Easter 2021

Good morning and welcome to the Castle Baptist Tabernacle, this wonderful Easter morning, if you would, please, let's go ahead and stand together. We're going to quote a verse together to start off our service in Matthew. Chapter twenty eight, verse number six. Let's quote this together. He is not here for he is risen, as he said. Come see the place where the Lord Jesus Christ is not dead. He is alive. And that's why we're here this morning. We are celebrating his resurrection, his victory over death, how the grave sin. He is a victorious God. Let's sing it out on Christ's rose. Hit number three hundred and sixty two.

Spiceland.

Stavros Bychowski this morning, we'll continue seeing him number three hundred and thirty two, I believe, and a hill called Mount Calvary. Let's sing it out here. This.

And this time I have brother Sam Lexar pray for for us this morning.

Your head's with me, please pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for this beautiful day being created for us and we thank you for your blessings upon each and every one of us and allowing us to have the privilege to be here, come and worship you and to sing our praises to you, Lord.

Uh, just thank you. As we celebrate this day, as we celebrate the risen savior, Lord and, uh, death has no more dominion over us and we are able to live a life that is, well, pleasing to you, Lord. Just pray that you just, uh, be with the services Lord. Uh, thank you for your blessings upon this church and pray that you just, uh, be with us as we go through this service, as in Jesus name.

Amen.

Thank you, may be seated. Good to have you here with us this morning. Welcome to the Baptist Tabernacle on this Easter Sunday morning. And we're so glad to have you in our service here today and glad to see some familiar faces and some new faces as well. And I hope that you're just having a great morning thus far. I want to say thank you to all of our folks who helped to prepare the breakfast this morning. And they did an excellent job with the homemade cinnamon rolls, eggs, bacon, biscuits, all of it just tasted wonderful. So I appreciate their help. And they've been working real hard between the egg hunt yesterday and then the breakfast this morning. And we're blessed to have a great team of volunteers here at the Baptist Tabernacle. Yesterday, we had over three hundred and fifty people here as a part of the egg hunt. And so that was a lot of fun. And I hope that you were able to be a part of that if you were available yesterday. But great to get some new contacts with different people in the community and excited to see what God will do through that. We're glad to have you here if you're a visitor, especially today, and hopefully you received one of our weekly bulletins as you came in the door. And if you did inside of that, you'll find a connection card. And if you wouldn't mind filling that out with whatever information you feel comfortable sharing, you can turn it in at the welcome desk after the service is over and they'll give you a little gift to show our appreciation for you being here with us today. If you want to see some things that are coming up here at our church, you can look in that bulletin. We got a couple of teen activities, some ladies events, even a men's event event coming up. And so you can see what is out there on the horizon for our church. We're very excited what God is doing here at our church. On the back, you'll see a couple of different projects we're working on right now and hopefully see those come to fruition here before the end of the year. Sorry. Wow. Anyways, tonight, I would like to invite you back tonight at five thirty. We're going to have a special evening service. It's going to be kind of a worship night singing. We'll have several songs that we're going to sing together. And in between those will have different testimonies, stories, illustrations that all have to do with Easter. And so we'd love to have you come back this evening. Be a nice special time for us to spend together and looking forward to that. Again, that's at five thirty. I believe that's all of the announcements I have. Oh, no, it's not OK. Everyone is here. If you if you came today, please pick up one of the key rings that is out on the welcome desk as you're leaving. I know it's not anything big or fancy, but just something to kind of mark the occasion. And remember Easter, twenty, twenty one. It's definitely better than Easter. Twenty twenty. Yeah. So, hey, we're glad to be here and able to be in person again and so glad you're here with us as well. What we're going to do is we're going to a short video that's going to play at this time, and then our choir is going to sing a couple of songs that they've been working on. So we'll hit the lights and let that video play.

Her sorry.

Thank the Lord for that. Amen. Let's go ahead and stand in Christ the Lord. We'll sing this next song. In Christ Alone. My hope is found.

I can't find any other place for the Lord Jesus Christ came in Christ.

Come on.

And he says Sisters has lost its. My friends, this is the power of Christ and.

Lights last night by Brad.

Jesus is my guest.

Has come forward at this time as we prepare to receive our ties and offerings here this morning, if you're a guest with us today, please don't feel obligated to participate during this time was for our church family. And this is how we support the ministry that takes place here in the Collinsville area and around the world through our nation's efforts. My brother, Jared Holly, if you don't mind, pray, ask God's blessing on the offering this morning.

