Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Brian: Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Today is a great day to celebrate so many things. I'm very celebratory over the fact that we got the band back together. For the first time in over a year, the band is back together and we are on a mission from God.
Jacque: And you are even wearing blue today.
Brian: And I'm wearing my blue, so I'm kind of a blues brother, so hallelujah. I'm happy today. Can you tell? I've kind of felt, you know I love singing with you and we can do a lot of schmaltzy stuff, but when we want to do big stuff, I need some other people around me.
Jacque: That's for sure. Yes.
Brian: You are looking beautiful today, baby.
Jacque: Thank you.
Brian: Happy Easter.
Jacque: I'm going to [inaudible 47:17]
Brian: So I've just got to kind of let you into our personal lives a little bit.
Jacque: What is he going to say?
Brian: Jacque really put herself out for me yesterday, and she went out and bought me a new sports coat and a new shirt to wear, nice pastel colors and everything to celebrate Easter. I went to put them on this morning and the security tags were still on all of my clothes that she bought. I don't have that—
Jacque: I spent a lot of time.
Brian: Obviously, I don't have that device to free my clothes from their bondage, but Jesus does, I think.
Jacque: We just rose above it.
Brian: We did, we did. There is so much to be thankful for it today.
Jacque: I stayed there a little bit before I rose.
Brian: Yes. Well, I want to talk to you today, obviously, there are so many things that we can talk about on Easter. A lot of my messages in the past have been about the resurrection and the historicity of it and why what we believe is not just a myth, but it's really based on historical fact. It's kind of a bulwark of our faith or an underpinning for our faith, but today I really wanted to talk about something a little bit different. Jacque just led you in a little bit of a response where we are the customary greeting after the time of Christ was he is risen and the believers and followers of Jesus would say he is risen indeed, but I would like to add something to that. I would also like our response to be this as well: he is risen in me as well. He is risen and he is risen in me because there are so many places where resurrection needs to be in our lives.
There are so many things as the Lord moved me to pray this morning, just about dreams and hopes and promises that have been put on the show sometimes for many years and we've lost our hopes and we've lost our dreams and we've lost our anticipation of the future. One of the things that I talked about on Friday night at the Passover of Good Friday service was the fact that Passover wasn't so much about reflecting on the past, but it was a doorway for Israel to walk into their future. It was what God had for their future for them. God is always wants us to think about our future.
I would like to begin by reading from first Corinthians 15 today verses 19 through 26 out of the Message Bible. I love how Paul puts this whole concept of resurrection applicable to our lives today.
Jacque: If all we get out of Christ is a little inspiration for a few short years, we are pretty sorry lot.
Brian: I like that. What he is saying is if we just have this kind of mythical character we are following that somehow makes us feel a little bit better during the course of our life, we are really a sorry lot. We really are, but following Christ and the resurrection and being a Christian is so much more than that.
Jacque: But the truth is that Christ has been raised up the first in a long legacy of those who are going to leave the cemeteries.
Brian: Now, one of the things I—, sorry to interrupt you, baby, but one of the things I've said on numerous occasions, and then we have a cemetery out here. We built one about eight/ nine years ago. There are a number of people where that is their earthly final resting place. I've often said, especially when we are doing interments, I've often said, you know, when Jesus comes back, that's right where I want to be, right out there, because these graves are going to open up and people are going to come out of their graves. This will be like the "I told you so" moment. This will be the greatest "I told you so" moment in all of history. When Jesus comes back, all the graves will open up, and those who are in Christ will— We can be a part of that long legacy, as Paul says, this long legacy of those who are going to leave their cemeteries,
Jacque: There is a nice cemetery in this. Death, initially, came by a man and resurrection from death came by a man. Everybody dies in Adam. Everybody comes alive in Christ, but we have to wait our turn. Christ is first then those with him at his coming, the grand consummation, when crushing the opposition, he hands over his kingdom to God, the father. He won't let up until the last enemy is down.
