The Church of the Resurrected Christ

John chapter 20, please. If you'll turn there, I'm going to speak to you about the church of the resurrected Christ. John chapter 20.

While you're turning there, let's pray together. Now, Father, I thank you with all my heart for the truth of your word. God, speak to us today.

Speak to every heart, Lord. Do something in us, Lord, that moves us forward in you. Help us to understand the great mysteries in the word of God concerning your death and your resurrection and your ascension to the right hand of all authority and all power.

I ask you today, Lord, to quicken my physical body. I ask you to help me, Lord, and anoint me. Give me strength.

And Father, I thank you for this with everything within me. Holy Spirit, touch me. Give me words, Lord, that will reach every heart and every situation.

And Father, we thank you for it and bless you for it in Jesus' name. John chapter 20, beginning of verse 11, the church of the resurrected Christ. Let's start at verse 10.

Then the disciples went away again unto their own home. But Mary stood without at the sepulcher, that means at the grave, weeping. And as she wept, she stooped down and looked into the sepulcher and saw two angels in white sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.

And they said to her, Woman, why weepest thou? She said to them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. And when she had thus said, she turned herself back and saw Jesus standing and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus said unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou? In other words, why are you crying and who are you looking for? She, supposing him to be the gardener, said to him, Sir, if you've borne him hence, if you've taken him away, tell me where you've laid him and I will, I will take him away.

Jesus said unto her, Mary. She turned herself and said to him, Rabboni, which is to say, Master. Jesus said unto her, Touch me not, for I'm not yet ascended to my father.

But go to my brethren and say unto them, I ascend to my father and to your father and to my God and to your God. Now this particular woman that we're saying about actually today, Mary Magdalene, is a woman who had seemingly lost sight of the Savior that she had so once deeply loved. It seems like as a nation, perhaps we've done that as well.

There was, at least in great measure, a love for Jesus Christ in this society, but we let it slip from our fingers. And we come to church on Easter morning, just in a similar way that Mary went to the tomb, looking for something of God, some evidence of where he is and how he could be found. How can I get close to him again after having lost him? I knew him once.

I walked with him, but I let it slip through my fingers, through my own ignorance and foolishness. And how incredible it must have been when she heard his voice again after what must have seemed like a long, long, dark night of the soul. Have you ever known that feeling, anybody here? When it just seems that you can't hear him.

It seems like he's a hundred million miles away. Your prayers seem to be bouncing off the ceiling. You don't know why it is, but somehow this life that you once had, this relationship seems to be gone and it's such a long, long, dark time.

And suddenly again, you begin to hear his voice. And that's my only prayer for you today, for everybody who's here, that you'd hear his voice in a new way, calling your name again. We can't help but wonder about how many theories she had to endure about the ways of God in the absence of what she had once known to be the actual presence of God.

Many, many, many in our generation understand how she felt for many people are weary of the powerless speech that tries every week to explain away this curious absence of Christ in their midst. People are tired. They're weary.

They're weary in the house of God. They're tired of coming into the church of Jesus Christ and listening to three rhyming words with the fill in the blank stories in the middle, jokes in a time of crisis. They're tired of it, folks.

And I hope to God you're tired of it too. It's not an hour for playing in the presence of the Lord. It's not an hour for hearing theories about God.

We have to hear the voice of God again in this generation. Now, Mary was a desperate seeker. She was unwilling to give up her search even after others seemed content to go home.

Verse 10, where we started reading, it says, then the disciples went away again to their own home. And this is the dilemma, of course, of today that churches will be filled across the country. People will come in just as the disciples did into the graveyard of that time.

They will one more time theoretically agree that Christ has been raised from the dead because they're told that he is, and then they'll go home. But there are others who say in their heart, it's just not enough. She stood out at this place where seemingly had died, and she was weeping, and she was looking, and she was searching.

And that's got to be the cry of our hearts now at this time. It's not enough to casually attend church anymore. It's not enough, folks, to just theoretically agree with a series of facts in scripture and then just go home.

