Thank you to our music ministers. You have
your bibles. Or you can look on the screen as
you know
all the verses will be up there on the screen.
Turn with me to John chapter five and verse
number 25.
John chapter five and verse number 25.
Today marks 18 Easter Sundays in a row that I
have been privileged to preach behind a
pulpit as a senior pastor. Two of those were
at Cedar Crest and some of you in this room
were even
here and you've somehow stuck with me all
these years. It's hard for me to describe how
grateful
and undeserving I feel that God allows me this
amazing privilege to be engaged
in the greatest vocation and the most
important work that a man can be engaged in.
And believers don't understand that my job
here is far more important than any president
and any prime minister and any governor and
any congressman in all of human history can
hold.
Then it doesn't matter whether you have a
church of 30 or you have a church of 3000,
you're still doing the same work. And the
reason why this is the most important vocation
in the
world, the most significant vocation in the
world is because what we're dealing with are
matters of
the eternal. We stand before God in judgment,
all of us. Whatever legislation was passed,
whatever legacies presidents have will count
for absolutely nothing.
But what pastors do in being faithful to the
Word of God will carry on for all eternity.
And I've preached the narrative of the most
important event in human history many times,
the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And because
the Bible is an inexhaustible book inspired by
the
author of the resurrection, there are many
ways and many passages to choose from
when you address this subject. And Christy and
Jordan would like for me to preach every
single
Sunday the narrative of the resurrection. Now,
18 years, I've done that a lot of times
and understand where they're coming from. But
today we're going to address the subject of
resurrection from an angle that you might not
very often think about. And that is a stunning
reality that we find in Scripture that most
people don't understand. The overwhelming
biblical fact that every single person at the
end of human history who has ever lived or
died
will rise again, everybody. Wherever the
bodies were laid in death, whether they were
cremated
at the bottom of an ocean or in a grave in a
casket, to whatever degree of corruption
they were then subjected will have absolutely
nothing to do with God's ability
to raise them in a new body that is fit for
their eternal dwelling place because he's God.
And there is nothing that is too hard for him
to do. And what I am telling you is that every
single human being from Adam until the very
last person born on earth, and what I thought
that is,
every person who will be born on this earth
will exist forever.
All the people who think, and there are many
of them, that when we die, that's it.
We're no longer here. We're out of existence.
There's no more consciousness.
Cannot possibly be more mistaken. In fact, all
people, every single person born
is going to go into an eternal existence with
all of their faculties heightened
and intensified to a degree that is absolutely
incomprehensible to us
while we are living out our days on this earth
.
All people will be raised up in a new body
that is fit for either heaven or hell.
There is no in between. There is no purgatory.
There is no astral plane where you become a
ghost.
And once you arrive in either of those two
only possible places, you will again find
yourself
in an existence that you can't even possibly
imagine right now, either way, either place,
and which everyone you wind up in, there you
will stay forever.
And once you've been resurrected, you will
have a body that is designed and suited
either to the eternal service of God Almighty
in his kingdom or a body that is suited
to eternal damnation. And let me be as clear,
as clear as I can.
That sounds crazy to you. If you choose not to
believe those biblical facts
during your short time in this life on earth,
you're not believing it will have absolutely
no
effect whatsoever on the certainty of
everything that I just said coming to pass
exactly as the
Bible makes clear. If you find yourself in
heaven when you die, you will never want to
leave.
You will not want to come back here. If you
find yourself in hell, you will nask your
teeth,
as Jesus himself said, and you won't be
looking to repent. You'll still be in your dep
raved
condition. You'll be cursing God every moment
that you're there with no possibility of
escape,
whatsoever. In Job chapter 14 verse 14, the
question is posed, if a man dies,
will he live again? And the answer comes to us
in Job 19 verse 26. Look at it and 27 there
with me.
Job says, even after my skin is destroyed, in
other words, after his body is decayed,
yet, look at what he says, from my flesh I
shall see God whom I myself shall behold
and whom my eyes will see and not another my
heart faints within me.
So, Job answers the question. Yes, he will
live again. His flesh is corrupted in death,
but yet,
in a new kind of flesh, he will see God and
the reality of that new existence is enough to
make
his heart faint within him, as it will for all
of us. If you die as a Christian,
I believe, especially in that first moment,
your heart will faint within you, but in a
good way,
with reverential fear and awe, fear of God as
a beginning of wisdom. But if you close your
eyes
and death, your heart, if you're lost, will
faint with sheer terror beyond description,
beyond comprehension right now. So, every
human being who dies in human history will be
raised to
have an audience with the living God. Once you
're born into this world, you exist forever.
