John 11:17- 27 (Waiting On The Resurrection)

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Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

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Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

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Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you.

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You know, one of the things I've noticed is that people become a lot more spiritual at a funeral.

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You notice that? I've talked to people, maybe here's some hypothetical things that I've heard.

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Joanne finally got her wings today. Aunt Linda is gonna be with Uncle Bill again.

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She'll be so glad to see him, which that's sweet. Jack's not alone anymore because, you know,

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Dad's watching over him. Frank, well, he lived like hell here on earth. He hated

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God, beat his wife, died in a drunken stupor, but hey, at least he's at peace. Now, while these are theologically fairly inaccurate things to say, they do tip our hand, or they do make us aware of the fact that we have an expectation for eternal life.

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We have an expectation that there's something beyond this world, beyond this life. It takes almost fighting against your humanity to think otherwise.

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We were made to be eternity -seeking creatures. I think even

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Augustine said that God put eternity in our hearts so that we can only be satisfied by him.

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We expect things to happen beyond this life. That's not just true of Westerners here in America. That's true of every society on earth today, and it's true of every society in history.

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It is, you know, I don't even know if you could call it monolithic, but it's in every society that there is.

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It's baked in feature of what it means to be human that we are longing for what's next.

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That's the sort of question that Martha is asking in the passage that we're going to look at today in John chapter 11.

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We're back in John. Martha's asking, my brother Lasters just died.

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Jesus, if you would have been here, then he wouldn't have died. But she admits in this passage that she believes that her brother will rise in the resurrection.

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So what I want us to do today is look at what she thinks she understands. Then I want us to look at what

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Jesus says about the resurrection, and then I want to see how Jesus narrows down a theology of the resurrection onto himself when he says,

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I am the resurrection and the life. So if you will turn with me to John 11 17 through 27 as we consider these things together.

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So when Jesus came, he found that he, that's Lazarus, had already been in the tomb for four days.

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Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother.

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Martha, therefore, when she heard that Jesus was coming, went to meet him. It's a Martha thing to do, isn't it?

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Mary stayed at the house. Martha then said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

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Even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you. Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again.

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Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. Jesus said to her,

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I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.

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Do you believe this? And she said, yes, Lord, I have believed that you are the Christ, the Son of God, even he who comes into the world.

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Let's pray. Lord, we ask that you bless our time today as we examine this passage.

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Lord, I ask that we would see what it is that you have revealed to us from the beginning all the way to the end.

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Lord, I pray that we would see this concept of resurrection is not a new thing.

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It's not inherently a New Testament thing. But Lord, it really stretches back into every facet of your story on how you're going to redeem humanity from Adam all the way to New Jerusalem.

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Lord, we thank you. We praise you. In Christ's name, amen. Now, there's all kinds of sermons.

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There's simple sermons which communicate a wonderful truth that I'm not teaching anything new, but I'm reminding us of what we already should know.

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God is good. You know, we know that we believe that. There's also emotional sermons which talk about very, very emotional topics.

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And we've had a couple of those. There's motivating sermons where we're going to go and conquer the world together for Christ and the kingdom of God is going to expand to the ends of the earth and Jesus is going to put all of his enemies under his feet and gates of hell are going to fall.

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I preach those a lot. Because they're true. There's convicting sermons.

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Our brothers and I had a convicting sermon last week on what it means to be a man.

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Then there's teaching sermons, doctrinal sermons. There's sermons where you listen to it and you may think, well,

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I'm not sure I can relate to the topic or it's a lot of Old Testament or it's a lot of this or it's it's a lot of teaching.

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That's what this sermon is going to be, but I do want to ask you just to stay plugged in with me, to stay engaged with me as we teach this topic, because what you'll see is as you begin to understand what

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God is talking about from the beginning all the way to the end when it comes to resurrection, you will find your place in the story of God.

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You will see what God is doing in resurrecting you from the dead and you'll see what hope you have for the future.

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But we have to go through some text first. We have to go through some data.

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We have to go through some Old Testament to get there. So just hang on with me.

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That's my request. Now, again, we're going to look at three things today.

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We're going to look at what did the Jews believe about the resurrection. We're going to look at what

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Jesus thought about the resurrection. Then we're going to look at how he is the resurrection.

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So let's first begin with the background. A death has occurred in John 11. Lazarus, the beloved disciple of Christ, the friend of Jesus, the brother of Mary and Martha, has died.

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So what does that mean? When a person died in Judah, this is what would happen. They would, on the same day that that person died, put them in the tomb.

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They didn't wait. They didn't plan a wake a couple days later. It was the exact same day that they would be buried.

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The first thing they would do is they would wash the body ceremonially because a body that was dead, according to the

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Old Testament law, was ceremonially unclean. And if a body is ceremonially unclean, then it would make you unclean as well.

