Video Transcript: The New Adam Rises

They went to the tomb that first Easter morning to pay honor to Him, and when they got there He wasn't there. And so, for them at first it was very puzzling, in fact disturbing as some of them wondered where the body had been moved and they didn't know what to make of it. But then when angels told them that He was risen and when Jesus Himself appeared to one after another after another, they were filled with joy.

And their joy came, first of all, because they loved Jesus and it was such a thrill to know that He was alive. To know that their friend, the one they loved, was back again. When Mary Magdalene heard that voice say her name, that familiar voice, Mary, and she knew and recognized that it was the Lord, her heart leaped with joy.

When Cleopas and his friend invited the stranger on the road to have supper with them and then he blessed the bread and broke it and they recognized Him, they remembered that their hearts had already been burning on the road even while He was talking and they didn't yet know Him. And when Peter met Jesus and saw that He was alive, he was full of joy. And one after another, their joy was that their friend was alive.

And at the same time, once they discovered that, they realized that this was not just the case of their friend come back to them and of having the joy that he had not been defeated, that the accusations against him had not stuck, that the condemnation had not lasted, but that God had raised him up and God had made him alive again. They began to realize, with a lot of help from Jesus Himself and from the Holy Spirit, to understand what had happened. Not only had their friend come back, but the universe was different.

Something had happened that changed everything. The reign of God had come in a fresh way. A new creation was being launched.

It was not just their friend who had arisen. It was the new Adam who had arisen, the Son of God who had arisen and was taking charge of all things. And today, I want to reflect with you on some of the earliest statements about the resurrection that were written down by the Apostle Paul.

Paul had started out as an enemy of Christ. He opposed Jesus. He opposed Jesus' first followers.

He led the lynch mob that killed the first martyr Stephen. And yet, he too had met the risen Christ and had been changed completely from a killer of Christians to the greatest Christian missionary. And he wrote in 1 Corinthians 15, one of the great chapters in the Bible about the resurrection.

He says, Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you, otherwise you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Peter and then to the twelve.

After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living at the time that Paul wrote, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, He appeared to me also as to one abnormally born. So Paul is not just saying, once upon a time, somebody came back to life again.

He said, this is the gospel, this is the good news that saves you when you believe it. If you want to know the gospel in a nutshell, the apostle gives it to us here. He says, the gospel is that Christ died for our sins.

Because we're sinners, because we rebelled against God, because all of humanity was involved in that sin, somebody had to pay the penalty and rescue us from those sins, and Christ died for those sins to suffer the judgment and the penalty for His people. He died for our sins. He was buried, and then He arose, and He conquered death.

And how do we know these things? Well, there are two main witnesses. The Old Testament Scriptures predicted it, and the eyewitnesses saw it. The Old Testament had spoken of someone who would have his hands pierced, who would say, I thirst, who would be mocked, who would cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And all these things were written down a thousand years before they happened.

Isaiah 53 says He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows. He took up our infirmities. He carried our sorrows.

He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. He bore the sin of many.

That's what that chapter says. But then it also says, after the suffering of His soul, He will see the light of life and be satisfied and will justify many. So you had things that were written centuries and centuries before Christ came that said what would happen, and it did happen.

It was foretold in advance, and then after it happened, Jesus appointed people to be witnesses for Him. And they could only be witnesses for Him if they had been with Him throughout those years of teaching, and if they had witnessed His resurrection from the dead, had seen the living Christ. So the gospel is Christ died for our sins.

He rose again to conquer death. This was told about in the Bible before it ever happened, and the rest of the Bible, the New Testament, is the word of eyewitnesses who tell us what happened. And you're saved by believing this.

You're saved by believing that your sins were punished in Jesus, and you don't have to suffer for them anymore. You're saved by believing that Christ rose again from the dead and gives you eternal life, a taste of it now and the fullness of it when He raises you to eternal life, your physical body in the future. This is the gospel.

Gospel means good news. It does not simply mean good advice. It is good news.

