Please turn your Bibles to the second epistle or letter of Timothy, 2 Timothy, chapter 2. I was preparing to preach on the life of Gideon. It would be sermon number 4, but in light of our dear sister Judy going to be with the Lord, I changed horses on Saturday. So we're going to consider this text in light of the doctrine of the resurrection. We constantly need to focus our attention upon the life to come and that glorious truth that we will one day be with the Lord, but we will be with him with new bodies and perfect souls, glorified souls. But let me pick up the reading at verse 8 of 2 Timothy 2. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal, but the word of God is not bound. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. The saying is trustworthy, for if we have died with him, we will also live with him. If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we deny him, he also will deny us. If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. Let's look to the Lord. Father, again, we come with this desire and for your blessing upon us today, we come believing that you smile upon your people, that you love us far above what we could even know or acknowledge, and that you, Lord, love to give good gifts to us. like a father loves to give good gifts to his children. And so when we ask for bread, you will not give us, Jesus says, a snake. But you will give us what we need, and you will give us far above what we need. But we always are in need of grace, and we know that you have a storehouse full of grace, that we can never, ever exhaust your grace. And so we come with open hands and open hearts and open mouths, asking you to feed us and meet with us and, again, be our helper, every one of us. If we are to profit from your Word, we need the help of the Holy Spirit. So come, we pray, by His power and by His might. And we ask this in Jesus' name, Amen. The Bible says that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. You read of that in Romans 1 verse 16. And the man who wrote those words knew that from personal experience. He had been saved by that very gospel. And he tells his story of conversion six times. I've often asked people when I I tell my story of conversion. How many times did Paul tell his story? Or how many times do we find it in the Word of God? Most people can't get the right answer, but it's six times. He never forgot it. It made him the man that he was. It also made him the pastor that he was, the preacher that he was, and also the apostle that he was. And you know his story, I'm sure most of you, it's not what you would call a bright story from one perspective. It has some very dark shadows. Listen to his words in Galatians 1 where he tells that story. I persecuted the church beyond measure, in excess. He said, I went far beyond what would even be normal. I went far beyond. I went in excess to persecute Christians, to put them in jail. Some think they were murdered, many of them, by this man named Saul of Tarsus. In 1 Timothy he describes his past with these three awful words. I was once a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent man, who we today would put him in the category of a terrorist. But he becomes a Christian. He becomes a fine Christian gentleman, and you could even say this, I don't think it's hyperbole, he became the greatest Christian who ever lived. a missionary, a church planter, a pastor of pastors, the greatest theologian ever given to the Church of Christ. From the human side of things, Christianity would never have gone where it went in terms of its global impact. It would never have got outside the confines of Judaism if it weren't for Saul of Tarsus. He was the apostle to the Gentiles, a man by the name of Gresham Machen, that said the establishment of Christianity as a world religion, as a great historical movement, can be ascribed to one man, the work of Paul. But how did this hated persecutor become a Christian? well he wasn't what you would call a seeker No, he stumbled upon the gospel much like that man that Jesus described. You remember in Matthew chapter 13, he comes upon that hidden treasure in the field and sells everything he has to purchase that treasure. Paul wasn't looking for Jesus. No, he was very opposed to Jesus. He was pretty well convinced that Jesus was an imposter, a charlatan, and anyone who believed in him should be put in jail or tortured. The man was determined to stamp out Christianity like you'd stamp out a smoldering bushfire. But he met Jesus. You might put it this way, Jesus came crashing into his life. It was almost like a head-on collision. And he confronted him with these words, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? But that was the beginning and the man never looked back. And it was crucial, wasn't it, that he meet the risen Jesus because that was a mark, a distinguishing mark or credential when it came to being an apostle. And in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul gives that long catalogue of people who had seen Jesus, the resurrected Christ, he starts there in verse 5. He says he was seen by Cephas, that is Peter. He was seen by the twelve. He was seen by about five hundred, and some of them, he said at that time, were still present. He was seen by James and by all the apostles. And last of all, he says, he was