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Pastor Josh: the book of Revelation
verse one, the revelation of Jesus

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Christ, which God gave him to show to
his servants the things that must soon.

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take place he made it known by
sending his angel to servant John.

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Who bore witness to the word of God and
to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even

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to all that he saw, blesses the one who
reads aloud the words of this prophecy.

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And blessed are those who hear
and who keep what is written

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in it for the time is near.

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So we're blessed just reading this
out loud, just FYI, John, to the

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seven churches that are in Asia,
graced you in peace from him.

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Who is and who was, and who is to come.

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And from the seven spirits here before is
thrown and from Jesus Christ, the faithful

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witness, the firstborn of the dead and
the ruler of the kings on earth, to him

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who loves us and has freed us from our
sins by his blood, and made us a kingdom

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priest to his God and Father, to him
be glory and dominion forever and ever.

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Amen.

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Behold, he is coming with the cloud.

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And every eye will see him.

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Even those who pierced him and
all tribes of the earth will

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wail on account of him even so.

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Amen.

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I am the alpha and the
omega says the Lord God.

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Who is and who was, and who is to come.

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The Almighty.

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Verse nine I, John, your brother and
partner in the tribulation and the

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kingdom and the patient endurance
that are in Jesus was on the island

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called Patmos, on account of the word
of God and the testimony of Jesus.

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I was in the spirit on the Lord's day
and I heard behind me a loud voice

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like a trumpet saying, write what you
see in a book and send it to the seven

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churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and
Perma, and to thi Tyra and to Sardis

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and to Philadelphia and tole de.

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Then I turned to see the
voice that was speaking to me.

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And on turning I saw
seven golden lampstand.

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And in the midst of the lamp
stands, one like the son of man

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clothed with a long robe and with
a golden sash around his chest.

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The hairs of his head were
white, like wool, like snow.

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His eyes were like a flame of fire.

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His feet were like burnished, bronze,
refined in the furnace, and his voice

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was like the roar of many waters.

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And his right hand, he held seven
stars and from his mouth came a sharp

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two-edged sword, and his face was like
the sun shining in its full strength.

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When I saw him, I fell at his feet
as though dead, but he laid his

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right hand on me saying, fear not.

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I am the first and the
last and the living one.

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I died.

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And behold, I am alive forevermore,
and I have the keys of death and Hades.

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This is the word of the Lord, right?

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Father, we thank you
so much for this text.

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We thank you so much for what we
celebrate, that we're not celebrating

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a good moral teacher who gave us good
things to do, to be better, in our

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city and to our neighbors, and to be
more moral, to become a better person.

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But that Lord, you conquered
Satan sin and death.

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You conquered the grape itself.

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Our great foe, a foe that we still
man, our knees knock and we tremble

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before, as we even get close to it.

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Our hearts melt within us like wax.

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And yet you went into the grave and you
came out on the other side conquering

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that death, holding those keys.

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I pray, God, just for such a boldness
in the resurrection this morning.

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Such a confidence, such a living
hope in us that Lord, you have

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already defanged to death, that
you've already taken the steam.

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I pray that you'd make us aware, Lord,
that if that great foe has been conquered,

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then these little foes are no problem.

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Lord, we pray that you bless the other
churches that gather in the city.

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Thank you that your church is beautiful
and diverse, that it speaks different

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languages, that it is different cultures,
but we all gather around you, king Jesus.

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So be honored in this time.

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We love you and praise you in Jesus' name.

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Amen.

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When you become a Christian,
you're like, wow, if God before

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us, who could be against us?

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And when you first start out, you're
kind of thinking on small terms, right?

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You're thinking of the little
things that he helps you out with.

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I remember driving and my Toyota.

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I called it the blue bullet.

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It was a hatchback that was ugly as sin.

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It did, you know, zero to
60 in about 20 minutes.

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it took forever.

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but I was driving down to Southern
California, and, uh, my wife was with me.

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I borrowed a surfboard,
strapped to the top of it,

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which made it look even goofier.

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you know, this blue little tanklike
thing, uh, just cruising down the highway.

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Well, I was going to pass a semi-truck
and, you know, started rocking back and

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forth to get the speed up in the vehicle,
just to get it to move a little faster.

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And then I could see off in the distance
in my rear view mirror, this black SUV

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tinted window slammed to the ground.

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'cause that was cool.

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Big tires, I could see 'em from back there
and it's weaving in and out of traffic.

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And I was like, oh no.

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And I put the, floored
it as hard as I could.

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This car is not gonna cut
in front of me, no way.

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Not today.

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I'm going to pass.

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You know, I'm gonna pass this semi.

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I'm in the fast lane.

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It's a two lane highway, and he's cutting.

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He's getting closer and
closer and closer and closer.

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Finally, he cuts right in front of me.

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I mean, I had to slam on my brakes.

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And as soon as I did, there was this
giant gust of wind that ripped this huge

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metal sign off the side of the semi.

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And this metal sign flew.

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And because he cut in front of me, it
slammed into the hood of the black SUV,

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hit the top and flew right over me.

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Perfectly safe.

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And my response was.

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Our God isn't an awesome God.

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He reigns with that, kind of a
thing when you think about that.

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I'm like, yes, God is for me.

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You know, he's for my road rage, right?

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He is for me.

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But Easter resurrection Sunday is a time
to remember that God's power was brought

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to bear on something that actually matters
to every human being on the planet.

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That every human being will face.

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robert Bull , said,
death comes for us all.

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Even at our birth.

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Even at our birth death does,
but stand aside a little.

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Someone else said death is the last enemy.

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Once we got past it, I think
everything will be all right.

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I think of my first brushes with death.

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You're immature.

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You're growing up.

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You're a kid, you don't know what to,
you know, think about this is all new.

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I remember going, my baseball coach
died and going to his funerals.

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The first funeral I remember ever
going to, and me and my friend laughed

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the whole time and we were actually
asked to leave, kicked outta the

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funeral because we just didn't get it.

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it was goofy.

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Everybody was acting weird and strange.

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I remember my mom's estranged
dad coming to live with us in the

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last couple months of his life.

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I remember he passed away as my mom
was trying to take him to the hospital.

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I remember how torn apart
my mom was for this man.

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We hardly knew.

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Just etched into my soul, talking to
people who had tried to self delete and

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their struggle going up to the line.

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Uh, my wife's grandpa passing
away when we just started dating.

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You know, not understanding how
devastating that was, but I began circling

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the drain, getting closer to death.

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Gravitational force.

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Then two things, shook me to my core.

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That changed me forever.

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There was a girl that, I knew
and, uh, was friends with.

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she was friends with my wife when
she was in high school, and they

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went to the same youth group.

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Well, she ended up becoming a
firefighter and she died in a

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fire, that she was fighting.

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And so we went to her funeral and it
was a funeral, like every other funeral

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that I'd been to, except as everybody
started to slowly file out of the room.

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This girl's mom fell on her knees
and started screaming at the top of

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her lungs, clawing at the coffin,
shouting, no, no, my girl, no.

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And they had to grab her because she
was trying to get into the coffin.

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And I just was like, oh,
this is something else.

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This is something.

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That I've been immature to, that
my eyes had been blinded to.

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I think it's someone who's the most
courageous person I know who's talks

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about death, like it's that he mucks it,

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but as a very real illness
suddenly outta nowhere caused

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him to be rushed to the hospital.

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This could be the end.

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This courageous, powerful man of God even
melted and trembled in the face of that

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dark doorway, and it shook me to my core

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death.

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I wanna.

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Not just to have warm, fuzzy
feelings about the empty tomb

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in Christ's victory over death.

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I don't want us to think,
yeah, maybe there's something

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that comes after this life.

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But I want to present to you on this
Easter morning, an anchor of hope

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for your so, so solid, so weighty, a
hope with its own gravitational pole.

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This John who wrote Revelation
writes in one John five 13.

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I write these things to you who believe in
the name of the son of God, that you may

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know that you have eternal life, that you
might know it, that you don't doubt that

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you know, that you know, that you know.

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A hope not just for the day of
the valley of shadow of death, but

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a hope that affects us now today
and changes everything around us.

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That's the promise and
the hope of the gospel.

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In verse John three, two to three.

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It says, beloved, we are God's
children now, and what we will be

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has not yet appear, but we know that
what he appears, we shall be like him

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because we shall see him as he is.

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And everyone who thus hopes in him
purifies himself as he is pure amazing.

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hope nowadays is like, I hope so.

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Are you gonna go to the movie?

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I hope that means no, you're not.

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That means you're gonna do something else.

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You're gonna watch Jeopardy, right?

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We just hired Marcos.

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He's running Smurf.

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Uh, it's this tubing that's plastic.

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It's, and it's not a fun job, you know?

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But I could give two guys if I told
Hudson, you guys are gonna run Smurf

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together, Hudson, I'm gonna pay you $50
at the end of the day to run this Smurf.

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And I pull Marcos aside and I say, Marcos,
I'm gonna give you a million dollars.

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Same job, different attitudes.

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Hudson's over there, you know,
having a hard time, you know, the

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drills slipping and everything.

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And, and 50 bucks is this.

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Mark is just like whistling a tune.

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He's just like, oh, thinking
about what I'm gonna get.

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You know, the car or, you know why?

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Because a confident expectation of
future good shapes you in the present.

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That is what biblical hope is.

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A confident expectation of future good.

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That shapes us.

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Now, this morning we'll look at
from the passage, uh, the revelation

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and the keys and little bit of the
hope, the revelation, verse nine.

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Then I turn to see the voice
that was speaking to me.

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And on turning I saw seven golden lamps.

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And so there's a voice
that's speaking revelation.

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What is revelation?

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I want two things to point out briefly.

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It is a letter written at a certain
time to a certain people dealing

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with a certain set of circumstances.

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We like to read ourselves into the story,
uh, as if we are the main audience.

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This is written to, it's written
for us, but it's not written to us.

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So often it gets co-opted by bad theology.

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I grew up watching these movies where
woo, it'll scare you a thief in the night.

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You remember that low budget Texas
Chainsaw Massacre ripoff where

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people are like getting beheaded by
guillotines, because they like had a

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cross necklace and you're like, what
the heck is this movie I'm watching?

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It was insane.

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I was, I'm scarred by that a little bit.

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but it's written for us, but not
written to us, and it so often

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gets co-opted by bad theology.

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I can confidently say the locusts
are not Apache helicopters written

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in about 96 AD in the midst of
three decades of insane persecution.

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Guys three decades of the most insane
persecution the church has ever faced.

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some of the emperors would dip
Christians in tar and light them on

229
00:13:36,804 --> 00:13:39,654
fire to use them as human torches.

230
00:13:40,494 --> 00:13:44,184
They would drill their brain
in the top and they would pour

231
00:13:44,364 --> 00:13:46,734
more molten metal into it.

232
00:13:47,124 --> 00:13:52,734
Kids would be thrown to lions
to be torn apart for spectacle.

233
00:13:53,334 --> 00:13:56,154
This was the everyday existence.

234
00:13:56,154 --> 00:14:00,534
In those 30 years, Christians would be
quartered, where they'd be pulled apart

235
00:14:00,534 --> 00:14:03,474
by horses going in opposite directions.

236
00:14:04,644 --> 00:14:08,034
One of the worst years was in
70 ad Jerusalem was destroyed.

237
00:14:08,034 --> 00:14:16,014
And in the same year, Paul, Peter and
Timothy were all executed publicly in 92.

238
00:14:16,884 --> 00:14:19,678
Ad DEMA, Dian Made everyone in Rome.

239
00:14:20,068 --> 00:14:23,668
Travel to his temple and throw
some incense in the fire and

240
00:14:23,668 --> 00:14:25,408
declare that Caesar is Lord.

241
00:14:25,948 --> 00:14:28,888
That's why the early church is
always saying Jesus is Lord.

242
00:14:28,978 --> 00:14:31,378
And that if you did not say
Caesar is Lord, you could

243
00:14:31,378 --> 00:14:32,968
not buy, you could not sell.