And some people think it is enough. I agree that Christ was crucified and raised from the dead. And I go to church periodically to prove that I agree.

I go down, and I view it. I agree with it, and I go home. But Mary was a seeker of God.

And Jeremiah, the prophet said in chapter 29 and verse 13, you shall seek me, and you shall find me. When you search for me with all your heart, when you want me for who I am, when you want me for a present reality in your life, you'll find me. And then came the moment when Jesus spoke her name.

There's a moment to every seeker of God, no matter what happened to you or how it fell through your fingers, that he speaks your name as only the one who loves you and made you can. There's nobody anywhere that can speak your name like God. He knew you, the scripture says, before you were formed in your mother's womb.

He allowed you to be conceived, irrespective of the circumstances surrounding that and how you came into the world. You were not a fluke of nature. God allowed you to be created.

He knew you. The psalmist David said, he knew all the characteristics of my life and how I was going to be formed, and they were all written down even before I was conceived in my mother's womb. Incredible thought.

And there's something about the voice of God calling you and calling me as only he can. It's not like any other voice you've ever heard. You had a mother perhaps or an aunt or somebody that called you when you're out in the hallway playing or you're out in the yard.

Those voices, as much as they're clothed in a certain form of love, there's nothing that can compare to the voice of God the first time you hear him call your name. There's such power in that voice. There's such magnitude.

There's such hope. There's such invitation into places that we cannot naturally go. There's such a warmth.

There's such a tenderness. There's such a sense of divine purpose. There's such a sense of completeness when God calls your name.

I wonder how long it's been since you've heard that. I remember the time when I first heard him. That's not an audible voice, but there's an inner sense that God is speaking to you, an inner sense that God is calling you.

And I remember when I first became aware of that, just as a young man, I remember I cried for three days. It seemed like every prison door was opened. The wounds of the past were being healed.

Blindness concerning the future was beginning to, the fog about my future was beginning to dissipate. Hope and help had come into my life. I couldn't do anything but cry because I'd never heard a voice like that ever before in my life, calling me.

Out of death and into life. Out of darkness and into light. Out of powerlessness and into something that God had for me.

Out of captivity and into freedom. Out of confusion, into knowledge. Out of cowardice and into the bravery that God alone can put into a person's heart.

Out of selfishness and into being given for others. Out of an insecurity into the security of God in Jesus Christ. There's no voice anywhere that can call you like the voice of God.

And he doesn't call us when we have it all together. He doesn't call us because we haven't made mistakes. He doesn't call us because we've done it all right.

He calls us in our weakness. He calls us in our failure. He calls us in our lack of strength.

He calls us when we've let him slip through our fingers. And just like Mary, when he calls we lay hold of him. And many commentators believe that Mary just simply fell at his feet.

I don't know how they arrived at the conclusion. Perhaps more it was just the culture of the day. I really don't know.

But assuming that they are correct, many, many today lay hold of him and say, I will simply stay here. I will never leave you. I will never let you go again.

And they fall at his feet. And how strange it must have seemed when Jesus essentially said to her, let me go. Don't hold me here because there's more I have for you.

What I want to give you is not complete here. You've got to let me go. It's not sufficient just to hold to my feet and declare yourself to be a failure.

And you can think about Mary for a moment. I don't know exactly what happened when Christ was arrested. I do know she's most likely at the cross.

But perhaps she felt a sense of guilt because when you were being demeaned, when you were there, I wasn't there for you. When my voice should have counted, I cowered. I drew down the volume as it as the Pharisees and religious leaders and even perhaps some of the Romans were calling out for your death, violent death.

Maybe I didn't, maybe my voice wasn't as loud as it should be. And in every one of us, there's this inherent sense of unworthiness. And sometimes we're just content to hear his voice and to lay hold of his feet.

But he was about to ascend into heaven to sit at the right hand of God. He was about to go into a place of full rest, complete victory and absolute authority. And what he had won on that cross in full measure was going to be given to those who by faith make the choice to allow him to be the God of their lives.