Brian: I like that. He is not going to let up. Jesus has a purpose. His work was finished in terms of redemption and the plan of salvation at the cross. That's why he said it's completed, it's finished, and then of course the resurrection, but his work is not done. He is still on the prowl. He is still conquering the enemy, every place that we have faith and allow him to be. And so he is not letting up and he won't let up until the very last enemy is down. Who is that last enemy?
Jacque: The very last enemy is death.
Brian: Yes, he is going to conquer death. Aren't you glad for a God that brings life instead of death? When you read mythology and Greek mythology and all of the other basically, religions that have to do with a man trying to worship some kind of God, so much of it has to do with oppressiveness and death and sacrificing, but not out of love and compassion. We see the contrast with what God, our creator has for us and this beautiful relationship that he has for us.
As I thought about the last Passover weekend with Christ, I think one of the great tragedies of that last weekend that Christ celebrated with his disciples was that after the crucifixion Judas cut himself off from the power of the resurrection. See, we often think of Judas as a bad guy. We forget that he was loved by Jesus. He was loved by God. He mattered to God, just as much as all the other disciples did. God had a heart for him. Jesus came for people like Judas. Judas cut himself off from the power of the resurrection. If he would have waited one more day, his life could have been entirely different. The story we tell about him could have been entirely different if he would have waited one more day.
The power of the resurrection, there is a mercy seat because of the resurrection. There is a covenant of grace in effect for every single person who has ever lived because of the resurrection. We are made sons and daughters of the most high God because our father in heaven moved upon that tomb and the power of God infused that body of Jesus and he rose from the dead. Unfortunately, Judas would not wait. All he had to do is wait one more day. All he had to do was wait one more day, but having murdered truth and having murdered life and having murdered hope, he then murdered himself.
We live in a Judas world today, a world, a culture obsessed with aborting things. We abort our babies, of course. We abort our marriages. We abort lives in a mad celebration of death. Yet there are many today, thank God, like you and I who welcome Christ's resurrection into our lives, into our remorse. There is a resurrection that God wants to bring into our pain. There is a resurrection that God wants to bring into our regrets. There is a resurrection that God wants to bring into our shame. There is a resurrection that God wants to bring, in a sense, into our past so that we can actually have a future.
I'm so thankful that we've just a week or so ago started a 15 minute time of prayer every day from 6:45 to 7. We just call it reaching for more. We are not asking God to do anything other than show up and empower us with his grace and mercy. As I've been just sitting there and meditating and asking for more of God, what I believe is going to happen in my life and I believe what will happen into your life as you do this as well, and in our churches life is that we will begin to experience more of the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is the resurrection and the life. He is not just the resurrection; he is the resurrection and the life. He brings life into dead marriages. He brings life into a couple who choose to embrace an infirmed child rather than abort that child when they see on that little sonogram, that this child might have some kind of infirmity.
He is the resurrection and the life to the spouse who has lost the soul. We think of our friend, Sandy Colthy whose husband, John just recently passed away too young for all of us, way too young for her. Yet Jesus will bring life to her, the resurrection life. In our current culture of death and hatred, the power of the resurrection, I believe is really the message for the hour today. It's really the greatest message we can bring to the world: the fact that there is a resurrected power that will bring life and hope and future to all of us.
Unfortunately, we live in a culture at times, and even a world that actually enshrines death. We write poetry to its glory. We at times hurl the wounded into the defenseless, cruel arms of sacrifice. We see this massive graveyard that thousands and countless and thousands of people are falling into today. I believe that Jesus will come with power to those who welcome him. He will come with power to those who welcome him. Here is something that's really cool about Jesus: he wasn't afraid of a graveyard. I remember you told stories about when you are in high school and Dan Peters. Maybe Dan's watching today on live stream. Dan would take you out, and where would he drive you guys to?
Jacque: He would always go through Sunset cemetery. I was so scared. I would put my head down and scream the whole time, but he would really drive right out and then drive up and then to my house and I was screaming all the way home.
Brian: One of the things that Jesus was not afraid of was cemeteries. The trip he made across the Sea of Galilee one time was specifically to go to a graveyard which where the Demoniac of the Gadarene was dwelling and living. He comes into our grief. He comes into our death. He is well able to lift us up out of our pain. He is well able to lift us up out of our sorrow, our shame. He is able to banish death, basically with a single word. He can banish addictions with a single word. He can banish sins with a single word. That's the resurrecting power of Jesus.