244
00:14:34,408 --> 00:14:37,498
If any Christian had any charge
against them at all, they all, uh,

245
00:14:37,498 --> 00:14:40,738
all they had to do to clear the
charges was to say, Caesar as Lord.

246
00:14:40,738 --> 00:14:44,278
And if they didn't, they suffered the
full extent of Rome's violent punishment.

247
00:14:44,278 --> 00:14:47,758
30 years of being brutalized
in ways we can't even imagine.

248
00:14:48,088 --> 00:14:50,758
I mean, we freak out 'cause
we wore masks for a while.

249
00:14:50,908 --> 00:14:54,718
We can't imagine this even
for a month, 30 years.

250
00:14:54,898 --> 00:14:57,898
Most of the younger Christians
didn't know anything different.

251
00:14:57,898 --> 00:14:59,998
Think about growing up
in that persecution.

252
00:15:00,208 --> 00:15:04,408
To be a Christian was to put your life
on the line, to follow Jesus as to

253
00:15:04,408 --> 00:15:08,668
remain poor forever, to be locked outta
the economic system, to be hounded and

254
00:15:08,668 --> 00:15:12,898
marginalized and misrepresented, and
lied about and beaten with no justice

255
00:15:12,898 --> 00:15:16,648
for those who beat you and mistreated
you and maybe ultimately killed you.

256
00:15:17,173 --> 00:15:19,783
This is who Revelation is written to.

257
00:15:19,873 --> 00:15:25,183
And for some reason in the midst of
that Christianity spread like wildfire.

258
00:15:25,183 --> 00:15:25,633
You guys.

259
00:15:25,753 --> 00:15:29,833
Guys, do you realize like at
Jesus's ascension, he's risen and he

260
00:15:29,833 --> 00:15:31,783
showed himself for 50 days, right?

261
00:15:31,843 --> 00:15:34,423
And at his ascension it's 500 people.

262
00:15:34,663 --> 00:15:39,763
And even there it says some
worshiped and some doubted.

263
00:15:40,483 --> 00:15:41,263
Who are you?

264
00:15:41,323 --> 00:15:41,923
Who are, you know?

265
00:15:41,983 --> 00:15:43,543
Oh wow, you rose from the dead.

266
00:15:43,543 --> 00:15:44,143
That's crazy.

267
00:15:44,143 --> 00:15:45,403
You conquered death.

268
00:15:45,553 --> 00:15:46,033
Oh wow.

269
00:15:46,033 --> 00:15:47,263
You just ascended, you know?

270
00:15:47,263 --> 00:15:47,743
Uh uh.

271
00:15:47,803 --> 00:15:49,483
That's, nah, I don't know.

272
00:15:51,373 --> 00:15:52,603
I'm gonna need more than that.

273
00:15:53,863 --> 00:15:54,973
Why put that in the Bible?

274
00:15:54,973 --> 00:15:56,383
Because it's true.

275
00:15:56,593 --> 00:16:00,583
'cause it's true to the human
condition that we still struggle in

276
00:16:00,583 --> 00:16:03,043
the face of everything that we see.

277
00:16:04,153 --> 00:16:04,933
It's true.

278
00:16:05,083 --> 00:16:05,713
It's true.

279
00:16:05,773 --> 00:16:06,433
It's true.

280
00:16:07,153 --> 00:16:10,513
I think of the first witness to
the resurrection morning, right?

281
00:16:10,573 --> 00:16:11,863
Is Mary Magdalene.

282
00:16:12,868 --> 00:16:15,598
And it was a demonized woman.

283
00:16:15,808 --> 00:16:21,088
And women weren't in that day and
age, used as reliable eyewitnesses.

284
00:16:21,088 --> 00:16:23,368
They couldn't testify in a court.

285
00:16:23,878 --> 00:16:25,708
Here's how they thought
about 'em back then.

286
00:16:25,893 --> 00:16:28,678
Uh, uh, women, the, the
rabbis, they tell this story.

287
00:16:28,678 --> 00:16:32,878
They said, you know, when God was making
Adam, God came to Adam and said, it's

288
00:16:32,878 --> 00:16:34,648
not good, Adam, that you're alone.

289
00:16:35,368 --> 00:16:38,158
Adam said, I agree, yes.

290
00:16:39,088 --> 00:16:41,728
And so God said to Adam, Adam,
I'm gonna make a helpmate.

291
00:16:41,938 --> 00:16:46,618
I'm gonna make a woman for you,
and I am gonna make her the

292
00:16:46,618 --> 00:16:47,998
best helpmate you can imagine.

293
00:16:47,998 --> 00:16:49,918
She's gonna inspire your dreams.

294
00:16:50,158 --> 00:16:52,468
She's gonna fuel your destiny.

295
00:16:52,768 --> 00:16:56,578
She's gonna encourage you
every moment of every day, the

296
00:16:56,578 --> 00:16:59,158
hottest and best meals gourmet.

297
00:16:59,608 --> 00:17:02,368
Everything will be there for you.

298
00:17:02,368 --> 00:17:04,288
You can't imagine how good it is.

299
00:17:04,498 --> 00:17:05,907
And I says, that sounds great.

300
00:17:06,688 --> 00:17:07,917
And God says it'll cost you.

301
00:17:09,353 --> 00:17:10,828
He says, okay, what will it cost me?

302
00:17:10,828 --> 00:17:15,508
He says, it'll cost you your left eye
and your left arm and your left leg.

303
00:17:17,637 --> 00:17:19,078
I hadn't thought about it for a while.

304
00:17:19,137 --> 00:17:21,928
And he said, what can I get for a rib?

305
00:17:27,958 --> 00:17:28,438
Thank you.

306
00:17:30,208 --> 00:17:31,558
I'll be performing here all night.

307
00:17:31,588 --> 00:17:31,858
No.

308
00:17:31,958 --> 00:17:34,418
the point though is that's
how they thought about women.

309
00:17:34,418 --> 00:17:40,448
They were like second class citizens and
who does Jesus, God incarnate, appear

310
00:17:40,448 --> 00:17:43,088
to and say, you are my first witness.

311
00:17:43,118 --> 00:17:46,358
You're gonna take the gospel to the men,

312
00:17:48,608 --> 00:17:49,208
women.

313
00:17:50,378 --> 00:17:57,128
Mary, I think of the shepherds, who
also were of such low social status.

314
00:17:57,158 --> 00:18:00,368
Their testimony was not
allowed in the court of law.

315
00:18:00,368 --> 00:18:02,408
Who were the first witnesses
at the birth of Christ?

316
00:18:02,408 --> 00:18:02,978
It was shepherds.

317
00:18:04,203 --> 00:18:08,528
The upside down nature, the inside
out that says male and female,

318
00:18:08,588 --> 00:18:16,088
Jew and Greek and Gentile are
all one in Christ, other worldly.

319
00:18:16,718 --> 00:18:19,718
But this Christianity, it
spreads guys, 500 people.

320
00:18:19,778 --> 00:18:21,278
Some doubted, some worshiped.

321
00:18:21,368 --> 00:18:31,328
Do you realize by 350 ad that it,
it had grown to 350 million, Romans

322
00:18:31,508 --> 00:18:36,038
declaring Christ as their savior,
350 million, uh, sociologist writing.

323
00:18:36,038 --> 00:18:46,238
And it stark says 51% of the Roman
Empire was Christian, 500 to 350 million,

324
00:18:46,598 --> 00:18:50,618
51% of the entire Roman population.

325
00:18:53,558 --> 00:18:57,488
Why the early church loved their
enemies in the face of persecution.

326
00:18:58,028 --> 00:19:00,908
They had this anchor, this
gravitational thing that made them

327
00:19:00,908 --> 00:19:02,648
face death and persecution like it.

328
00:19:03,263 --> 00:19:05,123
Sting was removed.

329
00:19:05,393 --> 00:19:08,033
They could go into the fire,
they could get up on the cross.

330
00:19:08,153 --> 00:19:13,163
Peter famously, when he was crucified,
when he was executed, he said, man, I'm

331
00:19:13,163 --> 00:19:15,683
not worthy to be executed like my Lord.

332
00:19:15,743 --> 00:19:20,633
And he said, crucify me upside down
during a plague that was sweeping through

333
00:19:20,633 --> 00:19:24,083
Rome, when someone started to show signs
of the disease, the family would just

334
00:19:24,083 --> 00:19:25,613
throw them into the streets to die.

335
00:19:25,673 --> 00:19:27,293
Even if it was your child.

336
00:19:28,073 --> 00:19:31,583
It was the Christians who took
these diseased, riddled people

337
00:19:31,583 --> 00:19:32,873
off the streets into their homes.

338
00:19:32,873 --> 00:19:35,573
Many dying in this process of helping.

339
00:19:36,953 --> 00:19:38,243
Absolutely amazing.

340
00:19:38,513 --> 00:19:41,723
And one of the main reasons that they
could have this buoyancy, that they

341
00:19:41,723 --> 00:19:46,043
had this anchor of their souls was
because of the Book of Revelation.

342
00:19:46,043 --> 00:19:48,113
Notice I didn't say revelations.

343
00:19:48,173 --> 00:19:49,163
It's one revelation.

344
00:19:49,163 --> 00:19:50,573
And what is the revelation?

345
00:19:50,813 --> 00:19:51,713
Revelation one.

346
00:19:51,713 --> 00:19:51,953
One.

347
00:19:51,953 --> 00:19:52,523
We read it.

348
00:19:52,553 --> 00:19:55,073
The revelation of Jesus Christ.

349
00:19:56,063 --> 00:19:57,353
It's the revelation of him.

350
00:19:58,478 --> 00:20:01,988
Just like so many other places in
scripture, I de Isaiah think about him.

351
00:20:02,048 --> 00:20:04,868
He doesn't know what's gonna
happen in the kingdom now that

352
00:20:04,868 --> 00:20:06,698
the godly king Siah has died.

353
00:20:06,878 --> 00:20:10,208
so he goes to the temple and he gets a
vision of the Lord high and lifted up

354
00:20:10,208 --> 00:20:16,058
the train of his robe, filling the temple
with glory, and he's undone and remade.

355
00:20:16,238 --> 00:20:20,828
One in the same job, asked chapter
after chapter about the point of

356
00:20:20,828 --> 00:20:23,798
suffering and death and the end.

357
00:20:23,918 --> 00:20:26,558
And he doesn't get an
answer to his questions.

358
00:20:26,708 --> 00:20:30,218
He gets an answer that he needed
a person, a revelation of God

359
00:20:30,218 --> 00:20:32,078
showing up in glory and majesty.

360
00:20:32,348 --> 00:20:35,948
And he says, I heard you with the
hearing of my ear, but now my I

361
00:20:35,948 --> 00:20:41,438
see you and I repent and dust and
ashes the three Hebrews facing the

362
00:20:41,438 --> 00:20:45,008
fiery furnace because they won't
bow down to the Babylonian image.

363
00:20:45,128 --> 00:20:48,218
They're thrown into the furnace
that's been heated seven times hotter.

364
00:20:48,248 --> 00:20:49,448
And what do they get?

365
00:20:49,988 --> 00:20:53,258
They not only get the freedom as their
bonds are burnt off, but they get

366
00:20:53,258 --> 00:20:55,478
one who stands in the fire with him.

367
00:20:55,523 --> 00:20:57,713
And the fire doesn't burn them.

368
00:20:57,713 --> 00:20:58,853
It doesn't touch them.

369
00:20:59,843 --> 00:21:02,513
One, it says, who is like the son of God?

370
00:21:03,323 --> 00:21:09,113
So John the beloved, the writer, this
one who is exiled, part of persecution

371
00:21:09,263 --> 00:21:13,403
to the island of Patmos, gets this
vision, and this is John the beloved.

372
00:21:13,403 --> 00:21:17,393
This isn't John the Baptizer who eats
locust and wild honey and wears camel.

