You Are Witnesses Of These Things

He is risen. He is risen indeed. We greet one another with these words every year on this Sunday as a commemoration of our Lord's victory over the grave. Peter tells us that through His resurrection, we are born again to a living hope that our sins have been paid for through His death and that by His resurrection, we too will be raised up with Him to be with Him forever in paradise. This is what his resurrection accomplished. But the question that arises and the question that we're going to work through today is, what are we supposed to do until that time? This morning, I want to answer that question. My hope is that God will help us to see the answer to that question being that we're supposed to be building his kingdom. That we're supposed to be making disciples. That we're supposed to be teaching others about the good news.

of his salvation that comes through Jesus Christ our Lord. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord from Luke chapter 24, verses 44 through 49. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Now he, Jesus, said to them, these are my words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. And he said to them, thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending forth the promise of my Father upon you, that you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.

This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Let's pray. Our gracious God and our Heavenly Father, we gather together confessing that even now we don't understand as we should. We don't know all the things we should know. We certainly don't do all the things we should do. In many ways, we are still as children, immature and feeble, limited in our obedience and in our faith. We pray that as we study your word this morning, that you'd fill us with your Holy Spirit and that you'd help us to understand it and that you would help us to receive it, not as the words of men, but as your word, the word of God. I pray that you'd help me as I preach to speak clearly and boldly, and I pray that we would be attentive to your word and we would be considering our own need of salvation, and not only ours, but those of our neighbors. We pray that you'd fill our lives.

with good fruit, that you work in us. We pray that you'd open our mouths to speak of your mercies towards sinners. Help us not to bury your good news in the ground, but to proclaim it from the rooftops. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. One of the things that I think about a lot during ministry as I think about preaching, one of the questions that comes to my mind often is, do I preach the gospel? That may seem like a strange question to you, but it's a question that often occurs to me. Do I preach the gospel? Or do we just talk about how you ought to live? Is this just a list of moral do's and don'ts? Do we preach the gospel? And the longer I've been in ministry, and the more I've preached, and the more I've grown, and the more I've seen other people grow, I've become more and more convinced that we do preach the gospel. And that the gospel is much more than simply

Jesus was raised from the dead so that you could be forgiven for your sins. If that's all the gospel is, it is that. I don't mean to discount that or to denigrate that in any way, but if that's all there is to say, then the question that I posed to you this morning, what are we supposed to do between receiving that good news and glory, remains unanswered. Is the gospel anything more than he has been raised from the dead to save us from our sins? As we were singing earlier this morning, Jesus Lives in Social I, I couldn't help but notice that that song is almost entirely self-referential. It's about me, and it's not a bad song. I like the song. But it only talks about me. And our text tells us that the Gospel and His resurrection is not just about me. That His resurrection wasn't just to save us from our sins, but also to equip us to proclaim. And so I want to start by asking you a question.

How did the disciples live and behave between His death and His resurrection? What were they like? I think we all know they weren't real happy. They were discouraged. They were hiding. They were dismayed. Why were they so upset? Well, there's a number of reasons. One, They believed that Jesus had come to establish his kingdom, but they believed that his kingdom was going to be established at the expense of the Roman Empire. That he was going to establish his kingdom and he was going to get rid of the Romans. And so when that didn't happen, they were discouraged. Why else were they discouraged? Well, because for all of their teaching and all of their understanding and all the things Jesus had said to them, there was something they didn't understand or remember. And that was...

that he told them numerous times he was going to die and that he was going to be raised from the dead. Do you know who believed that message? That it was true? Right from his death? Eric just read it to us in the account of Matthew. Pilate and the Pharisees. The Pharisees believed it. They said, you need to set a guard on the stone because this guy said that he was going to be raised from the dead. So his disciples, are going to try to steal him away and perpetuate a lie. So you need to guard against that. And Pilate said, you've got guards. Go see to it yourself. They knew. The Pharisees knew what Jesus had said. But yet all of his people were discouraged. They were downcast. They were without their Savior. They were without their hope. In Luke 24, verses 10 and 11, Mary Magdalene and some of the other women had gone to the tomb early in the morning. And when they got there,