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So they would wash the body with water and cleanse it. The next thing they would do is they would reverentially close the eyes because it was signifying that light has been extinguished, that you have been brought into darkness temporarily.

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They would anoint the body with oil, which is a fascinating thing about the

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Jews compared to other ancient cultures. Other ancient cultures, like the Egyptians, would dry the body out.

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They would dry the skin. They would hollow it out. They would take out the organs. They would empty all the body fluids so that nothing could saturate the skin because they wanted to make it almost like leather so that they could put it in a mummified state so that we could dig it up all these years later and look at how wonderful it looks.

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In Egyptian mythology, the Egyptians believed that if you didn't preserve the skin, then you were denying them access to eternity.

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Because how in the world could you walk around without skin? That's what they believed. So they did everything they could to preserve the flesh, even if it meant taking out the organs.

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Because, you know, you can live without a brain and a heart, but you can't live without your skin. But the

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Jews didn't do that. The Jews actually did everything they could to make sure the body would decay.

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They left everything intact. They washed your body so that your skin would be nice and moist, and then they anointed it with oil because it expedited the decay process.

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Like, why would they do that? Why would they want to make sure that your body decayed? Because the

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Bible says that from dust we were made and to dust we return, and they had a view as Jews that God could reanimate the flesh, that he could take your dust and form you into something beautiful.

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He had already done it once before. So they wanted to get you to a place to where your body was perfectly decayed, and they did everything they could to to do that.

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What they would do then, after they anointed you with oil, they would wrap your body in several different ways.

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First with your hands and your feet with linen strips, then they would put on your favorite garment. We do that today.

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You know, when you go to a funeral, you see what someone's favorite clothing was, or something that they look nice in. That's what they would have done.

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And then finally, they wrapped the entire body with strips and bound it. After that, they would perfume it, and they would put frankincense and myrrh.

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Frankincense is a strong smell, if you've ever smelled it. My wife has essential oils, one whiff of that.

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It's powerful. I've never smelled myrrh, but I know frankincense is a very powerful smell. It would have taken that very powerful smell, though, to perfume a body.

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Even though they sealed the tomb, you think you walk past the tomb, odor would have been released, and they would have done the perfuming to dignify you.

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It would have been undignified and unseemly if the odor would have escaped the tomb, so they perfumed you with spices, myrrh, and frankincense.

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It's interesting that Jesus was given myrrh and frankincense at his birth, because they were preparing him already for his death.

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It's interesting. They put a napkin on the face. You ever heard of the

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Shroud of Turin? We don't know if that's Jesus or not. We know it was a crucified person. There's an imprint on that.

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That's the napkin that would have sat right on top of the forehead, that Shroud of Turin. Again, we don't know if that's

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Jesus or not, but we know it was someone who was crucified. They would have put you in a rock -hewn tomb, which was all over the landscape of Judea, because it was rocky and it was mountainous.

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So they would literally cut out a cave into a rock face, and then as soon as you would walk into that cave, you would see this additional cutout.

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It was like they cut out a bed into the rock. They wouldn't place you on the ground. They wouldn't put you on a cot. They cut out a bed into the wall, so that you would have to climb up in it to get into it.

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The reason they did that is to protect your body. They wanted you to decay naturally. They didn't want you to be rodents or things like that.

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So they laid you down on this rock bed, midway up the wall, so that you could lay undisturbed, so that you could decay naturally.

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In Israel, it was a two -staged burial. What I just described to you was the first stage.

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The second stage happens a little bit later, where they open up the tomb one year later.

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They would let you sit there for one year with the tomb perfectly sealed, again, letting the natural processes happen.

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On your one -year anniversary, though, the family would come back, and they would open the tomb up, and they would come in, and they would gather all of the decayed stuff together.

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There would be bones. There would be hair and nails, but there would be mostly dust.

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They would take all of that, showing how much dignity they value the body, and they would put that into a stone box called an ossuary.

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And that ossuary would be taken to a different part of the tomb. It was almost like a shelving system cut into the rocks, and they would put your body next to your ancestors.

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So you would sleep with your fathers. When the Old Testament David says that I will go down to my father's, he says what he's talking about, the position of being buried next to your kin.

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And they were kept in that place for generations and generations.

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Why? Because the Jews were waiting on the resurrection. They did everything they could to preserve your body and put it there in a place of dignity and honor, so that when

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Jesus, or not Jesus at this point, when God returned and brought about the resurrection, that your body would be nicely stored and ready to be reanimated.

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That's what they were doing. Archaeologists have found these all over the place. They found some that have

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Mary and Martha's name inside the cave. We don't know if it's that Mary and Martha, but we know it's a common name, but it's interesting.