We know the story of Lazarus. We remember the story where he had died and word was sent to Jesus to come and he waited to come and then Lazarus died. But then he came and he raised Lazarus from the dead he spoke and he said, "Lazarus, come forth." Have you ever thought to yourself what it was like when Lazarus went to church that next week? Do you ever think about that? He went to a synagogue course, but you know, I mean— here he walks in and here is a rabbi and some of the other leaders and they are saying to themselves, “Do you think we should let him say something? What should we do here?” I'm sure that he had to have spoken that Saturday in the synagogue. He might have talked about forgiveness, which is obviously an important thing for all of us to talk about, but I have a feeling he said something different than I'm forgiven. I think he said something like this, "Man, I was dead. In fact, I was so dead, I was stinking. I smelled. I was rotten, but power flooded this dead corpse of mine, and once I was dead, but now I'm alive. I was dead. I was dead. Look at me and believe. Look at me and believe on this person called Jesus Christ. I was once dead, but now I live."
This is what we should be saying to others: look at me and live; look at me because the resurrected power of Jesus is in me. It has freed me from my shame. It has freed me from my past. It has freed me from my addictions. It has freed me from all of my sorrows. It has given me life and life more abundantly like Pastor Jeff was talking about today. Look at me and believe because his resurrection is my resurrection. His resurrection is your resurrection. I thought to myself, was the man that they carried into the tomb Lazarus? Was that the same Lazarus that came out of the tomb? Huh? Not at all, not at all.
I think proof of the fact that he wasn't the same guy that they carried in was he was now on the same hit list that Jesus was on because the Pharisees were trying to get rid of him too. Why add Lazarus to the same hit-list that Jesus was on? There is only one reason. It’s because of the resurrected power was in his life, the resurrected power in his life. I don't think Satan really minds those people who feel as though they've been forgiven and maybe who really are forgiven, but I tell you what Satan really isn't opposed to. He is opposed to people who understand the power of the resurrection, because the power of the resurrection is what conquered Satan. It's the power of the resurrection that defeated Satan. It's quite simple. The resurrection virtually is the hatred of hell. The resurrection really is the hatred of hell. The hatred of hell is fixed on those who now live not just as forgiven sinners, but as living proof of the resurrection.
I want to not just live as though I'm forgiven. I'm thankful for that. It's great to be forgiven, isn't it? The shame and bondage, that emotional weight is lifted, and that's so wonderful, but I want something actually more than just something for me. I want something for the world that the world needs, and that's the resurrected power of Jesus Christ that they can look at me and I can say to them, you can be forgiven too, and you can be resurrected too, and you can become free too.
Jacque: And victorious.
Brian: And victorious.
Jacque: And victory.
Brian: Absolutely. I talked about this little illustration a number of years ago. I can't remember how many years ago it was, seven or eight years ago, but I wanted to resurrect it today, a little play on words there. It's interesting that so many things from our youth, our younger years, they come back to us from time to time. The things that Micah and BJ, our two sons, the things of their youth are a lot different than the things of our youth, because their youth was like the eighties and in the early nineties where our youth was like the sixties, in the fifties and sixties. Of course, you know what the sixties were all about, right?
There was like a theater group that became very popular in Great Britain in the middle sixties. It's called Monty Python. Anybody ever hear of it? By the seventies, when I was at the university of Minnesota, by the seventies Monty Python had made the rage over here in America. Of course, I personally think Monty Python had a lot of effect on the writers of Saturday Night Live because with Monty Python and Saturday Night Live, nothing was sacred anymore.
Jacque: He opened the door.
Brian: He opened the doors to all unsacredness, I guess, or whatever. He did this satire on Camelot. It was kind of a spoof on Camelot, but he called it Spamalot. Spam was really big in Britain, believe it or not, even though it's made right here in Minnesota. Spam was really, really big in Britain.
Jacque: Was it about the food?