Eric read us Matthew's account of Jesus not being there and them running back and telling all of the apostles. Do you know how those apostles responded to that news? The ones we pay attention to are Peter and John because they got up and ran to the tomb to see if the things were so. But do you know what Luke said about the rest of them? It says, but these words, that Jesus was not in the tomb, that he was raised, and that he was going to meet them, these words seemed to them as nonsense. And they would not believe them. These words appeared to them as nonsense and they would not believe them. These words that Jesus was raised from the dead, that he was out of the tomb and that he was gone to meet them in Galilee and that they were to proceed there to meet their Lord. That seemed like nonsense to them. The resurrection was not some sort of surprise plot twist that was concealed, that was kept from their knowledge. The Pharisees even knew about it. But the understanding of it was hidden.

They didn't understand what was being said and what it meant. And so now our passage tells us that he, Jesus, opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. And he said to them, Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead on the third day. They'd heard his teaching before his death. They were familiar with the Old Testament promises about the Messiah. Their problem wasn't a lack of knowledge. It was a lack of understanding or a lack of faith in what had been said. In a very real sense, the disciples before Jesus' resurrection were living by sight and not by faith. They had seen his arrest. Some of them had seen his trial. Some of them had seen his crucifixion and his burial. They were aware of that. They'd seen those things. And this is one thing you have to realize as living as a Christian is your eyes and your mind are going to be filled with the things that you see. And what's...

what Satan will do is he'll take the things that God has said and he'll just crush it underneath the things that you see. And that's something you have to fight against. Because if you don't fight against it, you'll end up discouraged and dismayed and you'll end up living like Jesus isn't raised from the dead. You'll lose the good news. There won't be any good news. So we ought not to live by sight, but rather by faith. They saw the trial, the crucifixion, the burial. If they hadn't seen it themselves, they'd heard testimony of it. That these things happened. We saw them happen. And so they believed it. But when Mary and Magdalene and the other women came and told them, he's raised from the dead, that was nonsense to them. Perhaps we could say that they should have known. That it was a terrible failure for them. That's sort of the way I'm arguing, right? That there was some sort of major failure in them. But we also have to note that at that time, the Holy Spirit hadn't been given yet. This was before Pentecost.

They didn't have the Holy Spirit to lead them into the truth, to guide them, to comfort them, and to instruct them. At the end of our passage, Jesus tells them, you're to stay in this city until you are clothed with power from on high. And he's saying, after his resurrection, after his ascension, he's going to do what he said, which is that he was going to go away and send the Holy Spirit to him. In John 14, Jesus says this, I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper, that he may be with you forever. That is the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him. But you know him because he abides with you and will be in you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. And so they lacked something at that time. If we wanted to give them some pass, if we wanted to understand their situation, we'd say if they didn't have the Holy Spirit yet,

To teach them and to call to their mind and to make them remember what Jesus had said to them. Is that true of us? That's not true of us. The Holy Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost, not many days after his resurrection. And Jesus promised that he'll live with us. He'll abide with us and will be in us. And so where they may have been ignorant, where they may have had a lack, where there may have been some shortcoming in their understanding and needed Jesus to open up the Scriptures to them, we're not in the same position. And so where their ignorance may have been able to be excused at some level, we don't have that same excuse. We do know that Jesus has been raised from the dead. We live after it. Now Jesus told them two things that He gave them understanding in. The first was that the Scripture had said, that Christ would suffer and would rise again from the dead the third day. And then the passage goes on and it says, and, so we have two things of equal importance, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations. This is Luke's account of the Great Commission. This is what he has to say to his disciples. Matthew recounts it. It's probably the passage we're familiar with. Eric read it earlier. I want to read it again. This is Matthew 28, 18-20.

All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. And lo, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. This commission was given originally to the 11 disciples that he met up on the mountain. But it was a message that they were supposed to take and establish churches with this message, and they were supposed to see these churches proclaim this message long after they were gone. That's what we're here to do yet still today, is to fulfill the Great Commission. Now, one of the things that I think is dangerous for us as a Reformed congregation is that we like theology, we like things that are sophisticated, we like things that are in-depth, things that are complex. It sort of scratches us where we itch.