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Now another feature that I think is pretty interesting about this, and all of this will tie together in just a moment, is that they mourned for seven days.

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Specifically. It wasn't an accident. They mourned for seven days. The first day was the entire burial process.

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And if you'll remember, when Jesus died, they had to do a rush job. They didn't get it finished, and they had to go back to the tomb to finish it, which was unorthodox in their society.

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First day was entirely dedicated to the body. The next six days were entirely dedicated to the family.

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The family would mourn. The community would come and visit them. In the text it says that Jews were coming back and forth to mourn.

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They even hired paid mourners because they valued the body so much, they thought that it would be an awful thing to die without someone mourning your death.

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In fact, this is another bonus material fact of history. Herod, the king of Israel, was so hated in his life that one of the last decisions that he made was he spent some money out of his bank account to hire professional mourners to go all through Israel mourning his death, so that his name would be on the lips of the people.

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Because they hated him, and they wouldn't do it themselves. It was a big deal. It was an industry, even, at this time.

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But what I find so fascinating is that it was seven days. On the eighth day, they stopped mourning.

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Now, why is that important? Why do they mourn for seven, but on the first day of the new week they stopped?

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See, eight is an important number in the Bible. We often talk about seven, but eight is also very important.

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Eight is a number that symbolizes new creation. Let me give you some examples.

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When God destroyed the earth with a flood, and he remade it, he washed it, remade it, how many people came out of the boat?

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Eight. There was eight of them to repopulate the new created earth. What about John chapter 1?

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John chapter 1 is, there's seven days in Jesus's first ministry week, then he goes to Cana, where he does his first miracle, on the eighth day.

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He made new creation wine out of nothing, but water in some old dusty pots, and he made new creation on the eighth day.

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In the Old Testament, the covenant feast, I'm thinking specifically about the Feast of Weeks. There's seven days of feasting, and then a mandatory eighth day convocation.

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And as we talked about a few weeks ago, you can reference the sermon on the Feast of Booths. The Feast of Booths was thinking about and focused on the return, the

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Messianic kingdom that was coming. So on the eighth day, there was this incredible celebration, where they sang and where they worshiped, because they were saying that old creation is eventually going to pass away and new creation is going to come, where we're not going to dwell in these tents anymore, but we're going to dwell in the kingdom of our

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Messiah. His new creation. By far, the greatest example of an eighth day in the

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Bible is Jesus. In his resurrection. Now we say,

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OK, OK, but he rose on the third day, not the eighth. Well, I guess it depends on how you count.

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It says that he rose on the third day from Friday. But it also says that he rose on the first day of a new week.

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Seven days in an old week, Jesus was resting on the seventh day in the tomb as God rested from his labors on the seventh day.

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And on the eighth day, he rose from the dead, the first fruit of a brand new creation.

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Eighth day in the Bible represents something. And it represents that the old is passing away and that God is bringing about new creation.

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So when these families in Israel. We're celebrating on the eighth day, people might have thought in other countries, they might have thought they're crazy.

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You were just crying. You were just mourning. You were just weeping. You were just doing all of this stuff on the seventh day of your mourning of your loved one.

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Why are you now celebrating on the eighth day? They were celebrating because they had a firm and a fixed hope that that body would not lie in the grave forever, that God would come back and give that body life again.

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It was a it was a fact of what the Jews actually believe. We see it with Martha and verses 20 through 24.

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She believed in the resurrection, even though she didn't know how Christ was going to do it. She had a theology about it.

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Let's look and see. Verse 20 through 24. Martha, therefore, when she heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him.

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But Mary stayed at the house. Mary then said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

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Even now, I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you. And Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again.

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And Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. She had a theology of this.

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Now, the question is, where did she get that theology? Was it something that Jesus taught her or was it something that goes deeper even into the

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Old Testament? Because I think by looking at what we see in the Old Testament, they believe that the resurrection was going to happen as well.

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They believe that men like Adam and women like Eve were going to be raised whenever God decided to perform this great end time resurrection.

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They believe that Lazarus was a part of that great epic story that God was telling of resurrection.

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They believe that the future was going to be for the people of God. Almost everyone in Israel believe that except for one group, the

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Sadducees. And I'll show you just in the text. The Pharisees, the ones we like to hate, the ones we like to make fun of and call the religious people, they actually had really good theology in a lot of ways.

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They agreed with this theology on resurrection. And there's a wonderful example of this.

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They believed in the resurrection. They believed in the spirit world. They believed in angels and demons. They believed in all of that. Acts 23, 6 through 9 tells us that.

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It's a fascinating passage because Paul is doing something really brilliant. He's in the middle of being accused himself and he turns everyone else against each other.

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But for our purposes, we'll see that the Pharisees believed in the resurrection. That's my point. So this is what he says in Acts 23, 6 through 9.