He said, I ascend into heaven to my father and to your father and my God and your God. In other words, Christ was saying, I'm going to sit down in all authority and everything that is mine of the father is going to become yours. You can call him my God.

You can call him your, my father in the same measure that I do. You can call God, your very, very own. Listen to what Paul, the apostle said, the eyes of your understanding, being enlightened that you may know what is the hope of his calling, the riches of his glory and his inheritance in the saints.

And what is exceeding greatness of his power to us were to believe according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him in his own right hand in the heavenly places. He's far above all principality, power, might, dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. And he has put all things under his feet and gave him to be the head of the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that fills all in all.

There are many, many true seekers of Christ that lay hold of him, but failed to move beyond a personal sense of failure and unworthiness. Like the prodigal son, when he came home, they lay hold of Jesus. They start to hear him again and they develop this inner sense of I'm not worthy to be called your son anymore.

I'm not worthy to be called your daughter for I once knew you. I once walked with you, but I let slip through my fingers, this precious relationship. And I became in a sense, an ambassador that didn't clearly represent you among men.

And so I'm no longer worthy to be called your son or to be called your daughter. And you know, it can even have an appearance of holiness, but it isn't holy because we don't have the right to call unclean that which Christ has cleansed. Some of the greatest preachers that have ever touched pulpits in the world in all of time, I've been men and women who have been inherently aware of their own weakness and their own failure.

And so they put their soapbox away. They don't talk down to people anymore. They don't parachute out of heaven to give everybody a divine lecture on how to live the Christian life because they themselves are struggling and know what it is to need the strength of God and the cleansing of God every day, all day, every week, all week.

Folks, we're all a mess. We've all failed. Settle it.

I don't care how big your Bible is. If God judged us by our thoughts, there's nobody here that would stand. We have all sinned inherently in ourselves and fallen short of the glory of God.

But in Christ, we have this one opportunity. Paul said, this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things that are before me, I press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. In other words, I'm not going to stay here.

I'm not going to let this thing about unworthiness become the mantra of my life. If you have cleansed me, I'm not going to call myself common or unclean any longer. I'm going to lift my hands to you, God.

I'm going to let you put upon me that robe of cleanness that you bought for me on the cross on Calvary. I'm going to open my heart to the Holy Spirit. I'm going to accept the resurrected life of Christ within me.

And God Almighty, not by my strength, but by yours, you're going to live your life through me and glorify your own name. I just simply offer you to you as the weakest vessel in your entire kingdom. And I say, God, be glorified through this vessel.

Take me, Lord, and use me for your glory. Many today, like Mary, they feel intensely the pain, as she felt, of how her nation had tragically handled Jesus. And we're living in a generation that has tragically handled the truth of Jesus Christ, casually played with the things of God, and now is casting the living Christ, as they see it, at least out of every facet of society, as they had done in Mary's day.

And you can't help but feel the pain of that. You can't help but feel the tragedy of that, the foolishness of it. You can't help but have this inner sense of foreboding.

God, why don't we understand that everybody through history who has done this has paid a terrible price for it? Why can't we understand? Why don't we learn from history? What is it about us as a people that we fail to see that the greatness that this nation came to in just a short period of time owes its origin in great measure to the acknowledgement of the Word of God and of the person of Jesus Christ? That the culture that we have was founded on the Word of God, but yet we've strayed and we've cast Christ out of our society. And how Mary must have felt the pain of this moment, the shame of it all. And how she must have felt helpless against the whirlpool of anti-God sentiment that seemed to be dragging herself and the whole of society down with it.

It would be easy to lay hold of Jesus with these two things in the heart, this deep sense of personal unworthiness and a deeper sense of national or corporate unworthiness. God, I wasn't there in the fullness when you needed me. My voice wasn't raised at the moment that it could have made a difference.

And yet not only I, but you came to your own and your own received you not. And look how we have treated you as a people. Look what we have done.

