Death and Burial

Happy Easter. You know, today’s kind of like the Super Bowl of Christianity. It’s the most important day of our faith. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, really, nothing else matters in the faith.

The Bible says we are to be pitied among everyone. So today we are here to remember Easter and to remember the resurrection of Jesus and what it means for all men in all times. And we certainly are going to do that today, but it’s going to take us a little bit to get there. First, I’d like to rewind the story of Jesus about 72 hours before the resurrection, where God in the form of Jesus’s son, is going to die. Today we’re starting with the death of Jesus before we talk about the resurrection of Jesus, because some of the meaning of the resurrection is really missed if we don’t first wrestle with the implications of Jesus’s death.

So this morning in our study, what we’re going to study is God’s death. He’s going to die horribly. And in the wake of his violent and humiliating end, we’re going to have some deciding to do. As a species, we have done a fair bit of talking about the death of God. We have thought about it. There are songs about it.

There’s even famous books about it. And his famous literature or famous book. It’s called The Gay Science. Nietzsche, Frederick Nietzsche writes this. He’s a 19th century thinker.

He proclaims sort of nihilism as this belief that there’s no values that are important. He says, hey, let me just tell you something. There’s nothing good, there’s nothing right, there’s nothing wrong. We can’t define morals. In his book, he writes this.

He says, we have killed God. Meaning in his theology. His theology has killed God. You and I, we are his murderers. Nietzsche’s oft quoted and probably just as often misunderstood quote, became kind of a catchphrase for a lot of people.

It’s a catchphrase. Certainly for some academics. God is dead. It was catchphrase for, like the flower power generation of the 60s and the Goth and punk rock generations of the 70s and of the 80s. And certainly it’s a catchphrase of some of the atheist movements on TikTok and Instagram.

God is dead. Take that, mom. Don’t make me go to Church anymore. God is dead. And running to the defense of our very not dead God, christians have sort of tried to hit back against the secular establishment with things that I believe are cringey. And so, look, if you don’t think they’re cringy, that’s fine. But I get cringed by it. Things like embarrassing titles of movies. How about this?

God’s not Dead. Very, very creative. Or some solid zingers. I found this Church sign on Instagram. It says, this God is dead. Nietzsche. Then it says, God is dad. Jesus. P. S. Nietzsche is dead. God.

This is wildly corny, but Amen. By the way, this is Nietzsche. Look at that mustache. You ever seen anything like that? I looked at this picture and I thought, this is the reason his wife looks so sad.

Look at that. Look at that thing. Oh, my goodness. And just to be clear, I’m not saying there’s no reason to be offended by Nietzsche, but for something both the secular and the Christian world talks a lot about, it seems like we have maybe missed a little bit of the point of the death of God.

Anyway, so that’s where we’re going to go this morning. If you have a Bible, you could turn with me to Matthew, chapter 27. If we’ve never met before, my name is Tony Fernandez, and I get a chance to, along with a group of elders and staff, lead this Church. And I know there are many places you could have gone for Easter. I know probably a lot of people are inviting you to their churches.

And I just want to say if you’re visiting, I just want to say thank you for choosing to be with us today. I’m tempted to apologize because of the subject matter of the sermon to all of you who are visiting. But it is what it is at this point. So we’re just going to let it go. There’s not going to be a lot of humor.

The most humorous thing I got is Nietzsche’s mustache. So that’s it pretty much from here on out, we’re quite serious. And the reason I guess we’re serious is because our congregation takes the Bible really, really seriously. We do that because we believe it’s not only God’s word, but we also believe that the book is good and true. And if obeyed, we believe that it leads to human flourishing. Something that we don’t think can be said about the secular postchristian west.

I don’t necessarily have time to explain all of this, but our culture and in this cultural moment, doesn’t it feel a little bit to you like everything is going wrong? And much of what’s been promised, it was promised as a utopia, it’s actually looking more like a nightmare. And so we at the Church look around and think, hey, there’s a chance to persuade a generation of people that the way of the world is sort of a disaster. And what there could be is a new North Star in the scriptures that have lived on for generations and generations and generations. And so when we get up here, we encourage you and I’ll encourage you again to read the Bible and to learn it and to learn to live it out because we know, I’m sorry, and also because we know that sometimes it’s difficult to understand. We do a fair bit of teaching on Sunday morning. It’s not so much kind of like didactic preaching, but instead we really walk through some scriptures and teach you what it means. And so I’m going to do a fair bit of that today, and then I’m going to help you make some connections to your own life. And so it’s no small feat.