seen by me. I saw the risen Christ. And you get a sense of how important that was to the Apostle by reading his epistles. No one talked more about the risen Jesus than the Apostle Paul. Just in the book of Romans, he mentions the resurrection twenty times. And writing to his young Pastor friend Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 2, he tells Timothy, in essence, if you're going to be a good pastor, if you're going to be a faithful preacher of the Gospel, Timothy, you're going to have to remember this or say, remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead. Timothy, you can't forget that or you're sunk. You're dead in the water. You cannot face your suffering. You will not endure hardship as a good soldier unless that truth and that reality has a controlling influence upon your mind and heart and upon your pastoral ministry. You will lack courage. You will lack joy. You will lack confidence. You really can't pastor. You really can't be a Christian. and live the Christian life if you don't live in light of this doctrine of the resurrection. So let me just tell you this morning at least three things. We could tell you a million things, couldn't we, about this great doctrine, but just three things that I want us to consider this morning and why this doctrine is so important, how it impacts the Christian. Christ's resurrection impacts or changes our past. Christ's resurrection impacts or changes the present for the child of God or the Christian. And then number three, Christ's resurrection impacts or changes the future. Past, present, and future. To put it even more simply, Jesus Christ and His resurrection changes everything. Everything. But let's look at it from these three major perspectives. The Christian's life past, present, and future is shaped by the resurrection. So let's begin with the first, the resurrection of Jesus Christ impacts or changes our past. On the cross, Jesus reaches his lowest point of humiliation when he died. And there's no question, is there, from our Bibles that he died. And then he was buried, and that would have been the end, wouldn't it, of any ordinary person like you and like me, but it wasn't the end for Jesus, because Jesus is not ordinary. Jesus is extraordinary. You just, again, read the Gospels, any one of them, and you'll see this over and over again. He was extraordinary in what he said, and what he did, and everything that you hear from Jesus and see Him doing, you could put that extraordinary. No one spoke like Him when it came to miracles. He did what no one ever did. No one had ever opened the eyes of the blind. No one had ever walked on water. No one had stopped a storm by speaking a few verbals. And when Jesus rose, no one had ever done that before. Now, you might think, well, there's people in my Bible who were raised from the dead, but it wasn't what you would call a resurrection. It was a resuscitation. They were brought from the dead. They were miraculously brought to life, but their bodies did not change. And they went back to the grave. Both Elijah and Elisha, you remember those two Old Testament prophets, they brought people to life. And Jesus brought at least three people to life. Remember that widow of Nain, her son, and that little girl, and then his friend Lazarus. We read of that in John chapter 11. And certainly the raising of Lazarus was the most memorable, most stunning of all his miracles. Lazarus had been dead for four days. And then remember what our Lord said when he stood and spoke first to Martha and Mary to assure them that something great was going to happen. He identifies himself as the resurrection. I'm the life and the resurrection. And it's almost like he proves it, doesn't he? By raising his dead friend. But Lazarus would go back to another tomb, wouldn't he? His body would rot. He would return to the dust. But when we're talking about Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus, we're talking about something far different, something so different, because Jesus never went back to the grave. He lives forever. Jesus died, no question. His heart stopped beating. He stopped breathing. His body cells were deprived of oxygen. They say within three hours, the muscles begin to stiffen up, which is called rigor mortis, that all happened to Jesus. They took his body and they put into that sepulcher of Joseph of Arimathea, and then the clock starts to tick. Three days, it weren't three full days, but the way Jews counted up days, they speak of three days, but that beat up blood-stained body of Jesus went into a grave and laid there on cold stone. And then three days later, what happened? He came out of that tomb and his body was gloriously transformed. He had a new body. Yes, it looked like his old body. There was some similarity, but there was a great dissimilarity. It was a resurrected body. It was a body that could appear and vanish and move from one location to another with a blink of an eye. It was a body that would never ever die again. And here's the good news, the good news of the Gospel, because Jesus, His resurrection is identified in 1 Corinthians 15 as the first fruit. So what's that telling us? Well, there's more fruit to come. And that fruit is us. It's the fruit of His church, the fruit of His people. Every Christian will one day enjoy a resurrected