Hallelujah. I’m so excited to be here to celebrate our Resurrected King together. Amen. Hallelujah. Praise God.

As we pray for the Word, Lord, we know that we serve a Risen King. Hallelujah. We don’t serve a dead king. We don’t serve a God who has passed away, who went to the grave and stayed there. Hallelujah. We serve a risen, risen God. Hallelujah—that You are in heaven, but You are also here with us. You are in the hearts of Your people.

God, I pray that Your spirit would arise today, God, as You arose from the grave, may Your spirit arise. May it conquer all darkness. May it go forward, cut through to the heart, God. And may we be risen as You rose, God. We bless Your Holy Word this day. In Your name we pray, amen. Hallelujah.

What an exciting day to be with God on this risen Sunday—this Sunday, the day of the sun, the day of light, the day when God arose from the grave and came and spoke light unto His people. Amen.

I was thinking about the sermon and praying, and God was speaking to me about the resurrection. “The resurrection,” He was saying, “is not something for the future.” People think the resurrection is going to be something when they close their eyes for the last time—”oh God, now your resurrection is going to apply to me”—but the truth is, the resurrection is for today. The resurrection is for today.

And when I thought about how best to describe what the resurrection looks like inside of a man, I thought about sleeping. I think people sleep differently. My wife, if the neighbor has the TV on in their living room—not even loud—it keeps her up. She’s very light. For me, an airplane could go down in front of the house and I probably wouldn’t wake up. There’s only like certain things—like my wife’s alarm for her sugar, or Joshua if he makes a noise—that wakes me up. But other than that, I’m pretty much a zombie when I’m sleeping and I’m out until the morning. And I know different people sleep different ways.

But you know when you wake up when you’re in that deep sleep, and you first wake up and you kind of have to reorient yourself to the room? You wake up for the first time and you start asking yourselves questions like, “Where am I? Why am I here? Why did I wake up? Can I afford to go back to sleep? Is anything wrong? What time is it?” And you start to have to get your brain to go from standby mode into, all right, it’s time to move mode, right? And it happens kind of suddenly, and it takes a minute to get yourself kind of geared up and to reorient yourself and see what’s going on around you.

I think about what the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ—when we talk about the resurrection—what it does inside of a man. You see, as Jesus Christ rose from the grave, you were meant to rise as well. You were not meant to be staying in your slumber. You were not meant to be staying asleep. God is supposed to go in. That gospel is supposed to go inside of your heart, and when it hits, it’s like that first moment you wake up. All of a sudden you’re awake and you’re looking around and you’re saying, “Whoa, wait a second—I didn’t know all this sin was surrounding me. I didn’t know the ways of the world, but I see it now.”

Disaster could be striking around you when you’re in slumber and you don’t even see it. Your marriage could be falling apart. We look at the kids up here, and Pastor Janeth talked about the innocence of our children—we know the world is trying to steal the innocence of our children. Marriages falling apart. Your homes are falling apart. Your finances are falling apart. Hurts from your past are eroding your conscience. All these disasters are happening right in front of your face, but if we’re asleep, we don’t even see it.

That’s the power of the gospel. The power of the gospel was meant to come and wake you up—to wake you up, to pull you out of your slumber, to pull you out of your death, to pull you out of the grave—that you might wake up and see what is happening around you.

Let me deliver some good news to you today: Jesus Christ has risen from the grave, and because He awoke, you too are called to awake. He can resurrect your soul on this day. He can wake you up. The resurrection is not a message for death, the physical death—it is a resurrection message for today that you would be resurrected, that you would be woken up, that God would do something in your soul, that the gospel message would take a hold of your soul and wake you up, and that as He died on the cross, that sinful nature would die on the cross, and you would be risen as a new spiritual creation. Hallelujah.

"Jesus Christ has risen from the grave, and because He awoke, you too are called to awake."

So if you have your Bibles, I’m going to be reading from Luke 9, and I’ll be jumping around a little bit. It’ll be up here behind me. The first thing I’m going to talk about today is how the resurrection makes you see. It opens up your eyes. The scales fall off. You wake up and all of a sudden you are able to see—just like those first moments when you wake up from that deep sleep. Your eyes open up when God’s salvation comes inside. You begin to look around and see things around you.