Lord, we are so, uh, happy to be here in your house this morning. We're just thank you, Lord, for what this day means to us, Lord. And just, uh, so thank for what you did for us, Lord at Calvary. Or just pray you take this offering, you use it to further your work that you bless every gift and every giver.

And they made.

Hey, man, thank you for that. Appreciate your willingness to play. Thank you to our choir as well for singing for us today. Wasn't that a blessing? I had one of our longtime members tell me after the first service that in her opinion, it's the best the choir ever sound. If you don't agree with that, then you should have been here for the early service. Maybe it was better. Maybe it wasn't. I don't know. You'll never know. All right. Take your Bibles if you have them. Turn to Matthew. Chapter number twenty eight, Matthew. Twenty eight is where we'll be this morning. We've been talking about this passage here already in the first week, quoted, but very excited to go over some things with you here this morning. As you find your place, if you wouldn't mind physically able to stand and honor of reading God's word. We'll read Matthew. Chapter number twenty eight, verses one through six.

Matthew, chapter twenty eight, verses one through six. The Bible says in the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, to see the sepulcher. Behold, there was a great earthquake. The angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back. The stone from the door sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning and his ringman, white as snow for fear of him, the keepers did shake became his dead men. The angel answered and Selander, the woman fearnot, not for I know that you seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen, as he said, come see the place where the Lord lay. Let's pray, Lord, we thank you for the opportunity we have to come together to celebrate the resurrection of your son. God, I ask that you to help us this morning as we look into your word, pray that you would give us the things that we need to hear. Or do you know what each person here has faced over the last week or last several months and over the last year? God, I ask that today people that are here would be encouraged that they be challenged in their spiritual life, or if there's somebody here today that doesn't know you as their savior, never received new life from you, pray that this Easter Sunday would be the day that they got saved. Lord, we love you. Thank you for all you do for us in Jesus name, I pray. Amen. You may be seated.

It's always fun on Easter Sunday to see the little kids coming in and their different outfits and they're all done up and they've got matching clothes. And how many of you, your parents made you match your siblings when you were growing up? Oh, yeah. I've got some pictures of me and my brother with some M.C. Hammer pants with a t shirt tucked in. And we were cool stuff, you know? Well, it was the early 90s, so we expect. But yeah, I mean, it's a big deal for kids Easter Sunday.

I mean, you know, they're over there like you can hear the sugar eating away at their teeth as we speak. Carter, my youngest, woke up this morning, he said a church, a kind, it's like we already had an egg and it was yesterday another egg hunt?

No, not that well, yes. When you get home, I guess there will be another egg hunt, but not a church. You know, they get excited and they come in and there's just this this energy about Easter Sunday, even adults come in and they're excited about what's going to happen. They're excited about the choir singing.

They're excited because family has come into town and maybe there's some guests that they've been inviting and they're hopeful that those guests will be there that day.

It was a family that was headed to Easter Sunday morning church and they were talking to their children, just trying to get them ready for what was going to be discussed at church that day and the life of Jesus and why he came and his crucifixion and then his resurrection. And they were making a big deal about Jesus being alive again, like almost like it was his birthday.

And so the kids are getting excited, like it's going to be a party for Jesus being alive and the youngest in the backseat. Is Jesus going to be there to.

Parents are thinking they would have said, well, so. And Easter is fun, Easter is a happy time.

I mean, you think about the crucifixion and sometimes on Easter Sunday, we talk about Jesus dying on the cross and all that he went through. And it's it's very somber. It's very hard to read some of those things. It's really hard to meditate and sobering to think about my part in him being on that tree.

This morning, we're going to look at the resurrection and it's only good news, you know, this is the this is the rest of the story. Somebody was talking about Paul Harvey to me this morning. And, well, this is the good part, Jesus being alive again.

You know, the gospels, those first four books of the New Testament where we learn what we know about Jesus life, the Bible makes quite a few amazing, stupendous, almost fantastic claims about Jesus. Jesus made some fantastic claims about himself. I mean, when you read the Gospels and and we see the different parts of his life, you know, in order for Jesus to be who he said he was, there are two things that must be true about his life. Two things that must be true about Jesus life. If he is going to be who he said he was, No. One, he must have been born of a virgin. That's absolutely essential. But number two, he must rise again. If Jesus is the son of God that he claimed to be the Messiah, then he must have been a virgin born and he must have risen from that grave. Is it an interesting that we celebrate the fulfillment of those two, those two features, Christmas and Easter?