I have something to the tune of 35 minutes to teach you about maybe the most important Christian doctrine in the whole world. Then try to make a connection to Easter, and then try to give you a relevant application. My point is I have a lot to go through, and I’m going to go quickly. Are you ready? Yes.

Okay. Matthew, chapter 27. Here we go. Matthew 27. I guess we’ll get there in just a second.

Matthew is an amazing book. If you haven’t had the opportunity to read it, man, I just encourage you so much. It’s this wonderfully, beautiful literary biography of Jesus, and it reaches its fever pitch in Matthew, chapter 27. We’re going to read starting in verse 45, but in context, it’s the last few hours of Jesus life. In a few moments, God will die.

Jesus has already been mocked, abused, led out to be crucified. It’s quite horrific, but Matthew will spare us all the details. In fact, in Matthew’s Gospel, the crucifixion happens kind of off stage, as if Matthew just cannot even bear to write the details of Jesus death. And so he gets it over very quickly. But for those of you unfamiliar with crucifixion, it’s important to know that crucifixion was anything but quick.

Crucifixion was designed by the Roman government to take a long time. Victims would be suspended by rope or nails through their hands and feet. They would typically asphyxiate slowly over the course of several agonizing days or hours. Unable to lift themselves, to even draw enough breath, the victims would succumb to the comprehensive traumas of things like suffocation or shock, heart attack, or maybe even a really bad crucifixion, they would die of all of those things.

And contrary to most artistic depictions, victims of crucifixions were often stripped totally naked to further their humiliation. One first century philosopher Seneca the Younger wrote this, the victims of crucifixion typically suffered a sharpened stick forced upward through their groin. This would create the maddening struggle, right, of suspending yourself and also just the inevitability that you are going to be lowering yourself onto the stake, which is being impaled into your body. Crucifixion was excruciating.

In fact, that’s where we get the word excruciating from. It comes from the word crucifying. You might wonder why the cruelty? Well, the idea was that if the state would inflict the maximum physical, emotional, psychological trauma and suffering, and they also do it at the public square, that everyone who looks at it will be stricken with fear, and thus it would dissuade a bunch of people from being criminals. Now, all of that is intense, and the physical trauma of the crucifixion is something beyond even explaining.

But what’s truly interesting to Matthew, and I guess by extension to all of us, is that Matthew is creating this literary tension in which the tragedy of Jesus and his execution is contrasted in real time with the glory of his victory. As the reader reads, they’re meant to be horrified by the act of crucifixion and also torn in between this other overlapping reality that it’s actually good news for us. The cross is good news, but also unspeakably bad. And that’s what we’re getting as we read the book of Matthew, especially in his account of the passion of the Christ. The horror and the shame and the ridicule of Jesus dying in agony, then juxtaposed with the awe-inspiring Majesty of God, finally and fully bringing on the things he promised through the prophets and through the Psalms, all to demonstrate what this really means for humanity. This moment, this crucifixion, is kind of like the lynchpin of the story of mankind.

And so as we read it, it’s important that we kind of lean in and learn from it. We’re going to do a fair bit of study of it. And then again, I will connect it to Easter and then make a relevant application. Verse 45. From noon until three in the afternoon, darkness came over the land.

Darkness is a major symbol of the Old Testament, and this passage, especially as a callback to the Book of Amos. In Amos chapter eight, it says this in that day declares the sovereign Lord, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the Earth in broad daylight. This is a fulfillment of this prophecy from Amos in the Old Testament. I will turn your religious festivals into mourning and your singing into weeping. This is a reference to something called the day of the Lord, in which sort of we’re experiencing right here in Matthew, chapter 27.