It's an announcement of what Jesus Christ has done. And when you believe in what Jesus Christ has done, then you're saved. This is the saving gospel.

Easter is all about the saving gospel and the way of salvation that God provides for humanity in Jesus Christ. And the apostle says, this is what we preach. This is what all the other apostles preached.

If you want to know the gospel, this is it. And then he gets into a little more detail because some people that he was writing to were wondering if resurrection is for real or not. And he says, hey, if resurrection isn't real, we apostles are a bunch of liars.

Your faith is useless. You're still in your sins. You are pitiable.

You are sad. But he says, Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first roots of those who have fallen asleep, fallen asleep is his way of saying died. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.

For as in Adam all die. So in Christ, all will be made alive. But each in his own turn, Christ, the first fruits, then when he comes, those who belong to him, then the end will come when he hands over the kingdom to God, the father, after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power, for he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he has put everything under his feet. Now, when it says that everything is put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself who put everything under Christ.

When he has done this, then the son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him so that God may be all in all. So Jesus is going to take care of everything and then hand everything back over to God, the father, so that God is everything to everybody. Now, when it says that Jesus undid and kind of redid things for Adam, we have to think about Adam, the first Adam.

The Bible says that Adam was made from dust. And that basically means that Adam was made mortal. It's not just talking about a bit of dirt being thrown together.

Dust in the Bible always indicates you're mortal. Adam was not automatically somebody who was going to live forever. He didn't have immortality just embedded in him.

He could be made immortal, but that depended. That depended. And in fact, he made choices that made him all too mortal.

He was dust and he would return to dust because instead of choosing the tree of life, he had the opportunity from any tree he wanted in the garden. He chose the one tree that God said, don't take it. And so Adam, though, when he was created, was made in God's image.

And what did it mean to be in God's image? Well, it meant he was to represent God, to be like him in some important ways and also to represent God in ruling over things and in relating to God. So he was made son of God in a certain sense. The Bible, even when it gives Jesus' genealogy in the New Testament, it says the son of a whole bunch of son of's and then the son of Adam, the son of God.

So he was meant to be one of the sons of God. One of the things this probably indicates is that he was meant to be included in God's divine counsel. Sons of God often is used to describe angelic beings, and he was meant to be included in the divine counsel and in God's rule over the creation.

And in particular, he was dust. He was son of God, but he was a gardener and not just any gardener. God gave him and Eve this area to defend when when snakes telling lies about God slither in, you need to deal with them, not go along with them.

But also God told him to expand this area, this garden temple, a place for God to dwell in a special way. And it was to keep growing and growing and growing. God said to him, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.

Make it all like this garden, this dwelling. The whole earth was meant to be a beautiful, wondrous garden and temple for God to dwell in. And Adam's calling was to be the gardener who governed it and expanded it.

And he was the link between God and God's wonderful creation. He was to bring God's reign to creation and bring creation's praises to God. And when he fell, he stopped reigning well over creation on God's behalf.

He stopped being a fit link to bring creation's praises to God. He did not fulfill what he was called to do. Now, when Adam was first created, he wasn't fully the man he was meant to become.

He was meant to become immortal. He was meant to govern well, but he failed. The first Adam failed.

In Adam, all die by the trespass of the one man. His sin, death reigned through that one man. Sin reigned in death.

And it affected Adam. It affected everybody who would come from Adam and Eve. And it affected all the creation that they were meant to govern and attend and to care for.

The creation was subjected to frustration. The creation fell into bondage to decay. The created world is not the way it's supposed to be because humanity is not the way it's supposed to be.

And humanity is not the way it's supposed to be because Adam wasn't the way he was supposed to be. And so you have this big problem. Adam has blown it and his disaster has brought disaster on all humanity, brought sin and death to all of us and indeed to the whole creation.

And so we needed a new Adam. We needed a new Adam very badly. And the announcement of Easter is we've got a new Adam.

Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

When Christ comes to life on that first Easter Sunday, it is a great blessing to his followers to see their friend back. But it's not just that. He's the first of a new humanity.