Now, the text that we have before us today,
here in John 5, I preached at some point last
year,
but I won't be preaching the same sermon on it
today because I want to focus in
on a more detailed way, in a more detailed way
on the subject of resurrection that we do find
in
this text. This chapter starts with Jesus
healing the paralytic man at the pool of Beth
esda. You
remember we went through that last year, and
you will remember the man had been in his
condition
for 38 years, and he believed that superst
ition that if you could just get in the pool
first,
when the angels stirred the water, you'd be
healed. Now, he had been there for many years,
and he'd never been healed, and then one day
Jesus showed up, and he healed the man,
and he told him, "Roll up your mat and walk."
And he did. It was a jaw-dropping miracle,
inescapably obvious to everybody who had been
seeing this man at the pool in his condition
for decades. At this point in the ministry of
Jesus, the Jewish religious leaders were
already
wanting to kill Jesus, but that reality had
kind of been kept under the surface
until this event. And John 5, verse 16, tells
us why. For this reason, the Jews were perse
cuting
Jesus because he was doing these things on the
Sabbath. Now, remember, at this point in
Jewish
history, the religious leaders had created
many false rules for the Sabbath day that were
outside
of Scripture. The Old Testament did say you're
to limit your travel on the Sabbath, but for
sure,
a man who had been healed in a divine miracle
by the God-man could pick up his mat and walk.
But they were so baked into their man-made
rules that they saw this act of healing
as blasphemy on the part of Jesus. Why?
Because you weren't supposed to work on the
Sabbath,
and they considered that work. And then also,
they considered the man carrying his mat work.
That's where they were. So, John 5, 18, we
read this. For this reason, the Jews were
seeking all
the more to kill him because he not only was
breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God
his own Father, making himself equal with God.
And that, of course, was the
ultimate blasphemy because back in John 5, 17,
just one verse before this, he rocked them to
their
core when he said this, "My Father is working
until now, and I myself is working." And what
he was
saying there, and we're going to get more into
that in a moment, but what he's saying there
to
them is the Sabbath doesn't relate to God, and
I'm God. And neither God the Father or God the
Son
are subject to your fabricated rules. Listen,
these religious leaders clearly understood
that
as a claim of Godhood, along with many others
that he made, that he was equal with God
himself.
And that's exactly what it was. The Jews were
never mistaken about Jesus's claim.
There was no one in the crowd that day who
were deniers that Jesus claimed to be God.
They all understood it well. They knew that he
was claiming to be equal with and therefore is
Yahweh, the Creator God of Scripture. And
Jesus always a man amongst boys when he got
with these
Jewish religious leaders, instead of backing
off when they were accusing him of blaspheming
for
claiming to be equal with God. What does he do
? He intensifies. Next, the reality of his
claim,
and he presses it even further to unbelievable
heights. Look with me in verses 19 to 23,
right
after this. "Therefore Jesus answered and was
saying to them, 'Truly, truly I say to you,
the Son can do nothing of himself unless it is
something he sees the Father doing. So
whatever
the Father does, these things the Son also
does. Look at this, in like manner. He does
everything
God does. For the Father loves the Son and
shows him all things that he himself is doing.
And the
Father will show him greater works than these
so that you will marvel." Watch this. "For
just as
the Father raises the dead and gives them life
, even so the Son also gives life to whom he
wishes."
Verse 22, "For not even the Father judges
anyone, but he has given all judgment to the
Son."
Verse 23, "So that all will honor the Son even
and honor the Father. He who does not honor
the Son
does not honor the Father who sent him." Just
in this text is a set of the most incredible
claims
that any man could ever make. And I will say
it again, if you don't understand just out of
that
text that Jesus is claiming to be God, then I
question your ability to read.
The Jewish leaders had already understood that
Jesus was claiming to be equal with God back
in
verse 18. Look at it again in verse 18.
Clearly, look what it states. "Calling God his
own Father,
making himself equal with God." And like the
boss that he is, he goes on from there to ramp
up that
reality in the verses we just read in verses
19 to 23. Understand, he was saying not only
is he one with God in nature and essence, but
he is also one with God in work. And let me
just dig
down on that for you, just see it. Verse 19
again, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son
can do nothing
of himself unless it is something he sees the
Father doing for whatever the Father does.