And the idea is simple. The darkness is representative of God’s anger and his grief. If you get one thing from this symbol of darkness, get this God is angry and God is stricken with grief. Matthew is describing this moment with all this grandiose language to communicate to the reader this idea that something tragically bad is happening in the darkness. We’ll go on.

Verse 46. It was about three in the afternoon. Jesus cried out in a loud voice, Eli Eli lama sabachthani, which means, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? About three in the afternoon is an important little moment for us to stop on.

3:00 p.m is significant because this means that the crucifixion is unfolding concurrently with the Passover festival in Jerusalem. During the Passover, a lamb would be brought out and then slaughtered for the sins of the people. I wish I had time to unpack all the beautiful symbolism of that, but we don’t have time for that. Instead, I just want you to notice this really important thing. 3:00 is the time where the Lamb is brought into the temple.

So Matthew, again weaving all of this imagery into his text, is trying to get our attention and saying, hey, you know how the lamb is being brought out? Remember that? Well, also the Lamb who takes away the sins of the Earth is being hung on the cross. It’s a beautiful moment. And what does he say?

He says, Sorry. He says, Eli, eli lama sabachthani, which means, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus is quoting the first line of Psalm 22 here. And Matthew, for the only time in his biography of Jesus, documents the quotation not in Greek but in Aramaic. Drawing special attention to the sacredness of his words, he shares us the words exactly as Jesus said them.

This is exactly what Jesus said with no translation. Matthew doesn’t talk much about what’s happening physically, but he is very concerned about the things that are happening, kind of theologically or spiritually. And what Jesus is saying on the cross is, hey, you, Lord, are forsaking me. You have turned your back on me. As Jesus hangs on the cross, the reason is because as Jesus hangs on the cross, he is spiritually absorbing the sin of humanity.

And then God abandons him because of the sin he now bears. Again, much can be said about this, but it’s important to notice that the horrors that Jesus is facing are not only spiritual or emotional, but they’re also spiritual. They’re not just physical emotional, but they’re also spiritual. The lesson goes on, or the passage goes on. When some of those standing there heard this, they said, he’s calling Elijah.

As silly as it sounds, the Aramaic word Eli sounds a lot like the word Elijah. So some people are listening and going. When Jesus said Eli, Eli, they’re thinking, oh, he’s calling Elijah, who in some folklore, Jewish folklore would be coming and willing to save people who are in desperate need. So obviously this seizes everybody’s attention. They all turn to him and then they realize very quickly he’s not calling Elijah at all.

Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. She filled it with wine vinegar, put it on the staff and offered it to Jesus to drink. The rest said, now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him. Jesus wasn’t calling Elijah, obviously.

And so the next moment is the death of God in the form of Jesus the Son. And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. At the moment of Jesus’s death, there is this cataclysmic event where God demonstrates both his judgment and also Salvation concurrently. There was in the temple, there was this place called the Holy of Holies.

The Holy of Holies is the place where God’s unique presence was supposed to live. And it was hidden behind this curtain. And so when Jesus dies, the curtain tears in two. It’s a demonstration of judgment. Like God is rebuking the religious system, but it’s also symbolic announcement of Salvation.

How? Well that moment rather that thing that divided man from humanity is now torn in half. And so his presence is unleashed into the world. And then things get really strange. Verse 51. The Earth shook, the rocks split, and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many Holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs and after Jesus resurrection and went into the Holy city and appeared to many people. Man, I could preach a whole sermon series just on this text. It is beautiful and it is deep. But the most important thing is that this is a demonstration that the power of death is being undone by Jesus’s work on the cross.

Hey, why did people break free from their tombs? Well, because Jesus death is undoing all of the pain and the destruction and the trauma of death. Pretty amazing. So in the midst of this incredible succession of event, from darkness to earthquake to curtains tearing, we read the last verse of this account. When the Centurion and those with him were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified and exclaimed, Surely he was the son of God.

The account is over. We’re going to move to the conversation about Easter in just a second, but I want to give you sort of a theological summary of the background of all that we just read. See, what happened with the cross wasn’t just a one moment thing. It was something that had been planned since basically the beginning of time. The wretchedness of the cross, the brutality and the humiliation of it is in many ways your story and mine.