373
00:21:17,393 --> 00:21:20,273
For this is John who would, when
they're, he's eating dinner with

374
00:21:20,273 --> 00:21:22,733
Jesus would lay his head on his chest.

375
00:21:23,603 --> 00:21:25,793
Hey Jesus, how's it going?

376
00:21:26,933 --> 00:21:27,773
What do you think about Peter?

377
00:21:27,773 --> 00:21:28,253
What he said?

378
00:21:28,253 --> 00:21:29,483
He's crazy.

379
00:21:30,323 --> 00:21:30,803
Right?

380
00:21:33,953 --> 00:21:37,703
Again, verse 12, then I turned to see
the voice that was speaking to me.

381
00:21:38,423 --> 00:21:40,703
And on turning I saw
seven golden lamps hands.

382
00:21:40,763 --> 00:21:44,123
Because even what John needed in
this moment, in the midst of this

383
00:21:44,123 --> 00:21:49,013
three decades of persecution, was
not an escape from the circumstances,

384
00:21:49,013 --> 00:21:50,433
but a revelation of Jesus Christ.

385
00:21:52,403 --> 00:21:54,353
He had eaten with Jesus.

386
00:21:54,353 --> 00:21:55,793
He had broken bread.

387
00:21:55,793 --> 00:21:59,313
He had, seen Jesus walk
on the sea in calm storms.

388
00:21:59,823 --> 00:22:04,593
He was at the foot of the cross when Jesus
said, into your hands, I commit my spirit.

389
00:22:04,653 --> 00:22:07,083
Father, forgive them for
they know not what they do.

390
00:22:07,143 --> 00:22:08,673
He was there.

391
00:22:08,673 --> 00:22:09,813
He saw all this.

392
00:22:09,933 --> 00:22:14,163
But there was a night of nights
before Jesus went to the cross where

393
00:22:14,163 --> 00:22:18,723
Jesus unzipped his humanity a little
bit and let the divinity come out.

394
00:22:18,723 --> 00:22:20,613
It was called the Mount
of Transfiguration.

395
00:22:21,513 --> 00:22:25,243
And here he gets this vision,
this glorified Christ.

396
00:22:25,933 --> 00:22:28,873
And I kind of wanna read it from
our, from John's perspective.

397
00:22:31,513 --> 00:22:32,323
So go with me.

398
00:22:32,683 --> 00:22:33,733
Mind you, you know, style.

399
00:22:33,733 --> 00:22:34,663
I'm still working it out.

400
00:22:36,643 --> 00:22:38,023
I heard the voice before.

401
00:22:38,023 --> 00:22:38,593
I saw him.

402
00:22:39,523 --> 00:22:43,243
Heard of like the echo of a choir
on a mountain, a mighty rolling

403
00:22:43,243 --> 00:22:46,393
sound that shook the walls of reason
and made the bones in my chest.

404
00:22:46,393 --> 00:22:46,903
Trem.

405
00:22:47,788 --> 00:22:52,918
It was a voice that did not seek to
persuade or plead, but rather insisted

406
00:22:52,918 --> 00:22:58,978
on being heard as though the very
heir had been awaiting its arrival.

407
00:22:59,248 --> 00:23:02,428
The words themselves were
strange and unearthly shimmering

408
00:23:02,428 --> 00:23:03,688
at the edge of comprehension.

409
00:23:03,688 --> 00:23:07,378
Behold, was it a command
and invitation, a warning?

410
00:23:07,828 --> 00:23:10,498
I turned reluctant at first
for I knew that to turn was

411
00:23:10,498 --> 00:23:11,908
to confront the unbearable.

412
00:23:12,058 --> 00:23:14,188
I was not prepared for
the site that met me.

413
00:23:15,298 --> 00:23:19,828
A temple corridor stretched away
into dustless infinity lined

414
00:23:19,828 --> 00:23:21,148
with seven golden lampstands.

415
00:23:21,148 --> 00:23:23,758
They seemed to float above the
floor, untethered to gravity or

416
00:23:23,758 --> 00:23:25,588
logic or the rules of matter.

417
00:23:26,038 --> 00:23:29,458
Each lamp stand gave off a fire
that was neither hot nor cold.

418
00:23:29,578 --> 00:23:32,848
A fire that illuminated
everything, yet cast no shadow.

419
00:23:33,388 --> 00:23:35,278
The gold itself was not dull.

420
00:23:35,338 --> 00:23:39,868
Brassy gold of coins and jewelry,
but a living, breathing gold molten.

421
00:23:39,868 --> 00:23:42,388
A gold that had never known corruption.

422
00:23:43,333 --> 00:23:46,543
Their light was an illumination
alone, but an active revelation.

423
00:23:46,543 --> 00:23:49,693
The lamps exposed the secret
architecture of the world, the

424
00:23:49,693 --> 00:23:51,763
scaffolding behind all that is seen.

425
00:23:51,763 --> 00:23:53,803
But it was not the
lampstands that held my gaze.

426
00:23:53,983 --> 00:23:55,603
It was the one who walked among them.

427
00:23:56,263 --> 00:23:59,713
He was a man, and yet
he was not merely a man.

428
00:24:00,343 --> 00:24:02,203
He was the sum of all human long longing.

429
00:24:02,203 --> 00:24:06,013
The answer to every unspoken prayer
and every wordless groan, his

430
00:24:06,013 --> 00:24:10,423
presence possessed the gravity of a
supernova, the attraction of something

431
00:24:10,423 --> 00:24:12,373
that bends reality around itself.

432
00:24:12,493 --> 00:24:17,413
He was clothed in a robe that seemed to be
woven from the night sky itself, a fabric

433
00:24:17,413 --> 00:24:22,573
so pure that it drank in all in truth
and radiated only the essence of light.

434
00:24:23,083 --> 00:24:26,743
A gold sash crossed his chest, but
even the gold seemed to pale in

435
00:24:26,743 --> 00:24:29,353
comparison to the radiance of his being.

436
00:24:29,923 --> 00:24:34,933
His head and hair were white, absolutely
unyielding white, as though every sorrow,

437
00:24:34,933 --> 00:24:40,363
every regret, every burden of time had
been bleached away by the eons of mercy.

438
00:24:42,808 --> 00:24:47,188
Leaving only this pure unblemished
snow, his eyes, when I dare to meet

439
00:24:47,188 --> 00:24:50,638
them, burn with such intensity that I
felt myself peeled, open, inspected,

440
00:24:50,638 --> 00:24:52,558
and found both wanting and beloved.

441
00:24:52,738 --> 00:24:56,608
His eyes were not fire in the way of
destruction, but fire in the way of

442
00:24:56,608 --> 00:25:01,168
refinement a kind of fire that draws the
impurity to the surface and makes clean.

443
00:25:01,228 --> 00:25:05,368
When it was filthy, he stopped walking,
and now I could see his feet like burnish

444
00:25:05,368 --> 00:25:08,938
bronze, as if they had passed through the
hottest part of the furnace and emerge,

445
00:25:08,938 --> 00:25:11,098
gleaming, hardened, and unbreakable.

446
00:25:11,578 --> 00:25:15,568
It was then that I noticed that every time
his feet touched the ground, the earth

447
00:25:15,568 --> 00:25:20,098
itself seemed to acknowledge him as if
these were the first in true footsteps.

448
00:25:20,103 --> 00:25:25,048
Since the beginning of days, the
paradox struck me his every MO movement

449
00:25:25,138 --> 00:25:27,028
was the embodiment of stillness.

450
00:25:27,028 --> 00:25:29,488
His voice was both silence and thunder.

451
00:25:29,488 --> 00:25:33,868
When he spoke, it was as if the ocean
had learned the language of men.

452
00:25:34,678 --> 00:25:37,258
The sound rolled through the
corridor, cresting and falling,

453
00:25:37,258 --> 00:25:40,828
sometimes gentle sometimes with
the violence of the storm surge.

454
00:25:40,978 --> 00:25:43,528
No syllable was wasted, no word left.

455
00:25:43,528 --> 00:25:44,188
Undelivered.

456
00:25:44,368 --> 00:25:46,108
Each sentence reconstructed.

457
00:25:46,108 --> 00:25:50,008
My very molecules rearranging
my understanding, filled and

458
00:25:50,008 --> 00:25:51,328
emptied me in the same moment.

459
00:25:51,328 --> 00:25:54,418
He lifted his right hand and
in that instant I saw seven

460
00:25:54,418 --> 00:25:56,098
stars cradled in his palm.

461
00:25:56,248 --> 00:26:00,838
They did not struggle or resist, but
turned as one obedient to his touch.

462
00:26:00,988 --> 00:26:03,748
Each star sang with its own distinct note.

463
00:26:03,988 --> 00:26:07,888
Yet together they formed harmony that
rivaled even the voice of their keeper.

464
00:26:08,188 --> 00:26:12,428
I understood then how thin the membrane
between matter and spirit truly was.

465
00:26:12,638 --> 00:26:17,978
How stars themselves could be summoned
as easily as breath, but his hand

466
00:26:17,978 --> 00:26:19,328
was not empty of other things.

467
00:26:19,328 --> 00:26:19,988
And the brightness.

468
00:26:19,988 --> 00:26:21,518
I discerned the glint of a sword.

469
00:26:21,608 --> 00:26:24,668
No, not held in hand, but
emerging from his mouth.

470
00:26:24,788 --> 00:26:27,008
A double-edged blade, infinitely sharp.

471
00:26:27,743 --> 00:26:29,963
Infinitely merciful, severing.

472
00:26:29,963 --> 00:26:31,973
All that was false from all that was true.

473
00:26:32,153 --> 00:26:33,983
It did not threaten it liberated.

474
00:26:34,103 --> 00:26:37,973
The sword was not for violence, but for
dividing darkness from light, deception,

475
00:26:37,973 --> 00:26:40,193
from clarity and death from life.

476
00:26:40,853 --> 00:26:43,043
All this I saw in one eternal second.

477
00:26:43,043 --> 00:26:44,753
My knees failed beneath me.

478
00:26:44,903 --> 00:26:47,723
I fell unmade at the feet
of this impossible man.

479
00:26:47,903 --> 00:26:51,893
I was not afraid in the way of a
child cowering from thunder, but

480
00:26:51,893 --> 00:26:55,343
afraid in the way of one who has
glimpsed the final sum of all things.

481
00:26:55,703 --> 00:27:00,443
Who seen the last page of the last book,
and knows that their name is inscribed.

482
00:27:00,443 --> 00:27:04,133
There I felt my self, a vessel
emptied of all its contents

483
00:27:04,163 --> 00:27:05,333
waiting to be filled anew.

484
00:27:05,483 --> 00:27:09,203
I pressed my forehead to the ground,
unable to move, unable to weep

485
00:27:09,383 --> 00:27:10,943
for the presence of such glory.

486
00:27:10,943 --> 00:27:12,263
Tears are redundant.

487
00:27:12,263 --> 00:27:16,013
My body wanted to die for it could
not contain the magnitude of what

488
00:27:16,013 --> 00:27:21,293
I witnessed, but instead of death,
I received a hand upon my shoulder.

489
00:27:22,373 --> 00:27:26,003
His touch was not electric or
overwhelming, and was simply alive.

490
00:27:27,383 --> 00:27:29,423
It was the hand that had spun the galaxy.

491
00:27:29,423 --> 00:27:33,263
He's now resting on the back
of one trembling observer.

492
00:27:34,073 --> 00:27:39,233
His voice came again, not as thunder,
but as close and intimate as a whisper.

493
00:27:39,413 --> 00:27:42,743
Do not be afraid.

494
00:27:43,943 --> 00:27:46,493
The words crawled into my
morrow reanimating, me, giving

495
00:27:46,493 --> 00:27:47,873
me breath where I'd lost it.

496
00:27:48,503 --> 00:27:50,903
He said, I'm the first and the last.

497
00:27:51,143 --> 00:27:52,163
I'm the living one.