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But perceiving one group or Sadducees and the other Pharisees, Paul began crying out in the council. Brethren, I'm a

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Pharisee, a son of Pharisees, and I'm on trial for the hope and resurrection of the dead.

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As he said this, there occurred a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided.

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For the Sadducees say that there's no resurrection, nor angels, nor spirits, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all.

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And there occurred a great uproar. And some of the scribes of the Pharisaic party stood up and began to argue heartily, saying,

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We find nothing wrong with this man. Suppose a spirit or an angel has spoken to him. Isn't that fascinating?

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They came there to convict him, the Pharisees. And now they're like, I don't see anything wrong with him.

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He believes the same thing I believe. Some divisions go deeper than others, I guess.

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The Pharisees believed in the bodily resurrection. That's the point. The Sadducees, however, did not.

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The Sadducees were a small group by size, a very large group by power.

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The Sadducees were in bed with Rome. The Roman leaders actually installed

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Sadducees into Jewish leadership so that they could have Jewish leaders under their thumb.

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At this time, the high priest was from the party of the Sadducees. So you think about a high priest who doesn't even believe in the resurrection, a high priest who doesn't believe in life after death, a high priest who doesn't believe in any of the things that are really in the

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Old Testament. You wonder, how did they get to that point where they were so theologically liberal, they were so fast and loose with the text?

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Well, it's because they made their belief system conform to the Bible. And when the Bible didn't conform to their doctrine, they did what

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Thomas Jefferson and Marcion did, they cut it out. If you know what the reference is,

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Thomas Jefferson, there's called a Jeffersonian Bible, you can actually look it up. He cut out the parts that he didn't like and he made his own

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Bible, which means he made himself to be the standard of truth and that he believed functionally that he was

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God. Marcion did the same thing in the ancient world. They cut out the parts they didn't like, that's what the

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Sadducees did. They cut out the parts they didn't like and they said, I'm not going to believe in Isaiah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel, Psalms, Proverbs, none of that.

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The Sadducees only believed in the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, which is fascinating because when they try to trick

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Jesus with a resurrection question, Jesus turns the tables on them and shows them that even their scripture proved the resurrection was true.

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Matthew 22, 29 through 33 says this, and this is they ask him about, hey, a brother dies, his wife marries her.

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That happens seven times. Whose wife is she in the resurrection? What a disingenuous question. They didn't even believe in it.

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This is what happens. But Jesus answered and said to them, you are mistaken, not understanding the scriptures nor the power of God.

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For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven.

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But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God?

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I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the

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God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.

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And when the crowd heard when the crowds heard this, they were astonished, aka it was a mic drop moment.

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They were like, oh, no, oh, no, he didn't. That's that's

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Aramaic, if you're wondering what that is. Most of the

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Jews in Israel believed in the resurrection. A slim minority did not. They were the theologically liberal

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Sadducees who were the leadership party. But Mary and Martha believed in it, and more than the

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Pharisees, Mary and Martha believed in Jesus and they trusted him. That's why we see in this text, she says, I believe that you can do this,

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Lord. I believe in you is what she's saying. Now, what we have shown so far is that it was common for people to believe in the resurrection.

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What we have not shown yet is what a real true theology of the resurrection is, because they didn't understand it the way that Jesus was going to show it.

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They believe that one day in the future, their bodies were going to be resurrected. They had no concept for a spiritual resurrection.

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They had no concept for a two staged resurrection, which we will get into in just a moment.

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Imagine they buried their bodies in two stages, but they had no idea how to conceptualize a two stage resurrection.

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Fascinating point. There's three kinds of resurrections in the Bible that I want to share with you. Three. There's a typological resurrection.

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I'll define that. There's a spiritual resurrection and there's a physical resurrection.

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A typological resurrection means that it's an image, it's a picture, it stands for something else.

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If I were to say, if I were to give you a little figurine of a motorcycle and I were to ask you what that is, you would say it's a motorcycle.

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And I would say, oh, no, you can't get on it and ride it. You know what I mean when I say that, that the little figurine represents the bigger reality, right?

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This resurrection that I'm going to be talking about now, the typological resurrections represent what's going to happen in the future.

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There's six of them, actually, in the Bible. There's six Old Testament, Old Covenant resurrections that are going to point forward to what

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Jesus does. So I want to go through them very quickly, but I want to go through them just so that we have categories for them. The first resurrection in the

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Old Testament occurs by a man named Elijah. Elijah prays and he raises a young boy from the dead in 1

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Kings 17, 17 through 24. That's the first one. The second one is his predecessor, his successor named

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Elisha. He prays for a Shunammite woman's son, and that child is resurrected.

