Unleashed

Unleashed

Easter Sunday, April 4, 2021

Brad Bailey

Intro

It’s such a joy to be gathering to celebrate something GREAT...something profound...something powerful. We are gathering around an event that changed the world.

This is the event that divides all of human history. It is this event which made it’s way throughout the world and divided time between BC and AD. Every other date is set by this event. Your birthday is set by this event.

This could make us think that this event must have been like a massive bolt of lightning that struck the earth...but what I want us to realize this morning is that it wasn’t the power that changes the earth...but a power that changed people.

When Jesus was crucified in 33 AD...there were only about 120 devoted followers...120 who really received him... today...2000 years later...there are 2.3 BILLION. There is an estimated 2.3 BILLION people living today who have come to know this Jesus to be their savior. That is 1 in every 3 people on this entire planet. That is more than all he lives who live across all he European nations...... more lives than all who live US... more lives than all who live in China. In fact...it represents more lives than all of Europe.... the United States and China...combined.

Think about that. A few fishermen and outcasts had just watched as the one they had followed was arrested, beaten, mocked, and then crucified. There is no better picture of a group of powerless lives being reminded who rules this world. They were left lost in their failings and fear... afraid to be identified by the religious authorities...and hiding from the forces of the Roman Empire. What could have transformed such fear into a force that changed the world?

One word: The resurrection. Jesus had risen from the dead. [1]

Something happened that they couldn’t have imagined... and now they couldn’t deny. Let’s listen to a portion of what the disciple John, the one closest to Jesus and these events, declares in his Gospel account:

From the Gospel of John...chapter 20, verses 1, and 16-22

1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.

...16 Jesus said to her, "Mary." She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" 18 Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord!" And she told them that he had said these things to her. 19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. 21 Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit.

Here we have ...one of the testimonies of that moment...about the moment that God struck the world... and it sent something outward that would divide human history...and spread out through history to our very lives sitting here today.

It’s vital that we see that state of these lives ..when this moment came.

What we see in this moment was the culmination of all that God had prepared. God had chosen not to come to those who represented the powers of this world...the kings and pharaohs... but rather he formed

mysterious nation of Israel...by calling one nomadic figure named Abraham... and told him he would make his descendants a great nation through whom he would bring his blessing to the whole world...and then he makes him wait to have a child... allows those people to fail to fulfill their calling.

They were a mystery though history. They reveal that God will come show his power as distinct from the powers of this world... as greater than the powers of this world.

And so when God sent one into the world to save it...as he had said he would... and he came to the remote and rudimentary... the poor and powerless. And the very powers he defied....he allowed to bind him...and execute him.

These lives had just experienced the dramatic proof that the powers of this world are in control. The one who had come as the ruler of God’s kingdom ... and defied the powers of this world...had just been silenced by the religious leaders...executed by the Roman Empire.