498
00:27:52,463 --> 00:27:58,553
I died, but look, I'm
alive forever and ever.

499
00:27:59,033 --> 00:28:03,653
The words were not a boast but pierce
truth spoken by one who had traverse the

500
00:28:03,653 --> 00:28:10,313
borderlands of nothingness and returned
with the keys to every locked door.

501
00:28:11,153 --> 00:28:14,423
He opened his hand and I saw
with in it the keys to death

502
00:28:14,453 --> 00:28:15,863
and the grave, real keys.

503
00:28:16,553 --> 00:28:19,553
Yet not of metal or bone, but
of something older, the ancient

504
00:28:19,553 --> 00:28:21,563
authority of life itself.

505
00:28:21,563 --> 00:28:26,063
I understood then that every bolt and
barrier, every chain, that ever bound a

506
00:28:26,063 --> 00:28:30,863
soul was nothing to him for he carried
the keys and he intended to use them.

507
00:28:31,103 --> 00:28:33,953
I raised my head, not in
defiance, but in desperate hope.

508
00:28:33,953 --> 00:28:39,113
I looked into his eyes and in their
infinite death, I saw not only the end of

509
00:28:39,113 --> 00:28:41,903
my fear, but the beginning of my purpose.

510
00:28:42,083 --> 00:28:46,313
I understood that the grave would one
day yield its captives, that every

511
00:28:46,313 --> 00:28:51,653
loss would be reversed, and even
the darkest night would end in dawn,

512
00:28:53,663 --> 00:29:00,593
the Keys, I wanna spend a couple
minutes telling you, convincing

513
00:29:00,593 --> 00:29:06,203
you hopefully that death is not a
friend, that it is the great enemy.

514
00:29:06,833 --> 00:29:10,283
It's a great enemy that everybody
faces, and in our culture,

515
00:29:10,643 --> 00:29:11,693
we don't want to face it.

516
00:29:12,533 --> 00:29:13,043
We don't want to.

517
00:29:13,043 --> 00:29:17,123
We want to pretend we keep ourselves
busy and distracted, and you're gonna

518
00:29:17,123 --> 00:29:22,583
miss out on joy unless you see that
this great foe has been conquered.

519
00:29:24,713 --> 00:29:27,833
Verse 18, in the living one, I
died and behold, on my alive, I

520
00:29:27,833 --> 00:29:32,633
am alive forevermore, and I have
the keys of death and Hades.

521
00:29:35,063 --> 00:29:40,613
His words fell with a way of eternity,
and the hush of humility and finality

522
00:29:40,613 --> 00:29:42,323
shattering the silence inside me.

523
00:29:42,323 --> 00:29:44,003
I'm the first and the
last, the living one.

524
00:29:44,013 --> 00:29:44,463
I died.

525
00:29:44,463 --> 00:29:48,843
But look, I'm alive forever and ever, and
I hold the keys of death and the grave.

526
00:29:49,383 --> 00:29:53,403
The proclamation resounded across the
corridors of human history, a clarion

527
00:29:53,403 --> 00:29:57,033
call that echoed from the dawn of
time and reverberated in the marrow

528
00:29:57,033 --> 00:30:01,503
of every bone that had ever trembled
before the image of a tombstone.

529
00:30:02,673 --> 00:30:07,143
He spoke not as a distant deity reciting
ancient dogma, but as one who had

530
00:30:07,143 --> 00:30:12,783
descended into the ravenous maw of
oblivion and emerged on the other side.

531
00:30:13,593 --> 00:30:18,213
His voice contained the hush of the
grave and the roar of the resurrection.

532
00:30:18,363 --> 00:30:23,673
The authority of one who endured the full
curse of mortality, draining its cups to

533
00:30:23,673 --> 00:30:29,043
the dregs, only to invert it and refill
it with the dyne wine of new creation.

534
00:30:29,133 --> 00:30:33,483
He had entered the seur as a lamb,
innocent, bruised, and exited a lion

535
00:30:33,513 --> 00:30:38,133
terrifying in his gentleness, the scars on
his hands, no longer a record of defeat,

536
00:30:38,133 --> 00:30:40,953
but trophies of an impossible conquest.

537
00:30:41,043 --> 00:30:43,863
He is the Lord of the aftermath.

538
00:30:43,863 --> 00:30:46,203
The king of the unthinkable come true.

539
00:30:46,443 --> 00:30:51,693
His words undid the logic of decay and
made a mockery of graves greedy mouth.

540
00:30:52,143 --> 00:30:56,103
What he offered was not a
denial, but defiance and ous.

541
00:30:56,163 --> 00:30:58,933
Laughter in the face of the final silence.

542
00:30:59,473 --> 00:31:00,223
He made it clear.

543
00:31:00,223 --> 00:31:04,933
Death was not a friend nor a neutral
passage, but a thief, a vandal to

544
00:31:04,933 --> 00:31:10,183
be dispossessed, and he alone had
stormed the citadel, broken its

545
00:31:10,183 --> 00:31:12,283
locks and seized its authority.

546
00:31:13,003 --> 00:31:15,523
Why does death have to be
swallowed up in victory?

547
00:31:16,153 --> 00:31:20,293
Because death is an enemy and
you must see death as an enemy.

548
00:31:20,503 --> 00:31:22,273
That's not the way most people see it.

549
00:31:22,543 --> 00:31:26,773
People today are taught either
to deny death or befriend death.

550
00:31:27,613 --> 00:31:31,723
If you do either of those things,
you'll not have the fierce joy that

551
00:31:31,723 --> 00:31:36,223
anchored that arises from the Christian
hope that Christ conquered the grave.

552
00:31:36,253 --> 00:31:38,293
Why must death be swallowed up in victory?

553
00:31:39,373 --> 00:31:41,983
Why that the last Trump is death itself?

554
00:31:41,983 --> 00:31:46,783
That ancient tyrant, that serpent coiled
around the roots of our souls itself, cast

555
00:31:46,783 --> 00:31:49,573
into the abyss and made forever powerless.

556
00:31:50,323 --> 00:31:51,913
I want you to see this.

557
00:31:52,123 --> 00:31:56,573
It's not merely a poetic flourish
or the bravado of the pious.

558
00:31:56,903 --> 00:32:00,053
It is the only answer that
refuses to concede an inch to

559
00:32:00,053 --> 00:32:06,143
that which is the most fundamental
that undoes us and un makes us.

560
00:32:06,413 --> 00:32:10,883
The Gospel's logic is not to domesticate
death, not to make it a pet or a

561
00:32:10,883 --> 00:32:15,593
partner, but to see it for what it
is, an enemy, a thief, a vandal of all

562
00:32:15,593 --> 00:32:19,403
that is good, but this is precisely
what our age cannot, and its tender.

563
00:32:19,403 --> 00:32:21,293
Self deceptions dare to utter.

564
00:32:21,563 --> 00:32:25,523
Instead, our culture has become an
expert in two contradictory tactics,

565
00:32:26,033 --> 00:32:29,633
denial and becoming sentimental about it.

566
00:32:29,633 --> 00:32:32,813
The first tactic, which is denial,
is the more obvious one, and it's

567
00:32:32,813 --> 00:32:34,283
become the very air we breathe.

568
00:32:34,283 --> 00:32:39,413
We're schooled from childhood to think
of death as an avoidable inconvenience.

569
00:32:39,968 --> 00:32:44,678
To be managed away by better nutrition,
more rigorous exercise, frequent

570
00:32:44,678 --> 00:32:46,778
checkups, and medical promise.

571
00:32:47,678 --> 00:32:49,178
Yeah, we'll get those.

572
00:32:49,628 --> 00:32:53,048
We'll get those shots, those
injections going we'll live forever.

573
00:32:54,218 --> 00:32:57,818
Our billboards and social feeds are
filled with the success stories of a

574
00:32:57,818 --> 00:33:01,598
hundred year olds with Miracle Cures
with glossy magazine covers showing

575
00:33:01,598 --> 00:33:06,608
plasticized immortality With tight
abs and smooth jawlines, we do not

576
00:33:06,608 --> 00:33:08,348
use the word death and polite company.

577
00:33:08,348 --> 00:33:12,878
We euphemized that someone passes
away or goes to a better place,

578
00:33:13,058 --> 00:33:16,178
or is simply no longer with us.

579
00:33:16,388 --> 00:33:20,408
We invest enormous resources to keep
the dying hidden from sight tucked

580
00:33:20,408 --> 00:33:24,278
away at hospices or cordon off
behind the sterility of fluorescent

581
00:33:24,278 --> 00:33:26,888
lights in the hospital corridors.

582
00:33:27,263 --> 00:33:30,593
Children no longer play in alleys
where Herses Pass, we do not teach

583
00:33:30,593 --> 00:33:34,793
our children the inventory of mourning
the black armband the household,

584
00:33:34,793 --> 00:33:37,943
wake the casserole of condolence.

585
00:33:39,053 --> 00:33:42,503
Instead, we're trained to act as
if death is merely a bad break and

586
00:33:42,503 --> 00:33:47,543
unfortunate aberration in the otherwise
smooth flow of our daily life.

587
00:33:47,543 --> 00:33:51,233
But then curiously and in a manner
deeply ironic, our culture also

588
00:33:51,233 --> 00:33:53,663
sentiment sentimentalize his death.

589
00:33:53,963 --> 00:33:57,173
We befriend it, we assign it the
role of kindly old usher, who

590
00:33:57,323 --> 00:34:00,383
with a gentle hand, shows us to
our seat in the eternal theater.

591
00:34:00,803 --> 00:34:04,373
Modern spirituality is a wash
with the language of pre peaceful

592
00:34:04,373 --> 00:34:08,543
transition or natural cycles
becoming one with the universe.

593
00:34:08,543 --> 00:34:12,893
Going back into the energy death
is presented as a wise teacher, a

594
00:34:12,893 --> 00:34:16,733
necessary step in personal growth,
sometimes even a lover awaiting.

595
00:34:17,558 --> 00:34:22,688
Our cold embrace the poetry of Ry and
Mary Oliver is invoked to convince us

596
00:34:22,688 --> 00:34:27,788
that what lies at the end of things is
not horror, not rupture, but completion.

597
00:34:28,358 --> 00:34:33,848
Funerals are no longer funerals
and the air is heavy with helium

598
00:34:33,848 --> 00:34:35,467
balloons and curated playlists.

599
00:34:35,467 --> 00:34:39,518
And worst of all the sense that grief
itself is something unseemly to begotten

600
00:34:39,518 --> 00:34:43,978
over to be processed and placed in the
compost heap of therapeutic progress.

601
00:34:44,848 --> 00:34:48,958
I've seen both tactics often in the same
person within the same conversation, and

602
00:34:48,958 --> 00:34:54,328
even at times in the same sentence, the
refusal to name death as the enemy would

603
00:34:54,328 --> 00:34:58,108
puzzle even shock any of our ancestors.

604
00:34:58,588 --> 00:35:03,358
The entire history of human civilization
from Mesopotamia epics to the Greek

605
00:35:03,358 --> 00:35:08,398
tragedies from the Book of Job to the
kadish is a record of humanity's dread

606
00:35:08,398 --> 00:35:13,618
of death, and our stubborn insistent that
it cannot, must not have the last word.

607
00:35:14,173 --> 00:35:19,303
But now in a culture bathed in comfort,
insulated by screens and cars, with

608
00:35:19,303 --> 00:35:23,443
an infinitude of distractions and
amusements, we have developed to what

609
00:35:23,443 --> 00:35:26,053
can only be called a phobia of death's.

610
00:35:26,053 --> 00:35:26,833
Reality.

611
00:35:27,283 --> 00:35:30,463
Never in history have people been
less prepared to die, less willing

612
00:35:30,463 --> 00:35:36,583
to admit that the end will come not
as a soft landing, but as a violent

613
00:35:36,583 --> 00:35:42,973
disjunction, a sunding of every
tie, a tearing of the fabric itself.

