Good morning. My name is Chuck.
I'm one of the leaders here. In fact, I'm married to the
delightful Taran who you saw in the green earlier on.
And it's it's fantastic to see you.
And we're going to open up the Bible together now.
If you've got a Bible with you, now is the moment to produce it.
If you don't have one, that's fine.
The words are going to come up on the screen.
It just occurred to me to say, by the way, I was, I've met a
whole bunch of people already today who like, this isn't your
normal church. Maybe you don't even go to
church at all. And you're probably thinking,
oh, like, I feel a bit awkward. Everyone else here knows what
they're doing. And, and I like, I'm not used to
this, actually. What you probably don't know is
that there are loads of people in this room who don't normally
come to church And, and that's the same every single week.
And we have people exploring faith, pursuing Jesus, trying to
figure out what this whole thing is about every single week.
And so you'd be welcome to come any week and you wouldn't feel
out of place. That's exactly the kind of
church we're trying to be. We want to be the kind of church
where it's like it makes sense for people who don't normally do
church. And so if that's you, I'd love
to meet you afterwards. Come to the Connect lounge
through the doors on the left or just come next week and we can
meet you that next week instead. We always say like, don't judge
us on one week. That would be silly.
Just like, come for like six weeks and then decide whether or
not you want to be part of this church.
We'd love you to do that. OK, I'm going to open up the
Bible. Now.
Let's pray. And Lord, we are just so excited
to be celebrating Easter, your resurrection.
And we pray that as we open the Scriptures together this
morning, by your Spirit, you'd be causing them to burn within
us. We just open up our hearts.
We open up our lives, we open up our minds to you, and we invite
you to speak by your word and your Spirit.
Amen. Amen.
Well, a few years ago when we were living in Scotland, we, we
had our garage converted and, and so whilst the builders were
like nailing things and laying bricks and whatever they were
doing, me and Taron went off to go and try and find some
flooring. And so we, we went to a bunch of
different flooring shops and then we went to this one shop.
And, you know, when you meet someone who's just so passionate
about their job, you know, and so this guy was the most
passionate guy you could ever imagine on the subject of
flooring. He said, can I help you?
And we were like, well, we're just looking for some flooring.
He said, no, no, no, no, never apologize for looking at
flooring. You know, don't you're not just
looking for flooring. You're looking for flooring
today. And then he was like, well, what
kind of flooring do you want? Do you want laminate flooring?
Do you want vinyl flooring? Do you want engineered wood
flooring? Do you want solid wood flooring?
Well, I don't know. And so he was showing us all
these different things. And eventually we found
something that we thought might look all right.
And he said, right now I'm going to give you a sample.
He said, I'm only going to give you this sample if you promised
to do 2 things. And we were like, OK, we
promise. The two things are #1 He said, I
want you to go home. I want you to examine the
quality of the flooring. We were like, OK, we promised to
examine the quality of the floor.
Promise #2 He said, I want you to take this piece of flooring
and wherever you're going to lay it in your house, I want you to
put it on the floor. And then I want you to, like,
kneel down next to it. And I want you to just get your
eyes as close as possible to the flooring and then just look
across the flooring. Just imagine, just looking
across this sample, that the whole floor is covered with your
sample. And we were like, yeah, OK, we
promise. Might not have meant it, you
know, but it's like, and anyway, you might be wondering what the
point is. The point is that Jesus
resurrection, the resurrection that we are enjoying examining,
celebrating today is a sample resurrection, right?
We are examining the quality of this resurrection because it
really matters to us. In fact, the apostle Paul said
in Philippians chapter 3 verse 20, he said, but our citizenship
is in heaven and we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the
Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables him to bring
everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies
so that they'll be like his glorious body.
In other words, we're enjoying and celebrating Jesus
resurrection because one day it's going to be ours.
And so it's worth examining the quality of it to see what it's
going to be like. But also it's worth just
imagining just kneeling down at his resurrection and looking
across his resurrection and imagining the whole earth filled
covered with people who have also been raised from the dead.
Right. Just thinking about Revelation 7
where it talks about there before me was a great multitude
that no one could count from every nation, tribe, people and
language standing before the throne and and before the Lamb.
They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches
in their hands. And they cried out in a loud
voice. Salvation belongs to our God who
sits on the throne and to the Lamb.
And so my point is that what we're celebrating today is that
Jesus is very dead body in a cold tomb in the Middle East
2000 years ago was just the sample of what we're going to
enjoy across the face of the earth for every single one of us
available to us that we could enjoy a life after death.
And So what I want to look at this morning really briefly is
like, what is the nature of our hope?
What does it look like for there to be a resurrection?
What does it look like for the possibility of each one of us
being raised from the dead? And we're going to do that by
looking at this incredibly powerful picture of resurrection
that comes in the book of Ezekiel.