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So two children have been resurrected in the book of 1 Kings and the book of 2 Kings. The third one is really fascinating.

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There's a war that happens and one of the soldiers dies. Because the battle was fierce, they took his body and threw it into an open grave.

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Just so happened that Elijah's body, Elisha's body, was in that tomb. His body struck the bones of Elisha and he resurrected.

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It's fascinating, right? But those three resurrections in the Old Testament perfectly parallel three resurrections in the

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New. And I call them Old Covenant resurrections because Jesus hasn't risen from the dead yet. The first resurrection in the

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New Testament is Jesus raises a little boy, the widow's son from Nain in Luke 7, just like Elijah resurrected a little boy.

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The second resurrection is when Jesus raises the daughter of Jairus, the synagogue leader.

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Another child resurrected. Now we have two parallels from the Old Testament and the Gospels. The third is a tomb resurrection.

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One where Jesus raises someone from the tomb, just like in the Old Testament, the man who was thrown in was raised from the dead.

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What a beautiful parallel between them. Two children, not in tombs, are raised in both

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Testaments. And then one person, an adult male, in both Testaments are resurrected.

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And it entirely points forward to what Jesus Christ has done. Because Jesus came as the power of resurrection and also he came as the source of resurrection, because like that Old Testament body that was thrown into the grave and struck

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Jesus, when you and I strike the great cornerstone, the rock of ages, we become a

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Christian. When we come into contact with Jesus, when he comes into our heart, we are resurrected from the dead.

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There's six of these resurrections, three in the Gospels, three in the

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Old Testament. Now the question is, what's the seventh resurrection?

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Seventh resurrection is Jesus Christ, who rested on the seventh day and was the seventh resurrection from the dead.

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He died for our sins. He died as the seventh recorded resurrection in the

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Bible. Do we think that that's happenstance? When the perfect number is seven, when the

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Old Testament number is seven, when there's seven days of creation and Jesus is just so happening to rest on the seventh day from his labors and just so happens to be the seventh resurrection recorded in the

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Old Testament Scriptures. I don't think that's coincidence, especially considering what the eighth resurrection is in the

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New Testament. Now, before you accuse me of numerology, just listen to what I'm saying. The eighth resurrection is in Matthew 27, 45 through 53.

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This is what it says. Now, from the six hours, this is Jesus hanging on the cross. Darkness fell upon the land until the ninth hour.

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Darkness is a sign of de -creation. In the first creation, light and darkness were separated.

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Now darkness is coming back and enveloping the light. De -creation is occurring.

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Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, This is my God, my

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God, why have you forsaken me? And some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began saying, this man is calling for Elijah.

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That's an interesting reference, because Elijah is one of the only people who rose anyone from the dead. Immediately, one of them ran and taking a sponge, he filled it with sour wine and he put it on a reed and he gave him a drink.

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But the rest of them said, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.

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And Jesus cried out with a loud voice and yelled and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom and the earth shook and the rocks split and the tombs were open.

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And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised and were coming out of the tombs after his resurrection.

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They entered into the holy city. So what we see here is old creation is passing away.

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The earth is shaking, the earth that God created. The temple veil is tearing, that old covenant place where we get to know

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God is passing away. We're no longer going to go to a temple in Jerusalem in order to know

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Jesus, to know God. We're going to know God through Christ. That old covenant is passing away.

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The earth is shaking. The temple is breaking. The tombs are opening up. Life is going to come out of death for the first time.

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This is new creation. And they're the eighth ones, all the Old Testament saints. Did you know that that men and women from the

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Old Testament were raised from the dead when Christ died on the cross? They're the first resurrections in the new covenant era.

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You have people who ask you the question, what happens to the Old Testament saints? Are they saved? Apparently. And it wasn't by their effort.

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It was the same way we came in, by grace, through faith in Christ and Christ alone.

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Christ's death on the cross caused the earth to shake, the temple to break, and the tombs to open, giving forth life on the eighth resurrection.

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And they even showed up in Jerusalem. I love how Matthew tells us this. Just in case you don't believe it, they appeared to people.

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Go ask them. Jesus is ending the Old Testament era.

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That's what he's doing. He's bringing it to a close so that he can be the author of a brand new creation made in his image.

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Now, back to John 11. When we ask the question, when did the resurrection begin?

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When does the resurrection begin? We'll talk about this next week because we're going to we're going to dive into this a little bit deeper.

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But Martha says, I know that he will rise on the last day. So the question is, when do the resurrections begin?

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Do they begin in the future for us on the last day at the end of time? Or do they start earlier than that?

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Two thousand years ago, even. What Jesus is saying, what we'll see next week about the end times, is that if you are in Christ, the end times have already started.

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We're already in the last days because the last days is when the resurrection from the dead occurs.