No offense, but for some of us, those are the two times we go to church.

OK, well, we didn't think that was a funny. Anyways, well, so if you believe one of those, the virgin birth or the resurrection, you should be able to believe the other because both of them are miraculous.

Both of them are miracles. Know, I don't believe in miracles. I'm glad you said that. We'll talk about it later. But the Bible, which is an ancient text, I mean, none of you were alive when it was written. I wasn't alive when it was written. It's a very, very old book written over thousands of years of the Bible is an ancient text that if you were to be objective, you would have to agree because even nonbelievers agree that it has proven itself to be reliable by centuries of critics attacking it.

I mean, for for as long as the Bible has been written down on paper or papyrus, I don't know whether there have been people trying to make it out to be false.

They've been trying to say that it's a bunch of myths and legends and oh, we really can't be sure what happened, what didn't happen, and try as they might despite generation after generation of attacks.

We're still here.

Twenty, twenty one, we're still here, got the Bible sitting in your lap, you'll see some verses up on the screen. We still have God's word for us. And especially when it comes to this issue of the resurrection, the Bible is very careful to record and preserve exactly what happened.

There are many eyewitness accounts that went into the Bible being recorded for us. They speak of Jesus doing all sorts of things after his resurrection. He's walking around on two feet, not floating like a little ghostly spirit kind of thing. He's walking. He's talking to people not just like in their dreams. I mean, he literally showed up to people.

He even eats things, spirit, candy, things.

Jesus rose from the dead bodily. He really is alive. And it wasn't just a few that saw him. The Bible tells us that at one time over 500 saw him. So this is no grief hallucination that a few people experienced because they were so overwhelmed with the sorrow of losing their friend.

All of the testimonies and evidence and witnesses that we have, all of it starts on Easter Sunday morning with these ladies who got up early. To go and visit the tomb of Jesus. After suffering one of the most brutal deaths ever designed to end human life, Jesus body has been buried for three days. But in verse number one of our text, a Sunday morning begins to dawn. Something starts to happen. These ladies that we read about, they're making their way to that tune.

They are they're going to go and they're going to anoint Jesus body, Jesus, of course, after dying, he was hastily prepared for burial, placed in a borrowed tomb.

He had not been afforded the carefulness and the concern that would have been due to the greatest man that any of these people had ever known quickly been buried for the coming Sabbath.

Now, as these ladies come, they're going to try and right that wrong, they're going to go and anoint his body, they're going to make sure that it's not stinking.

They're going to put some perfume and some spices upon it to try and preserve the body for as long as possible.

We know that as they walked to the gravesite, the grave that they spoke along the way, the other gospels tell us that one of the things that they talked about was what are we going to do with the stone? How are we going to move this giant boulder away from the mouth of the tomb? These stones that would cover up the graves during their time could easily weigh two to four thousand pounds, and so it's doubtful that three people would be able to move this stone by themselves.

Typically, they they sat on an incline. And so if you were to put the stone in front of the grave, it's no big deal. You pull the plug and it rolls into place.

But to move it back was quite a feat because you had to push it uphill.

But in our text version number two, what we start to see happening makes their concern about how they're going to deal with the stones seem very irrelevant, because when they get there, they're going to find a scene unlike any they could have anticipated. The Bible says in verse number two that they're in that garden. Some things began to happen.

The tomb belonged to a man named Joseph. And after Jesus had been put in there, they had arranged for Roman guards to be placed outside the tomb. You may be familiar with the story already, but they were there to ensure that no one would come and steal Jesus body and say, Oh, he rose from the dead.

I just want you to think about this for a second. What did they think the disciples were going to do with a dead body?

A rigor mortis, Jesus doesn't help. Thanks. I mean, you're not going to get away with that for very long. Sure, they could have tried to bury him again and say, oh, well, the tomb is empty, he disappeared. But somebody would have snitched. Peter definitely couldn't keep his mouth shut.

It probably would have been too long before Thomas started saying, hey, you know what, for a couple of bucks, I'll I'll take you to show you where Jesus is really buried.