So Ezekiel chapter 37, if you've got your Bible with you, Ezekiel
is a prophet in the Old Testament who is prophesying at
one of the lowest points in the whole of the Bible history,
right? So, so throughout the Old
Testament, God has been pursuing his people with grace.
Throughout the Old Testament, the people of God are
consistently turning away from God and he keeps forgiving them.
He keeps being gracious to them. He keeps like bringing his word
to them and trying to gather them back.
And eventually he says, well, listen, this is what you
actually deserve. And his justice means that
eventually he says, OK, I'm going to give you over to what
you really deserve. And the Babylonians come and
they come to Jerusalem. They besiege the city and they
take, they ransack the city of Jerusalem.
And they take God's people out of Jerusalem, out of the
promised land, and they take them out into the the nation of
Babylon. And so this is like the lowest
point in the whole of the biblical history.
And into that context of of real sadness and desperation, the
prophet Ezekiel begins to speak about hope and about the
possibility that the fortunes of the people of God could turn.
And so that's Ezekiel 37. And just as we're reading it,
you just have to understand, whenever we read Old Testament
prophecy, we're reading in three different ways.
First of all, we're reading, what did this mean to those
people at that time? And clearly this is a message of
hope to a people who in exile in Babylon.
But also we're reading it like, what does it mean to us today?
What is God's word to us today? And then also finally we're
reading it like when Jesus comes in his glory and he finishes
every job that is unfinished, what will it mean then?
OK, so they're three different ways, but but what does it mean
for us today? Ezekiel 37 reading from verse
one, it says this. The hand of the Lord was on me,
and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in
the middle of a valley. It was full of bones.
He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many
bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very
dry. He asked me, Son of man, can
these bones live? I said, Sovereign Lord, you
alone know. Then he said to me, prophecy to
these bones, and say to them, dry bones, hear the word of the
Lord. This is what the sovereign Lord
says to these bones. I will make breath enter you,
and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and
make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin.
I'll put breath in you, and you will come to life.
Then you will know that I am the Lord.
So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I was
prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones
came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh
appeared on them, and skin covered them, but there was no
breath in them. Then he said to me, Prophecy to
the breath prophecy, Son of Man, and say to it, This is what the
Sovereign Lord says, Come breath from the four winds, and breathe
into these slain, that they may live.
So I prophesied as he commanded, and breath entered them.
They came to life and stood up on their feet a vast army.
Amazing picture of not just one resurrection, but whole army
full of people being resurrected.
So what is the nature of our hope as Christians when it comes
to resurrection? Well, first of all, resurrection
is never beyond hope. There is always hope.
This picture that Ezekiel paints is of a battlefield, right?
So there's a valley and there are bodies everywhere.
And these bodies aren't just like a bit unwell, you know,
like, oh, bless them. They're feeling a bit under the
weather, you know, because these are dead bodies.
And in fact, they're not just like dead.
They're skeletons. And in fact, they're not just
skeletons, but the bones have been scattered.
And in fact, the bones just haven't been scattered.
They're dry bones. So they've been there for ages.
So vitamin C is not going to help, right?
They're not going to wake up in the morning and think, oh, that
was a heavy night. You know, these, these are dead,
like deader than dead. These are these, these are
utterly beyond hope. The situation is terrible.
But Jesus said, you know, lots of things are impossible for
man, but all things are possible with God.
And these hopeless bones come back to life under the power of
God. And we see that in the Easter
story as well, don't we? There's Jesus.
And Jesus has been brutally tortured to the point where he's
unable to carry his own cross. But that means that he's nearly
dead by the time he even arrives at the cross.
And then he's brutally executed by one of the most barbaric
methods of execution ever invented.
And then a spear is thrust into his side just to make sure that
he's definitely dead. And then his body is tightly
wrapped in burial clothes, and it's placed in a tomb.
And then a stone that weighs as much as a small car is pushed
across the entrance of the tomb. And then this the the stone is
guarded by 16 professional Roman soldiers.
And so the chant of a man like sufficiently recovering after
everything that's happened to him over the previous days, to
the degree that he can unwrap himself from these tightly
wrapped clothes, push away the stone that weighs as much as a
small car, and then sneak past 16 professional Roman soldiers,
is precisely 0 right. It's impossible without the
invention of God, intervention of God.
And the point is it's not possible to be in a state of
death too deep that it is beyond the hope of a resurrection that
is empowered by the Lord God. It reminds me of that moment in
Luke chapter 8 where there's a man there in the region of the
garrisons and he's, he's like lost his mind.
And people have clearly tried to help him.
They've tried giving him clothes to wear, but he just kind of
tears them off. And they've tried sitting down
with him and they've even tried restraining him.
But this poor man just sits there and cuts himself with
stones and cries out. And he's just like, his
situation is completely beyond hope.