614
00:35:43,003 --> 00:35:45,673
And here is what is most
consequential about this.

615
00:35:45,673 --> 00:35:49,753
If you do not see death as the enemy,
as the one true foe that must be

616
00:35:49,753 --> 00:35:52,573
vanquished, then you cannot feel
the full weight of Christian hope.

617
00:35:53,833 --> 00:35:59,323
If you accept death as natural, as
merely a phase, as an inevitability to be

618
00:35:59,323 --> 00:36:04,843
hugged rather than hated, then why should
you look forward to the resurrection?

619
00:36:05,863 --> 00:36:08,173
Why should you long for
the world to be remade?

620
00:36:08,323 --> 00:36:10,573
Why should you care that Christ is broken?

621
00:36:10,573 --> 00:36:12,763
Open the tomb in making peace with death.

622
00:36:12,763 --> 00:36:13,993
You make a war on hope.

623
00:36:14,833 --> 00:36:18,703
You become, in a sense, spiritually
docile content to drift toward

624
00:36:18,703 --> 00:36:23,503
dissolution, tranquilized in the
certainty that nothing really is at stake.

625
00:36:23,983 --> 00:36:27,793
What is lost in this denial is not
only the theological rigor of the

626
00:36:27,793 --> 00:36:33,073
gospel, but also the fierce joy, the
spine tingling anchor that arises from

627
00:36:33,073 --> 00:36:38,593
the knowledge that the worst thing
imaginable has already been defeated.

628
00:36:39,763 --> 00:36:44,353
The Christian, if she's true to the
core, is not someone who is less afraid

629
00:36:44,353 --> 00:36:48,493
of death because she has reasoned
her way past it, or because she

630
00:36:48,493 --> 00:36:50,233
has numbed herself to its presence.

631
00:36:50,233 --> 00:36:53,563
No, the Christian is more afraid
of death, more conscious of its

632
00:36:53,563 --> 00:36:59,143
monstrosity, precisely because she has
glimpsed what life would be without it.

633
00:36:59,713 --> 00:37:02,023
The echo in the trace of Eden.

634
00:37:02,848 --> 00:37:05,788
Walking with God in the cool of the day.

635
00:37:06,208 --> 00:37:10,978
She knows that death is a negation,
a cosmic vandal and outrage.

636
00:37:11,008 --> 00:37:16,258
But she also knows that in Christ's death
has been UNM Fang and rendered ridiculous.

637
00:37:16,318 --> 00:37:21,868
The true Christian response to death is
not stoicism nor mere acceptance, but

638
00:37:21,868 --> 00:37:26,818
a kind of wild, holy taunt, oh, death.

639
00:37:27,088 --> 00:37:30,928
Paul writes in first Corinthians
15, where is your sting?

640
00:37:31,378 --> 00:37:35,698
Oh grave, where is your victory?

641
00:37:38,518 --> 00:37:39,328
But we haven't gotten there yet.

642
00:37:39,838 --> 00:37:45,208
First, we must face the enemy as he really
is in all the subtle ways that he is.

643
00:37:45,418 --> 00:37:49,948
Why is death such an enemy death as
he truly is not the side wielding

644
00:37:49,948 --> 00:37:52,648
wrath of cartoon and nightmare?

645
00:37:53,188 --> 00:37:56,278
Not a distant possibility to
be joked about or denied, but

646
00:37:56,278 --> 00:37:59,188
insistent as a toothache as patient.

647
00:37:59,728 --> 00:38:04,888
And as inevitable as the sea, his voice
is the hush that comes after gunshots.

648
00:38:05,188 --> 00:38:09,298
The crackling silence of the
hospital corridor at 3:00 AM His

649
00:38:09,298 --> 00:38:11,218
mighty sting is not a single blow.

650
00:38:11,218 --> 00:38:16,863
It's a slow, methodical, exhaling
and un unending invisible breath that

651
00:38:16,863 --> 00:38:20,853
presses down on the world and fills
every space, every cell, every moment,

652
00:38:20,973 --> 00:38:26,733
every joy, every hope with a faint
but persistent flavor of an ending.

653
00:38:27,363 --> 00:38:29,313
We are mortally wounded from birth.

654
00:38:29,583 --> 00:38:33,333
We gasp and gurgle as we enter the
world announcing our mortality With

655
00:38:33,333 --> 00:38:37,623
that first desperate cry from infancy,
we swallowed the honey of denial and

656
00:38:37,623 --> 00:38:40,413
learned to lie to ourselves about
the true nature of our condition.

657
00:38:42,573 --> 00:38:46,983
We invest our scan hours, our ration
days as if the currency of life could

658
00:38:46,983 --> 00:38:50,433
be saved or stockpiled, as if the
minutes themselves were not leaking

659
00:38:50,433 --> 00:38:52,833
constantly through the holes in our hands.

660
00:38:53,613 --> 00:38:57,183
And all the while there stands this
incredible creature, this un killable, un

661
00:38:57,183 --> 00:39:01,443
pitying force in the corner of every room,
behind every curtain, beneath every bed,

662
00:39:01,623 --> 00:39:06,303
watching with benevolent detachment, as
we make our anxious, valiant, petty little

663
00:39:06,303 --> 00:39:09,633
efforts to outwit and outweigh death.

664
00:39:09,723 --> 00:39:13,263
Death, he does not confine himself
to the melodrama of funerals

665
00:39:13,263 --> 00:39:14,523
or the spectacle of violence.

666
00:39:14,523 --> 00:39:16,953
He manifests himself in ordinary days.

667
00:39:16,953 --> 00:39:20,523
In the world's plaintiff details,
sometimes his presence is as subtle

668
00:39:20,523 --> 00:39:24,783
as the ache in your knee or the
width of rot in the produce aisle.

669
00:39:25,383 --> 00:39:29,643
Other times, he is a neon sign, impossible
to miss the pile up on the interstate.

670
00:39:29,643 --> 00:39:34,233
The shuttering headlines on tv, the
empty desk at work that everyone avoids

671
00:39:34,233 --> 00:39:37,113
talking about, his appetite is infinite.

672
00:39:37,113 --> 00:39:39,123
His six foot stomach growls.

673
00:39:40,083 --> 00:39:43,053
A hunger that is both cosmic
and terrifying for his meal.

674
00:39:43,053 --> 00:39:43,893
He will not wait.

675
00:39:44,133 --> 00:39:46,653
It is not enough that he
feasts on us at the end.

676
00:39:46,653 --> 00:39:50,013
We are required to taste him
every day and appetizers of

677
00:39:50,013 --> 00:39:53,013
anxiety and amuse bushes of pain.

678
00:39:53,073 --> 00:39:56,223
We sample him in the headaches that
refuse to fade in the heartbreaks

679
00:39:56,223 --> 00:40:00,093
that become mortgages on our souls
in the moments of regret that replay

680
00:40:00,123 --> 00:40:02,253
endlessly behind our eyelids at night.

681
00:40:02,343 --> 00:40:04,143
He's a gourmet chef of suffering.

682
00:40:04,233 --> 00:40:08,313
He flavors his meals with anticipation,
dread, and premature morning.

683
00:40:08,313 --> 00:40:09,333
We are all dying.

684
00:40:09,393 --> 00:40:10,683
His fingerprints are everywhere.

685
00:40:10,683 --> 00:40:11,913
His reach is unlimited.

686
00:40:12,063 --> 00:40:15,693
I see him at work in the tectonic
spasms of the Earth and Haitian

687
00:40:15,693 --> 00:40:18,933
and Japanese earthquakes, entire
cities flattened in seconds.

688
00:40:19,113 --> 00:40:22,053
The ground opening its jaws
and swallowing lives hole.

689
00:40:22,173 --> 00:40:24,033
Even in the aftermath, he lingers.

690
00:40:24,033 --> 00:40:25,563
He hates escapees.

691
00:40:25,773 --> 00:40:30,063
He resents the ones who crawl from the
level rubble, coughing the dust, and so

692
00:40:30,063 --> 00:40:34,443
he stalks them in their dreams, waiting
for the Astor shocks to finish his work.

693
00:40:35,118 --> 00:40:38,118
But he is not content to operating
only at the scale of catastrophe.

694
00:40:38,208 --> 00:40:42,108
He's present in the slow motion, tra
tragedies of poverty in the way that

695
00:40:42,108 --> 00:40:46,368
absence of money can hollow out a
life long before the body gives up.

696
00:40:46,728 --> 00:40:50,058
I see him in the face of children
with bellies bloated by hunger,

697
00:40:50,058 --> 00:40:52,428
eyes dull and ancient looking.

698
00:40:52,488 --> 00:40:54,048
Even at the age of eight.

699
00:40:54,558 --> 00:40:58,608
I see him in the elderly, abandoned
by families and governments dying of

700
00:40:58,608 --> 00:41:01,458
neglect in silent sun drenched rooms.

701
00:41:01,458 --> 00:41:05,208
I see him in bureau, bureaucracies
that calculate the cost of compassion

702
00:41:05,298 --> 00:41:09,648
and decide quietly and behind closed
doors that some are not worth saving.

703
00:41:10,128 --> 00:41:11,298
He thrives in disease.

704
00:41:11,298 --> 00:41:14,448
Of course, he's a master of plagues
and pestilence, the old friend of

705
00:41:14,448 --> 00:41:18,918
the virus In the parasite, he's
not satisfied by the death of one.

706
00:41:18,918 --> 00:41:23,088
He wants to see entire families broken,
entire communities hushed in the mourning.

707
00:41:23,508 --> 00:41:24,948
There's a cruelty in the way.

708
00:41:25,038 --> 00:41:27,018
He takes some and leaves others behind.

709
00:41:27,018 --> 00:41:29,118
Forced to stand at the
grave and wonder why.

710
00:41:29,808 --> 00:41:30,078
Death's.

711
00:41:30,078 --> 00:41:35,298
Mathematics is precise and pless, and
for every cure that science conjures,

712
00:41:35,358 --> 00:41:40,098
he devises a dozen new affliction, a
hundred mutations, a thousand slow and

713
00:41:40,098 --> 00:41:43,188
silent ways to rot a body from within.

714
00:41:43,188 --> 00:41:46,488
But death is not merely a
biological pH phenomenon.

715
00:41:46,488 --> 00:41:50,868
He's a social construct, a psychological
presence of force that pervades even

716
00:41:50,868 --> 00:41:52,248
our deepest thoughts and beliefs.

717
00:41:52,248 --> 00:41:55,728
I see 'em in oppression, both as the
hand that presses down on the oppress

718
00:41:55,938 --> 00:41:58,308
and the as the rot inside the oppressor.

719
00:41:58,638 --> 00:42:02,088
For every boot stamping on a
face, there's a soul being quietly

720
00:42:02,088 --> 00:42:03,828
crushed beneath its own weight.

721
00:42:04,338 --> 00:42:08,018
The knowledge of complicity, the
slow poisoning of our conscience,

722
00:42:08,348 --> 00:42:11,888
he's there in the institutions that
perpetuate suffering, and the systems

723
00:42:11,888 --> 00:42:15,938
designed to keep some high and others
low in the language of hate and the

724
00:42:15,938 --> 00:42:17,558
silence of those who know better.

725
00:42:17,858 --> 00:42:18,998
I see him in depression.

726
00:42:18,998 --> 00:42:21,998
The gray fog that settles on the
mind, the invisible hand that

727
00:42:21,998 --> 00:42:23,438
drags even the strongest to their.

728
00:42:24,173 --> 00:42:27,443
He's in meds that numb and pain pills
and the little orange bottles that

729
00:42:27,443 --> 00:42:29,363
line bathroom cabinets lick a warning.

730
00:42:29,483 --> 00:42:33,653
He's in razor blades and bedside
wheels and notes left behind for

731
00:42:33,653 --> 00:42:35,213
loved ones who never saw it coming.

732
00:42:35,213 --> 00:42:38,453
He's present in abuse, whether it
be physical, mental, or emotional.