Why don't we ever learn? What is it about humankind that we can't learn from history? We can't look back and see what has happened to other nations who have done the same thing that we're doing. But Jesus says today to her and to you, let go of the past and don't be bound by the present. And move forward towards the mercy of God, the victory of the cross, and God's always an eternal provision for a new tomorrow.

You and I have got to let go of our own sense of unworthiness. It's time to put it away. If God declares us clean, that is sufficient for me.

I'm going forward with that declaration. Whether I was a good witness or a bad one for Christ, I'm letting it go because I'm hearing his voice again. And if I was not his, he wouldn't call me.

I wouldn't be able to hear his voice, but because I hear it, I know I belong to him. And I have no right to call unclean that which is cleansed. And I'm not going to be swallowed by the depravity of this day.

I'm not going to be swallowed by this present hopelessness. No, I have a living eternal Christ who sits at the right hand of God. And as I read it, he is king over the nations.

The hearts of kings are in his hand. He moves everything any way he wants to move it. All he needed in Ezekiel's day to avert judgment on the nation was one person who would stand in the gap.

He said to Ezekiel, I sought for a man to stand in the gap that I should not have to judge the nation and I found none. In the day of Sodom and Gomorrah, if there had been 10 righteous people in the city, he would have spared it. There would have been a time for people to turn from their sin and turn to God.

No, I believe that Christ sits at the right hand of all authority. He is not the historical Christ in my heart. He is the risen Christ in my heart who lives within me.

From day to day and moment to moment and line by line, step by step, I am being changed by the spirit of God into that which God would have me to be to honor his name in my generation. I have had some successes and failures. I am aware as you are of the perilousness of the moment in which we're now living, but I'm bound by neither because my Savior sits at the throne of victory and he also lives inside of me.

He has a church on the earth. He has a body of people. They are not a natural people, they're a supernatural people.

It probably wasn't long after this, laying hold of him in the garden, I'm sure that Mary found herself among those in the upper room because she was the one sent to the disciples of Christ to tell them that he had been raised from the dead. Going into that upper room as we are now at a moment of history, not enough strength, no list of greatness, no tremendous accomplishments, an inner sense that we have failed and fallen short of the glory of God and because of it our nation is plummeting into darkness, into spiritual darkness. No, there was no superheroes there, there was no mighty preachers.

Peter, with all his boasting, would have had his head down at the table, but they were told to go there because Christ is alive and they went into that upper room and as they began to pray, God's Holy Spirit came down and as Jesus had told them through John, he said in John chapter 16, verses 13 to 16, when the Spirit of truth has come, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear that he will speak and he will show you things to come, for he will glorify me and he shall receive of mine and shall show it to you. And all things that the Father has are mine, therefore I said that he will take what is mine and show it to you.

A little while you'll not see me and again a little while you'll see me again because I go to my Father. And in that day, he said, you shall ask me nothing. Truly I say to you, whatsoever you shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you.

Up to this point you've asked for nothing in my name. Ask and you shall receive that your joy might be full. We're living in a day folks where we need another Pentecost.

We need to have the courage to go into that upper room again. There must be prayer meetings in our churches. And please pray for us because we're going to be on national radio very shortly calling this nation back to prayer again.

Pray for us. And in that upper room just as happened 2,000 years ago, Jesus said the Holy Spirit will show you the victory that I won and he will make it plain to you and whatever you ask for, for the purposes of God it shall be yours. If you need courage, if you need power, if you need direction, if you need freedom, if you need victory, if you need love, if you need whatever you need to be a living witness of Christ on the earth.

If you need faith to pray, ask for it. If you need wisdom, ask for wisdom. Whatever you need for this hour in this battle that we're now living in.

Jesus said I'll give it to you because you are the church of the risen Christ. You are not the the tomb surveyors. You're the church of the living Christ.

And I say in Christ's name we have to rise up again one more time in this hour and be the church of the living Christ. We must let go of the past. You must stop being ground down by things that were or were not done for you.

