know what? They were discouraged. They felt defeated. Some of them were intimidated. They were silent. They felt hopeless. And then 180 degree change. Not only that, but they were willing to die. Many of them died for their faith. They died bringing the gospel to more people. And I propose to you today that people will not die for a lie if they know it's a lie. They will die for a lie if they think that's the truth, but if you know it's a lie, you will not die for that lie. They could not just play games and try to fool people and then would die for that. No, they're dying because they know how real Jesus is and that the world needs to know. This is the gospel. Jesus qualifies as our king because he is our creator. He's our sustainer. Even if you reject Jesus, He's still sustaining you right now. Every breath in your lung, every heartbeat, that your body's working, Jesus is sustaining you. And then He redeems. He's our Redeemer, dying on the cross, paying the full price for our sins. And He is our resurrected King, and He will return. This is Jesus. You know, when I grew up, I didn't know Jesus, I didn't read a Bible, and I didn't go to church. And it wasn't until college, I was assigned the Gospel of John. I wasn't looking for God. Again, I rejected that God existed, but I started to learn about Jesus. And I started to consider the different religious leaders. And Jesus is very unique. Now, I want to show you a picture here. This is from someone in our church who went to Jerusalem, and you see the picture here, and the stone that's rolled away, that massive stone rolled away, and then you see a tomb. And when I considered Jesus and what I put my trust in him, what made him unique was his teaching. There's no teacher like him. And his miracles, nothing comes close. Prophecies, every one of them's fulfilled. But also he lived a sinless life. No other religious leader came close to living a sinless life. And that he's God, he's the Messiah. But here's the evidence that stood out to me. It's the evidence of the empty tomb. Because every other religious leader that I studied or considered still in the grave, there's only one who's defeated death and is risen and there's an empty tomb. There's only one. There's only one. So if I'm going to trust my life, my soul, my eternity with someone, I don't want someone who's still in the grave and has a few thoughts about death. I want to trust the one who overcame the grave, defeated death, and is risen with all the evidence. The king has ascended. Jesus is in heaven right now. You say, well, what does the resurrection mean? The resurrection means he's given you a promise. At Lazarus's funeral, he declared, I am the resurrection and the life. That's a bold, cruel lie if it's not true. He says, I am the resurrection and the life and the promise is whoever believes in me, you're going to have eternal life. When you die, that's not the end of the story. You're going to have eternal life. The King will raise you up and with a new body. That's a promise that we have. Brings comfort at every funeral where I've led or been to. And that person's put their trust in Jesus. What a promise. What a reality. But not only that, Jesus gives us a family. We're family. We already are. Sometimes we don't act like it, but we're family. Brothers and sisters, many generations, many cultures. And we're family because we are sons and daughters of the King. And not only that, but we have an identity. We have an identity in the Lord that is deeper than any other identity. I encourage you to get off the treadmill and the rat race of trying to prove your identity or earn it through performance, achievements, resumes. It doesn't come through more actions and effort. The deepest identity you'll ever have is that you're accepted in love, you're part of God's family, you're a son and daughter of the King. And not only that, but you are part of a kingdom that's unstoppable. A kingdom that the gates of hell won't prevail against. A kingdom that is personal and eternal. You have a promise of a resurrection, you are part of a family, you have a new identity, and you have a kingdom. And we look back and we thank God with all of our heart as we consider that reality today. But I also wanna look forward. And looking forward, we consider the resurrected King is returning. Jesus is gonna return triumphant, not defeated. And because he's triumphant, I hope that in your spirit, even during the pandemic, there is a spirit of triumph and not defeat. because of Jesus and also he's gonna return. Now the book of Revelation describes this return. Let's take a look at Revelation chapter 17. The Bible says they will wage war against the Lamb. What's going to happen when Jesus returns? There's going to be a final battle, good and evil, and Jesus will ultimately throw the devil into the lake of fire, but there's going to be a fierce battle. They're