733
00:42:38,633 --> 00:42:40,703
He's the echo in the angry voice.

734
00:42:40,703 --> 00:42:44,063
The coldness in the parents'
eyes, the slow corrosion of

735
00:42:44,063 --> 00:42:45,233
a child's sense of worth.

736
00:42:45,443 --> 00:42:47,243
He is the shadow behind addiction.

737
00:42:47,243 --> 00:42:50,693
The reason the needle calls the
justification for one more drink, one

738
00:42:50,693 --> 00:42:52,883
more pill, one more night of oblivion.

739
00:42:53,423 --> 00:42:55,073
He's both the cause and the effect.

740
00:42:55,073 --> 00:42:58,913
The reason and the excuse he is in
the material obsession that grips the

741
00:42:58,913 --> 00:43:00,473
mind, the endless pursuit of things.

742
00:43:00,473 --> 00:43:04,013
The belief that if we could only
own one more object, fill one more

743
00:43:04,013 --> 00:43:06,263
hole, we might finally be safe.

744
00:43:06,863 --> 00:43:11,063
He's in marital transgressions, the
secret texts sin after midnight and

745
00:43:11,063 --> 00:43:13,103
the Cold War of the shared bedroom.

746
00:43:14,033 --> 00:43:18,143
He's in our slavery to appearances, our
desperate sick addiction to the way things

747
00:43:18,173 --> 00:43:21,023
look rather than the way things are.

748
00:43:22,508 --> 00:43:26,348
We spend more time curating our
images than tending to our hearts,

749
00:43:26,348 --> 00:43:29,918
caring more about how we're
perceived by strangers than the

750
00:43:29,918 --> 00:43:32,018
reality of who we might actually be.

751
00:43:32,948 --> 00:43:37,088
All the wild death laughs Free
knows that none of it matters in

752
00:43:37,088 --> 00:43:40,688
the dying villages we ignore and
the suffering faces we scroll past.

753
00:43:40,838 --> 00:43:44,078
There he is always
watching, always waiting.

754
00:43:44,648 --> 00:43:48,368
We rehearse daily, elaborate
rich, uh, rituals of denial.

755
00:43:48,518 --> 00:43:52,148
We conspire with the cogs of commerce
and the wheels of politics, with

756
00:43:52,148 --> 00:43:55,478
the algorithms that spoonfeed
us the right headlines and the

757
00:43:55,478 --> 00:43:58,058
right hashtags and the right gods.

758
00:43:58,958 --> 00:44:01,208
We conge your comfort
by any means available.

759
00:44:01,268 --> 00:44:05,198
All the disguise, the churning
relentless certainty of our own

760
00:44:05,198 --> 00:44:09,968
contradiction that we are at once
temporary and desperate for eternity.

761
00:44:11,228 --> 00:44:15,188
I even see deaths emergence in
our churches, those centuries

762
00:44:15,188 --> 00:44:18,698
meant for the living, but often
haunted by ghosts of unspoken pain.

763
00:44:19,718 --> 00:44:24,218
There in hushed auditorium, hope and
fear seeing in unison, we pull out

764
00:44:24,218 --> 00:44:29,168
emergency verses as deterrent to religious
differences, as if scriptural bandaid

765
00:44:29,168 --> 00:44:32,108
could heal a gangrene of misunderstanding.

766
00:44:32,558 --> 00:44:36,638
We weaponize wisdom deployed doctrine
like landmines, all the wild bleeding,

767
00:44:36,818 --> 00:44:38,798
a slow and silent sorrow for the unity.

768
00:44:38,798 --> 00:44:42,038
We cannot bring ourselves
to risk in these days.

769
00:44:42,038 --> 00:44:44,978
Death is killing us before we even
enter the surface of the earth.

770
00:44:45,338 --> 00:44:48,098
We cannot hide from his wretched
curse for death in his grave.

771
00:44:48,098 --> 00:44:51,308
We constantly rehearse each
failed attempted connection,

772
00:44:51,428 --> 00:44:55,178
each refusal to forgive each
moment when we choose bitterness.

773
00:44:55,178 --> 00:44:59,168
Over compassion is a
small practice in dying.

774
00:44:59,738 --> 00:45:03,008
We build mausoleums of memory and
barricade our hearts behind them,

775
00:45:03,128 --> 00:45:07,478
believing that to fear the grave is
weakness, when in truth it is the

776
00:45:07,478 --> 00:45:10,178
most universal longing we all share.

777
00:45:11,288 --> 00:45:14,558
We're more frightened of death than
perhaps any generation before us.

778
00:45:15,368 --> 00:45:17,648
The sociologist Peter
Berger said it plainly.

779
00:45:18,438 --> 00:45:21,948
the modern day has created
a world without windows.

780
00:45:24,558 --> 00:45:26,628
Me and Andrew used to play
this game when we were dating.

781
00:45:26,628 --> 00:45:29,928
We don't do it now that we're
responsible adults and parents

782
00:45:32,958 --> 00:45:37,008
where we would drive, be driving on a
straight stretch of freeway and we would

783
00:45:37,008 --> 00:45:39,828
challenge each other to see how long
we could drive with our eyes closed.

784
00:45:42,708 --> 00:45:48,108
Not recommended at first,
four or five seconds.

785
00:45:49,248 --> 00:45:53,868
Cake, easy peasy, lemon squeezy, right?

786
00:45:54,588 --> 00:45:55,608
Seven seconds.

787
00:45:55,668 --> 00:45:56,778
You get a little nervous.

788
00:45:56,838 --> 00:46:01,038
Eight seconds, nine seconds,
10 seconds, 11 seconds.

789
00:46:01,098 --> 00:46:03,948
I think one of us had the
record for like 14 seconds.

790
00:46:06,528 --> 00:46:08,178
Your palms are sweating.

791
00:46:08,658 --> 00:46:09,978
Your heart is racing.

792
00:46:10,428 --> 00:46:12,138
Can I last one more second?

793
00:46:12,163 --> 00:46:14,598
And then you realize this is the
dumbest thing I've ever done.

794
00:46:15,258 --> 00:46:16,188
So you open your eyes.

795
00:46:16,773 --> 00:46:18,093
But you got a record, right?

796
00:46:18,723 --> 00:46:22,443
And what Peter Berger is pointing
out is he's saying, we've

797
00:46:22,443 --> 00:46:25,173
blocked out the reality of death.

798
00:46:25,653 --> 00:46:30,393
And so we're living, we're driving a car
without windows, somewhere we can't see.

799
00:46:30,573 --> 00:46:33,243
And that same anxiousness lays upon us.

800
00:46:33,243 --> 00:46:35,793
Imagine for a moment, even
in a room that your entire

801
00:46:35,793 --> 00:46:37,713
existence unfolds within a room.

802
00:46:37,953 --> 00:46:41,433
The walls are sturdy, the lighting,
artificial, and the decor carefully

803
00:46:41,433 --> 00:46:43,263
curated to keep your attention fixed.

804
00:46:43,263 --> 00:46:46,773
On the here and now in this room, you
attend your meetings, eat your meals,

805
00:46:46,773 --> 00:46:49,893
watch your screens, and worry about
your cholesterol, your step count,

806
00:46:49,893 --> 00:46:54,123
your carbon footprint, your retirement,
and the room is sealed perfectly

807
00:46:54,393 --> 00:46:59,133
so that your gaze never even for an
instant, falls upon what lies behind.

808
00:46:59,463 --> 00:47:02,493
You know, perhaps by rumor
or by vague recollection.

809
00:47:02,868 --> 00:47:06,828
That there's something outside a
world, a landscape, maybe even a sky.

810
00:47:06,828 --> 00:47:09,078
If you've ever tried to drive
a car without a windshield,

811
00:47:09,078 --> 00:47:10,098
you'd understand the problem.

812
00:47:10,098 --> 00:47:14,118
You sit behind the wheel engine, idling
blind, everything beyond the dashboard.

813
00:47:14,238 --> 00:47:16,278
You have no direct
experience of the road ahead.

814
00:47:16,278 --> 00:47:19,758
You proceed by inference, by
guesswork, by the careful study of

815
00:47:19,758 --> 00:47:21,198
what is immediately in front of you.

816
00:47:21,198 --> 00:47:24,198
But it's impossible to drive
for a time with no windshield.

817
00:47:24,948 --> 00:47:26,748
It's terrifying.

818
00:47:27,468 --> 00:47:30,768
Every turn could be a cliff,
every intersection, an ambush.

819
00:47:30,768 --> 00:47:31,638
You cannot plan.

820
00:47:31,638 --> 00:47:32,388
You cannot hope.

821
00:47:32,508 --> 00:47:33,858
You can only react.

822
00:47:33,858 --> 00:47:35,208
And so it is with our lives.

823
00:47:35,358 --> 00:47:39,408
In the absence of any vision of
out there, we are forced into

824
00:47:39,408 --> 00:47:41,778
a state of perpetual vigilance.

825
00:47:41,868 --> 00:47:48,468
Perpetual anxiety in this generation
is just anxiety as its moncure.

826
00:47:48,498 --> 00:47:52,158
Epicurious, the Greek philosopher,
put it rather well with furious logic.

827
00:47:52,158 --> 00:47:55,248
The way he put it was, what
men fear is not that death is

828
00:47:55,248 --> 00:47:58,788
annihilation, but that it is not.

829
00:47:59,898 --> 00:48:00,948
And it's not annihilation.

830
00:48:01,008 --> 00:48:02,058
Annihilation is where you just.

831
00:48:02,403 --> 00:48:04,263
Go into the long slumber of sleep.

832
00:48:05,343 --> 00:48:09,303
What we really fear is what if there
is something after What if there is

833
00:48:09,303 --> 00:48:11,133
a God who is in charge of things?

834
00:48:11,133 --> 00:48:14,193
Who designed the universe, who made
me for a relationship with himself?

835
00:48:14,373 --> 00:48:18,573
If there is a judge, is
there any hope for us?

836
00:48:19,173 --> 00:48:21,093
Everybody in this room knows we failed.

837
00:48:24,003 --> 00:48:25,473
We failed our parents as children.

838
00:48:25,473 --> 00:48:27,423
We failed our children as parents.

839
00:48:27,723 --> 00:48:30,603
We failed our space, our
spouses, we failed our friends.

840
00:48:30,603 --> 00:48:33,153
We failed as citizens,
we failed as people.

841
00:48:33,273 --> 00:48:38,193
We know those shortcomings and we know
if there isn't a judge who is going

842
00:48:38,193 --> 00:48:43,023
to someday put everything right and
that judge and judges impartially,

843
00:48:43,023 --> 00:48:44,253
there's no hope for the world.

844
00:48:44,433 --> 00:48:46,503
But if there is a judge,
is there any hope for us?

845
00:48:46,503 --> 00:48:50,763
The thing we're most afraid of is
we know we owe more than we can pay.

846
00:48:50,853 --> 00:48:56,763
If there is a God and if there is a judge,
what if payment is due on the day we die?

847
00:48:56,823 --> 00:48:57,878
The wages of sin is death.

848
00:48:59,323 --> 00:49:03,373
as Epicurious put it, we're not afraid
because maybe death is annihilation.

849
00:49:03,373 --> 00:49:06,553
We're afraid because maybe
death is not annihilation.

850
00:49:07,813 --> 00:49:12,253
Samuel Johnson, the great Lexier, wrote
with the graveyard always at his elbow.

851
00:49:12,253 --> 00:49:17,353
He said, no rational man can
die without uneasy apprehension.

852
00:49:18,313 --> 00:49:21,373
It is the deep logic of the mind
that cannot, will not pretend.

853
00:49:21,373 --> 00:49:23,413
The unknown is easy, softer, gentle.

854
00:49:23,563 --> 00:49:25,393
The mind recoils, the mind struggles.

855
00:49:25,393 --> 00:49:27,223
The mind screams against the dying of.