It’s a story that begins when Adam and Eve grabbed that fruit from that tree. And the reason it begins there is because in that moment, the human project runs off the rails. And from that moment on, there is just trauma after trauma after drama after drama. And all of us in our own brokenness we all contribute to the way and the current state of the world, don’t you? The awful state of the world was created by human beings.

The reason there is sickness and death and mourning and destruction and sadness and inequity and problems and all those things is because of human beings. We were supposed to be the image bearers, right? God put us on the planet to make it awesome, but instead we let it into chaos. So at the cause of the pain and the drama and the tragedy, again, are human beings. And God, in his amazing design for the world, wants to make it go away.

So he’s going to make it go away. How does he do it? Well, he has to get rid of us, too. But he didn’t want to do that. And so God the artist, began to introduce symbols and symbolic acts to his people that communicated both the awful toll of their sin, but also his incredible graciousness.

These symbolic acts seem bizarre to the modern mind, but they had a profound message. Throughout the Old Testament, we see things like God allowing an animal to die in the place of a guilty person. Why? Well, it was supposed to be kind of a visceral, almost tactile symbol of the consequence of sin, which is death, but also of God’s mercy, because God wasn’t going to kill the human being. Instead, he allowed something to die in its place.

And what was supposed to happen is that as mankind witnessed the death of these innocent, blameless animals, it was supposed to teach us that, man, sin is destructive and that we are the cause of all of the problems of life and that things are crushed by our wretchedness. And then we were supposed to be changed by that thought. Wow. I don’t want to create this atmosphere of death anymore. I don’t want to do that.

I’m going to be a person of justice. I’m going to be a person who cares for those who don’t have. I’m going to lift people up. And what was supposed to happen is we were supposed to be changed by it. But what happened is that time and time again, we proved that regardless of what God did, we were incapable of goodness.

So the project continued to decompose, and we were waiting for a rescuer. There’s got to be someone who can do this, someone who can take our place, who can fill in the gaps of our failure. And so God, again, the artist and the lover of profound symbols, brings this whole story to an apex with Jesus on the cross. Jesus takes on the mantle of Israel’s long-awaited rescuer. He lives the way humans were supposed to live, by loving and by caring and restoring and healing.

And then, as the Bible says, he gives his life up as a ransom for many. And just like the lamb that was slayed, Jesus is now the blameless lamb who takes away the sins of the world. I’ll try to make a theological summary of this whole cross conversation with this line, and hopefully this helps you. But Jesus displays the destructive power of evil. That’s what happens on the cross, the destructive power of evil.

Evil produces things that look like the cross and absorbs its consequences in order to rescue those who deserve to be destroyed by it. Jesus takes on the consequences that really were ours so that we could be saved from the consequences that are ours, and that by this act we can somehow, someway reclaim our humanity and live the lives we’re always meant to live. That’s the message of the cross. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? It’s also tragic.

And then the next scene of Matthew’s Gospel is the event that’s legitimacy has divided the entire world, because in two days, two days, the first Easter morning will happen where all of this death and all of this dying and all this stuff is immediately changed to celebration as Mary runs over to that tomb and sees that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away and Jesus had raised from the dead. Look, the lessons of the resurrection are more numerous than we could even possibly cover. But principally, the first Easter morning gives us some insight as to how to reclaim our humanity. And here’s what it teaches. Those who die in faith can be raised in glory.

It’s a pretty awesome thought, right? This is the message of Easter. This is why we dress in beautiful colors. This is why we come here with a sense of celebration. This is why we sing going to heaven songs and all those things on Easter morning, because there’s this sense that man, the things that lie dead can actually be raised to life, and that the traumas and the destruction that we have faced that we have done can actually be recovered and renewed and risen in glory.

And what an amazing thought that is. But the reason I didn’t want to start there, even though it’s Easter, is that this whole raised in glory part is exciting and easy to preach. I mean, it’s awesome to be like, guys, whatever is dead in your life can be renewed. And you go Amen. And then you go to lunch and you’re like, I felt really great, but I don’t think many of us are willing to wrestle with this whole idea of you have to die before you can receive glory.