Jesus
does these things. The Son also in like manner
." He says, "Everything you see me do
is the work of the Father, is based on the
will and the purpose of God the Father.
So far, he is claiming here to be one with God
in nature and one with God in works." And then
verse 20, "For the Father loves the Son and
shows him all things that he is doing."
Just let the gravitas, the weightiness of that
claim set in on you.
He's clearly saying that he has full knowledge
of everything that God knows.
That's his claim. No man will ever have that
kind of knowledge even in eternity future. We
won't
have exhaustive knowledge of God. We'll be
learning forever the truths of God and it'll
never stop
because he's infinite. There's only one man
that could have the same full knowledge of God
and that
is the God-man, Jesus Christ. So just in this
text so far, he has claimed to the elite
Jewish
religious leaders of the day that he's equal
to God in nature, equal to God in works, and
equal to
God in knowledge and the King of all men is
not done. He adds in verse 20, "And the Father
will
show him greater works than these so that you
will marvel." And what would that be? Well,
just keep reading. Verse 21 and 22, "For just
as the Father raises the dead and gives them
like,
even so, the Son also gives life to whom he
wishes, for not even the Father judges anyone,
but he has given all judgment to the Son." So
just in those two verses, Jesus claims to be
one with
God in power to raise the dead and one with
God in sovereignty to give life to whomever he
wishes.
And that he has been given the right to judge,
oh every human being, only God judges every
human
being. He says, "Not even the Father judges
anyone, but he has given all judgment to the
Son."
And then next, another incredible declaration
in verse 23, "So that all will honor the Son,
even as they honor the Father, he who does not
honor the Son does not honor the Father who
sent him."
I'm telling you with that, those Jewish
leaders' heads were spinning around like
Linda Blair and the Exorcist. I mean, just
what are you saying? How are you saying that
you are equal? I honor you like I honor God?
Those Jewish leaders there, they thought that
they knew God.
They thought that they honored God, but they
didn't.
Jesus is saying, "Because you can't honor God
the Father if you don't honor God the Son
in the exact same way." Is that clear? So let
's keep to count here. Just in this passage so
far,
Jesus is claiming to those Jewish leaders and
for all people for the rest of church history
till the very last day that he is equal to God
in nature, in works, in knowledge, in power,
in sovereignty, in judgment, in authority, and
in honor. He said all of that to them
after they came to the conclusion that he was
claiming to be God back in verse 18.
He added all this after they came to that
conclusion. Now,
all of that was the laying of a foundation for
the main point here today.
Laying the foundation sounds a lot better than
, "Well, that was my introduction." So I say
laying
the foundation. Don't get nervous. You'll
still be somewhat on time for Easter lunch.
Look what Jesus says next to them in verse 24.
"Truly, truly I say to you,
he who hears my word and believes him who sent
me has eternal life and does not come into
judgment,
but has passed out of death into life." That
is the sum of all of it right there. This is
an invitation and it is also a declaration of
fact. Since it is Jesus who has the power to
do
what only God can do, namely raise the dead,
as we just read, and who has the authority
that only God has, namely the authority to
judge everybody as he just finished saying,
and he'll do both, then truly you must hear
his word and believe in God the Father who
sent him
to have eternal life and escape judgment and
not come into judgment of God when you die.
That is the simple reality of gospel truth.
Everybody is born a sinner by nature and we
all
know it. And that means everybody left to
themselves, in and of themselves, is naturally
headed for a resurrection of their body one
day of judgment. And the only possible way to
avoid that
is to hear the word concerning Christ. Faith
comes by hearing and hearing by the word of
Christ. His person is worth repent and believe
, saving faith. It's the only way to escape.
So many want to claim, sadly, TV preachers,
mostly on our airwaves, that the gospel is
really about
all of the benefits that you get in this
earthly life that you receive as a result of
believing
in Jesus. And listen, there are great benefits
in this life that come to you when you believe
.
I mean, just the sense of purpose and meaning
that you know why you're here. You know the
purpose
of life. You know what I mean? People are
searching for purpose and meaning and they run
through all
sorts of hobbies and different things and all
of it is fleeting because there's only one
true sense
of purpose and meaning that you can have in
life. And that is when you come into union
with Christ,
then there's peace and joy and contentment.