going to wage war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will triumph over them because He is the Lord of lords and the King of kings, and with Him will be His called, chosen, and faithful followers. Now we also read in Revelation chapter 19, on his robe and on his thigh, he has this name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Jesus is gonna return, and when he returns, the Bible says, he's riding on a white horse, he has many crowns on his head, he has fire in his eyes, and his word is powerful, and what's written? His name, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the King will return. And every day, we are one day closer to the return of Jesus. Now, as we consider these facts, the resurrection and the return, I want to point out that there's a lot of deception, and we need a firm grip on reality. We need the truth, we need love, and to not be deceived. Now, Mark Twain said it's easier to bamboozle someone than to show someone that they have been bamboozled. It's easier to trick someone, deceive someone, bamboozle someone, than it is to show someone that they've been bamboozled. And I believe many people are bamboozled, deceived. And we need the truth of Jesus, this firm grip of who He is. And when you know who Jesus is, then you know who you are. And if you don't know who Jesus is, and even if you know who Jesus is, what's easy in our culture is to have an inflated view of self or a deflated view of self. And it's all deception. Here's the inflated view of self. In our culture, it's popular to think that you decide morality. It's not God's word. It's what you think and your opinions and your experiences. You decide morality, not God's word. It's easy to say, well, I'm at the center of the universe. It all kind of revolves around me instead of Jesus. It's easy in our culture. Now here's an important distinction. I want to make this point. Self-love is very good. It's very important and it's biblical. There's three kinds of love that we all need, self-love, love from other people, and love from God. But the misnomer in our culture is that self-love is all you need, and if you have enough self-love, then you've got what you need, you've got everything. And I wanna tell you, self-love's important, love from other people's important, but the greatest love is a love from God. And that's the love we need, that's the love that kids need. When they grow up, they need to know how much God loves them. An inflated view of self, would be, this is a false gospel, just do whatever makes you happy today. Follow your heart, go with whatever you feel, go with whatever you want, and you'll be happy. But that's a lie. You won't be happy chasing happiness and making it all about you. And just our hearts are deceptive. So there's a lot of things, a lot of versions of inflating ourselves. And I'm not even gonna touch social media. There's just a lot of versions of inflating ourselves. Don't fall into that trap. Here's the other trap, and you might know which way you're bent, either inflating or deflating. Deflating would be you're not that important, there's not that much hope, you're not really loved, you don't really have many gifts or talents, you're not gonna make a difference and touch many lives. This is deflating, this is not what God says. You know, I hear intelligent people say, I ask them, what's gonna happen at the end of your life? And they've got impressive degrees, masters, doctorates. And I say, what's gonna happen at the end of your life? And they say, biological decay. That's the end. And what a deflated view of the glory of God. The end of our lives is not biological decay. Some of them will add reincarnation. I'm like, no, we're not coming back. Say, yeah, I could be reincarnated. My next life could be a dog. No, that's deflated view. That's not what God, you're never gonna be a dog. But there's so many versions today of a deflated view. We're all made in God's image. We're all loved by God. So those are two traps. Moses is someone in the Bible for the first 40 years of his life you could say was characterized by an inflated view of himself. He ended up murdering somebody. Then he was deflated because of decisions he made. And he moved away and he just thought, God's probably done with me. I made too many mistakes. In the last 40 years of his life, he learned not to be inflated, not to be deflated, but to trust God and abide with Jesus. That's where we want to be. It's this place of abiding in closeness where we're secure and we're serving. That's what you're designed to do. Be secure in the Lord, serving other people. Not thinking too highly or lowly of yourself, secure in the Lord, serving other people. If we're going to serve the king, what should we do? Well, what does Jesus say about serving him? There's something called the Great Commission. In Matthew chapter 28, Jesus says, all