It makes us feel smart. We understand that these things are necessary, and I'm not here to tell you that they're not necessary, but I am here to tell you that repentance for the forgiveness of sins is the foundation that all of that stuff is built upon. And if you lose that foundation, then all of our theology is just a house built on sand. It's not important. It's just not important. The message of the resurrection is that Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sins and was raised so that we might be raised with him. and that we would then go tell other people about it. That's our job. That's our whole job as Christians is to go tell other people about Jesus. Now, I know whether you're an introvert or whether you're an extrovert or whether you're old or whether you're young, whether you're a Christian or not, I know that you talk to people about things. I don't know what it is. We all have our interests. We all have our things. We all have our hobbies.

But I know that you talk to people about stuff. I know that you don't sit around and do nothing. I know that you have interests. And if we ask your friends or your co-workers or your neighbors or your children's friends, parents, what do they like to talk about? They could tell us. The real question is, would any of them say he likes to talk about Jesus? That's what he likes to talk about. That's what he cares about. He's on and on and on about... about God and about my need of salvation and his thankfulness for God's work in his life. It's just what he talks about. It's just what she talks about. The message this morning is very simple. We need to be talking about Jesus to other people. That's the message this morning. That's what we're supposed to do between his resurrection and our glorification. We're supposed to proclaim repentance for forgiveness of sins in his name to all the nations.

So everyone we're around. That's our work. That's our work. And at this point, I could go and say, well, these are all the reasons that we don't do it. And these are all the reasons it's hard. And these are all the reasons it's scary. Do you love Jesus is what I'd rather ask you. Do you love Him? If you love Him, it's because He's loved you first. And He didn't love you academically. And He didn't love you theoretically. And His work on the cross wasn't meant to engage and titillate your mind so much as your heart. Do you have a testimony about the goodness of God in your life? I know you've got troubles. I know life's hard. We live in a sinful world. I get it. That's not going to change. But our Savior overcame this world. Can you talk about it? Are you ready to give an account for the hope that's within you? Is that miserable work? Is it miserable to tell people about Jesus?

To tell people that He saved me and I'm a sinner? Are you willing for them to know that you're not better than they are? That you're not smarter than they are? That your clothes and your car and your bank account don't make you any different than them in God's eyes? What do you care about? Who do you care about? That's what the resurrection was meant to drive home to us. That we would love our neighbors. That we would tell them the truth. And that if they rejected it, it would be a grief to us. Not a theoretical grief. Not a theological grief. Like a heartfelt grief. It would be sad to us to see someone that we love going to hell. Someone that we care about. You might think, well, this is work that the church does, Pastor. This is work that you and the elders do. And I'll grant you that that's true. But here's what I want to say to you. Is this worship service primarily for people who are Christians or primarily for people who have never heard the Gospel before?

It's a question that's been asked in the past, and it was answered 20, 30 years ago. And he said, you know what we need to do? We need to make our worship service and everything we do be about unbelievers. So anything that is distinctly Christian, anything that distinctly draws a line or a boundary and says this is what Christians say and believe and hold to, we need to kind of erase that, blur it out a little bit. We need to make this a welcoming place. So we need to make our music top-notch. We need to make our production top-notch. We need to make our teaching top-notch.

We need to make our coffee top-notch, our kids' ministry top-notch. What we need to do is we need to enter into the marketplace and compete with the other messages and entertainments that exist. That's not the gospel. That's not actually what the church service is for. The point of worship is for us to lift up our hearts to God in praise and ask that it be acceptable to Him, that it would arise to Him as a pleasing aroma. Like when you come home or you open the oven and you go, that smells good and I can't wait to have some. We want our worship and our lives to arise to him as a pleasing aroma and worship is meant to be the primary place where we're trained in that work. So what does that mean? If an unbeliever were to come in, we don't live in a culture where the Christian foundation that our society was built on is largely intact. It's eroding away. And what that means is that there's a larger and larger gap