Even during the hardest trials of life,
the peace that passes all understanding. But
the primary reason for salvation is not to
bring you
bliss in this life. Remember what John Mac
Arthur said in response to Joe Osteen's best
selling book?
If this is your best life now, you're on your
way to hell.
And this really is your best life that you're
ever going to get.
And even though believers do have gospel
benefits, every believer in this room knows we
have them
as we are fighting a daily struggle with the
world, the flesh and the devil. And we know
for sure
this will never be our best life right here
ever. As my brother David Miller used to say,
your best life is yet to come and your inner
man belongs to be there.
The primary reality that the gospel brings you
is an escape from real eternal judgment.
That every single one of us knows that we
deserve. And King Jesus, the God man,
the only one who can save you, he's either
going to be your savior or your judge.
He's claiming here that he himself will raise
you in the final resurrection
to eternal life in his presence, or he will
raise you to condemn nation forever in
judgment
and the place that he talks about more than
any other person in the Bible. Jesus talks
about hell
more than any other person in the Bible. So I
can't possibly overemphasize the shock of
these words
that Jesus said to these Jewish leaders that
day. And incredibly, as we have seen,
instead of backing down from what they
perceived as blasphemy, he escalates it
to a point to the likes of which they could
never imagine that he would say such things.
So again, he makes clear in verses 21 and 22
that he raises the dead, he gives them life,
and he is the judge. Those are things that
only God can do, the power to raise the dead,
and the authority to judge. That's his claim,
but he's not done.
The same conversation is continuing and gets
more intense in verses 25 to 29.
Look at these with me. Truly, truly, I say to
you, an hour is coming and now is when the
dead
will hear the voice of the Son of God and
those who here will live for just as the
Father has life
in himself, even so, he gave to the Son also
to have life in himself. Remember the fact
that he
has life in himself means that he's self-exist
ent. He has life in himself. Everybody else is
given
life by God, but the Son here is claiming he
has life in himself just as God the Father,
because he's the second person of the Trinity.
Verse 27, "And he gave him authority to
execute
judgment, because he is the Son of man." Do
not marvel at this, for an hour is coming in
which
all who are in the tombs will hear his voice,
Jesus' voice, and will come forth those who
did
the good deeds to a resurrection of life and
those who committed the evil deeds to a
resurrection
of judgment. Now, there is a lot there, so I
can only just drill down to stay with my main
point
here, okay? Clearly, this passage is teaching
us that everybody is going to be raised from
the dead,
resurrected. Everybody who has ever or will
ever live and die in human history,
and Jesus says, "Don't marvel at this." Why
does he say that? Because it's so shocking
for those guys to hear. Religion was their
business, okay? Now, for time's sake,
I could probably preach five messages out of
that text, but for time's sake, I want to hit
a couple of points in Jesus' word here,
because I want to make sure that everybody in
this worship
service here today does not walk out of here
in confusion at all, okay? I want you to all
be
very clear, because there's two aspects to
resurrection that Jesus is talking about in
these verses, okay? So, let's drill down on
this for a second. Verse 25, "An hour is
coming and now
is when the dead will hear the voice of the
Son of God and those who hear will live." Now,
think about it.
As Jesus spoke these words, and even today,
where we sit right now here on Puppa Road,
the final resurrection of the dead, of all the
dead, is yet to come, right? It hadn't
happened yet.
So, when he says, "An hour is coming," look at
that next phrase, "and now is,"
he's speaking to them present tense, "when the
dead will hear the voice of the Son of God
and those who hear will live." What does he
mean by that? Here, he's talking about
spiritual resurrection.
First, look at the phrase again in verse 25, "
now is." Right then at that moment, understand,
even during the ministry of Jesus, he was
giving spiritual life to people. He was saving
people,
which as we know, raises people from being
naturally spiritually dead to spiritually
alive.
Remember when Jesus said in Matthew, "Let the
dead bury their dead." You know what he was
saying?
He was saying, "Let the spiritually dead bury
the physically dead." We all arrive in this
world,
descendants of Adam, spiritually dead on
arrival, right? And only Christ can make us
spiritually
alive, and he was doing this during his
ministry. As he was speaking to these Jews, I
'm not going
to go into detail, but a couple examples. The
woman at the well. We studied her last year,
all the people in the town that she was
involved with in Samaria. I mean, I can go all
the way back
to Abraham in the Old Testament, long before
the cross, Romans 4-3, Paul quotes Genesis 15
for
what the scripture say, "Abraham believed God
and it was credited to him as righteousness."