body. And certainly the great text for the resurrection is 1 Corinthians 15. You might even want to turn there and see for yourself. Now this great apologetic is given to the Corinthian church because they really have some problems when it came to the resurrection. If you look at verse 2 of 1 Corinthians 15, I'm sorry, verse 12, you can see what they were saying. At least some of them were saying something that they had been influenced by a platonic thought, and Plato believed that the body was evil, you didn't want to have a body, so Plato said the greatest thing that can happen to you is to be delivered from your body. And some of the Corinthians may very well have imbibed that false kind of thinking from the Greek philosopher Plato. And so, Paul says right up front here, in verse 12 he says, some of you are sane, there is no resurrection of the dead. Paul now by way of logic argument and cogent reasoning goes from the lesser to the greater. And he says, if you deny the lesser, that is the resurrection of believers, you will deny the greater. You really have to come there. You have to deny the resurrection of Jesus himself, because they stand and fall together. Jesus is so united, inextricably united with his people, that if they don't rise, then Jesus didn't rise. And he works through this whole matter of a no resurrection and tells us, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, let me tell you what kind of religion you have. Everything collapses, everything implodes. Verse 14, if Christ is not raised, our preaching is vain and your faith is empty. It's useless. Verse 15, if Christ be not raised, we haven't been telling you the truth. Our integrity goes down the tubes. We're nothing but a bunch of liars. Verse 17, if Christ is not raised, we are still dead in sin. You have no salvation. You've never been saved. You see, the resurrection impacts the very heart of the Gospel. That's why Paul could say in a more positive way in Romans 4.25, he was raised for our justification. You can't be assured of anything if Christ did not come out of that tomb. You can't be assured that your sins are forgiven. You can't be assured that God's wrath was absorbed or placated. You can't be sure that God's still not against you. You can't be sure that the price was paid in full. You can't be sure that the cross accomplished anything if you don't believe. in a Christ who rose from the dead. You see, the resurrection is God's amen. It is God's signature saying, yes, yes, I approve everything my son did on that cross. And so, when he vacated that tomb, he did it in triumph and victory with the full approval and acceptance of heaven itself. Death had no hold on him. The debt has been paid. He's secured our justification. God says, yea and amen. You see, the resurrection impacts our past, our forgiveness of sin, our justification before a holy God. Secondly, the resurrection profoundly impacts our present salvation. all four Gospels broadcast in stereo, these two great realities, His death and His resurrection. And there's no question that those two events are of central importance when it comes to the Gospel. That's what constitutes the Gospel. He died, He was buried, and He rose. And at no stage in Christian life, in experience, Can you or I forget those realities? The Apostle Paul couldn't. If you read through his epistles from beginning to end, he's always talking or bringing us back to the cross or to the empty tomb. He's always talking about a Jesus who died and a Jesus who rose. Years after, he'd met the risen Christ. In writing these epistles, he is fixated with these two redemptive events. And so he could write to the Galatians and say, I boast in the cross of Christ. He could write to the Corinthians and say, flee sexual immorality. Don't you guys know that your body has been bought with a price? He died for you. And then he takes them to the empty tomb here in 1 Corinthians 15. And when he writes to the Philippians, he spoke of the power of the resurrection, sharing in the fellowship of his sufferings, but the power of his resurrection. And when he writes to the Romans, look what he does back in chapter 5 of Romans 5, verse 8. Christ died for us, he says. Again, he's talking about a Christ who died. But in the very next chapter of Romans 6, he talks about a Christ who died, but a Christ who rose. Romans 6, verse 4, we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. Again, Romans 6, verse 5, he speaks of His death, His resurrection. You go to the back end of Romans. Romans 14. And again, the apostle Paul puts into the crosshairs the cross and the empty tomb. Romans 14, verse 7, For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself, for we live to the Lord. Verse 8, If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. Verse 9, For to this end Christ died and rose again, that he might be the Lord both of the dead and the living. If you look here back at chapter 6 again, you'll see that when Paul talks about the death of Christ and the Christ who came from that tomb, the risen Christ, he wants us to understand that that reality of what he did in terms of death and resurrection impacts how we live in the present. He talks about, we died with him, we died to sin, and we rose with him, we rose to newness of life. Some believe, and I wouldn't argue against