what a Christian is, what the gospel is, and the way Christians live, and the way the world lives. There's less and less touch point or familiarity. So that when someone comes into a worship service, we talk about it in terms of, well, they're intimidated by that. They don't know. It's kind of weird. They're not sure. How do I dress? Those are just indications that you can't rely on all of this commonality with an unbeliever in terms of culture. That's all going away. And so the gap widens. Between living as a Christian and coming into worship and doing the things, I mean, literally, listening to someone talk for 30, 40, 50 minutes, where else do we do that? I mean, where else do we do that? Anywhere else somebody talks to you, they apologize if they take more than 5 or 10 minutes. They'd rather send you an email. They'd rather shoot you a text. Where else do you go and listen to somebody talk for an extended period of time where you're not allowed to be on your phone, you really shouldn't leave, and you shouldn't fall asleep?

once you get out of school, there's really no place where that's expected on a regular basis. Perhaps in your industry, you have to go to continuing education classes where you're expected to be paying attention and learning and refining your knowledge and your skills. But where else in our world do people go to listen? And then if they do, they have to listen to it at real time. They can't speed it up. You know, you go on the video and it'll say, most listens to part. This is where the important part of the talk is. Someone says, here's this talk you should listen to, but the good part, I mean, I know it's an hour long, but just listen to these five minutes in the middle of it. We just don't have any patience for it in our society. So church is going to be really strange to an unbeliever. That's the point I'm making. It's going to be weird. It's just going to be incredibly foreign to them.

How does an unbeliever go from their life into a church? What is the bridge? You are. You are. You're not going to be able to explain everything that comes to church to someone who's never been in church before. I didn't grow up in the church and when I started going to church, it was the weirdest thing in the world. All these people and they're singing. I mean, it's not a concert. At a concert, that makes sense. But here at church and they're singing and they're raising their hands and it's like... It doesn't make any sense. This big group of people and they get together and they eat together and what's that about? That's weird. If you hang out here, they sit and they talk after church. We all have small groups to get to on normal Sundays and all of a sudden, you know, church gets over around noon. It's when it's supposed to be over. And we're like, man, we got to get to small groups so we can fellowship. But we need to stop doing this other thing. We've been doing it for an hour.

I didn't grow up in the church. Some of you guys grew up in the church. Is hanging out for an hour after church when you've got another church function to go to, is that normal? That's really weird. When Timothy says, hey, we've got a meal for you guys right after church, and if you didn't know about it, that's fine. Come, just eat with us. That is so strange. How is the unbeliever supposed to enter into that? How can they enter into that? The only way they can enter into that is through you. That's how they're going to enter into it. Yes. Life as a Christian and life as a non-Christian are very different, and that's not changing. The differences are only going to become more pronounced. So the question to us is, are we going to build those bridges and talk to people and minister to them and interpret when they come and they're going to have questions about stuff? Y'all kneel? That's weird. You guys lift your hands when you pray. Why do you guys talk about your sins? Christians will ask you that.

Why do you talk about your sins in the worship service? Well, because God's holy and because we're sinful and it's appropriate that we would acknowledge that to Him. That's what we want our kids to do, isn't it? I think one of the dangers of Reformed theology and having a high view of worship and of the holiness of God is it can almost remove the expectation in your minds that you're capable of telling anybody about Jesus. But isn't the Gospel a really simple message? I'm a sinner. Any one of you, if I handed you a microphone and said, would you please tell us what your sins were this last week and how that went for you, you may not want to say, but you could. You say, you know what, that's what I did this week. This is what happened. It was not good. You've got to get over that pride. That's what that is. That's just pride. And if you can't get over your own pride, then you're never going to be able to tell people about Jesus because what you're going to tell them instead is, you just need to be proud like me.

and learn to hide your problems and learn to paper over them and say they're not that big of a deal and it's okay and I fit in, don't I? If you invite people to church, increasingly that's going to mean that you're going to have to answer questions about church. If you tell people the gospel, they're going to have questions you wouldn't anticipate. You know if you have kids and you name them Bible names? Have you had this experience that people don't know their Bible names? They don't know it anymore. They don't know it. The one that is most prominent in our family is Canaan. You know what he always gets called? Canaan. He is Canaan. You are Canaan, right? Everyone calls you Canaan. Or Canaan. Foreigners, who says that? Nobody knows where Canaan is, what Canaan is. They've never even read the Bible. They have no clue. So what do we do? Just go, oh yeah, it's just this weird, you know. We just like weird, crazy names that have no connection to anything.