Somebody would have revealed the new grave. It definitely wouldn't have suffered a martyr's death hanging on to this joke that he was alive.

Those guards there, they're there to make sure that the body doesn't get taken and as their guardians of the dead are standing watch, they are interrupted from their pointless duty by a great earthquake. Now, an earthquake quake wasn't too out of the ordinary fact. If you're familiar with the story, you know, they just had an earthquake three days earlier when Jesus died. So another earthquake is like, OK, whatever. But what accompanies the earthquake? Now, that was something different, because the Bible tells us that in addition to the earthquake, there was also a visit from the angel of the Lord. Now, this angel is unlike anything you or I have ever seen. No human effort to depict an angel can can accurately portray what these people saw.

I mean, it definitely wasn't a baby with its bottom hanging out and wings on the back.

Sorry, when I see that I don't hit the ground, I start laughing.

The Bible says that this angel, his countenance was like lightening his raymont was white as snow.

This is just something absolutely incredible. No doubt you've had a child or you've seen a child who's afraid of lightning. They're afraid of the storm. That flash that for a moment illuminates your entire home in the dark.

I've known some grown men that were a little afraid of storms. There's one guy I know. He lived in a desert for a long time. He came here to Oklahoma to visit one one day and we had a big storm moving in.

And this guy starts getting antsy. He's like, anxious, like we're going home.

I got to get my kids back in the car. We got to get back to the house. I mean, this storm is really serious.

Rahmat, that you remember that?

Men have a face like lightning. Garments, white snow reflecting this light, the sky would have been quite the sight, this angel was incredible.

This angel wasn't just incredible with the way he appeared, but when you when you look at verse number two, this angel comes and rolls back the stone from the door.

And then he sits on.

I mean, this guy just needed a place to sit down, so he takes a four thousand pound rock, moves it out of the way, and he plops himself down on it.

Well, what's going on here? You move a four thousand pound rocks if you don't want to take a seat.

Bible says Matthew records for us, Matthew, if you've watched the chosen, I love how they depict him.

And now when I read Matthew, I think of that guy writing these things down and he's got this dry sense of humor, this this irony that he pulls out and he puts into the story and in verse no, verse number four, it says, and for fear of him, fear of the angel, the keepers did shake.

And became as Dedman. Guardians of the Dead became dead like the dead themselves.

This is the scene that the women stumbled upon as they come inside of the two. I want you to try and put yourself in their place right now, you're coming into the garden. It's in the early morning. You have that nice, cool, crisp air. Don't you love that that that cool air in the morning? Get here in the morning sometimes at the church, and it's just just nice and chilly. And I just know it's going to be so refreshing when I step out of my car. There's a slight north wind coming this way. You know, I'm going with this. Get on my car. It's the rendering plant.

Never fails.

They're coming in that garden and the birds are chirping, flowers are beginning to bloom, there's that aroma, that earthy smell from the garden. You know, it's unlike anything else, just flowers everywhere. You've been to the Botanical Gardens. You know what this smells like.

Coming in, everything is so pleasant, everything is just refreshing, and yet deep down, they're still struggling to find any sense of joy or peace because they're going to visit the grave of their their teacher.

As they round the corner, they see what has happened there at the Great. The first thing that I believe they would have noticed were the angels, I mean, face like light, it's hard to miss. Light grabs their attention. See this angel, we know that one was outside the tomb on the stone, the other was inside. It would have been impossible to miss these gleaming messengers of heaven. Next, believe they would have noticed the giant stone which had transitioned from a tomb covering to an angel's couch. Yes, that answers the question, what are we going to do about the St.. Finally. They would have noticed the Roman guards seemingly dead, scattered all over the area.

This would have struck fear in their hearts for a couple of reasons. Number one, I believe they would have been afraid that perhaps they might be held responsible for what appears to be the death of these Roman guards. It would would've been a very serious crime to be accused of. Perhaps they were also afraid of these angels. Who seem to have the ability to kill hardened Roman soldiers, surely a couple of ladies wouldn't be too difficult for them to dispatch.

Version number five, the angel graciously speaks to them, he initiates the conversation by telling them, don't be afraid.

There's no need to fear. I know why you're here. You're seeking Jesus. I know why you've come, you're looking for him that was crucified.

And the angel says those wonderful, wonderful words.

He is not here.