it, that the greatest help to holy living and that the only sure way that we will make significant progress in the Christian life is by understanding our union with Christ and that we died with Him and we arose with Him, that we must constantly take our minds and our hearts back to Calvary's cross and the empty tomb I quote, while there are many other helpful things that we can do when it comes to living a Christian life, there are commandments, there are warnings, there are promises of reward for obedience, there are the means of grace that we can utilize. However, we have to go back to the cross, Calvary's hill, and see a Christ who died Look what he says in Romans 6, verse 10. Romans 6, verse 10. For the death he died, he died to sin. Have you ever thought of those words? I never quite understood them. How did he die to sin when he never sinned? He died to sin. Well, he wasn't a sinner, right? But he was a representative sinner and the penalty of sin came upon him, the guilt of sin came upon him there at Calvary. So the Apostle Paul wants us to know that when he died, he died to sin, that his relationship to sin was changed. That there was a severance that took place, a total, complete, decisive break with any relationship to sin, the penalty of sin, and the guilt of sin. And so what he's saying here is that we died with Christ and that our relationship with sin changes too, just as radically, just as decisively. Sin no longer has dominion over you. Reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to God. So the more, as one man put it, the more you decide to reckon yourself dead to sin and the more you think of yourself as alive to Christ, the more dead to sin you will be and the more alive to Christ you will be. You see, it comes back to identity. Forgetting who we are. We all suffer from identity amnesia. We forget who we are. We forget who we are in Christ. And when we forget who we are in Christ, we are in trouble. When we forget that we died to sin in Christ, and that we were raised to newness of life in Christ, And so when we are tempted to sin, we can say, no, that's not who I am. That's not who I am. I'm dead to you, sin. You no longer reign. You no longer rule. You're no longer my master. Jesus is. And because of Jesus, I'm dead to you. And because of Jesus, I'm alive to holiness. You see, the death and the resurrection of Jesus changes my relationship to sin. And I can now live a holy life. And so when sin, like the harlots of Proverbs 6, comes to entice me and allure me, and even with the press of a button today, I can bring to my eye gate all kinds of sensual pleasures and sights. And what do I do? I say, dead! You're dead to that! And you'll lie to Christ. That's not me. You go to the cross and you go to the empty tomb. And again, the more you and I regard ourselves as dead to sin, the more you and I will be able to fight against sin and have victory over sin. That's probably why we lose a lot of our battles, brethren, because we forget who we are. You find your identity in something else. You have to find your identity in Christ, His death and His resurrection. The resurrection profoundly impacts our past justification. It profoundly impacts the present, our sanctification. But in the third place, it profoundly impacts our future. Now, salvation can be put in terms of three verb tenses that sort of already suggested that past, present and future, the past, we were saved, we have been saved, we were once dead, no longer are we dead, we were once blind, but now we see Ephesians chapter 2, past salvation, it's captured by those biblical terms of regeneration and justification, there's a present salvation, we are being saved, we are continually being saved. We are growing in holiness. There is this progressive aspect to the Christian life, the negative side of sanctification, mortification of sin. Romans 8, verse 13, we put sin to death. But there is the positive of maturation, or what the old writers called vivification. But we're becoming like Him. It's not just dealing with sin, but it's putting him on and becoming more like him and all of those graces that were so perfectly and brilliantly displayed in his life and that affects how we think. We begin to think like Christ thought, and we put our minds upon things above, and it impacts how we talk with our lips or with our tongues. We're slow to speak, and we have our tongues regulated by wisdom and self-control, and by love we speak the truth. But we speak it in love, and the Christian also grows in those attitudes of humility and joy and kindness and patience. So there's a past, a present, but there's also a future. We have been saved. We are being saved. But we will be saved in the full, complete sense of that word. And one word that helps us look forward to that future aspect of salvation is found in Romans chapter 8. In Romans 8 verse 30, it's sometimes been called the golden chain of salvation. It starts in eternity past, predestination, and then takes us to eternity future. But notice Romans 8 verse 30, and those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called, He also justified, and those whom He justified, He also glorified. Everyone that God predestines will be called, and everyone God calls will be justified, and everyone God justifies will be glorified. It's an