All of a sudden you’re able to see your state. All of a sudden you wake up and see the sin that is in this world surrounding you. You see your need for a savior. You look and say, “God, I am so far from you.” You realize that God’s mercy is the fact that you no longer have to stay blind but that your eyes can be opened up.

You know, we walk around sometimes with our eyes closed and almost in ignorance to say, I don’t see it so it’s not there. But the truth is we live in a spiritual world. I asked my youth group kids this week, I said, “Do you realize that there is a war going on in your schools for your souls, for your innocence? There is a war going on, but when God opens up your eyes, when He wakes you out of your slumber, you can’t help but cry out for a savior. You can’t help but cry out, ‘Hosanna.’ You can’t help but cry out, ‘God, I need you today.’ It makes you realize you can’t stand up on your own anymore.”

You know, there’s this lie in the world, and it’s a big one, and you know what it says? It says, you got it. You got it. You got your life. Everything—you can do it. You can take a handle on it. You got it. But when your eyes are open you see the world, and you look at your past, and you look at generational sin and the pressures of this world, and you look at all of these mounting things that surround you, and all of a sudden you know what it does? It opens up your eyes and makes you cry out for a savior.

That’s how you know that the resurrection has come upon you—when you look at your life and say, “God, I see it. I don’t have it. I need a savior today.”

And Peter, he identifies—when we look in Luke right before this verse we’re about to get into—Jesus asked Peter, “Peter, who do you say I am?” And he says, “Well, you’re the Christ, which means the anointed one of God.” You see, Peter’s eyes were opened up in that minute, and what did Jesus say to him? “It’s not by flesh and blood that this has been revealed to you, but by my Father.” And he goes on right after that to prophesy on what is to come.

And that’s where we’ll pick it up in verse 21. And it said: “‘He strictly warned and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, ‘The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and be raised the third day.’ Then he said to them all, ‘If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.’”

Let’s remember right now, Jesus hadn’t been crucified yet. They didn’t know anything about the cross. To them, the cross was a bad thing. It was a sign of death. So He looks and He says, look, I’m going to be rejected. I’m going to have to suffer and then I’m going to die. And then He asked him a question—”do you want to go next?” Who would say yes to that? Who would say, yeah, me, I’m next. I’ll get in line there. That doesn’t sound like a good thing, yet He gives instructions on what it means to follow Him.

This week, I started reading a really cool book. It was written in 1669. It was by William Penn, and it was called “No Cross, No Crown.” And it has some really interesting stuff in there, and it talked about the importance of what it means to pick up your cross and walk daily. It’s about denying yourself and the sin of this world and being able to follow Jesus Christ, being able to see the sin, yet not be subject to the sin. And I was reading—I was really encouraged.

We need to understand what the cross is today. When we look up at that cross, we look at it today as a sign of hope and a sign of our salvation, but back then, that’s not what it was. The cross is an exact representation of our sin. It’s death. It’s penalty. It’s consequence. It’s punishment. It’s guilt.

When you look up at that cross, I want you to see your sin up on the side of that cross. I want you to look up and see that it be a representation of your sin, because that’s what it was. It was like the hangman’s noose or the axe. When you looked at it, it was a sign of punishment, a sign of guilt, a sign of penalty. Yet whose body hung across it? Who covered that cross? His body covered it. His body covered our sins. His blood went and covered the cross.

You see, Him on the cross is a representation of what it means for our sins to be covered. If we don’t have a cross, there can be no crown. And we like to skip over that. We like to say, “I’ll take the crown, but not the cross.” But we need to understand today that they are two sides of the same coin. To receive His salvation today means that He has opened up your eyes to what the cross means.

John 3:14 says, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

Let’s remember that story. Moses was up on the mountain. He put the staff up there. The people were getting bit by snakes. The venom was running through their veins. And he looked up and said, “Look up at this staff and you will be healed.” And they looked up and they were healed. It is the same thing today. We need to look up at that cross and see that Jesus Christ died for our sins. Your eyes must be opened today, for that is the only way to bring healing.