856
00:49:28,393 --> 00:49:31,513
Rousseau who tried to be so at
ease with nature, so reconciled to

857
00:49:31,513 --> 00:49:33,013
the cycle, ultimately confessed.

858
00:49:33,193 --> 00:49:36,793
He who pretends to look upon
death without fear lies.

859
00:49:36,823 --> 00:49:42,793
Even Voltaire in all his satin bravado
was said to tremble at the last.

860
00:49:42,943 --> 00:49:46,243
We are wired to despise the
conclusion of our own narrative.

861
00:49:46,243 --> 00:49:50,893
The idea that there is a judge, a tribunal
behind the veil is so terrifying precisely

862
00:49:50,893 --> 00:49:53,563
because we know we would stand condemned.

863
00:49:54,373 --> 00:49:58,963
Yet, if there is no judge, if life and
death are only a blind process, then

864
00:49:58,963 --> 00:50:02,713
there is no hope for anyone, not for
the righteous, not for the innocent, not

865
00:50:02,713 --> 00:50:04,513
for the crush, not for the voiceless.

866
00:50:04,663 --> 00:50:07,843
History's victims are forgotten
the shuffle of genes and dust.

867
00:50:08,053 --> 00:50:10,243
The world does not put the
rights in the scenario.

868
00:50:10,333 --> 00:50:13,873
We are abandoned at the end of
time, and evil and goodness are

869
00:50:13,873 --> 00:50:16,213
both swallowed in the same silence.

870
00:50:16,213 --> 00:50:20,113
So we drive on without windows,
clutching at the wheel with white

871
00:50:20,113 --> 00:50:21,793
knuckles, sick with uncertainty.

872
00:50:22,348 --> 00:50:25,318
We try to distract ourselves with
work, with pleasure, with arguments and

873
00:50:25,318 --> 00:50:29,398
entertainments and the endless turn of
news, we build museums and playgrounds

874
00:50:29,398 --> 00:50:34,018
and shopping malls over ancient burial
grounds, but the dead crowd in mute,

875
00:50:34,018 --> 00:50:37,978
an assistant, their presence felt in
the ache of the back and the dullness

876
00:50:37,978 --> 00:50:43,018
behind the eyes and the anxiety dreams
that come at 3:00 AM we laugh at the old

877
00:50:43,018 --> 00:50:47,398
superstitions, the haunted houses and the
ghosts, but we are haunted all the same.

878
00:50:47,398 --> 00:50:52,018
Christianity does not offer some gentle
reconciliation with mortality, nor

879
00:50:52,018 --> 00:50:55,948
does it indulge in the escapist fantasy
that death is a myth or a friend.

880
00:50:55,948 --> 00:51:01,348
No Christianity insist upon calling
death by its oldest truest name an enemy.

881
00:51:01,348 --> 00:51:02,848
It is the enemy.

882
00:51:03,448 --> 00:51:05,698
It is the one adversary we all share.

883
00:51:05,818 --> 00:51:09,598
No matter where we're born, no matter
what we believe it is, the iron

884
00:51:09,598 --> 00:51:13,108
limit that cannot be reasoned with,
cannot be seduced, cannot be tricked.

885
00:51:13,258 --> 00:51:17,008
It is unyielding, implacable,
and if we're honest, terrifying.

886
00:51:17,368 --> 00:51:21,088
Yet in the strangeness of the gospel,
death is not merely the greatest foe.

887
00:51:21,298 --> 00:51:23,908
It is a foe, and he spent a
shadow that in the presence

888
00:51:23,908 --> 00:51:25,888
of Christ loses all substance.

889
00:51:26,278 --> 00:51:30,508
This is the only story that permits
us to rage against our end without

890
00:51:30,508 --> 00:51:35,008
the guilt of self delusion to grieve,
loss as unnatural, to despise it,

891
00:51:35,008 --> 00:51:38,998
to hate it, to see the world itself
has been and broken by its presence.

892
00:51:39,553 --> 00:51:44,293
And yearn, like with all of creation, that
God will come and make things right again,

893
00:51:44,293 --> 00:51:46,513
that he'll straighten every crooked path.

894
00:51:46,843 --> 00:51:50,173
Christianity is not a religion for
the serene or the self-satisfied.

895
00:51:50,353 --> 00:51:54,203
It is a message for those who cannot
abide the thought of loved ones, simply

896
00:51:54,203 --> 00:51:58,343
vanishing, who cannot bear the arithmetic
of centuries, grinding every name into

897
00:51:58,343 --> 00:52:03,083
dust, who cannot forgive the world for
its insatiable appetite for suffering.

898
00:52:03,083 --> 00:52:06,443
And in these, it is for those who
refuse to make peace with death,

899
00:52:06,443 --> 00:52:10,823
because somewhere deep inside, they
remember there's a rumor of victory.

900
00:52:11,783 --> 00:52:15,523
The poet, Dylan Thomas, Do not
go gentle into that good night.

901
00:52:15,673 --> 00:52:16,333
Rage.

902
00:52:16,333 --> 00:52:18,433
Rage against the dying of the light.

903
00:52:18,913 --> 00:52:23,653
Modernity by contrast proposes a
tranquilized guide into extinction.

904
00:52:23,653 --> 00:52:25,693
It offers no rage, only distraction.

905
00:52:25,693 --> 00:52:27,493
No hope only sedation.

906
00:52:28,378 --> 00:52:32,218
But Christianity listens to this primal
cry and names it with what it is.

907
00:52:32,218 --> 00:52:35,458
Not a weakness, not a disease
to be cured, but a homing

908
00:52:35,458 --> 00:52:38,278
beacon that points us somewhere.

909
00:52:38,638 --> 00:52:43,498
The horror of death is not a byproduct
of ignorance, but a remnant, a trace

910
00:52:43,498 --> 00:52:49,798
memory, a residue of Eden itself
walking with God in the cool of the day.

911
00:52:50,188 --> 00:52:54,148
We are meant to live,
and we are meant to last.

912
00:52:54,328 --> 00:52:56,278
We are meant to stand before God.

913
00:52:56,278 --> 00:53:00,298
Who remembers every hair, who
bottles every tear, who calls every

914
00:53:00,298 --> 00:53:04,978
star by name, and who promises
that not one life will be lost.

915
00:53:04,978 --> 00:53:06,838
Not one fragment forgotten.

916
00:53:07,138 --> 00:53:12,178
Not one love wasted To deny
death's, monstrosity is to

917
00:53:12,178 --> 00:53:14,103
Deny this promise to befriend.

918
00:53:14,103 --> 00:53:15,123
It is to concede it.

919
00:53:15,123 --> 00:53:19,233
As master Christianity offers
something altogether, wilder.

920
00:53:19,233 --> 00:53:21,873
The chance to mock it, to
taunt it, to stand at the

921
00:53:21,873 --> 00:53:24,003
edge of the grave and to sing.

922
00:53:25,198 --> 00:53:27,453
In one Corinthians 15,
that's what Paul does.

923
00:53:27,453 --> 00:53:29,163
He's not polite in the presence of death.

924
00:53:29,613 --> 00:53:31,983
Not circumspect, not respectful.

925
00:53:32,013 --> 00:53:33,723
He heaps scorn on the grave.

926
00:53:33,843 --> 00:53:35,403
He laughs in its face.

927
00:53:36,003 --> 00:53:36,093
Ow.

928
00:53:36,093 --> 00:53:37,263
Death is your victory.

929
00:53:37,503 --> 00:53:39,033
Where, oh, death is your sting.

930
00:53:39,243 --> 00:53:40,923
It is not a rhetorical question.

931
00:53:41,073 --> 00:53:44,373
It is a dare, a provocation,
a spit in the eye.

932
00:53:45,033 --> 00:53:49,023
Paul knows death is still real, still
painful, still hated, but he also knows

933
00:53:49,023 --> 00:53:51,093
that it's been defanged, it's victory.

934
00:53:51,093 --> 00:53:53,403
As a joke, it's sting, a mockery.

935
00:53:53,493 --> 00:53:55,023
It's permanence and illusion.

936
00:53:55,143 --> 00:53:56,643
He's inviting us to live.

937
00:53:57,093 --> 00:54:01,923
Even now with that kind of buoyancy, that
anchor to be unsinkable, knowing that our

938
00:54:01,923 --> 00:54:07,383
greatest enemy is already defeated, it's
teeth shattered, it's threat emptied.

939
00:54:10,345 --> 00:54:11,635
Nothing else could explain

940
00:54:13,675 --> 00:54:14,620
why there were Christians.

941
00:54:17,650 --> 00:54:21,700
Who sang as they burned on crosses,

942
00:54:25,720 --> 00:54:34,030
accept that they had an
anchored hope so, sure, so true.

943
00:54:34,270 --> 00:54:39,670
So confident that death had been defeated.

944
00:54:41,020 --> 00:54:42,790
Here's know the story
of David and Goliath.

945
00:54:43,300 --> 00:54:46,630
I love this story and I used
to teach it as a youth pastor.

946
00:54:47,470 --> 00:54:51,490
I'd be like, there's this Goliath
and he gets up and he defies

947
00:54:51,490 --> 00:54:52,690
the armies of the living God.

948
00:54:52,690 --> 00:54:54,460
And he's like, makes a mockery.

949
00:54:54,460 --> 00:54:58,360
And he blasphemes and he's ah,
you guys, you know your God is

950
00:54:58,360 --> 00:54:59,710
weak and puny and everything.

951
00:54:59,710 --> 00:55:03,520
And choose a man, a champion from
among you and I'll fight him.

952
00:55:03,520 --> 00:55:06,420
And if he wins, we'll
become your servants.

953
00:55:06,540 --> 00:55:08,800
And if, if I win, you become our servants.

954
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:14,480
And so, Never a man of Israel would
stand up to this giant, I think there

955
00:55:14,480 --> 00:55:18,260
were times where, you know, they
thought in the middle of the night

956
00:55:18,260 --> 00:55:23,210
they had one of those good dreams you
have after you eat healthy for a while,

957
00:55:23,260 --> 00:55:27,430
and, uh, you have this amazing dream
and you're like, man, I can do this.

958
00:55:27,430 --> 00:55:29,710
Yes, I can face this giant.

959
00:55:29,920 --> 00:55:31,570
I can beat this.

960
00:55:32,110 --> 00:55:36,130
And and he get gets up in the morning and
he sees the giant standing almost 10 feet

961
00:55:36,130 --> 00:55:42,100
tall with the armor and spear and the
sword, and it says that all of Israel's

962
00:55:42,100 --> 00:55:44,860
heart melted in them like wax did.

963
00:55:44,860 --> 00:55:47,860
We we're afraid they were trembling,
their knees were knocking.

964
00:55:48,100 --> 00:55:50,740
It sounded like chattering teeth
through the camp, but it was

965
00:55:50,740 --> 00:55:52,180
just everybody's knees trembling.

966
00:55:52,330 --> 00:55:56,050
They were so afraid to face this one.

967
00:55:56,950 --> 00:56:00,670
And then David comes along, David's like,
who's this guy talking all this junk?

968
00:56:02,030 --> 00:56:04,795
And so David, goes and he
finds five smooth stones.

969
00:56:04,795 --> 00:56:06,745
And then you say, as a
youth pastor, why five?

970
00:56:06,745 --> 00:56:08,425
Because Goliath had four brothers.

971
00:56:08,425 --> 00:56:10,135
David was like, I'm
gonna take 'em all out.

972
00:56:10,975 --> 00:56:11,425
I don't know.

973
00:56:11,965 --> 00:56:13,195
But he chooses five smooth stones.

974
00:56:13,195 --> 00:56:15,025
He goes, you defy the
armies of the living God.

975
00:56:15,025 --> 00:56:16,465
it's you who are gonna lose your head.

976
00:56:16,495 --> 00:56:19,645
And he slings his sling and it goes
right into the forehead of the,

977
00:56:19,695 --> 00:56:21,285
of the giant, knocks him mountain.

