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Good morning, Gateway Chapel!
Scripture Psalm 16.
Father, you are life.
There is nothing but death apart from you.
There is no life separate from you presence.
When you’re with us, we can never truly die.
Forgive us for the ways we knowingly and unknowingly wander from your presence and bring about death.
Make known to us the path of life, give us full joy in your presence today, remind us of the pleasant, desirable, enriching life that is available to us when we live fully aware that we’re by your side.
Holy Spirit, we ask to see Jesus today.
In Jesus’ name, amen.
Intro
Good morning, Gateway Chapel!
If we haven’t met, my name is Chris, I’m the pastor of Gateway Chapel, the church that gathers here in this building.
Before I get started I wanted to say how great it was to celebrate baptisms last Sunday out at Lake Tapps.
Congrats to Shari Coleman, Jim Watson, and Micheal and Landyn Whitson who all told the world “I am with Jesus.”
Baptism is not the destination it is the beginning.
So let’s encourage them as we encourage everyone in the church to keep hearing, loving, and obeying Jesus.
We’re over halfway through 2022.
I don’t know if that’s good news or bad news for you.
And we’re over halfway through our year-long sermon series, “The Year of Biblical Exploration.”
We are looking at the story of the Bible from a macro level, touching down at key points in the story to enjoy this amazing family quilt that is the Bible.
What is the Bible?
Is it a divine rule book handed down to show us how to be good people and go to the good place when we die?
No, we’ve put together a working definition of the Bible.
Let’s read it out loud together.
The Bible is a library of texts - both divine and human - with a unified story that leads to knowing Jesus and growing in Jesus.
Church is a gathering of Jesus followers who want to be more like Jesus, and Jesus loved his Bible.
He saw his whole life through the lens of Scripture, and he saw all of Scripture as pointing to himself.
And we’ve looked at that all year long, from Genesis all the way through the prophets, and now we’ve arrived at the stories of Jesus himself in the New Testament, and the last month or so we’ve been asking, “Who is Jesus?”
Who is Jesus?
How would you answer that?
How might your neighbors answer that?
It is the the most important question in the entire world.
The questions we all ask, “Why am I here?
What is the point of my life?
Is there anything more than this?
Is there a God?”
All these questions find their home in “Who is Jesus?” because Jesus reveals God himself, the longing of every human heart.
And fortunately for us, Jesus tells us.
Seven times in the book of John, Jesus says, “I am ________________.”
It’s Jesus’ nametag.
He tells us what he is like, and in doing so, what God himself is like.
He says I am
The bread of life
The light of the world
The gate
The good shepherd
The resurrection and the life
The way, the truth, and the life
The true vine
How many of you grew up playing video games?
I generally played sports video games, Tiger Woods, EA Sports, NCAA Football.
Madden…the good stuff.
But every so often I’d play Halo with buddies and if you’re not familiar the point of Halo is to kill aliens.
And because I wasn’t very good, the aliens or my friends would kill me, and then what happens?
You come back.
Your character just “respawns.”
Maybe you’re more familiar with Mario, when you touch the mushroom guy, Mario goes “Oh no!”
And then what happens?
You just start over again.
Playing that game as a kid, you take resurrection for granted.
“Of course, you just come back!”
I wonder if we do the same thing as Christians.
Jesus says to a woman in the depths of grief, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
And because we’ve heard the story so many times we go yeah yeah…but we have to stop.
Dead people stay dead.
Always have, always will.
Right?
Elvis is very dead, don’t listen to the internet.
But Jesus says, because I’m here, everything has changed.
What did that mean then, and what does it mean for us today?
Prayer
We’re asking, “Who is Jesus?” and to answer that, we’re in the gospel of John, looking at the seven times Jesus says, “I am ________________.”
So let’s get some context on the book of John.
What’s it about?
Turn to John 20:30-31
John chose each word and not others, so that we would experience life through believing in Jesus.
John is all about life, and belief, in Jesus.
But what does John mean by life and belief?
Well to help explain, he gives us the story of Jesus and Lazarus in John 11, which is where we are today.
John 11 is arguably the second most climactic moment in the book.
Everything in the story has lead to this, and everything that flows from this point will lead to the ultimate climax.
It says “When Jesus came”… a fascinating part of John 11 is that Jesus learned Lazarus was dying from Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha, but it says this earlier in John 11.
If he loves him, why wait?
Imagine calling 911 and hearing, “We’ll be there in two days.”
We view sickness and painful circumstances like a big spider on your shoulder, “GET IT OFF NOW!!” God is far more patient.
God invented time, and is never late.
And sickness, pain, and even death itself can be opportunities for God to display his glory, which is his number on priority.
Why?
Because he’s selfish?
Because it’s better than life itself.
And he wants us to feel it.
Jesus delays, and Lazarus dies.
He’s been dead four days.
He’s not just dead he’s very dead.
There was rabbinic tradition which thought that for the first three days after death, your soul hovered above your body and then after that it was gone.
Not sure if that belief was in place in Jesus’ day, but it’s possible.
Talking with Fletcher Price this week, Fletcher made the point that Ezekiel and the valley of dry bones may be in view here.
Lazarus is very dead.
Jesus, you’re late.
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