Brian: Well, I don't know if this was about the food, but he used the term Spamalot anyways. This satire was about this medieval city in Spamalot who was under a pandemic siege. They were under a pandemic, so I thought, well, we should talk about this because of what we've been through the last year. In one of the scenes, there is this guy with a wagon of corpses. Have you ever seen this scene? Anybody remember this scene? Yeah. Okay, right. Okay. So there is this wagon of corpses, and it's being driven by this very board attendant with all these dead bodies on this wagon, and he keeps droning out in a very gruesome chant, "Bring out your dad. Bring out your dad." That's what he keeps saying because this pandemic is going through and all these people are dying.
A man approaches the way again with a corpse over his shoulder. Just about the time he is going to throw this corpse on the wagon, the corpse lifts his head up and he says, "I'm not dead yet." After some debate between the wagon driver and the guy carrying the corpse, the wagon driver decides to knock the guy in the head with a club and kill him, and he says, "Now he is. You can throw him on the cart now." You might wonder, what does this have to do with Easter Sunday?
Jacque: I was just about to ask. I'm sure it's good.
Brian: It's good. Just hang in there. Here are the insights that Monty Python had. He had some great insights as to the direction that our culture was headed, our world was headed, and we have actually begun the nightmare journey into the land of Spamalot where we actually kill our wounded, where we kill the infirmed, where we kill the marginalized in our culture and the near dead are despised. We don't use clubs, of course, like in the Monty Python satire, but we will use judges. We will use laws. We will use judgment. We will use condemnation, even the elderly and the unborn, the partially born the infirmed, the mentally infirmed, those who struggle with addictions, those who have mental illness, none are safe because they are all becoming dehumanized in our culture today.
The land of the Spamalot is a very dangerous place to live unless you have the club, of course, and we quickly toss the barely alive onto the wagon of death. I find that at times odd in the sense that we, the church, who are supposed to be the purveyors and the givers of life. Many, a times who plead for the week like abortion and maybe the elderly in euthanasia, but we are often the very first to toss the sin bound people on the death card. We are often the very first to two to toss those who have addictive issues in their lives. Maybe those who have been born into poverty that didn't have the same opportunities that we did, we judged them, or maybe somebody who came back from fighting a horrific war and saw all sorts of tragedy that God never intended humanity to see, and they have post-traumatic stress. Now they just can't seem to cope and make it through a day. They can't seem to hold down a job and they stand on the street corner with a sign that says "homeless," and we drive past them with our nose in the air and judge them: why don't you just go get a job.
What we've been doing as a church is we've been throwing so many people on this Spamalot cart. We should not only weep for of course, the tiny corpses that are being tossed into the dumpsters behind the abortion mills. We certainly should weep for them, but we should also weep for the crack addicts in our culture today. We should weep for those who are bound up with addictive behaviors, trying to mask the wounds of having been abused themselves, maybe suffering great, horrific mental anguish from rejection.
Instead of tossing them on the Spamalot cart, we should say, "Look at me. I was once dead and you can be alive too." We seem to have boneless energy at times to squabble inside the church over things that make very little difference. We argue over eschatology. We argue over, as one teacher of mine once said, the significance of the seventh thread of the tabernacle curtain and what color it means, and we argue over that. Yet when it comes to true life and death situations with people who truly are living a life of death, we who have the resurrected power in us fail to somehow get that power to them.
We find ourselves almost resistant to being roused to revive those who are dying out in the streets. We have seemingly turned their directive of Jesus completely upside down, and what we've done is we raised the devil and we cast out the dead instead of raising the dead and casting out the devil. I feel like because I'm still a pastor of a church that I've not left the church, I love the church, my life has been in the church. I feel like I can at least address some of these things where we have failed as the church, as Christians. We have failed in some of these things.
The land of Spamalot is not a very safe place for the weak, and the church of Spamalot is not powerful enough to change anybody's life. We don't need the church of Spamalot; we need the church of Jesus Christ. We need the church of Jesus Christ, the power of the resurrection. I pray that we will have a greater demonstration of God's power in our midst as we move forward in life.