The one you're seeking for is not here, he has risen. As he said.

Come on, come on. Come see the place where the Lord lay. Where he led past tense. He's not there anymore.

You realize that Jesus resurrected body was not waiting, waiting on the angels to let him out.

It wasn't in there like, oh, man, what do I do? I need some angel to come along and open this door for me. You know, he's laying there completely lifeless. All of a sudden, air fills his lungs again. Pulls that napkin off of his face, he starts to take off all of the grave clothes and and lay them down and he goes up to the stone and he's like.

Oh, man. And think about that one. How long we'll have to wait.

What do we know about Jesus after he rose from the dead, the disciples there in the upper room, it's completely sealed off and then all of a sudden.

There is some. Walls don't don't stop him, that the Stones definitely not going to stop him.

The Angels didn't have to come and lay the stone away so that Jesus could get out.

Angel came in Rolling Stone away so that people could get in.

So that those ladies could go in and look so that Peter and John could go look, so that pilgrims for the last two thousand years could go and look inside and see.

There's nobody here. It's empty, it's still empty.

Empty grave is one of the greatest evidences of Jesus resurrection.

So these ladies. Ladies who had been with Jesus from the very beginning. Became the first of his followers to see the proof of his resurrection.

They also became the first bearers of the good news of the gospel in verse number seven. We're not going to deal with it today, though, says that and go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead.

Sorry, I'm in.

The first witnesses to the resurrection were ladies, the first bearers of the gospel were ladies. If you doubt the resurrection, those two points ought to be enough to prove to you that this isn't something that was made up, because when this was written, you wanted to make sure people believed your story. You wouldn't have made ladies the first two to see this. You'd made sure there was a couple of men there to validate.

And they go. And they spread the gospel, Jesus is alive. Jesus is risen again. You see, it's the resurrection.

It all centers around the resurrection of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, that Jesus sets Christianity apart from any other major world religion.

We don't have time to go through all of them, although we could if I could just point out a few examples here. No Muslim believes that Muhammad is still alive.

They have his grave. They know where it is, his remains are in there, people go and pay their respects. Nobody is under the assumption that the Budha is still alive. You can go visit his grave, he's still there.

Their tombs are marked, they're venerated, they're respected by those who follow. And if Jesus had remained buried, don't you think that that would be the same story for him?

I mean, he'd only been dead a few days and already there were ladies coming to to pay respects to his grave.

Jesus hadn't risen, word would have gotten out, and today Jesus followers would be very hopeless, but they would also go and visit his grave on a regular basis.

Historians tell us that during the time of Jesus life, there were between 40 and 50 different graves in Israel that were routinely visited by different groups. We still have some of these with us today, though, the traditional burial site of Rachel in the traditional burial site of Solomon. And we will go and visit these places. Don't you think Jesus would have been the same?

We've gone and paid their respects. They would have done so in light of a tragic death. Not a miraculous resurrection. You know, some people don't believe in miracles, though. Some people don't believe that miracles happen. They say, well, you know.

You small minded Christian person.

Miracles are impossible. The resurrection. Évidemment, that's impossible.

And so you know what, you are right. But isn't that the definition of a miracle? When the impossible becomes possible. I'm pretty sure Jesus said with God all things are.

Yes, it was impossible for a dead body to be reanimated with life.

You and I are not unfamiliar with miracles.

You know, when a person is given zero percent chance of living. And then they recover. It's a miracle of science. OK. Oh, wait, you said it a miracle. I ever heard of Al Quds and Edgar Moreno. May need it, but I found them in my studies. I thought you'd like to hear their story. They're window washers, Manhattan. And they worked on those carts on the pulleys, you know, and you go up, you go down, you wash the windows. Um, seems like a pretty dangerous way to live. I'm scared of heights, though, so definitely not for me. Marino brothers were washing windows on December 7th, twenty seven. And during their their job time, as they were working, a cable snapped on their cart, they happened to be forty seven stories in the air when this happened and the cart fell to the ground, the concrete sidewalk below, and nothing caught them. Nothing broke there for nothing. It was a straight. Forty seven feet to the ground. Edgar Moreno died instantly. I'll see days, though, when the paramedics showed up, was still alive, they were shocked. Of course, his body was crushed, it just looked hopeless, but he was living, they took him to the hospital, they hooked him up to all the machines.