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And if you're in Jesus, then you have been raised from the dead. The author of Hebrews and several passages in the

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Old Testament will prove this to us. But bookmark that just for a moment. Resurrection began when those

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Old Testament saints burst out of the tomb. And that was the pattern ever since. Dead people raised to life.

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That's your and my story, too. It's consistent. Two thousand year story of God raising people from the dead.

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Now, the only question we have left to answer is what's the nature of this resurrection? Because Martha believed it was a future oriented physical resurrection.

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And yet what we see in the New Testament is actually it's a two staged resurrection, spiritual first, physical later.

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Martha had no concept of that. But that's what Jesus brought. Now, I find it interesting.

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When we're saved, we're given a new heart, a new birth, a new life, but not a new body. Amen. You woke up this morning to don't act like you didn't.

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I'm 38. I feel it. You're like, you're young. I don't care. I feel it.

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He raised a spiritually first. The quintessential example of this is Romans six, chapter four or Romans chapter six, verse four.

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It says, therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into his death so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the father, we to spiritually might walk in newness of life.

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You and I were not there physically speaking when Jesus was crucified. We were not there when Jesus was placed in a tomb and we were not there when

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Jesus was raised from the dead. But Paul says spiritually, we were. We were spiritually nailed to the cross with Christ.

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We were spiritually placed in the tomb with Christ and we were spiritually raised with Christ when the new covenant era began.

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He brought us out of the tomb with him, which is actually really, really good news.

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When Paul says that you were crucified with him and you were raised with him,

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Paul is talking about a definite number of people. He is not talking about whoever raises their hand and accepts

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Jesus into their heart or whoever signs of a little a little thing on the back of your seats that says, yes, check the box.

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I'm a Christian now. He's not saying that. He's saying that every single Christian who would ever be a

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Christian was crucified with Jesus on the cross. And every single Christian that would ever be a

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Christian was buried with Jesus in baptism. And every single one of them, covenantally and spiritually speaking, were raised with Christ when

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Jesus rose from the dead. You didn't know about it. You didn't figure it out until 2000 years later.

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Whenever you whenever you decided that you were going to follow Jesus, you were probably in a Methodist church singing. I have decided.

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No, you didn't. That was decided 2000 years ago. I appreciate your zeal.

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I sang that song, too. What I think is so interesting.

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Is that our resurrection spiritually actually looks perfectly aligned with the burial practices of Israel.

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It's a dorky thing that I'm getting ready to tell you, but I think it's really cool. We were washed just like the dead body of Lazarus says we were washed in baptism.

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That's what Peter says. We were anointed, were we not? They were anointed with oil, we were anointed with something better, we were anointed with Christ.

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They had their favorite garment put on them. Is that true of us? We're clothed with Christ.

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Says that they were perfumed so that they're the deadness of their body wouldn't stink.

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It says Paul says that we're a pleasing aroma to God. We've been perfumed by grace.

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Every aspect of that Old Testament burial ritual is ours in the resurrection, but better.

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We were washed with better water, anointed with better oil, raised with a better resurrection. All of it was there in the

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Old Testament practices to show them what was coming and they didn't see it right away. That Jesus is doing something to you in your resurrection that is preparing you for eternal life.

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Colossians 3 1 says the same sort of thing. Therefore, if you've been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

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If you've been raised in the power of the resurrection of Christ, then that power is available to you.

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Jesus didn't raise anyone so that you could go on living like dead people. He didn't. He raised you so you can live as living people.

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He raised you so that you can live holy lives. He brought you out of the grave and he hit you at some point in your life with Holy Spirit regeneration that wakes you up.

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Listen to this in the tomb, they placed the body in the ossuary waiting for the resurrection.

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Christ, when he came out of his grave, he put you there, he held you there, he kept you there. And when the

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Holy Spirit came in and woke you up, you came out of the tomb and you said, how did I get here? You've been held.

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You've been preserved. You've been saved. Two thousand years ago, kept for the moment where the

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Holy Spirit came into your life and regenerated you. He raised you spiritually.

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The resurrection changes you. It does. You're no longer the same person.

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You no longer have the same desires. You no longer have the same affections that you once had. You no longer hate

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God and love sin. You love God and you hate your sin. And you increasingly learn to hate your sin because the resurrection power of God has come inside of you.

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And you're new and you're new. Christianity is not spraying perfume on a corpse.

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Christianity is making a brand new creation. That's you. John 5, 25 is where Jesus talks about this.

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It's not just Paul. Jesus talks about it as well. He says, truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is when the dead will hear the voice of the

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Son of God. And those who hear will live. Those who hear the voice of God will rise.

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And they will become alive in him. John 5, 27 talks about the authority that Jesus has to do this.