And in fact, the the author Luke, he tells us that this man
has been living among the tombs, which is way more than just a
geographical location, right? It's like this man is living
among the tombs until Jesus comes into his life.
And within moments, this man who's just completely beyond
hope is sitting dressed in his right mind, listening to Jesus
and his teaching. Resurrection is never beyond
hope. So many of us, in so many ways,
we appear to be alive, and yet actually we have areas, parts of
our lives that in a sense, we're living among the tombs.
Friends, you're not beyond hope. You're not beyond hope.
There's always hope. That's the first thing.
The second thing is resurrection is only available from God.
In verse 3, God asks son of man's can these bones live?
Now remember I said to you, these bones are like really
dead. So the answer is what?
No, no, these bones can't live. But suddenly Ezekiel has this
like flash of revelation and he's like, well actually they
could live if you did something about it.
He says, sovereign Lord, you alone.
No, in other words, like God, well, if you decided to, to do
something, then something could really change.
My mum has had problems with her knees for like years.
And we've been saying, mum, you've got to do something about
that. And finally she went to the
doctor and the doctor was like, I can't believe you've been
living with that for so long. And so, you know, she went on a
waiting list and eventually this in the, in the course of the
last year, she's had surgeons take, I don't know, a hacksaw or
something like that to her legs and just chop out her knees and
give her like titanium knees. You can have all kinds of parts
of your body replaced. Did you know that it's also
possible, you know, like you, you might say, well, I don't
really like the effect that age is having on my body.
You know, my face, my nose, my boobs.
Can you say boobs in church? I don't know.
But Tara's like, no, OK, forget I said that.
Anyway, you, you can have, you can have all parts, all kinds of
parts of your body renovated, right?
You can have bits of yourself replaced.
You can have bits of yourself renovated.
You can be refreshed. You know, you can be like, you
could go to a spa and they'll wrap you in, I've never been to
a spa, but they'll wrap you in seaweed or cling film or
something like that. And like, you know, they can
like do that thing where they thread your eyebrows and they
can give you a hot stone massage.
And, you know, yeah, it could be really refreshed.
It's apparently wonderful. Taron and I love a box set.
We, we love to watch Netflix and stuff like that.
And we've watched the, I don't know whether you remember the
series ER, We've watched ER like hundreds of times.
And so I like to think that I basically am nearly a doctor,
like, you know, I know all the language, CBC, Chem 7 central
line rib spreader, you know, like I, I feel like I, I feel
like in an emergency, you know, if they was to say like, is
there a doctor on the plane, I would be like, well, I've seen a
lot of ER. My point is, like in the 21st
century, with all kinds of medicine and therapies, like you
can resuscitate, you can renovate, you can refresh, you
can whatever the all the other things I said were, but God
alone through Jesus Christ can do resurrection.
There's no other. There's no one else you can go
to. You know, I want to say this
like if you're here and you're visiting and you're kind of like
pursuing God or God's pursuing you, or you're like on a,
whatever language you would use to describe like what brings you
here today. Like if you're looking for a
spirituality that works right now, that's great.
And I can tell you, you've come to the right place.
If you want to know real peace in your life right now, if you
want to know joy even in the midst of the hardest of
circumstances, if you want to know a meaning and a purpose, if
you want to connect with your Creator, then you've come
absolutely to the right place. But what I want to say that's
even more important than that is if you're worried about what's
going to happen after you die and you're thinking I would
really like to live after I die, I would really like to live for
eternity. I would really like to know God
for the rest of my, you know, for the rest of eternity.
Then there's literally no point shopping around, right?
I'm really good at shopping around.
In fact, it's like a speciality of mine.
If you need a new TV, I'll find you a new TV.
That is like the best price, the best specification.
Like I've got it nailed. I've got all these different
websites I use and stuff like that.
There's no point shopping around for a resurrection because only
God alone through Jesus Christ can raise you from the dead.
Oh, there you go. Resurrection is only available
from God. And then the third thing is
resurrection is a work of the Holy Spirit.
It's a work of the Holy Spirit. I am, I'm, I'm a very
enthusiastic person who, who, but, but more than that, I, it's
like contagious, you know, when I see somebody else who's really
enthusiastic about something, I sort of catch it.
And so I don't know whether this is you, but like, I could just
watch Wimbledon for about 10 minutes and I'm looking for my
tennis racket under the bed. Does is there anyone else like
that? You think I could do that?
Like I was saying to someone the other day, Friday, I was
speaking to a midwife and like when we had our babies, I was
like, I think I could be a midwife.
Like, I, I just, it's true. It's true.
I just, I just enjoy people's enthusiasm and stuff like that.
It's just kind of contagious. I promise you.
I watch 20 minutes of the Great British Sewing Bee and I got out
the. This is absolutely true.
I got out this sewing machine and I made a cushion.