authority in heaven and earth have been given to me. There's our king. And then this is what he declares. He says, make disciples. It's called the Great Commission. Two words. Make disciples. If you're asking the king, what could we do until you return? Jesus, could you make it really, really clear? And he repeats it over and over and over and over and over and over again before he dies. And then after the resurrection, he continues to say it again and again and again. Here's the most important thing to do. Make disciples. Now a disciple is a follower of Jesus. So we don't have to make it a stained glass word. It's someone following Jesus. So we have the honor of leading people to Jesus. They could start a relationship with him or taking the next step. It could be water baptism, finding a church home, studying the Bible, serving. What's the next step? Help others to follow Jesus. That's the Great Commission. Look at this. This is statistics from Barna, asking Christians, have you heard of the Great Commission? I mean, it's called the Great Commission. We do it in love, to fully love other people and make disciples. Have you heard of the Great Commission? It's what the king says to focus on. Well, 51% say, no, I don't know what the Great Commission is. And then you've got another 25% saying, yeah, I think I do, but I don't exactly remember exactly what it means. So that's over three quarters of Christ followers. And then we've got 17% saying, yes, yeah, I'm in, I'm in. 6%, I'm just really not sure. So the king has said to us, shifting our priorities now, this is what's important before he returns, make disciples. What are we seeing in our country right now? Someone in our church family sent me this. Gallup just did a poll. This has never happened in our country before. Less than half the people in our country, this isn't going to sound surprising in the Pacific Northwest because we live in this reality, but when you think of our country overall, less than half the people are connected to members of a church. It's dipped, for the first time ever, less than half. And you know what's happened in the last 20 years? It's dropped over 20 points in the last 20 years. What's happening right now? People are not realizing who Jesus is, the resurrection, his return, and the followers of Jesus are not making disciples. And you know what? Our nation's changing. rapidly, spiritually, morally, it's changing rapidly right now. So what are we going to do in terms of honoring the King? I believe that this is an exciting, exciting time. I believe just looking, and some of the statistics are sad, but when you look at marriages right now and what's happening, I believe that people in our country are trying to figure out, how do you have a healthy marriage? In my own neighborhood, suicide And there's so many people right now just searching, where do you find hope during a pandemic? Online, millions of people every day, how do you pray? How do you deal with anxiety? Who is God? Who is Jesus? What's the evidence of Jesus? Around the world, I don't think there's ever been a greater hunger. People are looking, they might not know someone, they might go online, but they're just looking like, what do I do with this emptiness inside of me? Where do I turn? And I believe it's never been a more right time for followers of Jesus to share the gospel and the good news before the King returns. And I believe we're getting closer to his return. And it leads to the third one, which is very encouraging. The King is redeeming right now with resurrection power. Don't settle for religion without the relationship. Don't settle for the form of religion without the power. The Bible says a lot of people are gonna have religion, they're gonna have rituals, but they're not gonna have the power of God in their lives. And so the king gives us resurrection power. I did a Google search on the greatest kings of all time. I was curious what would happen in this search. This is what I learned about some of the kings. Sargon the Great was considered the first king over an empire, Mesopotamia, 2350 BC. Then I was reading about Cyrus, and Cyrus is in the Bible. He was the king of Persia, took some steps forward with human rights. It was about 530 BC. Then you might think of Pharaoh in Egypt, hydropower. You might consider Henry VIII in England in the Reformation. Attila the Hun, Hungary, Genghis Khan, Northern China, Afghanistan. What about Louis XIV in France? There's some scandals there. Alexander the Great in everything he conquered. Here's my comparison with the most famous kings throughout the history of mankind. These kings like to be called the Great. Have you noticed that? They like to be called the Great. Jesus, the exact opposite, couldn't be more humble. Don't you appreciate that about Jesus? His humility, the humility of Jesus. Let's imitate our king. The humility of