 Happy Easter everyone. What a delight to have you join us. I want to bring a message to you this resurrection weekend out of John chapter 20 called, This Is Jesus. I want you to look with me at John chapter 20 beginning in verse number one. This is John's perspective of that very first morning after Jesus's resurrection. It says in verse one, Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark and she saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and she went to Simon Peter and the other disciples whom Jesus loved and said to them, They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him. So Peter went out with the other disciple and they were going towards the tomb. Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first and stooping to look in. He saw the linen cloth lying there, but he did not go in. And then Simon Peter came following in and went to the tomb and he saw the linen cloths lying there and the face cloth which had been on Jesus's head not lying with the linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in and he saw and he believed for as yet they did not understand the scriptures that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes. Verse number 11, But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb and as she wept, she stooped to look in the tomb and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain. One at the head, one at the feet. And they said to her, woman, why are you weeping? And she said to them, they've taken away the Lord or they've taken away my Lord and I do not know where they've laid him. And having said this, she turned around and she saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. And Jesus said to her, woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, sir, you have carried him away. Tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away. And Jesus said to her, Mary. And she turned and said to him in Aramaic, Rabboni, which means teacher. And Jesus said to her, do not cling to me for I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father to my God and your God. Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord and that he had said these things to her. This was on the morning just after Jesus has raised from the dead. And what's interesting about this particular story, this narrative of that first Easter morning is that Mary did not know that it was Jesus. She had spent so much time with Jesus. She knew Jesus intimately, but when she sees Jesus in the garden, she has a case of mistaken identity. She actually thinks it's the gardener. And she says to him, where have you taken the Lord? She assumes that the person that she is talking to that she sees is somebody other than Jesus. Do you know, A.W. Tozier said something. He said, what comes into our mind when we think about God is the single most important thing about us. And I think it's interesting that here we have a woman like Mary, Mary Magdalene, who has been saved by Jesus. Demons have been cast out of her. She became one of his supporters and financial backers for his ministry. She's traveled with Jesus. She knows Jesus. She's there when Jesus is crucified. She's there when Jesus is buried. But now on this Easter morning, when she sees Jesus, she doesn't recognize Jesus. And I think that's very telling to us today because there are a lot of people who have spent a lot of time with Jesus. They've gone to church. They've been around religion all their lives. They hear the name of Jesus and it's very familiar to them. But when they're confronted with the power of the resurrected Jesus, or when you ask them, who is Jesus, they oftentimes have a mistaken identity about who he is. The wrong thing comes up in their mind about who he is. And you see, if we make a mistake about somebody that we meet in the mall or at the grocery store and we mess their name up, which I do all the time, we'll get corrected and it's not a big deal. The next time we'll remember hopefully. But if we get who Jesus is wrong, it has eternal consequences. You see, it took one moment. It took one word from Jesus of him saying to her, Mary. And everything changed for Mary in that moment. She recognized who he was. And my prayer this morning, this Easter resurrection weekend is that as we put our focus on Jesus resurrected from the dead, that we will also hear his voice speaking to us, speaking our name. And whatever misconceptions and whatever filters we have put over Jesus will be stripped away and will recognize him for who he is, that he really is Lord of Lords. This is Jesus. Today in our world, in our culture, people believe a lot of things about Jesus. You ask the average person on the street and say, who is Jesus? They will give you all kinds of answers. Some people will say, well, Jesus is a good man and he taught good principles. So Jesus was a good moral example. He was a good man. He did a lot of good things. He taught a lot of good things. And we have a lot of respect for him. You know, a lot of our founding fathers in this nation, including Thomas Jefferson, that was their perspective about Jesus. He's a good man, but he's more than that. Some would say, well, Jesus was an enlightened man. He came and he showed us a pathway towards enlightenment, much like Buddha. You know, there's Buddha and, you know, there's Krishna and there's Muhammad. And then there's Jesus, these religious avatars, these human beings who somehow tapped into the universal consciousness and experienced enlightenment at a higher level than the rest of us. And they gave us a pathway so that we can experience enlightenment, that somehow we are divine. And all we need is somebody to show us how to tap into that divine enlightenment and to reach divinity and become our own gods. You know, there are a lot of people in our culture today that subscribe to that philosophy. They think we're all gods. We just don't know it. Or that we're all connected to the universe and that the universe is this all-encompassing inanimate force that we just need to tap into and experience and realize that we're divine, that we're our own Savior, that we're our own gods. And we need people to teach us the pathway there. There are a lot of people believe that's what Jesus was. But Jesus is so much more. There are some people who would say, well, Jesus was a Jewish prophet. He was like Jeremiah. He was like Isaiah. He was like Hosea, Micah, Nehum. He was like, you know, John the Baptist. He was just one of these prophets that God raised up to go to the Jewish people and to call them back to devotion to Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And he indeed was a prophet. But he was so much more than just a prophet. Yes, indeed, he spoke the word of God. He confronted the religious leaders of his day. He did call the nation of Israel back. He did deal with Gentiles who were far away. He cleansed the temple, all of the things that you would assume that a prophet would do. But Jesus was so much more than even just a prophet. There