I find myself praying— since we've been doing are reaching for more. I find myself praying that there will be a greater manifestation of the power of God in our services and in people's lives for freedom and for deliverance, because just one touch from the king can change everything. It can change everything. Only a resurrection will do if you are dead. Only a resurrection will do it. There is no medicine for a dead person. There is no therapy that you can give someone that's dead. Only a resurrection will change a dead person into a live person, and not just for the nice dead; not just for the nice dead, for the nasty dead as well.
All of us struggle at times with wanting to be around the nasty dead. We can sometimes tolerate being around the nice dead, but the drug addict and power addict, they both need Jesus. The rich thief is no more alive than a poor one. They are both dead. Death in the penthouse is no near life than death in the gutter. It is still death. Death is death and there is no medicine for death. There is no therapy for death. Only the resurrection can fix death. Only the resurrection can. You know what, the dead can't be counseled out of their graves, but they can be resurrected out of their graves.
This poor, staggering death-obsessed culture of ours is longing for a voice, a voice that will bring hope, that will bring hope, real hope, a realistic hope because we can say like Lazarus, I was dead, but I'm alive. I can relate. I can relate. Jesus said an interesting thing when Lazarus was struggling to get out of the grave because he'd been wrapped in grave clothes. He gave a command, "Let him be loose. Let him be loose." Take all that stuff off of him, all that bonded stuff. We don't need more rules and regulations on people. The church has been real good at that, haven't we?
What we need is the power of a relationship with the living Christ that transforms our heart so that the passion of that person now is to serve Jesus Christ out of passionate heart, not an obligation. The resurrection is not just a doctrine, but it's a way of transforming death into life. So often we've treated the resurrection like a doctrine of the church. This is like what we intellectually believe. It's okay to intellectually believe it, but we need to realistically and relationally apply it in our lives.
So what needs resurrecting in your life? What needs resurrecting in my life? I'm asking myself that question. When we encounter the walking dead, and I'm not talking the zombies on a TV program here, when we encounter the walking dead, let's not load them on the death cart and bludgeon them who died too slowly. Let's not do that. We need a paradigm for our culture and our world. We need to say, look at death and speak life to it. We need to look at death and speak life to it. We need to go where there is death and speak life to it. That's what I love about Mother Teresa. She looked death right in the face, in the place where it was like no help available, in the heart of India where poverty was rampant, caste system kept people oppressed, and she went there and all she did was she prayed, and she served. She looked at people who were dying in the streets and she said there is hope in the resurrected Lord.
Jacque: Brian, we have to not just believe in the resurrection; we need to believe in the resurrection. You know what, we can't just believe in the historicity of it and that it happened. We need to live it in our hearts and walk it out.
Brian: That's right. So there is a paradigm. We need a new paradigm for our culture and our world. That paradigm is it. It's a paradigm that will look at every death scenario and say, he is risen in me and he can be risen in you. He can be risen in you. The life that I now live, I freely give to you. He is risen in me, and that life that I have freely been given, I give to you. I'm wondering what it was like for Peter and James when they went to the temple and the crippled, the paraplegic was there and he was begging, and they said, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I thee. In the name of Jesus, stand up and walk," the courage that must have taken, but also the realization that they had something in them that this guy needed. It wasn't just a gold coin to buy one more meal. It was something to give him a purpose and a hope.
I'm not saying we don't give bread because the Book of James talks real clearly about giving bread and not just praying for people, but there is a paradigm shift that needs to happen. It's a model that says he is risen. He is risen in me. He is risen and he is risen in me, and what I have, I will give to you. I truly believe the greatest opportunity for if you want to use the word revival or a spiritual awakening, people coming to know Jesus, whatever term you want to use. I really don't get hung up on that kind of stuff, but the greatest opportunity facing us in the last 2000 years is today.
The greatest opportunity is today because there is more death, there is more hatred. There is more arguing. There is more bickering. There is more killing. There is more all of that stuff on a worldwide scale than ever before in the history of our culture. We need people like you and me to go say to the world, he is risen in me, and I give you what I have. This is the hour to deny fear its victory. This is the hour because you know what? Fear will keep us from doing things. But this is the hour to deny fear its victory, stretch out our hands in loving invitation to those who are dead or almost dead and touch them with the power of the resurrection. That's why Jesus rose from the dead.