unbreakable golden chain. But it starts again in eternity past. That word glorification has us looking towards the final climactic act where our souls will become perfectly sanctified, sinless souls. Now that can happen when Christ comes back, that can happen as soon as you die. But for most of us, I think it will happen before we Before we look to Christ, we will be glorified, the soul will be perfectly sanctified. When we go to heaven, we have a perfectly sanctified soul. But the other word that we have to keep in mind when we think of the future, glorification talks about what will take place primarily with respect to the soul, but the word resurrection, that's the word that we're focusing on this morning, what does that talk about? Well, not a perfect soul, but a perfect body. It focuses upon the body. And again, when will we experience glorification? And it's certainly resurrection. Well, it's when Jesus comes back again. It's all connected to that final great event. One has called it the momentous event. No greater event on God's calendar than when His Son comes back again. The New Testament uses several words for us to understand what it will be like. It's called the parousia, the coming. It's called the apocalypse, the revelation. It's called the epiphany, the appearance. It will be the last day on the human calendar. It will end the clock for everybody. And we will see Him the trumpet blast, and then He will descend on that chariot of clouds. But that's the day, that's the day when we will be, if we're alive, that's when we will be glorified, entirely sanctified, no trace of sin, no stence of the old man. But something else, as I said, will happen on that day. It's the resurrection of the body. And Paul has that in mind when he speaks to the Thessalonians and says to them, the dead in Christ shall rise. He has that in mind when he says to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 52, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, in the flash of an eye. He says we will be raised with incorruptible bodies. New bodies. They will never get old, never get wrinkled, never have any arthritic pains. You will have a body like Jesus. Now, most of us, not all of us, I mean, you children can't relate to this, but I'm going to say it anyways. Most of us, if we sit here and think about it from top of the head to the bottom of our feet, can find some problem. There's some discomfort, some limitation, some infirmity, some pain. Maybe it's a crooked toe. Maybe it's back surgery. Maybe it's eye surgery. Maybe it's kidney stones or your body's been hit with radiation or chemo. You may have a missing finger or a missing arm. And most of us, again, not all of us, but most of us know that we're losing energy strength in terms of what we might have enjoyed even ten years ago. And when we get up in the morning, we can look in the mirror and we can see another wrinkle, another sag. Now, if you believe that this is all there is, that we're living only for the here and now, then you can understand why there is an obsession with health, body physique, cosmetic surgery, billions of dollars spent by people who are trying to keep the looks up. I have news for them. No matter how much you fight your body decay, the body reconstruction industry has so many needles. And so many injections, and so many tummy tucks, and so many facelifts. After a while, you actually look plastic. Just buy a mask. Just make sure it's not a Halloween mask. But you can't stop the wrinkling process. You can't. You can't stop the weakening. You can't stop the malfunctioning. You can give a kind of a disguise for a while by dealing with the outside, but you can't stop the inside. Your body will die. And again, if this is all there is, then you probably made a pretty good investment. Short term, but probably pretty good. But if there's a resurrection, If there is a hell and if there's a heaven, then you've made a bad investment. Now, we should be body conscious in the right sense. Paul could tell Timothy physical exercises can be helpful. It's a small thing, but you might want to take care of your body. It's your stewardship responsibility, but today there's an obsession But when a Christian gets up in the morning, he doesn't just look in the mirror, does he? And look at his face and his body physique, he looks in another mirror. The mirror of God's Word. And he's constantly thinking, thinking, from the vantage point of the end, that I will one day stand before a holy God and give account for everything I have done in this life, good or bad, God is counting. And you realize as a Christian, don't you, that there's so, so much more, so much more. And you realize there will be a glorious day of reckoning, but also a glorious day of resurrection. And those will not be spiritual bodies, those will be physical, real bodies, flesh and blood body. And they will be incorruptible, they will be immortal, they will live forever. Can anybody make anything in this life that is forever? Can any car run forever? Ten, fifteen years, is any house? I mean, even the pyramids of Egypt are crumbling. Nothing forever in this world. But in the world to come, you will have a forever body, a perfect body. You will never have to worry about clogged arteries, arthritic pain, blood pressure. You won't have to worry about