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It says, just as the father has life in himself, that means that he has life that cannot be attributed to anything else but himself.

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That's a theological term called a seiyadi. His life comes from himself, not from anything else, not from batteries, not from a father and mother.

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His life comes from inside of himself. It says, just as the father has life in himself, even so he gave to the son also to have life in himself and he gave him the authority to execute judgment because he is the son of man.

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Do you know what that means? Just as God has life in himself and can share that life with anyone because of Christ's death on the cross, because of Christ's resurrection, because of his obedience, he can give life to whomever he pleases.

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There's no one who can walk up to God and say, give that to me. And him say, well, you asked.

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No, Christ has the authority to give life to those whom the father has chosen.

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It says in Ephesians that he chose them before the foundations of the world, says that Jesus died and paid for that sin.

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And by the power of the spirit, Christ gives life to those who are in the father's hand and those who are in the father's hand cannot be lost.

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We're saved under his authority. We're saved under his watch. We're saved even while we were dead and dead people don't choose things.

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It wasn't just Jesus, John and Paul who said this. One of the first things that the apostles began doing was preaching resurrection, says in Acts four, one through two.

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And they were speaking to the people, the priest and the captain of the temple guard, and the Sadducees came up to them, Sadducees being greatly disturbed because they were teaching people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.

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They were not only talking about resurrection theology because the Sadducees didn't believe in that. They were saying that Jesus is the author of resurrection.

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If you know the story, they beat John and James. And when they released them, they said they rejoiced that they'd been counted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ.

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Peter, the same guy who was beaten there in Acts four and five later and first Peter in his letter, he says, blessed be the

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God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his great mercy, has caused us to be born again to a living hope through resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

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Later, he also says this, this is a fascinating passage, it's a debated passage, but I think it's a beautiful passage in first Peter three, 18 through 21.

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He says, for Christ also died for sins once and for all the just for the unjust so that he might bring us to God, he might bring us to God.

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Having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit in which he went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah during this construction of the ark in which a few, that is, eight persons were brought safely through the water.

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Corresponding to that baptism now saves you. Not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven after the angels and authorities and the powers had been subjected to him.

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Jesus is not saying through the apostle Peter, the Holy Spirit's not saying that baptism saves you in the sense that it forgives you of your sins.

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It's a sign of your salvation. Those eight people who came off the ark saw the sign in the sky and they did not say, oh, thank you,

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Rainbow, for holding back that water. They said, thank you, God, for giving us a sign so that when we forget in our sin, we can look and we can say our

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God is good. Our baptism is a sign of the goodness of God. He gave us these signs because he loves us.

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And whether we get baptized as a child or whether we get baptized as an adult, it's a sign of what God has done for you.

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And when all of us in the room are watching someone else get baptized, we're remembering the goodness of God.

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That's why when Presbyterians and I think they're right, they say, remember your baptism because you're remembering the sign that points to the goodness of God.

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When you see someone else get baptized, it should make your heart skip a beat because you're like, that was me.

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I was dead, but now I'm alive. I was lost, but now I'm found. I'm the one who should have been outside of the boat, banging on the boat, saying, no, let me in.

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But no, he put me in the boat and that boat is Christ. He saved me.

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Baptism is the sign of that salvation. It's not the operation of that salvation. We should not get those two things confused.

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That salvation causes us to be made new. And that's why Paul can say in Philippians 3, 7 through 11.

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But whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

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I've counted those things as rubbish, Paul says. For more than this,

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I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom

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I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish so that I may gain

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Christ and may be found in him. Not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, the power of his resurrection.

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The resurrection is not a meaningless doctrine for the Christian. There's power in the resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death in order that I may attain the resurrection of the dead.

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He's talking about two resurrections here. He's talking about the spiritual resurrection, which grabs you and breathes the

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Holy Spirit's life into you and changes you and causes you to live a different life. But he's also highlighting a future resurrection, a resurrection of the body, a physical resurrection where you are with Christ in body forever.

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In the same way that the Jews had a at a two stage burial, in the same way that the Old Testament had a two stage fall, we fell in sin.

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We died spiritually first, then physically later in the same way. Christ will reverse the curse by raising us spiritually first and then physically later.

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Look at the symmetry of God's word. Look at how everything in it is going to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

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These details are not meaningless in the scriptures. When you run across them, they're there for a reason.

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God has created infinite depth in his word so that you can't study it enough. So that you can't master it.

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You can study it for the rest of your life and you'll never find out everything there is to know about it. You can study it for an eternity and never find out everything that's in it because we serve an infinite

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God. And he wrote a book and his book is Martha believed in a physical resurrection.

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But Jesus was going to bring first a spiritual resurrection. Martha said, I know he will rise again on the last day.