It wasn't just an individual victory that he was trying to give us, show us, but it was a corporate victory for all of us, for the church. Every resurrection is God's idea because there is not a death cart or crack house where God, isn't already there summoning people to come. People have become missionaries and they go to other nations and they think God is sending them. No, he is inviting them to join him because he is already there. He is already there waiting. He said, "Would you come and help me here? Would you come to Africa? Would you come to the Middle East? Welcome to South America? I would pray that, would you come to America? I would like to read a couple more scriptures and then we'll be done. The first is in John, 11, 14 and 15. This is the story of Lazarus and Jesus's response.
Jacque: So then he told them, plainly, Lazarus is dead. And for your sake, I am glad I was not there so that you may believe, but let us go to him.
Brian: So Jesus had a strategy. How many of you know that everything Jesus did, there was a reason for it? How many of you know that everything God does, there is a reason for it? We just don't always see it and understand it. What Jesus was saying is I didn't go to Lazarus on purpose because I actually wanted him to die because I wanted to show you what resurrection power really is like and what my heart is for all of mankind in the future, for all those who will die, for all those who will be near death, for all those who have no hope. That's what I wanted to show you, that I am the resurrection and the life. Not I will be; I am the resurrection to life.
And then I want to finish by reading Philippians chapter three, because Paul is writing to the church of Philippi here. He is really talking about his past a little bit, and all the people that wave credentials around: I graduated from this school, or I did this, or I accomplished that, or I prayed with this many people or whatever. Paul is really trying to say, this is not what his focus is. And this is what he says.
Jacque: The very credentials these people are waving around as something special I'm tearing up and throwing out with the trash, along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my master, first-hand. Everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant. I've dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn't want some petty inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ, God's righteousness.
I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering and go all the way with him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it.
Brian: This is Paul's cry. It's his passion: And if there is any way I can get in on the resurrection, I want to do it. That should be our goal, the resurrected power of Jesus Christ. So father, I thank you today that Lord, you have a power beyond what our minds can conceive. Our minds look at circumstances, and so often we think it's hopeless. It's hopeless. They will never change. They will never change. That will never work. But Jesus, you want us to think as resurrected people. When Lazarus was resurrected from the dead and you were having dinner with him and all of the religious leaders were plotting to now kill him as well as kill you, he just sat back and was taking it easy and reclining and eating. He wasn't worried about his future. He knew that he was safe in the arms and hands of a God who has resurrecting power.
So today Jesus, I pray for an enduement of power from on high to come upon all of us today. I pray, Lord for fashioning of new minds in us where we will look at the dead or the almost dead instead of just discarding them away and throwing them on a Spamalot cart, that Jesus, we would look them in the eyes and take them by the hands and say, there is hope because of the resurrection in Jesus Christ. We can look at them and say to them, "I was dead once, but now I'm alive. I was dead once, but now I'm alive."
I thank you that because you live, because you were resurrected and you make that resurrection power available to us, we have hope for tomorrow. We have something to give a lost and dying world, a world that is tumbling out of control. We can't change the world, but we certainly can speak to one, two, three, five, ten people that we know, and they can do the same. Just like this pandemic spread around the world because it started with one person and it has virtually spread around the world in one year, so can your resurrecting power spread around the world in one year.
It can. We just have to believe it. We have to believe it's in us and we have to possess, Lord this within us, this power of your resurrection. Thank you for giving us hope. Thank you for giving us something to believe in, that we can, in a sense, sink our teeth into, not just some fairy tale, but the power of the resurrected Lord for today. You are not only risen; you are risen in me. You are risen in me. Let's say that together. You are risen in me. One more time. You are risen in me. Thank you, Jesus that you are risen in us.
Let's raise our hands together. Now may the Lord bless you, and may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace, and may you walk in the power or the resurrected Lord. This, we pray, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you for being with us today. Thank all of you for watching by live stream. We love you. You are part of this community for so thankful for you as well. God bless you. Have a wonderful Easter with family and friends. God bless you.
Jacque: He has risen!
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 4-4-21. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.