He is the new Adam. And because he is the new Adam, he rescues those who are in him from sin and even rescues them from death itself. In Christ all will be made alive, but each in his own turn.

Christ the first fruits, then when he comes, those who belong to him. So as the apostle writes in this chapter, there's a two-stage resurrection, a two-step resurrection that's going on. And many Jewish people expected the resurrection to happen all at once.

They believe, many of them at least, in the resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. And so it was kind of a shock to the disciples to have somebody raised from the dead and glorified. And it wasn't the end of the world.

What was going on? Well, there was a two-step resurrection. Jesus rose first. His body was exalted.

And then later on, there will be a resurrection which believers in Jesus will have their bodies raised to life later on. So Jesus is the first fruits, the first part of the crop. But the rest of the crop is coming.

And Christ has risen and conquered death. And because he has, so will all who are in him. Just as Adam's fall had such a disastrous effect, so Christ's resurrection has this glorious effect.

And there's a two-step resurrection in the sense that Jesus rises first and that later on, those who belong to Jesus will rise. And there's also a two-step resurrection in another sense. Those who belong to Jesus rise in two stages.

When we believe in Jesus, the Spirit of Jesus puts His resurrection life into us right now, into our spirit. The Holy Spirit brings us alive inside right now. And that can even be called the first resurrection.

When Jesus returns, then the second and fullest resurrection comes when He gives us bodies like His resurrection body. Romans 8, 10 and 11 says, If Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. For if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who lives in you.

You see what it's saying? Your spirit is already alive. And because you have the Holy Spirit living in you, that's the same Holy Spirit that brought Jesus' body back to life. And so he's going to bring your body back to life, too.

Philippians 3, verse 21 says, Our citizenship is in heaven and we await a Savior from there who, by the power that enables him to bring all things under his authority, will make our lowly bodies like his glorious body. That's the second stage. The first stage is he makes you come alive now inside and starts changing you now.

And then when he comes again, there is that resurrection of your physical body and not just bringing it back to life again, but transforming it and making it glorious and immortal. It can't be destroyed or ever die again. So, again, there's a new creation that happens already now.

If anyone is in Christ, if you're in Christ, he's a new creation. The old has gone. The new has come.

And because that's true, we're told, put off the old man or the old anthropos, the Hebrew or the Greek word that just means human. Put off the old human. Put on the new human, created after the likeness of God.

Sometimes that gets translated, put off the old self and put on the new self. And that's not all bad. You know, we have kind of an old self that we need to leave behind and a new self that God gives us that we need to grow into.

But it's probably referring to really putting on a new man, the new Adam. Put off the old man, put on the new Adam, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. There are other passages that say in so many words, put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Put on, clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ. So, in this world, we've all got some of the legacy of old Adam still hanging with us. We've got to put off old Adam and put on the new Adam.

Jesus Himself spoke of a two-stage resurrection of what happens when He first brings us to life in the Holy Spirit and then what happens when He brings us to life at the resurrection of all the dead. Jesus said, Whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and will not be condemned. He has crossed over from death to life.

I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. So, you catch that? The time has come already. If you hear the voice of the Son of God and you respond in faith, then you live.

You're dead in Adam, but when you hear the voice of the Son of God, you live right now. That time has come. And a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and come out.

So, it's referring first of all to that resurrection to spiritual life in Christ right now. And then, Jesus is referring to that time in the future when everybody in the graves comes out at the voice of the Son of God. So, we're twice dead.

We die in Adam that first time. We're dead in sin, but Christ makes us alive when we hear His voice and put our trust in Him. And then we die.

Our body dies. That's the second time that we die or are dead. But then Christ speaks and raises our bodies to life.

The Bible speaks of these two comings of Jesus as the new creational reign of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes Jesus speaks of it as the kingdom of God. He would announce the kingdom of God, the reign of God.

That's what Adam was meant to do, you know. He was meant to reign. And he blew it.