Of course, he was in a coma and he told his family. It's just a matter of time. There's no way that he is going to recover. It's impossible. And we said, OK, well, let us get through the holidays. And after Christmas, they were going to make a decision about what to do for LCD. Christmas Day not making this up, you can look up Moreno Brothers, Manhattan, forty seven stories, you've got a phone looking up right now. I'm talking. I don't care.

Like, you don't do that already.

But on Christmas Day, al Qaeda is not only woke up, but he lifted his arm and touched his nurse's face while she was checking his vitals, scared the You-Know-What out of her.

Within a month, the doctors went from saying he's going to die, it's only a matter of time. I said, you know what? This guy is going to get up.

He's going to walk. He's going to make a full recovery. He's going to go back to work. So.

We see the impossible made possible on a regular basis. Miracles do happen. When it comes to Jesus coming back to life, it took a miracle.

For God to inject new life into his body and without this miracle, there would have been no Christianity.

You see, without the miracle of Easter. Christian preaching is useless. Without a reason, Jesus, Christian faith is useless.

If he's not alive. We're just a bunch of liars.

If Jesus didn't rise from the dead of Easter is just a fairy tale, then Christians are unforgiving and still in sins. Christianity without a risen Jesus is pointless.

But Jesus is alive.

His resurrection is one of the most well attested facts of ancient history, if any other historical event from that time period had as much written and eyewitness accounts as Jesus Resurrection did. It would have been the most indisputable event ever.

But because it's Jesus. Well, yeah, well, it's just a myth.

They made it up.

It was carefully recorded and carefully preserved for us today.

But why?

Why is it so important for us to know this? Because Jesus victory over death. Means that he was who he said he was.

Jesus, victory over death, the fact that he rose again from the grave means he actually was who he said he was.

It means that he has the power and authority to offer us what he received from the father himself.

That is life.

You see, when you and I are born, there is a part of our material being that is dead within us. Oh, it's because of our sin that this is so.

And the only remedy for this condition, for us to receive new life from Jesus, you can't produce that new life in yourself. Someone has to give it to you.

And Jesus died to pay for your sins. But he rose.

So he could secure a new life for you. Have you received this new life?

Died for your sins. Rose to defeat the grave for you.

Have you received this new life? I receive new life when I was four years old. My grandfather had just passed away. Of course, my parents told me he's in heaven. Well, I'm going to see him again. We'll see, Papa. Well, when you're old enough, you know, you can trust Jesus for forgiveness of your sins and you could see him again. Why do that now? Why the wait? I saved I was four years old.

Perhaps you got saved as a child, perhaps you got saved as an adult.

If you've never accepted Jesus as your savior, you've never had that new life.

For yourself. Today could be the day.

Did you receive the gift of salvation that Jesus offers to every person?

We're glad that you're here today.

We don't even know me, you're right, I don't, and that's some of you for the first time this morning, I have no idea your background, your history.

I don't know what you did this week. I don't know what you did last night. I don't know what you had happen to you this week. You could have come here straight from prison. You just got out. I have no idea.

Jesus knows. He knows all that you have done. Is all about you. He still wants to save you. He still wants to give you new life. Jesus wants to give you not your righteousness, your righteousness isn't worth anything. He says, look, I give you my righteousness. Jesus knows all about your attempts to clean up your life on your own.

All this time I'm going to be serious about I'm going to really buckle down, I'm going to give this thing up, this vice that I just really hate, I feel dirty. I feel bad when I do want to give it up, but I just can't I keep going back to it just as I.

I know. I know. So I give you my spirit. New life.

Holy Spirit, living inside you, Jesus, righteousness applied to your account. You know, I love that Easter is in spring.

We lived in Virginia. I saw some of the pictures from this morning, they were having their services. Everyone's bundled up. They did a sunrise service and they're all got winter coats and scarves and hats and gloves on them, like bring on the 80s, not the not the decade. The the temperature. I love these stories in the spring, the green grass poking up trees are budding, the flowers are blooming. Everywhere we look, there are signs, new life and a new year.

That's what Jesus did for us. He brought new life.

All of these things, the story, the the evidence, the testimonies, it's all here for you.

The question is this, do you need new life today? Jesus died and rose again to give you a new life.

If you've never received Jesus Christ, then you could do that this morning, I've never seen this happen. I'm sure it has.