No, we tell them, no, that's a Bible name. It's the name that God gave to the promised land that represents heaven in the Old Testament. It was full of wicked people, and God sent his people into it to clear them out so they'd have a dwelling place. It's just one example. But if your presumption is that people know the most basic stuff about what it means to be a Christian, you're wrong. You're wrong. You have to explain the most basic stuff. And that's a benefit to you because the basic stuff is easy to explain. No one's going to come and ask you about the hypostatic union. Some of you don't even know what that is, and that's okay. We'll talk about it when we get into our Sunday school class on the Westminster Confession that starts next week. It's coming. But no unbeliever is going to come ask you about that. Why do you pray before you eat? That's what they'll ask you. Do you really think God gave you these Cheetos? This Burger King? Like, you're thankful for that?

You ask God to bless that and nourish it to your bodies? Do you not know how much trans fat's in that? Isn't there a gospel answer for that question? Can't you give it? Yeah. And the goal is not that they would repent of their trans fat intake or their soda pop intake, but they repent of their sins. In Psalm 72, the psalmist is exclaiming the glories of God. And at the end, he says, may his name endure forever. And may His name increase as long as the sun shines. And let men bless themselves by Him. Let all nations call Him blessed. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who alone works wonders. And blessed be His glorious name forever. And may the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen and amen. Do we have any part in that work? Of filling this world or this city? The world's too big. How about your neighborhood?

How about your neighbor? The church's work, Christians' work, is to proclaim repentance for the forgiveness of sins everywhere. I'm afraid that many times when we think of presenting the gospel to people, we expect repentance to be like that. And if they don't repent like right now, like, well, that's sin and you need to repent of it. And if they don't like right now, oh, really? Then we think, well, see, I did my thing and I told them the gospel and they didn't repent. Is that how you repent? I mean, that's what I want to ask you. Do you turn that quick? You're a Christian. Do you turn that quickly? Does someone come to you and say, your wife come home and say, come to you when you get home and say, honey, you've done this thing. And you go, I'm so sorry. You're right. Children, do you listen to your parents when they say, son, daughter, you've done this thing and you need to repent? You say, yes, daddy. No. Your parents bear with you. Your spouse bears with you. Will you not bear with an unbeliever? Is God not born with you?

Don't you wonder when it's going to run out? Don't you realize that He's born with you so long? You're like, I think He should be about done with this. Done with me. Praise God that He's not. Praise God that He's not. So Jesus opened their minds. Gave them understanding of the Scriptures. That repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations. And then He says this to them. In case they were like... well, I don't know, and maybe that's not my, I don't know if I'm fit. He says to them very simply, you are witnesses of these things. You're witnesses of these things. At that moment, he's standing there going, you're witnesses of these things. You saw the grave, now you see me. Dead, now raised. You're witnesses of these things. Go therefore. Are you witnesses? In some sense, you might say, well, I didn't witness that with my own eyes. I didn't see it. And that's true.