We need to know we cannot receive a crown without the cross. It was the same for Jesus, and it certainly is the same for us. We cannot be in the kingdom of God, counted among the sons and daughters of God, being princes and princesses in the Kingdom of God, unless we have first looked at the cross and seen our sin, yet know that Jesus Christ walked that long road for us. He went and died on the cross so that we might be free. Our eyes have to be opened. Our eyes have to be opened to the cross, and seeing what it means.

Knowing that—looking around—that everything that surrounds us, the temptations, the trials, the war that is raging—it not only opens up your eyes, but you know the power of the resurrection? It gives you the power to say “no” to ungodliness. Not only opening up your eyes, not only that you would see it, but that you would be able to say “no”. “No” for your families. “No” for your children. “No” for their futures. “No” for your homes. “No,” because there was a God that died on the cross for your sins.

That’s what it means to pick up your cross and walk with it daily. It’s not that the cross disappears, but that you’re no longer subject to the sin that comes along with it. You can now walk and you can stand because you are no longer shackled to the sin. That’s what it means to serve a resurrected God. That’s why we are here today.

A Christian must deny the flesh and say no to ungodliness and walk in the wonderful freedom offered by the gospel.

You know, when our eyes are opened, we’re not only just seeing the sin, but there is a hope that comes along with it—the cross and the crown, two sides of the same coin. We see our sin and we have to cry out for a savior and we have to put it down and look to the cross, but we also have to see the hope that is found in the gospel: the fact that you will be seated in eternity with the Lord Jesus Christ, the fact that you’re living a life that is being prospered while being freed from every demonic power in this world, hope for your children that stand up here that they would live free and maintain their innocence, hope for your marriages that they would flourish in the love of God, seeing God’s glory and being counted among the sons and daughters of a mighty king—and in our last moments, when we close our eyes for the last time, knowing that we are going to open them up in paradise to be with our King.

You see, when your eyes see the cross, when your eyes see your sin, it makes you fall down and call out to a Savior, but it opens you up to the hope that is found in the gospel. And that keeps your eyes. Amen. That keeps your eyes on the prize and you remain diligent in your walk.

There can be no more slumber inside of the church. There can be no more slumber inside of the church. Jesus Christ did not stay in the grave, yet he was resurrected. He rose from that grave and appeared out in the world and began to speak life.

Let’s not forget that the Great Commission—it was delivered after he was resurrected—and he went to the people and he said “Go therefore into all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and teaching them to obey.” You see, He gave that command after He was resurrected, and God is calling to us to get out of the graves, to stop being those ones that remain blind, walking in the world, in the grave, yet be resurrected, no longer bound to sin, and going out into the world, opening up the eyes of the blind.

The resurrected ones are those who can see, those who are denying the flesh, and living in the freedom of God. Are we the ones that have gone out? Are we the ones that are bringing others as far as we have been brought?

I said to my youth group kids, I said, “Listen, is there enough fruit on your tree to bring life out into the world? Do you have enough fruit on your tree to bring life into the world? That is God’s mercy upon us, is that our eyes would be open.” God’s sight is a mercy upon a blind world.

Today I pray that the church’s slumber would come to an end. Today I pray that the gospel would take hold of your heart, that you would look up on the cross and see your need for a savior and see that His body died for our sins. He went to the cross and covered our sins. His blood covered the cross that we could be free, that we would no longer remain blind, that our eyes would be opened, that you could live free to serve Him, and that God would bless you with this amazing gospel out into the world to free the captives, to bring sight to the sightless. Amen. Amen.

So we know, first, His gospel, the resurrection, it opens up your eyes. Secondly, His gospel makes you feel. It makes you feel. It brings about a sensitivity to God and His Word.

Two weeks ago was one of the most hard—probably the most difficult—day, weeks, but especially one day that I think I’ve ever had at my job, just because of the types of calls that I was dealing with. You know, there’s a lot of death that comes hand in hand in the calls that I deal with, but there was one day that it was really kind of overwhelming.

And I got done and I went and I called my wife and I was like, “Jess, it’s crazy how much sin has a hold—how much death has a hold over this world.” And I had to park in a parking lot for a minute because I was kind of overwhelmed, and I had to start to pray. I said, “Lord, there’s so much death in this world, whether it be physical or emotional or spiritual.”