What a cool story if you got saved on Easter Sunday. Maybe this morning, probably this morning, most of you have already been made new by Jesus.

He's already changed your life. This morning, then, is a time to rejoice, it's a time to celebrate, it's a time, dare I say, to be happy.

You should be happy. I'm so happy.

Not not like the superficial thing, but just. Because what Jesus did for us. You have his righteousness, you have a new identity. You have a new life. Jesus made that possible. Because he rose from the grave. Eman. What a great blessing, what an awesome savior is Jesus, my lord, or we thank you this morning.

For the privilege that we have to celebrate such an amazing day. Or we know that every Sunday should be a celebration of your resurrection. Today, we give special attention to it.

Or like I said before, I don't know what each person's story is, but you do. If there's somebody here today that doesn't know Jesus as their savior, I pray that this morning would be the time, the moment where your Holy Spirit. Works in their heart and convinces them of their need for salvation or forgiveness. Word that today they would make that decision to follow you. Or if there's a Christian here today that has been beaten down by the circumstances of this life, they feel defeated. God, I pray that you would remind them this morning of all that is theirs through your son or the new life that we possess because of what Jesus did for us. Lord, I pray that you would send your Holy Spirit now to work in the hearts and lives of the people that are here this morning. You encourage us and challenge us and convict us ultimately draw us closer to your side. Lord, we love you so much. And thank you for all you do for us. In Jesus name, I pray. Men, let's all stand.

We're going to sing page to ninety one. Only trust in God has spoken to your heart. There's a decision you need to make. We invite you to come and make that decision. This time you pray there at your seat for sure. Come to this altar. You need to be saved. We'll have some. Might take a Bible, show you how you can know for sure that your sins are forgiven, that you have new life in Jesus. God has spoken to you this morning. You just want to come and you want to thank him for what he did for you on the cross, what he did when he rose from the grave. His brother Matt sings, Miss Alysha plays. You come and respond as Jesus has spoken to you.

Um, uh, very surprising. I press as mercy with the Lord and he will surely give you rest by trusting in his word.

Only trust him what they trust him or trust him now.

He will save you, he will save you.

He will save you.

Now, in that second verse for Jesus shed his precious blood, rich blessings to be so lush. Went to the crimson flood that washes white as snow.

Oh, they trust him. Oh, they trust.

Trust him now, he will say he will save you, he will save you now.

Amen. Well, thank you all so much for being here this morning. And I hope that the service was, like I said, a blessing and a challenge to you today. And thank you so much for making the effort and the the necessary sacrifices to be here with us this morning. And I invite you to come back tonight. Five thirty. We're going have a good time together, and I hope that you'll join us. Don't forget, we do have the key rings out there for everybody. Even the kids can have one. Uh, I know I always love getting those little things from church. Didn't matter how trivial it was, but go grab one of those. And just to commemorate the day, we've also got some little signs out there in the four. You, if you'd like to use those for family pictures, just say Happy Easter. And he has risen that kind of stuff. If you want, you can bring them up here. Take some pictures by the cross. Appreciate the Willie. Talk a little bit more work this year to get that ready than previous years.

But they got it back up here. And so if you'd like to take some pictures, absolutely make use of all of that. You have something that, uh.

Well, last week, I believe, last week was three year anniversary for the Boyd family. They've been here for three years. Praise the Lord for that, and I think I speak for everyone else that Miss Alysha come up as well. She's already here. Come on over here. Um, I think I speak for everyone at the church. Uh, we love you and are thankful that God has brought you and your family our way and all the things that you do. We there's so many things that you guys do that we can't even think of all of them. And we are thankful for everything you do. Thank you, Pastor.

This time, our brother Willie.

Come on up, Brother Willie. Uh, the maker of Crosses and, uh. Sure looks good. I want to thank them again for all that they do as well. All right.

Goderich, thank you for this beautiful day that you blessed us with, Lord, thank you for the glory and of it that, uh, the reason we celebrate today, Lord, thank for the eternal life that we have through it. God, just thank you for this church. Thank you for the outreach that we have. Just, uh, to pray that you just continue to help us to, uh, be a blessing to our community and around the world. And I just pray that you, uh, help us to live each day looking for your return as we celebrate the day that you are risen to bless us this week. Help us to be a shining example for you and everything that we do. We just pray these things and your glorious name. Amen.

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