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Jesus doesn't invalidate that. He doesn't disagree with her. That will happen. The final end time resurrection will come.

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Where you and I, who are broken, who the donut we had yesterday at the membership meeting didn't sit well with us.

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That's sin. That's the result of the fall. I think heaven will be a place where there are no calories.

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Amen. What better evidence of the fall of man than you could eat something good and it treat you like crap for weeks.

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We're going to be raised. It's all over the Bible. I'll give you a few examples. Luke chapter 20 verse 34 through 36 says,

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Jesus said to them, this is talking to the Pharisees or the Sadducees. The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage.

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But those who are considered worthy to attain the future age, that's my emphasis, and the physical resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor given in marriage.

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For they cannot even die anymore because they're like the angels and the sons of God being sons of the resurrection.

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He's saying that these physical bodies are not the end. The Sadducees who believe up, you die, you die.

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Your merry -go -round's over. It's not true. It's not true. We die with hope.

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Peter says, I'm living hope because we have a future, a resurrection. Paul tells us in first Corinthians 15, 50 through 58, putting a lot of scripture in here because I want you to see it's all over the place.

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Now, I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

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That word perishable and imperishable's language of like death and decay, tomb, ossuaries.

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Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep. That's a euphemism for death. But we will all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised.

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Imperishable. And we will be changed for this perishable body must put on the imperishable and this mortal must put on the immortality.

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But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable and this mortal put on the immortality, then will come about what is saying where death is.

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Your sting is swallowed up in victory. The sting of death is sin, the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ, our

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Lord. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast and movable, always abounding in the work of the

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Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain. Your toil is not in vain. You may hurt, you may ache, you may have emotional pains, you have mental pains, you have sorrows of every kind.

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You may have diagnosis that that are debilitating you, but your toil is not in vain. If you know

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Christ, then this present suffering is even worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in the day of Jesus Christ.

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We labor, we labor with dignity, we labor against our suffering with with courage and conviction, because this will not be the end of us, because the end of us was finished on the cross of Jesus Christ and we will be raised.

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If you're in Christ, you've been raised already spiritually. And if you're in Christ, you will be raised physically where you spend an eternity with your king.

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This is what Revelation says. This is the end of the Bible, the end of the story. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth and the first earth and the first earth passed away and there no longer was any sea.

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It's a fascinating point. John doesn't dislike oceans. In the Old Testament, a sea was a chaotic, untamable thing.

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There's no more chaos. There's no more curse. That's what he's saying. And I saw the holy city,

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New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.

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And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God, the presence of God is among men and he will dwell among them and they shall be his people and he shall be and God himself will be among them.

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And he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. And there is no longer any death and there is no longer any mourning and there is no longer any crying or pain for the first things have passed away because the second thing, the second resurrection has come.

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Jesus is looking at Mary and he's not denying this fact. He's saying,

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I am the resurrection and the life and anyone who is in me will live forever.

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In the present tense and in the future tense. Here's what all this means.

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I'm going to pull all this together. When Jesus says, I'm the resurrection and the life, you don't have to wait for heaven to live for Jesus.

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He raised you now. And as you serve him now, pain and sorrow cannot overtake you because you're finished.

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The ending of your story has already been written. So what this means practically is that we live with dignity and we live with courage and we live with hope and we face every single day with the kind of tenacity that knows that we can't be killed.

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Go to the darkest neighborhood you want to go to, go to the most God hating country on earth and preach the gospel.

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And what do you have to fear? They can't kill what's unkillable. They can take your body, but they can't take your soul.

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The Christ who rose for you raised you spiritually now and physically later, you can live with courage.

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Please do not do not fall into hopelessness. Don't fall into despair.

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Don't fall into sadness and brokenness over the things that have happened to you. Life's not meant to be fair on this side.

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Life hurts and life is painful, but you have the answer. If you're in this room and you're in Christ, you have the answer.

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You have the answer that the world is looking for. They freak out when pain happens. They weep when pain happens.

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They're broken when something gets taken away from them. They don't know what to do with us because when we know

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Christ, you can't take anything from us. We've been already given everything. We got to live like that.

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We got to live like that. A living Lord Jesus.

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Thank you. Thank you for all of the beautiful truths that are found in your Bible. Thank you,

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Lord, that we can see from scripture. That you saved us now.

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You breathed your spirit into us now to change us. And yet,

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Lord, it's just a taste, it's an appetizer and the meal is coming.

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Lord, I pray that we would like Paul, that we would live in the power of the resurrection. That we would live in the power of the

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Holy Spirit of God. That we would not live as though nothing has happened to us, but Lord, we would live like we have been ran over by God's grace and we're different.

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Lord, let your church be different, let your church stand out, let your church be set apart, let your church be holy.