978
00:56:21,285 --> 00:56:24,495
And David takes the sword and
chops Goliath his head off.

979
00:56:24,615 --> 00:56:27,975
And all of a sudden all of Israel
rallies behind David because David's

980
00:56:27,975 --> 00:56:30,735
victory became all of Israel's victory.

981
00:56:30,735 --> 00:56:32,895
And everybody's like, we won, right?

982
00:56:33,045 --> 00:56:35,625
And so, you know, it's a good youth
pastor and I'm like, so go out and

983
00:56:35,625 --> 00:56:39,045
face your giants, you guys, whether
it's the bullies at school or,

984
00:56:39,115 --> 00:56:41,275
whatever it is, or, or death itself.

985
00:56:41,335 --> 00:56:42,445
You guys have courage.

986
00:56:42,445 --> 00:56:43,645
You really find that great.

987
00:56:43,645 --> 00:56:45,025
You be like those young Davids.

988
00:56:45,205 --> 00:56:48,805
But here's the thing that I missed, is
that we are not David in that story.

989
00:56:50,305 --> 00:56:50,905
We're not David.

990
00:56:53,050 --> 00:56:55,870
We are the guys in the tents who
are too afraid to face because the

991
00:56:55,870 --> 00:57:00,520
giant in this giant, the giants of
Satan sin and death are overwhelming

992
00:57:01,180 --> 00:57:03,160
and they will slaughter us.

993
00:57:03,520 --> 00:57:06,310
Our hearts should melt within us like wax.

994
00:57:06,310 --> 00:57:08,785
But there was one who
came, the son of David.

995
00:57:10,165 --> 00:57:17,095
Who came and he said, I will face off
against the giants that you cannot defeat.

996
00:57:17,275 --> 00:57:20,035
And he went up against that giant,
not at the risk of his life,

997
00:57:20,035 --> 00:57:21,355
but at the cost of his life.

998
00:57:21,415 --> 00:57:23,785
And in dying, he defeated death.

999
00:57:23,935 --> 00:57:26,455
And in dying, he absorbed
death into himself.

1000
00:57:26,485 --> 00:57:29,695
And as he comes out on the other
side of the grave, he defangs death.

1001
00:57:29,695 --> 00:57:33,115
He removes the sting from it,
and he comes up in victory.

1002
00:57:33,235 --> 00:57:37,465
And just as David's victory was
a victory for all of Israel, so,

1003
00:57:37,465 --> 00:57:42,475
and alone is Christ's victory over
Satan, sin and death are victory.

1004
00:57:42,925 --> 00:57:47,635
We can face Satan sin and death
as defeated foes because Christus,

1005
00:57:47,635 --> 00:57:52,345
Victor, Christ, our Victor Christ,
the champion, has gone into death.

1006
00:57:52,405 --> 00:57:54,385
He suffered the wrath that I deserve.

1007
00:57:54,475 --> 00:57:56,035
Yes, I stood condemned.

1008
00:57:56,395 --> 00:57:56,755
Guys.

1009
00:57:56,935 --> 00:57:59,155
Have you ever thought
I, I tried doing this.

1010
00:57:59,545 --> 00:58:04,915
I have done at least one wrong thing
a day for the past two weeks I've been

1011
00:58:04,915 --> 00:58:06,295
thinking about it and keeping track and I.

1012
00:58:06,332 --> 00:58:08,217
I started making a mental
note, and guess what?

1013
00:58:08,342 --> 00:58:09,722
I don't really wanna share 'em with you.

1014
00:58:09,842 --> 00:58:11,162
That's too transparent.

1015
00:58:12,002 --> 00:58:15,002
But think about that 8
billion people on the planet.

1016
00:58:15,002 --> 00:58:18,302
If it's just one wrong thing,
and my wrong thing isn't just

1017
00:58:18,302 --> 00:58:19,622
something that I do to myself.

1018
00:58:19,682 --> 00:58:23,102
It affects my kids, it affects my
marriage, it affects my community,

1019
00:58:23,222 --> 00:58:29,192
and the impact of sin is so global, so
massive, so messy, and Christ, it says

1020
00:58:29,192 --> 00:58:31,502
its second Corinthians five became sin.

1021
00:58:34,052 --> 00:58:41,732
Is he was treated as the lamb and my sin
was put on him, and he took the judgment,

1022
00:58:41,732 --> 00:58:43,292
the condemnation that I deserved.

1023
00:58:43,352 --> 00:58:47,912
And then he didn't just wipe the
slate clean, he gave me the victory.

1024
00:58:47,972 --> 00:58:49,772
He treated me, he adopted me.

1025
00:58:49,802 --> 00:58:52,982
He gives me his inheritance,
he gives me his righteousness.

1026
00:58:52,982 --> 00:58:58,412
So as the father looks at me today, in
my messiest, in, in my worst, he sees

1027
00:58:58,412 --> 00:59:00,422
the beauty and the perfection of Christ.

1028
00:59:01,277 --> 00:59:05,147
That is the gospel of grace
and it changes everything.

1029
00:59:05,477 --> 00:59:08,507
It's not a religion of doing
and trying and being better.

1030
00:59:08,657 --> 00:59:13,697
It is those who can't do, who have
tried and are burnt out and spent

1031
00:59:13,757 --> 00:59:17,447
and weak and desperate, finding
that the Savior did it all for them.

1032
00:59:18,182 --> 00:59:20,252
And we cast ourselves on his mercy.

1033
00:59:20,372 --> 00:59:21,452
We lean into him.

1034
00:59:21,572 --> 00:59:23,132
But why defeat death?

1035
00:59:23,282 --> 00:59:26,672
Why is it so important to conquer
this foe, not just to give us an

1036
00:59:26,672 --> 00:59:31,172
anchor, but do you notice that verse
where it says that he, Jesus walks

1037
00:59:31,172 --> 00:59:33,572
up and puts his hand on John's back?

1038
00:59:33,662 --> 00:59:34,772
That's the whole point.

1039
00:59:34,832 --> 00:59:38,522
The touch, guys, you were made for God.

1040
00:59:39,362 --> 00:59:43,052
You were made to walk with God in
the cool of the day, face to face,

1041
00:59:45,182 --> 00:59:46,442
but sin destroyed that.

1042
00:59:47,102 --> 00:59:48,002
It made a barrier.

1043
00:59:48,002 --> 00:59:51,632
We were thrust outta Eden and we
couldn't get back to the tree of life.

1044
00:59:52,202 --> 00:59:54,302
You know, Moses said, show me your glory.

1045
00:59:54,362 --> 00:59:56,792
And God said, I can't show you my glory.

1046
00:59:56,792 --> 00:59:57,932
You'll die.

1047
00:59:58,262 --> 00:59:59,372
I can't show you my face.

1048
00:59:59,402 --> 01:00:01,472
I'll show you the backside of my glory.

1049
01:00:01,562 --> 01:00:05,822
And even at that, Moses glowed, people
couldn't get near to the presence of God.

1050
01:00:07,022 --> 01:00:10,862
Until the presence of God came and
got near to us and he lived the life

1051
01:00:10,892 --> 01:00:14,912
that we never could have lived, and he
died, the death that we deserve to die.

1052
01:00:15,032 --> 01:00:15,602
Why?

1053
01:00:15,812 --> 01:00:16,892
Why defeat death?

1054
01:00:16,952 --> 01:00:20,402
Why defeat death so that he could
come to you today and put his hand

1055
01:00:20,402 --> 01:00:22,232
on you and say, be not afraid.

1056
01:00:23,972 --> 01:00:24,962
Be not afraid.

1057
01:00:25,442 --> 01:00:26,252
I've conquered.

1058
01:00:26,257 --> 01:00:30,612
And why did I conquer so that I could have
you back in right relationship with me?

1059
01:00:31,772 --> 01:00:34,502
I finally close with this,
and guys, this blew me away.

1060
01:00:34,562 --> 01:00:37,592
I had, I have preached for a long
time and I've never known this.

1061
01:00:37,862 --> 01:00:41,582
Do you know the thief on the
cross when he says, remember me

1062
01:00:41,582 --> 01:00:43,602
when you come into, your kingdom?

1063
01:00:43,602 --> 01:00:46,932
And Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to
you today, you'll be with me in paradise.

1064
01:00:48,252 --> 01:00:50,262
Well, that is just a Greek word.

1065
01:00:50,382 --> 01:00:51,552
It's cio.

1066
01:00:51,912 --> 01:00:55,422
And when the people who are translating.

1067
01:00:55,812 --> 01:01:00,162
The Old Testament into Greek, they
just took that Greek word, and

1068
01:01:00,162 --> 01:01:04,362
every time the Hebrew word came
up, they would just translate it.

1069
01:01:04,782 --> 01:01:04,992
Cio.

1070
01:01:04,992 --> 01:01:05,442
Paradise.

1071
01:01:05,442 --> 01:01:05,832
paradise.

1072
01:01:05,832 --> 01:01:08,202
Do you know what that word means?

1073
01:01:08,262 --> 01:01:10,692
Actually in Hebrew?

1074
01:01:10,692 --> 01:01:12,612
Every time it's translated paradise.

1075
01:01:12,612 --> 01:01:13,992
Today you'll be with me in paradise.

1076
01:01:16,997 --> 01:01:18,612
That's translated as garden.

1077
01:01:19,012 --> 01:01:20,122
that's the Hebrew word.

1078
01:01:20,542 --> 01:01:23,422
And so when the thief says, remember
me, when you come into your kingdom.

1079
01:01:23,797 --> 01:01:29,617
Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you
today, we're gonna walk in the garden.

1080
01:01:29,617 --> 01:01:29,737
Mommy.

1081
01:01:34,327 --> 01:01:35,437
It all comes back, guys.

1082
01:01:35,437 --> 01:01:36,997
That's what you were built for.

1083
01:01:37,897 --> 01:01:38,917
It all comes back.

1084
01:01:38,917 --> 01:01:40,357
That's he loves you.

1085
01:01:40,417 --> 01:01:46,147
He wants you, and he's removed any barrier
sin that would keep you barred from

1086
01:01:46,147 --> 01:01:49,957
his presence, death that would keep you
barred from his presence for eternity.

1087
01:01:50,047 --> 01:01:52,267
He's removed and defanged it all.

1088
01:01:53,062 --> 01:01:54,352
He's conquered our enemy.

1089
01:01:54,382 --> 01:01:54,802
Why?

1090
01:01:54,952 --> 01:01:57,922
So that he can have that
relationship that you were built for.

1091
01:01:57,922 --> 01:02:04,012
You have been made for God, and we are
restless until we find our hope in him.

1092
01:02:04,432 --> 01:02:06,052
You were made for him.

1093
01:02:06,052 --> 01:02:08,002
He loves you and he's made every way.

1094
01:02:08,332 --> 01:02:08,902
We're gonna worship.

1095
01:02:08,902 --> 01:02:09,922
We're gonna close.

1096
01:02:10,252 --> 01:02:13,162
Please see, death is the enemy
that Jesus has conquered.

1097
01:02:13,162 --> 01:02:13,672
Hate it.

1098
01:02:13,792 --> 01:02:15,532
Rage against the dying of the light.

1099
01:02:15,712 --> 01:02:18,202
Things are not the way they're
supposed to be, but Christ is

1100
01:02:18,202 --> 01:02:22,042
coming back to put things right to
wipe away every tear from the eye.

1101
01:02:22,552 --> 01:02:24,292
Nothing is wasted to God.

1102
01:02:24,742 --> 01:02:29,062
It literally says that every tear
you've ever cried, whether privately

1103
01:02:29,122 --> 01:02:32,782
or publicly, he keeps in his bottle
and he's gonna make it right.

1104
01:02:32,782 --> 01:02:34,972
He's gonna make it right,
he's gonna make it right.

1105
01:02:36,652 --> 01:02:40,642
As he adjusts the universe, it puts things
back to the way they're supposed to be.