A couple of questions though. Do you trust the testimony of Scripture concerning it? What if that means you have to do uncomfortable things or it puts you in an uncomfortable spot? Because all of a sudden you're like, I do believe that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God. And I do believe He's interceding for me. And I do believe He's going to come back. And I think that He came the first time with mercy and the second time He's going to come with judgment and that there's going to be an end to the time, the opportunity for repentance and the day of salvation that someday will, will expire. If you believe all of that, that puts you in this position where you better talk. You had better talk. There will come a day when we'll talk, but we won't be talking to people about the salvation that's available through Jesus Christ. We'll be talking to the Lord, giving an account for whether we loved our neighbors, whether we spoke to them, whether we prayed for them, whether we prayed with them. Have you ever asked someone who's

An unbeliever who's struggling, if you can pray for them. Sometimes it's hard just to ask them, can I pray for you? Most of the time they'll say yes. The vast majority of times they'll say yes. And what I'll tell you from experience is when they say yes, then you really get scared. Because now what are you going to pray for? What do you pray for? Well, I pray for the problems that they're having. And I pray that God would be merciful to them. And that he'd resolve whatever this, you know, relational or financial or medical problem, whatever that is, I'm praying for that. What I want to know, what the Lord's interested in is, do you pray for their salvation in front of them? Do you let them know that you think they need something that no doctor and no amount of money and no level of education is going to give them? That you can tell them about it. Have you ever had someone pray for you in an uncomfortable way like that?

You're talking to them and you're telling them about the problem you're having in your marriage or at your workplace or whatever, and they say, okay, let's pray about it. And you're silly enough to think they're going to pray for the other people to change, and what they do is they pray for you to change. I pray that Bill will confess his bitterness and stop being embittered toward his neighbors, that he'd remember that Jesus died for his sins and have mercy on those who sin against him. I pray that Bill would turn. We're not supposed to do that, are we? Oh, yes, we are supposed to do that.

Because we're witnesses of these things. Have you seen somebody repent before? Have you actually seen it? Some of us have. Some of us have had the privilege. And it really is a privilege. It's a mercy from God. It's like nuclear energy. When you see that, it'll last you for years and years and years. It'll give you hope that other people might repent, that you might repent yourself. It's amazing. It's amazing. Because when someone repents, they stop fighting. They may have fought and fought and fought up to that point, but when God gets a hold of them, they stop fighting. And they say, I'm a sinner. Look what I've done. Look at the mess that I've made. Through tears, through sorrow, they turn away from their sins. It changes them. You're witnesses to these things. You're witness to it in your own life, and some of us have been witness to it in other people's lives. We ought to desire to be witnesses of it again.

And again, what I would love, and probably the kindest thing that you could do for me and for our elders and our wives, is to tell your neighbors about Jesus. That would be the sweetest gift you could give us. And I'd confess to you that I've failed in leading in this area. And Daniel's over here going, this is not anything we're good at. But are we content to leave it as just something we're not good at? That's really the question. Jesus is raised from the dead. Is it okay to continue to be bad at loving our neighbors? No. So the greatest gift you could give us, and one of the best ways you could glorify God, is to tell people about Jesus. That when you fill out your connection cards, or you go to prayer meetings, or when you're at small group, you say, can we pray for Bill? Because I've been talking to Bill, and Bill's a hardened old codger, and he's not there yet. But I love Bill. And Bill's going to die.

Can we pray for Bill? That would strengthen us. It would strengthen us. It would be a great encouragement to us. Paul says that we plant and we water, but God causes the growth. I didn't say to you, would you please bring 10 people to church by the end of this calendar year and see them and lead them to Christ? I want you to be about that work and willing to do it, but I want you to trust that God will cause the growth. I want you to plant and I want you to water. That's what I want. That's supposed to be what the resurrection produces in us. The resurrection is an interesting thing. It's just a picture of a seed. Jesus is a seed planted in the ground. And what has to happen to a seed before it grows? It has to die. It has to rot. You want to say, what's the gardening term for the seed? What's it have to do? Germinate. It has to germinate. That's a nice pretty word for die and rot so that life can come forth from it. Well, that's what the tomb was for Jesus. A seed planted.

that germinated, that sprung forth a new life. And we have access to that new life if we're Christians. That same life that was in him is in us. And we ought to see it in other people. This is a place where you can learn something from dandelions. They just grow. They proliferate. They just go everywhere. They go down. They send their roots out. Thistles. Actually, it's thistles that do that. Dandelions just grow these big, long tap roots. They just spread all out. And you can't get rid of them. You can't kill them. What happens to a dandelion if you lop the pretty yellow flower off? Seeds come. 24 to 48 hours later, there'll be something this tall in your nice cut grass and it'll have all these seeds on the top. Would it be that we would be like that? That when something happens and we get cut down, that we just spring forth all these seeds? That we'd be like dandelions that send their roots so far down you just can't get rid of them? Or like thistles that just kind of, you know, I know.