You must not live in this perpetual state of needing healing of the past when Jesus said the anointing that God placed upon me will open your prison doors. It will heal your wounded hearts and give you sight for the future. You and I must move beyond the limitations of the present.

Whatever your boundaries are, whatever the devil himself has put around you, whatever you've learned to believe about yourself, whatever words were spoken over your life and somehow those words have defined you and have become the boundaries of your life in Christ. I want to encourage you this morning let them go. Let go the limitations of the present.

Let go the failures of the past. Let all of it go and go to God and say show me what is mine. Show me Lord, show me.

It's not only, see he said to Mary, I didn't just call your name so you could hold to my feet for the rest of your days. I called your name because I'm going to go to my father and I'm going to send to you an understanding of what I've won for you, of the life that can be yours, of a future, a hope, a strength that can only come from God. The cry of my heart and the cry of your heart has got to be show me what is mine.

I don't know about you but I'll be 60 in September and I'm crying that more than I ever have before. Show me in the next 10-15 years what is mine. Show me what you want me to do.

Give me what I need to accomplish it. Give me faith. Give me power.

Help me to understand that I'm part of a victorious church. Do that within me which is necessary to bring glory to your name in my generation. Break me out of the box oh God.

The box that I put myself in from time to time, the box of my own thinking, the box of other people's words, the box of others expectations. Just God Almighty break me out of this box and do in me what you want to do. Help me Lord Jesus to lay hold of you again in this generation and to come up out of that place of prayer like they did one time in the upper room.

Victorious, empowered, sovereignly touched by God so much so that there are no more arguments. So much so that this generation in Mary's day that had just crucified Christ suddenly were looking at a supernatural church saying, what must we do to have that kind of a relationship with God? Hallelujah. Help me Lord.

Would you agree with me that to go forward we need God? Yes. We did everything that Christ bought for us on that cross. We have to have it.

Or we will just be one more of a myriad of powerless voices. As a matter of fact our voices will have less power than the enemies of God. But I happen to believe that Satan himself in his arrogance is about to wake up the church of Jesus Christ.

It's a supernatural church, supernaturally gifted, supernaturally set free, supernaturally cleansed, supernaturally empowered, supernaturally given the life of Christ and the giftings of God to move forward in that which only God can do within us. It's an awesome thing to be able to stand here this morning and look back over the years and God could have done this. I remember going to an altar years and years and years ago.

I was only in my 20s and I heard it. I don't even remember the message. And I remember going to the altar and I remember saying, God, I have less than the little boy's bag lunch that you used to feed 5,000.

I don't even have, I don't even have five loaves and three fishes or two fishes. I don't even have that much. I was so struggling with my own struggles.

So aware of my own unworthiness, so aware of my own limitations. Never had preached a sermon. And as far as I was concerned, never was going to, but yet I heard his voice calling me.

I got out of my chair and I went to an altar. I got on my knees and I remember crying and saying, Lord, I don't have much, but I believe that you can multiply the little that I have. So I give it to you.

And what a journey it's been. What an incredible journey it's been throughout these years. And so what I speak to you this morning is not some pie in the sky theory that I found to preach on Easter morning.

I've lived this, I've walked this, and it's created such a thirst in me and such a faith for tomorrow that I believe that even though I'm pushing 60, the best years of my life are just ahead. And I encourage you to let go of whatever it is that keeps you in poverty spiritually, whatever it is that keeps you behind closed doors, whatever it is that is shutting your mouth to the truth of God, whatever it is that keeps you living under this sense of hopelessness. Let it go.

If you have nothing but breath, offer that to God. Because he takes nothing and makes something out of it. That's who he is.

That's the God that he is. The testimony of the church of the risen Christ is not to be we figured out how to do this and we got 17 steps into a resurrected church. No, no, the testimony of the risen church of the risen Christ is I came to God with nothing.

I had no boast. I had no strength. I had no power.

I could not heal myself and I didn't see a future. But with the little I had, I brought it to God. And he took it and he multiplied it and took me out of that little box of my past and brought me into something of his life where I couldn't be quiet anymore.