And I remembered in that moment Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus when He started to weep, because He saw how much of a stranglehold death had over this world. And I began to pray, and I began to ask God for a word, and I said, “God, you know, this is just so nuts. I need You right now, Lord.” He began to speak to me and I began to cry out to Him, and I said, “God, we serve a Risen God. We serve a resurrected God.” This is what it means to serve a Risen God: it means we’re not subject to death like the rest of the world. It means that we’re not bound to death like the rest of the world.

I look around and all that I see is despair and death, and I look and say, “God, as much death and despair is in the world, Your church is meant to be a lighthouse. Your church is meant to be filled with life.” Today, Jesus Christ wants to separate you from the world, from all the ways, the stranglehold that death has over this world, and He wants to bring you into a kingdom of life. He wants to wake us up. He wants to bring about, break up your stony heart and give you a heart of flesh. There is no slumber. There is no death in the church of God. As much death as there is in the world, there should be even more life inside of the church of God. Amen.

So we look at our verse. It’s Matthew 27. It says: “On the next day, which followed the Day of Preparation,” so this is the day after Jesus died, “the chief priests and Pharisees gathered together to Pilate, saying, ‘Sir, we remember, while he was still alive, how that deceiver said, “After three days I will rise.” Therefore, command the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night and steal him away and say that he has risen from the dead, so that the last deception will be worse than the first.’

‘Pilate said to them, “You have a guard. Go your way. Make it as secure as you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone and setting the guard.’”

And I was really blown away when I started reading this verse. We try and look at everything that the world tries to do to try to stop the resurrection from happening. They put Him into a stone cave. No one’s digging through a stone cave. They didn’t have jackhammers back then. They rolled a heavy stone in front of the door so that no one could enter. They put the Roman seal on the stone that had the full authority of the government behind it so that if it was broken, it came with the penalty of death. And they set a guard in front of the tomb so that no one would dare approach. The extreme lengths the world would go to to ensure that the resurrection does not happen.

But praise God, we serve a God whom death could not hold down, that even death, He could not be held down. Amen. And God is calling us to be made alive, to be resurrected this day as well, inside of your hearts.

God has to replace our heart of stone with a heart of flesh. He has to take out all the old. Look, the truth is that our past affects us today. All the things that we’ve been through, all the heartache that we’ve been to, all the times that we have denied God, it has made us have a heavy, stone-like heart. But God today—praise God—we don’t have to remain subject to that death. Praise God that the past doesn’t matter when we serve a Risen God. Praise God that He wants to come and resurrect you this day.

We need to understand when I talk about lack of feeling what I’m talking about. We live in a world that has lost the ability to feel. We live in a world where right and wrong has lost all meaning. Every sin is excused and every perpetrator is displayed as a victim instead of the guilty. Definitions of words are being completely changed to fit agendas. Concepts like conviction and compassion are no longer accepted because it’s all about us, and conviction or compassion would be too hard for somebody to deal with. We live in a world where our consciousnesses have been seared, which only separates us further from a God who speaks to the heart, and our children are constantly indoctrinated into an anti-Christ culture that teaches them that they should accept what everyone else thinks is right and wrong and instead to ignore every other influence that is in their life. That is the world that we live in.

The truth is, the more and more sin, the more and more further we move away from God—especially in this country—the harder and harder the hearts of men become. When I say the ability to feel, what am I talking about? The truth is that since the beginning of creation, God has instilled law and order inside of the hearts of men. Since the beginning of time, even the Ten Commandments were formalized just to formalize what we already knew inside of our hearts: we should not lie, we should not steal, we should not murder, we should not cheat.

When we lose our ability to feel, when our hearts become hard, we lose all sensitivity to God and His laws, and in doing so, every sin becomes excusable and every act justifiable because it no longer becomes about the heart—it becomes about the mind. Our hearts become hard, so instead, we rationalize with our mind.

You see, people of God, we need a resurrection today. We need a resurrection today. So how do we receive this resurrection? If I could sum it up in one word, it would be this: surrender. Surrender to the fact that you need a Savior. Surrender and bow a knee to His authority over your life.

Remember, the truth is that you can’t have a crown without a cross. You can’t skip over the cross to get to the crown. They are two sides of the same coin. The cross is just as important as the resurrection, for our sins need to die with Jesus on the cross so that we can be resurrected as a spiritual being—one that knows God and can connect with God and knows Him and can speak to Him in the depths of His heart and knows His way, His law, and His workings, and can move in obedience to God, to our Lord.