These are weeds. Maybe they weren't there before the fall. But everything gives glory to God. Everything testifies to His truth. And you ought to have roots dug in so that when hardships come and when sorrows abound and when trials arise, you say, that's okay. I've got roots deep enough and strong enough. God's been good enough to me that I can withstand it. And I'm going to bear fruit all the more because you're witnesses of these things. God is gracious to us in showing us our sins. If someone were to come into our church, I think there's a few things they would notice as being different than either having never been in church or if they've been in other churches. One of the things I think would stand out to them is all of the talk of sin. Now, do we talk about sin all the time because it's like the whole goal is just to make you feel miserable all the time? That's not actually the point. Us feeling sorry for our sins is a...

is a step toward the point. But it's not the point. The point is, how can you ever repent unless you see your sins? And what's my job? It's to stand up here and to say, these are our sins. These are our failures. And they're not little failures. They're not insignificant failures. They're failures and sins that Jesus had to die for so that we would have life in His name. We ought not to live like the disciples who don't have a risen Savior and who don't believe that He could or would. Don't live like the disciples did between the crucifixion and the resurrection. We live after the resurrection. Okay? Even when we gather together on Good Friday, we're not gathered together for a funeral. It's not a funeral. He died once. He doesn't die every year. He died once. And now he's raised. And we remember his death as those who are convinced that he's raised. Okay?

I remember a dear brother, Jim Striedelmeyer, you guys remember him. He's gone to be with the Lord now. Came to faith in a Good Friday service where there was preaching about sin and about God's judgment and his mercies. These are the words that should be on our lips. That God has mercy for sinners and grace to forgive. Give up your politics. Give up your hobbies. Give up your hard work. Give up your health. All the things we talk about, give it up. Doesn't matter. None of that stuff. Can't take one bit of that to you with heaven. Not one bit of it. And if you think, well, I'll leave it for my kids, guess what? If it becomes an impediment to them getting into the kingdom of heaven, then you've not done them any good. Naked you've come into this world, naked you'll leave. And really all that matters is where you go when you leave. And not just where you go, but where your neighbors go, where your friends go, where your family goes. Well, I've tried and they don't like it. They got mad at me. Do you love them? It's really the question. I mean, those things are to be expected. Do you love them?

If you love them, then you'll speak God's love and mercy and warnings and all of the counsel of God to them as it seems appropriate. You may well start with, why do you pray for your fast food lunch and get to the mercy of God toward you? Most of you guys know my story. I know most of your guys' stories. God's been good to us. Why would we hide that? We shouldn't hide that. We shouldn't hide that. We're witnesses of the work of God in our lives. And we ought to pray and ask God to make us witnesses to his work in other people's lives. That's the blessing of the resurrection. One last thing I'll say. As worship becomes less or more dissonant with society, it's going to be harder for you to invite people to church. You're going to be like, well, this will be weird. They already think I'm kind of weird, but if they come to church, then I'm going to be full-blown weird.

Here's what I want to say to you about that. If God has used this church in your life, do not be ashamed of it. That's it. Do not be ashamed of it. Not every church is equal. Different churches have different gifts. And I'm not here to say that we're the only faithful church in Indianapolis or even one of the few. But I am here to say we are one of the faithful churches and you shouldn't have any shame about it. Okay? You shouldn't have any shame about it. Like little kids, when they get to be bigger kids, and at some point they're like, Dad's and Mom's not as cool as they used to be, and they don't want to hang out with them anymore. Don't be that way about your church. If God's seen fit to use the sinners here to help you grow in godliness, then have faith that He'll use the sinners here to help others grow in godliness. It's going to mean work for you, but it's gospel work. It's good work. And may God bless it. Let's pray.