Jesus, so different. These other kings were about themselves. Jesus was giving life to the world. When you think about these other kings compared to Jesus, Jesus is a king who will be on the throne forever. I wanna read you from Hebrews chapter one, verse eight. Your throne, O God, will last forever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom." He is the only righteous king. And then Revelation chapter 15, verses 3 and 4, here's a song, the song of the Lamb. King of the ages, Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed. There'll be people from every nation in heaven worshiping Jesus. So here's the difference. Those other kings, they're over people. They see themselves as better than people, and they lord it over people. Jesus comes underneath to serve. Those other kings were about hoarding and wealth and more for me. Jesus flips it and he says, blessed, you're more blessed if you give than if you receive. It's not about hoarding. And then the other ones, violence, conquering, power, destruction. Jesus comes with love and healing. you will imitate your King. Whoever is the King of your heart, you will imitate your King. You will become like the one you worship. And if Jesus is our King, you know what's going to happen in our lives? We're going to be coming underneath people. We're going to listen well. We're going to be humble. We're going to be serving. We're going to be giving, loving, and instruments of God's healing. That's our King. He's the true King. And I want to close with a story. You know, life goes quickly. As I get older, I would say life speeds up. I know that's not logical, but can I get an amen? As you get older, the clock's ticking the same speed, but life is speeding up. This last week, my car died. I said goodbye to my car and I want to share the story. It's a little unusual. I was coming down Highway 18 to come to church and I really lost most of the power in the car. Instead of going the speed limit, I could only go 20 miles an hour. So I pulled off onto the shoulder, driving 20 miles an hour down Highway 18, and eventually I got to the exit. Now when I stopped, I wasn't sure how fast the car would go, but when I started the car up and kept going, took a left-hand turn down Auburn Way, 10 miles an hour was as fast as the car would go. That's not how fast you want to be traveling down Auburn Way. The good people of Auburn had a response that included a lot of horns and gestures. And I was trying to discern. I couldn't tell. Maybe they were just cheering on my car. sensing that it was on its way to glory, kind of like the marathon, the Olympics, the last lap, everyone's cheering. But I don't know, because some of those horns were pretty strong and some of those gestures looked a little shady. I tried not to look too long, just in case one of us, some in our church family, was driving next to me. You know, sometimes we judge before we know the whole story. And if we knew the whole story, but I didn't want to make eye contact with him. It'd be awkward, right? You know? Oh, pastor. Hey, what's up? What's up? And I got to the church parking lot. I put a left-hand directional. I made it across Auburn Way. As my car, I can't make this up. This is what happened. As my car entered the church parking lot, the wheels had their final rotation. And isn't that a pastor's car? I mean, I'm going to get you to church one last time. And it took its final breath underneath the three crosses. God is sovereign. And because our parking lot isn't perfectly flat, I was able to put it in neutral because it was just sitting there in the middle of the lane. I put it in neutral and it just glided back into the parking spot. And it's over. It's over. 270,000 miles. That's a pretty good run right there. That's a pretty good run. What I want to say is that we are so different than a car. You are made in the image of God. My car isn't. My car, I don't think I'm going to see my car in heaven, but I look forward to seeing you. We're going to have a resurrection in heaven. My car is not going to get a new muffler, new brakes, new engine, new catalytic converter. But I'm so glad, read 1 Corinthians chapter 15, that we're going to have resurrected bodies. We're going to be with Christ. Forever. Praise the Lord. But here's a similarity we do have with the car. We all get to run the race and run the race once. One race to run and it's short. Some of us get 270,000 miles. Some of us are going to have less than that. But I want to say today, run your race well. In those words, for some people, it feels like pressure. Oh, the king is returning. Got to make disciples. That's not the message. It's not guilt. It's not shame. It's not just more self-effort. It's not self-help. No. Here's the second part. Run the race well. in the power of the resurrection. Because the power of the resurrection is available to all of us every day as we