depression. You will have a perfect soul and capable of sinning. You will never have to grieve over one bad thought. Pride or jealousy or envy or lust will never ever plague you in heaven. It almost sounds too good to be true. And it would be too good to be true, except for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He said, I would rise again. And he did. And he says, you will rise again. And we will. And those who are joined to Christ by faith will rise up with Christ. There will be a rapture, by the way. It just won't be secret. There will be a rapture. That's legitimate biblical terminology. We will rise with Christ together. Together. And if you're dead before He comes, guess what? It's to your advantage. Because you rise first, says Paul. You're going to be there before the guys who are still there. You're going to go up first. You're going to see Christ first. You're going to be able to talk to Him first. You'll be able to thank Him for your new body. And Johnny, Tata Erickson, who many of you know, paralyzed for, what, 40 years in a wheelchair. She's quadriplegic. She says, I can't wait for the day because when I get my glorified body, the first thing I'm going to do with my new made eternity legs is to fall down on grateful glorified knees. And I will, she says, I will have the chance to say with Psalm 95, come let us bow down in worship. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker, so I will kneel. with saints from all ages, former kings and queens, apostles and martyrs, farmers and wives of soldiers, and wonderful people through all the years who love Jesus more than life. That's the hope you have as a Christian. That's the hope our sister Judy had before the Lord took her home. Christ, your Savior, promises that kind of hope. and reality. We're going to die. And death in the Bible is a pregnant term. It's not just physical death. Get that. It has three tenses, or three different kinds. Physical, spiritual, and eternal. And the only way you escape spiritual death and eternal death is by Christ Jesus as your Savior. You have to trust Him, the One who died and the One who rose. And He's coming back again. He said He would and He never lies. And so if you don't have Christ as your Savior, you have to believe on Him, trust Him. No one can remain neutral. You're either for me or against me, said Jesus. Take your side. But his claims are too staggering. The matter here is so, so serious because it's for all eternity. That's why Paul again said to Timothy, remember Jesus Christ who rose from the dead. That will be ballast in the boat, brethren, when hardships come, when you stare death in the face. Every one of us is going to cross the River Jordan, and it ain't always easy to cross the river. A man by the name of Mr. Hooker, this is found in the Puritan writings of one of the Thomases. They love that name, Thomas. Not Thomas Boston, but Thomas Brooks, and that's what it is. But he tells the story, he said, Mr. Hooker lived 30 years in close communion with God, without any conscious withdrawing of God, but on his deathbed he struggled with assurance. And Thomas Brooks says, the best of believers can lose the sight of that city when it comes so near. He said, the most choice of souls can lose the sight of heaven even when they are nearest to heaven. And so we need to encourage one another and hold the promises before one another and tell them there are some wonderful promises exceedingly great promises, but there are some great pillars that you need to cling to. Here's one of them. It's the resurrection. He lives and so shall I. And the greatest thing about heaven isn't having a new body, by the way. And it isn't seeing your loved ones. That isn't what makes heaven heaven. Those are fringe benefits. What makes heaven heaven is Christ is there. That's what makes heaven heaven. That's what he said to the thief on the cross. You'll be with me in paradise. I'll be there. That's what makes heaven heaven. And when you're in heaven, when I am in heaven, Lord willing, we will look upon the Bridegroom, we will see Him face to face, and we will be able to worship Him in a way we couldn't worship Him in this life. We will have eyes that will see Him perfectly. We will have ears that will hear His voice perfectly. We will have hands that will be able to hold on to Him perfectly. We will have tongues that will sing of Him perfectly, glorified eyes and ears and tongues. And we'll be happy to see one another, don't get me wrong, but we'll be so happy to see Him And the Bible says, and certainly we could argue, can we not, that we all, in terms of life here upon earth, we all have a short time. A short time. A few more Sabbath days, says the hymn writer. A few more storms shall beat upon the shore and then we will be there. Home forever. And so, dear child of God, let us face our sick days our dying days with this glorious hope of the resurrection. Let's pray. Father, we thank you again for a Christ, your Son Jesus, who died that death and who rose from that grave We would have no hope this morning. We would have a vain faith. We would all be dead in trespasses and sins if he had not died on that cross and if he had not conquered that grave. Help us, Lord, to live in light of these glorious realities, and we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.