I had to tell somebody what God had done in me. That is the church of the risen Christ. That's what God has to do again in our generation.

There's no more time for any powerless religion. No more time for theories about a Christ. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no more of this.

We're going into the upper room again. We're going to pray. We're going to lay hold of God.

We're going to believe God to change this generation. Our children are not going to hell in our streets because Christ is still alive. Christ still sits on the throne.

Christ is coming again. The skeptics and scoffers and godless are not going to win this day. There is still a church in America.

Hallelujah to the lamb of God. Thank you Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you almighty God.

You can come out here Friday night over Sunday night actually over in the annex. You see the 75 brand new teenagers who've come to Christ in the cross and the Swiss blade. Hungry for truth.

Hungry for God. Hungry for a future. No sir, no sir.

Hallelujah. Christ is alive. Christ is alive.

Christ is alive in this generation. That's why my message next Sunday morning is going to be not so fast Goliath, not so fast. Christ is alive.

Christ is alive and there will be a people who for the honor and glory of God will get up from where they are and move to where they need to be in God. Because the Lord is speaking to your heart this morning. I'm going to ask you in the annex in Roxbury here in the main sanctuary and those that are listening at home.

Get up out of your seat and say these words. I'm letting go. I'm just letting go of my past.

I'm letting go of the limitations that I have felt on my life and that have boxed me into a life of powerlessness where I have so little to say about the kingdom of God and I'm going to that place where Jesus said I can call his father my father and his God my God in the same measure that he sits at the right hand with all power. I will let his life be the source of my strength and be all of my future. We will be a victorious church folks.

We will be a victorious church in our generation. Could you please stand and for those who want to respond and say Lord I'm going with you. I'm leaving the past behind.

I want everything that God has for my life. I'm going to ask you to come to the front of the sanctuary in the annex. You can step between the screens in Roxbury as well and for those who are at home maybe you just want to kneel in your living room with your family round about your table.

You'll be able to pray with us in just a moment. Let's take a moment to worship if we can. Lord we hear you.

God these people wouldn't be at the altar today if we didn't hear you calling us not in our strength but in our weakness. You're not calling us Lord in our own personal victories but in our struggles and failures because we're your own. We're your bride fraternity.

The church that you have cleansed and called your own and so Lord God we ask you in Jesus name. Father show us things to come in each of our lives Lord. What you have before us that we've not seen.

What you long to do that we've not even thought of. What you're able to accomplish what which we've not understood. God open our hearts to it today and take us through these doors that seem impossible to us but are possible with God.

Don't let our lives be marginalized. Don't let our voices be silent in this hour that we're living in for your church is a resurrected church. It's a supernatural church.

God we thank you Lord for calling us. Thank you Lord. We'll let go of the past.

We'll let go of the hopelessness of our present and we will embrace what you have for us in the future and Lord we thank you God. Thank you. There will be no boundaries, no limitations, no doors Lord that you have opened can be closed.

Give us the courage to go through. Give us the power Lord to agree with you and when we see what you have for our lives you told us come and ask for what you need and it will be given to you and so Lord I thank you God. Not only the calling but the giftings are with it oh God.

Give us the grace to go forward. Give us the grace Lord to stand. Give us the grace to fight again.

Give us the grace to pray again. Give us the grace to believe again. Give us the grace to escape oh God our own frailties and limitations and use us for your glory Lord.

Every one of us oh God. Use us for your glory. Lord thank you for answering this prayer.

Thank you Lord for hearing the cry of our heart. Thank you God for not turning us away. We bless you and praise you in the mighty name of Jesus.

Hallelujah. Let's give him a shout of praise in this house. Hallelujah.

Glory to God. Glory to God. Glory to God.

Glory to God. One more time. Give him a shout of glory.

Thank God. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord.

Thank you Lord. Thank you Jesus. Glory to God.

What a day. What a day. What a day awaits us.

What a day awaits us. What a day is just ahead. Just ahead of us.

What a day. Glory. Glory to the name of Jesus.