"You can’t have a crown without a cross. You can’t skip over the cross to get to the crown."

Matthew Henry had a really interesting quote. You can put it up. He said, “The body cannot be happy if the soul be miserable in the other world. But the soul may be happy, though the body is greatly afflicted and oppressed in this world. We must never be ashamed of Christ and His gospel.”

What’s that saying? There’s this thing where if our souls are messed up, we can never be happy in the world. It doesn’t matter how much money, how many things, how many boats you have. But there’s this crazy thing when you’re resurrected. There’s this crazy thing in the gospel that’s not found in the world. You see, when God is right in your soul, when you look to Him and you are able to know Him inside the depths of your soul, when your stony heart has been replaced with a heart of flesh, when you gain the ability to be resurrected and feel, it doesn’t matter what’s going on with the body. Though the body might be greatly afflicted, it does not matter.

And this is a conundrum that baffles the world because the people of God say, “It doesn’t matter what’s going on in this world—it is well, it is well, it is well with my soul.” When we are resurrected, our souls are firmly planted in God’s kingdom. We are connected to Him. And no matter what happens in this world, we are with Him.

You know, I thought it was amazing when we read that verse. Don’t forget that the disciples forgot all about what Jesus had said about resurrecting, right? They forgot all about it. They didn’t remember. But yet here are these people with evil inside of their hearts, and what are they saying? “Oh, we remember what that guy said. We got to stop this. We remember He said that He was going to resurrect—not in my house. That’s not going to happen. We’ve got to put an end to this right now.”

The truth is that it was the same then as it is today. The world we live in is a world that is geared to stop you from surrendering to God. As they rolled the stone in front of the grave, as they set the guard and stamped the seal of death over top of that grave, they did it all to stop the resurrection. Today, the enemy is trying to stop your surrender and resurrection as well.

There are these intangible fears that we hear that try to stop you from surrendering. They sound like this: you don’t need that. You’re fine the way you are. You got this. You’ll no longer be your own man. You have a handle on your life. It’s okay. You give up your identity if you surrender. Your children will be too heavily influenced, even though the world is trying to influence them every single day.

The enemy, just like Jesus, wants to stop your resurrection. They put a seal over your life of death, saying if you touch it, you will surely die. But let me tell you the glorious message of a Risen King on this Easter morning: His resurrection means that you can be resurrected—not one day when you die, but today—that today might be your day of resurrection.

"His resurrection means that you can be resurrected—not one day when you die, but today…"

The truth is we need a resurrection today. The day to start eternity is not in the last days of our lives. The day to start eternity is now. And if you wait—the truth is, if you wait until that last day when you close your eyes and you think that I’ll just accept it, or maybe when I close my eyes I’ll wake up and it will be all good and just put it off till then—you are going to be sorely disappointed.

Today is the day of resurrection. Today is the day of salvation. True life is found—only found—in him. We need to know that.

I looked at the news this week and apparently Elon Musk and stuff are sending astronauts and scientists to space—the first time they’re sending all private people up into space aboard the International Space Station. And they found that in space you age faster and they don’t know why. You age faster. So they’re going up there to do experiments to try to reverse engineer it to try to get us—if we can figure out why—maybe we can reverse it and then we live longer here on earth.

The truth is that people are all looking for all sorts of ways to extend this physical life, whether it be serums or vitamins or surgeries—all these experiments trying to delay death. But let me tell you today that the only true life can be found in the Lord Jesus Christ in His resurrection. Amen.

His resurrection today means that you can be resurrected as ones who no longer have a stony heart that can’t connect to God, whose past is haunting them, who they just can’t break through. No—God wants to resurrect you today. It doesn’t matter what you’ve been through. It doesn’t matter where you have been. God can replace your heart this day, take away your stony heart, and give you a heart that knows His laws, a heart that His laws are written upon—upon a heart of flesh this day. God wants to resurrect His people. Amen.

So we know His resurrection makes you see. His resurrection makes you feel. And finally, His resurrection makes you hear. It opens up your ears so that you might hear.