Now,
listen carefully, all the people before the
cross in time and before the resurrection
believed in
what God had revealed up to that point. You
understand? And God acquainted that kind of
faith
as the saving faith that embraced divine
righteousness. The same salvation by grace
alone through faith alone in Christ alone has
always existed all the way back to Old
Testament
time. So make sure you get your bearing
straight here, but now after the cross,
if you confess Jesus as Lord and believe in
your heart that God raised him from the dead,
you will be saved. That's on this side of the
cross, where we are now, believing in all the
components of the gospel. But before that, it
was a manner of all that, believing in all
that Jesus
had, God had revealed, including coming of
Messiah, right? Now go back to verse 25. That
's the now is.
But Jesus is making people alive before the
cross, but he also says in that verse,
"But an hour is coming when the dead will hear
the voice of the Son of God and those who hear
will live." So as Jesus was standing there
that day, what was coming? Well, what was
coming was
the cross and the resurrection. An hour was
coming when an amazing sweeping response to
the cross
and the resurrection would turn the whole
world upside down and still does worldwide to
this day.
What was coming was the birth of the New
Testament church, the preaching of the gospel,
the fulfillment of hundreds of prophecies out
of the Old Testament concerning how
God would act to be both the just and the just
ifier of them that believe in Jesus.
So Jesus here is talking about raising the
naturally spiritually dead to spiritual life.
Remember Ephesians 2, 4 to 5, "But God, being
rich in mercy, because of his great love with
which he loved us, even when we were what?
Dead in our transgressions made us alive
together with
Christ by grace you have been saved." And how
did this happen? Go back to John 5, 25. And
now
you understand John 25, 25, I hope a little
better. "An hour is coming and now is when the
dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and
those who here will live." So now you get that
a
little better, I hope. It's the voice of the
Son of God. You remember what Jesus said in
John 10,
27? "My sheep hear my voice and I know them
and they follow me. Only Christ can speak life
into
the spiritually dead through the regenerating
power of the Holy Spirit." This is the new
birth.
This is regeneration. And look, he's given the
title. And remember, Son of God is a title
that
is given. It means he's the same nature and
essence as God because only God can give life.
Only God is the source of life. But guess what
? Jesus is not done giving these Jewish
religious
leaders of the day. Maximum apoplexy. We're
really fixing to kick in here. You have verse
26.
Now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty.
And what I want you to see here, okay, on this
Easter
Sunday, verse 26 and 27, "For just as the
Father has life in himself, even so he gave to
the Son
also to have life in himself and he gave
authority to execute judgment because he is
the Son of Man."
Now watch this. In verse 25, Jesus has given
the title Son of God because it takes God and
God only
to give life. But here in verse 27, he's given
the title Son of Man. And that's the favorite
title that he refers to himself as in all the
New Testament. But Son of Man is because in
his
incarnation as a man, he can also sit in
judgment on man as he was tempted in all
points as like
are we when he was here and yet without sin as
our substitute. So that's why you have Son of
God
and then Son of Man. So as the God man, he has
the authority to execute judgment upon every
person
who has ever or will ever live. And that takes
us to, as Rush Limbaugh used to say, the pi
èce des
résistances. Verse 28, Jesus says, "Do not
marvel at this, for an hour is coming in which
all who are
in the tombs will hear his voice." That's
Jesus. "And will come forth those who did the
good deeds
to a resurrection of life, those who committed
evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment." And
now we move from spiritual resurrection in
this text to physical resurrection. This is
everybody
comes out of the grave. And would you notice
in verse 29 that everybody is judged by their
deeds?
But brother Philip, you constantly tell us
that salvation is by grace through faith alone
, not
out of works, lest any man should boast. That
's true. And on the one hand when we believe we
are
judged by the works of Jesus living a perfect
sinless life as our substitute and that
perfect
righteousness that he attained is put on our
account when we believe and we are justified
just as if we had never sinned. But here in
verse 29, look what it says carefully,
"Those who did the good deeds to a
resurrection of life are those who have
believed," and guess
what? "The validation that their saving faith
was real are the true God-glorifying good
works
that validate the fruit." Remember Ephesians 2
, verse 10, "For we are his workmanship created
in Christ Jesus," what? "For good works which
God prepared beforehand so that we would walk
in them."