But when Jesus said, the reign of God, the kingdom of God is near, it meant He had showed up and His reign was about to begin. And He gave hints of it in the way that He healed people and did mighty miracles. And then He entered into His reign when He rose from the dead.

And He said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. The New Testament speaks of two world ages or eons. And these ages overlap.

Jesus came to put an end to that passing world age and to begin the coming world age of eternal life. But for a while, those overlap. They overlap between Jesus' first coming and His second coming.

And that's what the Bible calls the last days, between Jesus' first coming and His second coming. And so we're living between the time of Jesus' resurrection and the time when He raises everybody else. And when He does that, then that old age is done.

And the new age is complete and full. And God is all in all. Then the end will come when He hands over the kingdom to God the Father after He's destroyed all dominion, authority and power.

For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. Putting under your feet.

He's actually referring back to a creation psalm, Psalm 8, where it says that God takes notice of little humanity and put all things under His feet, all the animals, and has given them glory and honor. And the Bible takes that promise to the created Adam and to humanity after Him and says that's come true in Jesus. And now He's putting everything under His feet again.

And He is ruling now. Don't think that Jesus rules only when He comes again. He has begun His reign already.

He's working in His people. He's working in His world. And He's ruling in such a way that He's mowing down His enemies one after another.

He's dealing with enemies, sometimes by changing them into His friends. But He's also dealing with enemies in the unseen realm, the demonic powers and Satan himself. And the Bible says He's going to rule and keep on ruling until all the enemies are subdued.

And the last enemy to be destroyed is death itself. And so when the resurrection of the dead happens for all of His people, that is the end. Death then will be the destroyed enemy.

The book of Revelation shows how Jesus reveals this same thing in visions. The beast and the false prophet were thrown alive into the lake of fire. Those enemies are going into the lake of fire one after another.

The devil was thrown into the lake of fire. And what's the last into the lake of fire? Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

And those who reject the Lord Jesus and join with the devil and the beast and the false prophet are also in the lake of fire. But the last enemy you see there is death and Hades being thrown into the lake of fire. And then Corinthians continues, for He's put everything under His feet.

Now, when it says everything has been put under Him, it's clear this doesn't include God Himself who put everything under Christ. So Jesus isn't saying, I'm putting God the Father under my feet. No, obviously not.

When God has put everything under Christ and when Christ has accomplished everything, then the Son Himself, which He always is, Jesus, the eternal Son of God, equal in all ways with the Father and yet always obedient to the Father and always doing everything to bring glory to the Father, is going to rule everything, gather it all up, and then hand it over to God the Father so that God is all in all. And that is the final purpose of Jesus coming into the world, is to bring everything back to God and to make everything rejoice in God and to set all the creation right. The very universe itself is reborn with the rise of the new Adam.

When Jesus rose from the grave on that first day and His disciples were filled with joy, they had hardly begun to discover what really had happened. But as Jesus explained the kingdom of God and the reign of God, the disciples understood. They understood that something huge had happened and that Jesus was taking over the universe.

And at the end it says that the whole universe is reborn where God is all in all. And there's different phrases, but they're pointing to the same thing. Jesus speaks of the rebirth when the Son of Man sits on His glorious throne.

There it's just the word that's often used of regeneration, of being born again, of individual persons being born again, except here it's talking about the rebirth of everything. He doesn't just intend to save individual souls. He intends a rebirth of the universe.

The Apostle Peter says, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and His great mercy. He's given us new birth. He's caused us to be born again into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.

He's talking about this rebirth into a tremendous inheritance. And that inheritance is nothing less than the rebirth of the creation. The Apostle Peter in one of his first sermons proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus said, He must remain in heaven until the time of the restoration of all things.

That's when God is all in all. The restoration of all things. When the animal world is set in harmony.

When the universe is working the way it's supposed to be. When we're governing the way we were meant to. When everything is beautiful and pure.

We have no idea just what a world could be like. We get tastes of it because in spite of the fallenness of our creation and its brokenness, there are wonderful things in it. But what would it be like? You know, we're eating an appetizer that's been dropped in the dirt.