abide with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Let's rely on the Lord and run our race well. Let's pray. Father God, thank you for this gift of life, and thank you for the gift of eternal life. Lord, thank you that we can find security in you. We don't have to try to inflate ourselves. We don't have to walk around defeated or deflated, but because of you, Jesus, and what you say about us and how you love us and what you've done for us, we can walk secure, eager to serve, eager to love people, eager to listen. God, we're learning, we're growing, and we pray this will be a day of transformation. As we wanna honor you, Jesus, we pray for some people today, it'd be a decision of following you for the first time. For some, it's water baptism. For some, maybe a church home, it's been a lot of isolation. For some, to really use gifts and make disciples. Lord, we wanna honor you. Lead and guide us individually and together. You are the King of Kings, we praise you. In Jesus' name, amen. We're going to do something unique right now. And this is a video. It's a song. It's worship that many people have put together. I want to give a shout out because some people have worked very hard. And this is our church family. When you think about for last year, there's been so many restrictions. We haven't had, you know, an orchestra at any point. We haven't had the same gatherings. Think about the kids. Think about lots we haven't in this video. It's really our church family coming together. So I want to thank and give a shout out to Josh, Joel, Liz, Eugene, Sarah, Emma, Van, Julia, Amanda, Becca, and Steve. Can we give it up for the work that they put in? So here's the video. Let's worship Jesus together and draw near to him. ♪ And in the darkness we were waiting ♪ ♪ Without hope and without light ♪ ♪ Told from heaven you came running ♪ ♪ There was mercy in your eyes ♪ ♪ To fulfill the law and prophets ♪ ♪ To a virgin came the Word ♪ ♪ From a throne of endless glory to a cradle in the night ♪ Praise the Father, praise the Son. Praise the Spirit, three in one. You're the God of glory, majesty. We praise forever to the King of kings. ♪ To redeem the kingdom come ♪ And to reconcile the lost ♪ To redeem the whole creation ♪ You did not despise the cross ♪ For even in your suffering ♪ You saw to the other side ♪ Knowing this was our salvation ♪ Jesus for our sake you died Praise the Father, praise the Son. We praise the Spirit, three in one. God of glory, majesty, we praise forever to the King. All of heaven held its breath, till that stone was moved for good, for the Lamb had conquered death. And the dead rose from their tombs, and the angels stood in awe, for the souls of all who'd come to the Father are restored. Then the Spirit lived a flame. Now this gospel truth of old Shall not kneel, shall not fain. For His blood has been His way, and it is free of mind. We praise forever to the King of kings. We praise forever to the King of kings. Our church family loves the king, and we're gonna honor the king in a unique way right now. In the presence of the king, we're gonna stand. So I'd like everyone to stand up. When there's a king, so often there's a standing to honor the king, and we're gonna have about 15 seconds of silence. Silence honors the king. Standing honors the king. And during this time of silence, I want you to draw near to Jesus. And it honors the king when we give him our attention. It honors the king and we give him our affection, hearts. It honors the king and we give him our devotion. It's time of worship and silence now. Let's honor the king. Amen. Amen. Let's continue to be hungry to seek Jesus, not for the manipulation and the hype, but for Jesus. The decisions you've made today, please fill out the connecting card, whether it's digital or physical. And let us know if you're ready to be baptized, if you want to serve. You know, one of the great things right now is we are having so many kids returning to the church, and we actually need, for Grace Kids, more teachers for all these added classrooms that we're opening up. So maybe that's a way that God's leading you. However He's leading you, let us know. and we'll walk with you in the faith. We're walking together. The elders here, some of the elders will be off to my right. We have a prayer area. And after the service, you can come over for prayer as well. And be encouraged, because sometimes at an Easter service, Resurrection Day, you think, oh that was great. But what I want to encourage you with is Jesus ascended into heaven. He says, I don't leave you as orphans. I give you the gift of the Holy Spirit. and the resurrection power and the Holy Spirit will be with you later today and Monday morning, you know, and Friday night. And going forward, we wanna rely on Jesus, the resurrection power, the Holy Spirit is in you. Let's walk together with God. Have a great day.