Do you guys ever have pointless conversations with yourself where you kind of get in arguments? So the other day I’m driving around at work and I’m you know what? I started thinking about which senses I’d want to lose. If I had to lose a sense which would it be? So I'm thinking and I’d probably want to lose my smell first. And then like, I’m going through that and I got to the top of the list and do I want to lose my sight or my hearing? And I started kind of listing the pros and cons. And at that point – “wow, I’m wasting a ton of time and I probably should be working.” And I stopped. So I can’t tell you exactly what my answer would be, but let me tell you this: in the Kingdom of God, hearing is one of the most important aspects of being a powerful Christian. Hearing God’s word is so important. It is necessary. You cannot begin, even begin your Christian walk until you have the ability to hear God’s word.

"You cannot begin, even begin your Christian walk until you have the ability to hear God’s word."

So let’s go back into our verse. I’m going to be going to Luke 24. We’ve read this, I think this is going to be the third time today. But we look at Luke 24. At this point, the women went to the grave and they find that the stone had been rolled away and the tomb was empty. And that’s where we pick up the verse:

“While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood before them. In their fright, the women bowed down with their faces to the ground. But the men said to them, ‘why do you look for the living among the dead? He’s not here. He has risen. Remember how he told you while he was still with you in Galilee. The Son of Man must be delivered to the hands of sinners, be crucified, and on the third day be risen again.’ ”

That was our first verse we talked about right in the first point. He spoke to them. He said it right to them. It couldn’t have been more clear. If you guys heard the cross, you guys would think you’d remember it. But at that point, they still weren’t remembering, and all of a sudden, the Word clicked.

We need a life planted inside of us. We need our old bodies—the sinful body—put to death. We need all of those old things, those old men, to be nailed to the cross as Jesus was nailed to the cross, and we need to be resurrected so that you will be able to hear God’s Word.

You see, there’s a difference between listening to God’s Word and hearing God’s Word. We get a lot of people that listen to God’s Word. A lot of people listen to what He said. In fact, the Pharisees listened to Jesus talk and at least they remembered it—and what happened when they tried to put a stop to it—but they were listening. They weren’t hearing.

The disciples, they listened to Jesus talk about His resurrection, but they didn’t hear it because it never hit their hearts. When God resurrects you, when God brings you out of that grave, all of a sudden the Word is no longer just a word, but it is life inside of you. All of a sudden the words that leave His mouth go past just in one ear, out the other, and it goes down and begins to hit the depths of your soul and it imparts life. God’s Word should be doing that for us today.

When you hear words like “when you pass through the waters, I will be with you; when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you; when you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze”—those words are meant to go down and breathe life inside of us: courage. You go out in boldness. You go out in God’s love. The Word starts to take root inside of your heart, and it begins to produce. You begin to connect the dots between the Word of your God and your own life, and it begins to breed faith inside of His people.

God begins to reveal the plans He has for your life and for your family, as we talked about today. The Word begins to cut deep inside of your soul and brings conviction. It causes you to examine your life so you can put to death the deeds of darkness so that you can walk in more light.

Truly, our whole walk with Christ begins when we are able to hear. Hear the Word of the Lord today. Hear that He offers you salvation, for He is a resurrected God. Hear what He wants to do in your life and in your heart. Hear the plans that He has for you.

In the mighty name of the Lord Jesus, open up your ears. Let His resurrection take root inside of your heart. Let your souls be resurrected so that you might hear this gospel message, so that it might go deep inside of your soul and that it might begin to produce life. I pray life upon you today. I pray life upon you today.

We need to stop the busyness of this world. I know we’re all busy, right? We have sports practices, homework, work, your boss is on your back, you have bills to pay, there’s so much yard work to do—and in all those moments of busyness we tend to lose the word that God is trying to give us. We get to lose how important it is to receive a word from God.

Let me tell you, in the craziest times of my life, like Pastor Janeth was talking about up here, in those times—in the times when my wife’s sugar is low, and Joshua, he’s sick, and things are going wrong with him, and my phone’s ringing, and my work is calling me, and I got a shift to do—in those times, those are the times that I need to stop and say, “God, I need a word from You right now. I need a word from You right now.”