We're going to be eating the main course perfectly clean. So, that's what happens when you have the restoration of all things. The creation itself will be freed from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

So, this is the ultimate destiny of the universe. And it is the new Adam and his resurrection that brings it there, causing us to be reborn through faith in Him, causing the entire universe to be reborn. And again, this is a two-stage renewal.

The Apostle Peter in that same sermon, he says, now repent of your sins and turn to God. We do have to ask, in light of this glorious news of Easter, what's the upshot? Well, repent of your sins and turn to God now that God has done all this for you in Christ so that your sins may be wiped away. That's part of the good news of the Gospel, of course, is when you put your faith in Jesus, the sins are wiped away.

You're forgiven. You're not going to get punished. You're made clean.

And there's more. Then times of refreshment will come from the presence of the Lord. And that's a wonderful promise, to know that not only are your sins wiped away, but even now in this life, God is going to refresh you.

He's going to come to you just when you're about ready to pack it in, when your strength is gone, and times of refreshment are going to come. Times of refreshment are going to come on the church just when the church is weary and weak. And the times of refreshment come from the presence of the Lord, where Jesus reigns at God's right hand.

But that's just the taste. And then He will send you Jesus, your appointed Messiah, for He must remain in heaven until the time for the final restoration of all things, as God promised long ago through His holy prophets. And through the prophets, God said, hey, the wolf will live with the lamb, the little child will play near the cobra.

They're all going to be living in harmony. Even the mountains and the hills will burst into song. The whole creation will be a great song of praise to God.

And that's what's going to happen at the final restoration of all things. So, when you think of the new Adam and the new Adam's rising, He's the Son of Man because He was born into Adam's line. He's the Son of God, and not just in the sense that Adam was, in the sense that He was made in God's image, or that He could have been one of the divine counsel, one of the great counsel that ruled along with the angels, though that's going to happen.

We're going to be ruling with angels, even judging angels, the Bible says. But, Jesus is more than that. Jesus is God.

Jesus is God the Son. He's the eternal Son of God. There are other sons of God in a certain sense, but there is no other son of God like Jesus.

And Jesus came to earth so that He could make us sons of God truly, and so that He would exalt us. The Bible speaks of Him, or we'll see in a moment, as the man from heaven. Adam was the man from the earth.

Jesus is the man from heaven because He's not just the man from heaven. He's the Son of God become man who came down from heaven. And the new Adam defeats death.

He rises. He reigns. He gives humanity a new start now, and a completely and full new start in the future.

And He completes the creation. The original creation was very good, but not yet what it was meant to be. It would have become what it was meant to be if Adam had carried out his mandate, but he didn't.

So, God took the old saying, if you want to do something right, you better do it yourself. And He did. He did it all Himself in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And when He comes again, then He's going to complete the creation where God is all in all. And what's that mean for us? Well, it means for our bodies some wonderful things. The last part of 1 Corinthians 15 says, if there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

And there it's not talking about a body that's just spirit and like a ghost, but rather a body that's fully glorified with great powers and full of and controlled by the Holy Spirit. A spiritual body. In a physical sense, you can think of Jesus' resurrection body, where when He came to His followers on that first Easter Sunday, they could touch Him.

They could hear Him. They could see Him. They could watch Him eat.

And then all of a sudden, He was gone. He was really physical, but He was not bound by the kind of physical laws that bind us anymore. He was glorified.

And so, He could go where He wanted at will. And the Bible says there's a spiritual body, one that has this complete control of what is physical and is completely controlled by the Holy Spirit. So, it is written, the first man became a living being.

The last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural. And after that, the spiritual.

The first man was of the dust of the earth. The second man, from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth.

And as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man Adam, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ. I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Once you understand that there are these two Adams, you've got to understand that if you only got one Adam in your body, you're not able to inherit the imperishable kingdom of God. You need God's life in you now, or you will not be able to inherit the kingdom of God with that glorious resurrection body later. I mentioned a story before about a young man in my church that I previously served.