Death might be the most important symbol in all of the Scriptures. And this is why before Jesus is arrest or betrayal of soldiers and the whips and the thorns and the nails in the hands and the feet and all that stuff, Jesus introduces the idea of a sword of death for his disciples. He says this Matthew, chapter Nine, verse 23. Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it. Whoever loses their life will save it. In some hard to totally grasp way, according to Jesus, death is how you really live. If you want to save your life, then you’re going to have to lose it. And for many throughout the centuries, this was a literal death.

Most of the early followers of Jesus were killed for their faith. But for every person in all time, it’s a kind of death through something the Bible calls self-denial. And I’d argue that the teaching of Jesus has such that no teaching of Jesus has such power or has the power to offend as self-denial, especially to our modern sensibilities. What does he say? Hey, if you want to live, you’re going to have to die first.

And if you want to find life as a disciple, you want to really know what it’s like to live. You’re going to have to deny yourself. Take up your cross, take up your cross and there’s that connection, right, between denial of self and this act of death? Yes, that means you take up all the horrors of your cross. Many of us are tempted to view the cross as little more than jewelry or decorative adornment perched atop an old Church building.

For centuries we have so romanticized the cross that I think sometimes it doesn’t even hold the scandal it’s supposed to, because it’s a beautiful thing. It now has no consequence. It’s an icon so familiar that it’s become something akin to beige wallpaper. We memorize this image of Jesus stretched out sort of sad puppy dog eyes, and it’s on jewelry that we wear on our neck. Or it’s printed on the candle, or it’s pixelated in some meme that when we hear, hey, deny yourself and take up your cross, it doesn’t feel like much of an ask. But the cross is horrific. How about this? Instead of imagining Jesus, handsome like on those statues and forelong, imagine his eyes blackened, beaten to a pulp, swollen shut. Don’t imagine Jesus’s marble body stretched out across smooth wood. Instead, imagine him shivering with his frame split in half, convulsing, trying to gather a breath with flies gathering on his wet, exposed tissue.

Don’t imagine Jesus in a beautifully white garment around a satin loin cloth, but naked and utterly humiliated. And also, he’s aware that his mom was put there, made to watch this whole thing. To us, the cross is romantic, pregnant with symbols, and that’s not all bad, but if we look at it too much with rose-colored glasses, we’re going to miss the point. Jesus went through shame, suffering, abandonment, loneliness, fear, and betrayal. And then he turns to his people and says, hey, hey, come follow me, come follow me to the place of death, by the Way of Self-denial and why self-denial?

Well, it’s because remember that whole human project issue? When you look at Adam and Eve and every other person generations, what they had was not a gospel of self-denial, but a gospel of self fulfillment. And what has become clear to me is that the gospel of self fulfillment has left a trail of carnage. Much of our world is a mess because everyone is in it for themselves. Much of our world is a disaster because no one is willing to deny themselves.

The gospel of our culture is all about self fulfillment, and the gospel of social media is narcissistic self-celebration. The gospel of entitlement assures that you deserve every comfort and every security and every entertainment and every Bell and every whistle, and I could just upgrade that and change that. It doesn’t matter who suffers. And if anything gets in trouble, despite or rather, if anything gets you to feeling a little bit of tension or discomfort, you have something for it, despite what it does to your children, despite what it does to your wife, despite what it does to humanity in general. If something disrupts said comfort, we have a way of fighting back against it.

We can watch more screens to numb our brains. We can just get another feed or another opinion. We have another outlet for complaints. I didn’t like that restaurant. How could these people not serve me right away?

This is the way I’m going to live. Even though I have no idea what this server has been through or what that chef had been through. It doesn’t matter. My whole life is about fulfilling myself. More pills, more apps, more porn, more drinks, more girls, more guys.

The pursuit of happiness in the American way. More cars, a bigger house, a nicer boat. We don’t ever live in a place where we deny ourselves. And the problem with all of that is that if you look at the world and all of its mess, it’s because we have followed the gospel of self fulfillment. You might deny yourself in the name of a diet or for your career because that makes you look good or makes you make a little bit more money.