That week I talked about with you at work, I was totally overwhelmed by the amount of death and despair I was seeing, and all of it I encountered in one day. I was overwhelmed, and I began to pray and I began to call out to God and say, “God, I need a word from You right now.” You know the word He gave me was? “I am the God who has conquered death.” That word changed my whole situation. Amen. That word in that moment all of a sudden set all the things straight.

All of a sudden I wasn’t overwhelmed anymore. You know why? Because God—I serve a God who has conquered death. There’s death in the world. There’s despair in the world. That’s what the world is. But I am not of that world. I am of the world of God. I am of the Kingdom of God. And all things were set straight and all truth came in, and all of a sudden I can see things, and I saw my God who was risen to heaven. I saw Him seated at the right hand of God, and I said, “God, you know what? There is death and despair in this world, but I don’t serve the world. I serve You. I serve Your kingdom.” Amen.

On this Easter Sunday, hear the Word of the Lord. We serve a Risen God. That’s what it means to serve a Risen God. We’re not subject to the death of this world. We’re not subject to the despair of this world. That’s why Easter and the Resurrection Sunday is so important—because I look around this world and I see everything that everyone is shackled to, yet we serve a Risen God.

We are not of the world. We are not subject to the ways of the world. We are serving God. We have surrendered ourselves. The laws of this world do not apply to me. The laws of God apply to me. Amen.

God wants to unplug your ears today—unplug your ears—resurrect you so that you might hear His Word this day. We serve a Risen God, a God that death could not hold. In fact, He holds the keys to death in His hand. He is an all-powerful, all-knowing, death-conquering Lord Jesus Christ, and through Him we are conquerors. Amen. We are conquerors in the name of the Lord Jesus.

So in the craziness of our day, in the busyness of our schedule, in the times that we feel overwhelmed by the world, we need to take a moment and receive a word from God. Let’s remember what the Word of God does. By His Word He said, “Let there be light and there was light.” By His Word the foundations of the earth were set. By His Word, He breathed life into man and man had life. By His decrees He tells the oceans to stop and they stop right where they are.

His Word is all powerful, and all of creation—when He speaks a word—all of creation runs to obey and bend a knee to the word that God speaks. So let me ask you a question: “what could His Word not accomplish in your life? What could His Word not do in your life?” All we need is a word from God this day.

Have you heard the Word of God in your life? Do you hear God calling your name out today? He went to death with you on His mind. He suffered in silence and allowed His own creation to punish Him for sins that He did not commit. He died on the cross for your sins even before you knew His name. He went down to Hades and proclaimed freedom to the captives. Three days later He resurrected, showing that death had no hold upon Him.

Today He calls your name, and He calls you to recognize your need for a savior, to put down ownership over your own life and to submit yourself to His rule, to accept His sacrifice for your sins and make Him Lord over your life, and that you might be resurrected as He was resurrected, and today might be the start of your eternity. The question is, can you hear the Word of the Lord today?

Hearing the word of the Lord is the keys to success. It is the keys to success in this world. All things are held in Him. You want to know how to raise your children? Hear the Word of the Lord and obey. You want to know how to run your finances? Hear the Word of the Lord and obey. You worried about what direction your life is going to take in the future? Hear the Word of the Lord and obey.

I’ll leave you guys with this verse today. It’s Ephesians 3:20. “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine according to his power that is in work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations…” through your sons and your daughters and your grandchildren in the church, “...through all generations forever and ever.” Amen. Hallelujah.

We serve a Living God. We serve a God who died on the cross and was resurrected. Today I pray that we would follow the same example that Jesus Christ laid out for us. He called us to die. He called us to die to the sinful nature. He called us to die to the ways of the world.

You see, as long as we’re still alive, we’re still subject to all those things of the world. If you have not died, you are still subject to everything that goes on in this world. Yet God has called you to put to death, to allow your sins to die on that cross, to accept His sacrifice, that His body covered your sins, that His blood paid the price for your sins.

So you can’t have a crown without a cross. God is calling us to be resurrected, to be put to death the ways of the old, to be resurrected as spiritual men and women who are not subject to the ways of the world, but are subject to the laws of God, that you might be resurrected—ones who can see God and His goodness, ones who can feel His presence and know Him, and ones who can hear the Word of the Lord and obey.