Our glorifying good works don't save us. They
are the necessary result of the reality that
we have been saved. Keep that in between the
ditches and go back to John 5, 28, the first
part of 29.
That incredible phrase, "All who are in the
tombs will hear his voice and will come for
the power that Jesus has to do this," is so
stunning and incomprehensible that we can
fully wrap our minds around it. And his voice,
every dead body in all human history will come
forth.
Only God can resurrect every human being who
has ever lived with a new body. And look, I
can't go
beyond what God is revealing to us here in
Scripture to borrow from Luther. That is
neither
right nor safe. When we talk about resurrected
bodies, it is an actual body. And if I use the
word physical, it's the only word my little
pea brain can use. I mean, Jesus, in his glor
ified
resurrected body, which is a body just like we
're going to have, he walked, he talked, he ate
fish,
but he also walked through a wall. So I can't
get you exactly to it, okay? But I do know
this,
that that glorified body will be designed and
fit by God for existence either in heaven or
hell
forever. I do know that. This is where the
world is headed, church. It is amazing to
think of how
oddly people, so many people, think about the
end of their life. And mainly, they don't
think about
it at all, really hardly ever. Since I became
a Christian over the years, I've always found
the
week leading up to Easter Sunday, fascinating
to hear people during the week ask each other.
What are y'all doing for Easter? And in those
plans, the answer for many people,
there's no church involved. It's, we're
getting together. I have pot roast with sides,
like it's just another holiday that we deserve
when it's really the most important event in
human
history. If Christ did not come out of that
grave alive after being most certainly dead,
then Christianity is a lie. Jesus is not God,
and the faith implodes in on itself. I want
nothing
to do with it. Eat, drink, and be merry,
because tomorrow you die. Paul said in 1
Corinthians 15,
12 through 14. Now, if Christ has preached
that he has been raised from the dead, how do
some among
you say there is not resurrection of the dead?
He was dealing in Corinth there with those who
said,
okay, Jesus was resurrected, but all of us
aren't going to be resurrected. Paul goes on,
but if there is no resurrection of the dead
for all of us, not even Christ is raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, then our
preaching is in vain, and your faith also is
in
vain. And that would be true if Jesus didn't
walk out of that grave on the first Easter
Sunday,
and if there is not going to be the
resurrection of every single human being who
has ever lived.
But Jesus himself has told us, go back to John
5, 28, and 29, do not marvel at this for an
hour
is coming in which all who are in the tombs
will hear his voice, verse 29, and will come
forth.
That takes me to what I'm going to leave you
with in this message here on this beautiful
resurrection Sunday. Here, I'm going to take
you to the scene
of the end of human history, Revelation
chapter 20, verse 11 to 15.
John says, "Then I saw a great white throne,
and him who sat upon it, from whose presence
earth and heaven led away, and no place
was found for them." Can you imagine that? You
can't. And I saw the dead,
the great and the small, standing before the
throne, and the books were opened. And another
book was opened, which is the Book of Life,
and the dead were judged from the things which
were written in the books according to their
deeds. And the sea gave up the dead, which
were in it,
and death and Hades gave up the dead, which
were in them. They were judged every one of
them,
according to their deeds. Then death and Hades
were thrown into the lake of fire. And if
anyone's
name was not found written in the Book of Life
, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
If you came here today, expecting to hear from
the "he gets us" Jesus from the Superbowl Ads,
who tiptoed through the tulips of Galilee,
giving life coach morality lessons, you came
to the wrong
place. At this church, we only hear the voice
of the biblical Jesus. That's the only Jesus
that
exists from His Word alone. And as we have
learned today, He has the power to raise the
dead.
He has the power to give life. He has the
authority to judge. That's only things that
God can do. And if you haven't already today,
repent and believe His Gospel before it's ever
lastingly too late. Whoever has ears to hear,
hear the Word of the Lord this day. Let's pray
.
Father in heaven, we thank you
that your grace is sovereign, that it is unmer
ited favor toward us who do not deserve
anything from you but wrath, and how we thank
you that you have made a way
whereby our sins are forgiven and the
righteousness of Christ is placed on our
account
so that when we close our eyes in death, we
are safe from your wrath that we deserve.
We give you glory today for the empty tomb. We
give you glory today for Christ.
I pray you would take the words of your book
today and apply them to every heart and mind.
Jesus' name I pray. Amen.