But it’s difficult for us to conceive of a happy, fulfilled life that doesn’t include us getting what we want on our terms.

I think this is the brainwashing of a culture that has no idea how to really live. We’re terrified that if we deny our dreams or soapbox on which to speak, if we can’t get on Facebook and make fun of the other political party, if we can’t sleep with the person of our choosing, then somehow we’re less human and nearly everything in our christian culture screams at us that self denial is not freedom, but it’s actually oppression and that self fulfillment is the only way to really be happy. And yet there Jesus stands, saying, hey, to really live, you must deny yourself and take up your cross. What Jesus called life to the full can never be realized except through the narrowing Crucible of self denial.

Why? And here’s the thing that’s important for you to grapple with. You don’t know how to live. You cannot be trusted to determine right and wrong in your own life. You know how I know? There are things you thought ten years ago were okay, that you know now are not.

You have a sliding morality. All of us do, and you cannot be trusted. You cannot be trusted to determine right and wrong. You’ve tried, and I would almost guarantee you there has been just a lot of suffering. You need something higher than you look.

To say yes to life to the full is also to say no to a whole bunch of other things. To say no to eating however you want or shopping however you want or hyper individualism. No to social media image creation. No to me first, me first, me first. No to careerism.

No to getting ahead at all costs. No to being liked all the time. No to the pursuit of American way or to the American dream no to the idea of sexual expression however you want, because none of those things has ever produced any of the things that it promised it would. You thought that there would be joy at the end of the tunnel if I just did whatever I wanted. And it turned out that that was something more like slavery than it was like freedom.

And Jesus, he says, hey, come follow me and I’ll set you free. But it’s going to require that you die first. And I know you say to me, hey, you don’t understand how much is being asked of me. I’ll have to give up a relationship, an identity, a dream, a career. And I think Jesus turns back and says to you, Just come and die.

But I’d have to wake up earlier, change my habits. I’d have to change the way I’m living. And Jesus says, Come and die, that you might really live. But how much of it will you require of me, God? And I think this is the best part of it all.

Jesus looks at you and says, I want all of it. You know why that’s the best part? Because then you don’t have to pick and choose what’s good. God gets to do it. He gets to be the master and you don’t. He gets to be the Potter and you get to be the clay.

He takes you, he rearranges you, he edits you. And much of you, he just cuts off and throws into the fire. Much of it is simply going to have to die. But the beauty is, once he’s done, you can be reborn and ushered into the life that’s unlike anything the world has ever offered you. Something new and glorious, full of joy and peace and faith in your Father.

It’s God’s Word and God’s Spirit that works on you and changes you and molds you and makes you into the person you were always intended to be. Look, if you don’t like the person you’ve become, then come, follow Jesus. Come and die. If you don’t like the way you’ve treated your family, if you don’t like the way that you interacted with your kids, if you live in a constant state of brokenness where anxiety and depression are just crushing you, then come to the altar of Jesus. If you’re addicted to porn, to drinks, to power, to Dominion, faithfully destroy the things that are ultimately trying to destroy you, you might wonder, how could this be good?

And I’d respond like this, hey, it’s Easter. This is the good news part, right? The creator of the universe became nothing, was crushed, and then laid in a tomb. And then three days later, he rose from the grave. He rose from the grave.

And what that’s supposed to symbolize for you and for me is that if we are willing to take the worst of us and put it to the grave, or take all of us and put it to the grave, God is faithful enough to bring you back to life. If you are willing to die, God is faithful and can bring you back in glory. Let me just tell you this. There are hundreds of stories in this Church.

Men and women who have been reborn by the work of Jesus Christ. People that were addicted, alcoholics, abusers, losers, that’s me. Greedy, unhappy people whose relationships were a disaster, who decided to be willing to die like Jesus. And God took their miserable lives and changed them into people that were just incredible. You should ask some of the members who have been here for 20 or 30 years what Jesus has done with their lives.

And just so we’re clear, and I want to be totally upfront about this, what I’m talking about is for everyone, not just for the first timers here. If you’re a disciple, you embark on this every single day. We crucify ourselves daily. We don’t placate our flesh or entertain our flesh or coddle our desires. Instead, we cultivate and nourish the spirit and everything else in the flesh we just hang to the cross and we leave it there to die. By the way, we also hang to that cross all of the kind of, like, catch phrases that we hear on Instagram. Be true to yourself.