Yeah. Thank you.
And I, I watched the Great British Bake Off when they were
making cakes using vegetables. Have you seen that, that one
where they, you know, they're using courgettes and beetroot
and carrots and stuff like that and they're making vegetable
cakes. And I was like, I've got some
carrots in the fridge that need using up.
I'm going to make some carrot cake.
And so I, you know, it was grating away making it all and
put it in the oven. And then what came out was a
little bit disappointing, if I'm honest.
Have you, you know, like if you open the boot of your car and
then you lift up that little flap on the bottom and there's
like a spare wheel there, a space saver wheel and it's like
really, really thin, but really, really hard.
That's basically how my carrot cake came out.
You know, I could have used that in an emergency to just, you
know, make my car go down the motorway.
And the reason was because, and this is where I'm going with it.
You're going to enjoy this. I've forgotten the.
Raising agent, do you see? Sorry about that.
Anyway, my point is, God's raising agent, His agent for
raising people is the Holy Spirit.
In Ezekiel's picture, you know, there's tendons that come on and
muscles and then skin and all of that.
And so these are bodies, but the bodies aren't yet alive until
what? Until the breath comes into
them. And the Hebrew word for breath
is the word ruach, which means which is all trans, also
translated as spirit. And so there are three times in
this short passage where where the Spirit of God, the breath of
God comes into these bodies and suddenly they come to life.
In verse five, I will make breath enter you and you will
come to life. Verse 6, I'll put my breath in
you and you'll come to life. Verse 14 I'll put my spirit in
you and you'll come to life. The way that God brings life out
of death is that He deploys His Spirit, which is the agent of
resuscitation and resurrection. The Spirit that raised Jesus
from the dead is the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is at work
in US. Romans 8 verse 11 says this.
And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is
living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also
give life to your mortal body because of his Spirit who lives
in you. You might say, So what?
I'm really pleased that I'm being raised from the dead.
I don't actually really mind how he does it.
I don't care whether it's the Holy Spirit or like bicarbonate
of soda. I'm not that bothered.
Well, the reason is because you already have the Holy Spirit in
your life if you follow Jesus, and so therefore he's already
beginning to raise you from the dead.
I went for a walk with a friend a while ago and he works or
worked in Teen Challenge, which is a Christian drug
rehabilitation place. And, and as we were walking, he
was saying that at that particular time, they had 14 men
staying in this rehab center and they'd done a little exercise
where they added up how many years that between them they've
been living among the Tombs, 224 years of, of their adult lives
have been spent in heroin addiction.
And, and so these guys, 224 years, that's nearly 2,000,000
hours of death. And then the Holy Spirit, they,
they connect with Jesus, the Holy Spirit floods into their
lives. And now they're dressed and in
their right mind. Now they're raised from the dead
now. Now they're experiencing hope in
a way that they'd never experienced before.
And if I had more time, I could, like, parade along the stage,
like all kinds of people in our church family who say, well,
I've known the power of death in my marriage and then the Holy
Spirit intervened. Or I've known the power of death
in my eating disorder, and then the Holy Spirit intervened.
I've known the power of death in my marriage, in my health, in
all kinds of situations in my life, and then the Holy Spirit
intervened. You know, the truth is, we all
want to change something about our lives.
I looked up on Amazon, there are 178,862 books on Amazon with the
words life change in the title. Not even in the description.
178,000 books with life change in the title.
Here are some of them. Super foods. 14 foods to change
your life, change your aura, change your life, change your
underwear, change your life. That's one for the teenagers fun
I love you, I love you Feng shui arranging your furniture to
change your life change your life without getting out of bed
on my favorite one. How to change your entire life
by doing absolutely nothing. We we all want to change our
lives. We all, we all know that there
are things about our lives that need to be changed, but actually
whether they're really changed really comes down to our answers
to two questions. The first question is this, Will
I welcome the power of the Holy Spirit into my life?
And question number 2, will I participate with what the Holy
Spirit is seeking to do in my life?
Right, as, as my conscience is being awakened, as, as, as my
mind is being awakened and the Holy Spirit is doing things in
my heart, my mind, my, my body. Will I be willing and, and will
I be participating in what the Holy Spirit is wanting to do in
my life? OK, I'd love to pray.
And then we're going to baptize some people.
Oh, OK. And so, Lord, I want to pray for
anyone here who doesn't yet know you.
Thank you, God, that you're pursuing them, that you're
drawing near to them. And I want to pray for them that
they would connect with you in a way that changes everything, not
just now, but for all eternity. And for all of us.
Lord, we all want to change. We know that there are aspects
of our lives that just in a sense, we're living among the
teams. We pray God that by your spirit,
the resurrection power of God, the power that raised Jesus from
the dead, would come into our mortal bodies and also raise us
from the dead. Amen.