And he came to his mother in March, and he gave her some miracle seeds. And he told her, now, mom, plant these, water them, and they will come up and be flowering in less than two weeks. So, that was quite an impressive set of seeds.

So, she took those little specks and put them in the dirt in a little pot and put them on her windowsill in the sunlight and waited for that wondrous flowering of the wonder seeds. And she looked at it, and nothing happened. She checked a few days later, nothing happened.

She checked a few days later, nothing happened. And she kept throwing a little bit of water on them. And then, on April 1, her son came and said, April fools, mom! Those are the tips of turkey beaks.

Well, now, seeds, they look dead, but they've got to have life in them, or nothing comes of them. Flesh and blood can't inherit the kingdom of God. Just can't.

You need a different kind of life in you, and you need God to give you a different kind of body to live in that eternal new reality that God is bringing. So, I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery.

We will not all sleep. We won't all die. But we will all be changed.

So, even if you don't die, you're going to get changed when Jesus comes again. In a flash, in the twinkle of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound. The dead will be raised imperishable.

And we who haven't died yet, if we're still alive and it's coming, we'll be changed. So, the dead will be raised with bodies like Jesus' resurrection body. And if you still happen to be living when Jesus comes again, you're going to get a body like His resurrection body too.

It'll all happen just like that. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true.

Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O grave, is your sting? And then the Apostle says, Thanks be to God, He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. The new Adam has risen.

And that means that already now, you can come to life in your spirit and become a new person. And when that happens, that means that in the future, you will be transformed to have a body like the body of the risen Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And to reign with Him in glory forever and ever.

Because when everything is put right, when Adam is who he ought to be, then those who belong to the new Adam also reign with Him. And then as we reign and reign well, we bring the praises of creation to God, and we bring the reign of God to all of creation. If you're really an environmentalist, you will want to take good care of the earth as we have it now.

But, true environmentalists will be praying that Jesus will come again and make us the kind of people who can take care of the creation the way it was meant to be. Because God starts right inside. He starts right inside by changing your spirit through the Gospel.

The next thing He does is when He comes again, He raises you to everlasting life. And by that point, the last enemy, death, is defeated. And God is all in all.

And creation is the way it's supposed to be. So, rejoice. If Jesus is your friend, if you already love Him, if you trust Him, rejoice that your friend is alive again.

But rejoice in something bigger today. Rejoice that the new Adam has risen. That the creation itself is in the process of being put right and that all things are destined to be the way they're meant to be.

Thanks be to God, He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. And take to heart again what the Apostle Ben says. You know, this is the Gospel.

Take your stand on this Gospel. Christ died for our sins. Christ rose again.

Repent. Times of refreshing are going to come now. And that time of the renewal of all things is coming soon.

We thank You, Lord, for raising Jesus from the dead. We thank You, Lord Jesus, that You reign even now, that we can share in Your victory. And we pray, Lord, that You will be near to us now as we think again on who You are and what You've done.

Lord, those of us who know You and love You, may we grow in faith each day and in the joy that You give us and in peace that surpasses all understanding. Help those of us, Lord, who grieve the loss of loved ones that they are in Your hands if they belonged to You by faith and that we will rejoice with them in Your new creation. Lord, help those too who have not yet believed this Gospel, who have not yet put their trust in You and do not experience the life of Your Holy Spirit working in them and transforming them.

Even today, Lord, help them to believe the good news of Your death and resurrection, that You'll take away their sins, that You'll give them eternal life through faith in Jesus our Lord. And we pray, Lord, that if there are any here today, that You'll accomplish that wonderful new birth and that You will also, Lord, cause Your Gospel to go out around the world to many today as the risen Christ is proclaimed and celebrated and bring Your salvation to many more people. And, Lord, we do look forward to that day when You come again when we receive our glorified bodies that are like Yours, when this creation which You made so wonderful, which has been broken in so many terrible ways, when it's reunited with heaven, when heaven comes to earth and all things are made new.

We pray for that day. In Jesus' name, amen.