Do whatever your heart says. Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding. I leave it up there to rot, because none of that stuff has produced human benefit. Like deny yourself and take up your cross daily. I leave it up there to rot.

And when I’m tempted to go back to my mildew infested old life, I have to remind myself, remind myself again and again and again to deny myself and find life that’s really life. This is a way of life, not a moment in time. Because we believe that God, more than anything, man, more than anything, he wants us to be full of life and full of joy and full of peace and full of patience. And though it doesn’t feel like that at first, man, when you get through on the other end, it’s what you really find.

Ignatius of Loyola once defined sin this way. Sin is the unwillingness to trust that what God wants is our deepest happiness. And I’ve learned as a disciple, it took me many, many years to learn this, but that I am not fit to carry the weight of my own satisfaction.

I thought I was. I thought I could say, you know, what I really need is this. And then I would do it. But the problem is, I would do it, and then I would really need something else. And then I would do that or get that and then I would really need something else. And then I realized, I’m not fit to do this. I need something greater than me to carry my own satisfaction. And I’m just not willing to continue to try to satiate the profound longing in my heart with things that spoil and fade because they’ve never done it. They’ve never done it.

Instead, I want to be willing to look in my father’s eyes every single day with trust and take his hand and allow him to lead me into life and into a hope and into a future and into goodness, into faith and into joy and to love, even though I know for a fact that I’m first going to be led to the cross. So let me tell you what’s next. And this is a little practice that I want you to do. To learn the practice of self-denial. Here’s a relevant application. Here’s a reflection and a practice. I want you to do it just in your own mind. You have 30 seconds.

What is something I’m doing wrong? Another way of saying the same question is, what’s something in me that needs to die? By the way, at this point, the worship team can come up on stage and you guys can also come and strike the stage if you guys want. What’s something that I’m doing wrong? What’s something that needs to die in me? You know what?

My relationship with my kids is not where it ought to be. My love for my wife is not where it ought to be. I’m addicted to those drinks. I think I’m addicted to consumption. I can’t seem to stop this constant addiction of needing to go to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.

I don’t know how to silence my life, whatever it is. What’s wrong? I can’t stop watching pornography. What’s wrong? Next question you have to ask yourself.

If you think about it, you will find an answer. Is there something I could do to fix it? You know what? Yeah, there is. My career is my whole world.

I could cut back on the hours. I could downsize my house. There are some things I could do. And let me just tell you this. If you spend five minutes on this whole thing, you’re going to hear things you don’t want to hear.

You’re going to hear things you don’t want to hear. And then the next question. And this is the test of self denial. This is the test of self denial. Am I willing to do it?

Because there’s a lot of things you could do. But I would guess there are some things you’re not willing to do. And self denial says, you know what? The things I could do are the things that I will do. Look, if you start practicing this, you can kind of get a glimpse of what self denial is.

And for those of you who are like, I just need a little help with this, because I bet you do. I needed help with this, too. I want to invite you to something that our Church does. We try to help people engage with the practice of self denial by a thing called personal Bible studies, where people engage with you on a one on one level and they look at you and go hey let’s teach you about sin, let’s teach you about repentance, let’s teach you about the things in your life that need to be changed and they engage with you and they ask you, hey what would Jesus do if he were you? And they lead you through the Crucible of self denial so that on the other end you could find life. I want to invite you if you’re willing to do that just to ask somebody, hey would you be willing to study the Bible with me? And maybe someone brought you here I want you if you brought someone here to ask the person who brought that question. Are you willing to study the Bible with me?

And if you feel like no one brought you here and you found us on Google then you can go in the back and ask somebody and someone will help you out if not also there is a class that we do at the end of service called Discover class where it’s not so personal, it’s a group. Maybe that’s a first step for you but I want to encourage you and I want to tell you from the onset you can find life. You can find life. You can be reborn like Jesus in glory, at first you’re willing to die happy Easter. I love you guys.