were some who will tell you today that, well, Jesus was just a social justice hippie. He walked around in Birkenstocks, lived in a Volkswagen van down by the Sea of Galilee, and he was fired up about all the social justice issues of his mind. He came of his era. He came to help the poor, which he did. And he came to overthrow power structures and political structures. And he got killed for it. You know, some of the great philosophical minds of the past couple of hundreds of years have said that, like Albert Schweitzer said that, you know, Jesus was just a social justice warrior for a better lack of a better definition in our context. But Jesus cared for the oppressed. Jesus ministered to the broken. Jesus fed the hungry and he cared for the poor. But he was so much more than that. Even recently on TikTok had a Bible college graduate, a man who went to a young man who went to a conservative Bible school who said this. Now, he said that Jesus basically repented of his prejudices and his racism, and that Jesus had prejudices and racial biases that he had to repent from. So you've got somebody who says that Jesus was a racist bigot that had to be confronted with all of his own prejudices and repent from that. And we need to follow his example. Can I just tell you that the only reason that there are races, the only reason that there is diversity, the only reason that there is equality is because of Jesus. Jesus was no racist. Jesus was no bigot. And Jesus doesn't follow TikTok. He's not concerned about social media and he's not concerned about human viewpoints of social justice because there's a higher justice than social justice. It's God's justice. And there's a higher reality and there's a higher reason to live our lives than for the approval of the populace or for the consensus of the crowds or for the direction that mainstream culture is going. Jesus said, I am here to do the will of my Father. One of the greatest minds that has ever lived and ever written about Jesus is a man named C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis was a Oxford educated, Cambridge Oxford educated and then became a professor at Oxford at the first half of the 20th century. And he was an atheist. And he was an atheist for a lot of good reasons. But as he began to investigate the claims of Jesus, as he began to investigate the hysterosity of the Scripture and study the church and how it's been preserved for 2,000 years and how the followers of Jesus have actually built much of Western civilization that we consider to be good and kind and actually the good things of Western civilization, he became convinced that Jesus Christ indeed was who he said he was. But in one of his books, he said this about Jesus, he said that no one can make the claims that Jesus made and just be a good man. No one can claim to be God and be just a pathway forward. He said this, he said, Jesus Christ is either a liar, a lunatic, or he is Lord because he can't be all three. Because if Jesus claimed that he was divine and he wasn't, well then he's a liar. If Jesus claimed to be divine and he wasn't, then he's out of his mind. But if Jesus claimed to be the Son of God who came into the world to save the world and he actually had something as part of his ministry that validated that, supernaturally validated that, then he's so much more than a prophet. He's so much more than a religious avatar. He's so much more than a social justice warrior. He's so much more than a mere carpenter, as Josh McDowell called him. He indeed is the Son of God. Well, what would that thing be? What would be his validation, his vindication? He would have to do something that no other man, no other religious icon, no other religious leader has ever done before or since that totally transcends all natural law, all logic, all rationale that suspends the laws of physics in the universe. And what was that? It was dying on the cross. A lot of men have died. But three days later to be raised from the dead, and Jesus did that. And that is the lynchpin to understanding who Jesus is. See, Jesus Christ crucified, Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and he appeared to his disciples. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that Jesus appeared to 500 men all at one time. This was not hypnosis. This was not they had some dream or some vision or some hallucination. 500 people seeing the same thing all at the same time. And when Paul wrote that in 1 Corinthians, those 500 witnesses were still alive. They could have discredited Paul's claim, but they didn't. And he appeared to Mary Magdalene. I'm going to tell you this morning who I believe Jesus is. But before I do that, I want to read to you a quote from Josh McDowell. Josh McDowell is an apologist. He was a follower of Jesus. He didn't always start off that way. He was a very gifted, very intellectual or very academically trained man like C.S. Lewis, who late in life came to faith. And he wrote a book about Jesus called More Than A Carpenter, that Jesus is more than a carpenter. And he wrote this, he said, many people entertain the idea that Christianity like almost any other religion is basically a system of beliefs, you know, a set of doctrines or a code of behavior, a philosophy or an ideology. But that is a myth. Christianity is not at all like Buddhism or Islam or Confucianism. The founders of those religions said in effect, here's what I teach. Believe my teachings, follow my philosophy. But Jesus said, follow me. In Matthew 9, 9, Jesus said, don't just follow my teaching, follow me. Leaders of the world religion said, what do you think about what I teach? But Jesus said, who do you say that I am? What a question. Who do you say that I am? In Luke 9, verse 20, he asked the question, who do you say that I am? So let me tell you who I believe the scriptures tell us that Jesus is, and that is validated by the eyewitnesses of his resurrection that has sustained and strengthened followers of Jesus for over 2,000 years. Here's who Jesus is. Number one, he's more than a man. He's the Son of God. Jesus is more than a mere man. Yes, Jesus indeed was the Son of God who became a man. The Bible describes that as Emmanuel, that God left heaven, the Son of God left the riches and the glory and the honor of heaven, and he condescended into history and took on humanity for the sake of saving the human race from our sins. It's the only way it could happen. There is no human man who would ever find a pathway that leads out of the pit of our sin and judgment and our deserving of death and condemnation. Even with our best attempts, there's no angel that God could have sent to tell us how to do it on our own because our sin nature, our human nature is so broken and so flawed, and we reproduce that in our children and generation to generation to generation. We pass on the virus of sin that contaminates and corrupts each of us from the inside out. We are totally broken without any ability to save or fix ourselves. God could have just left us, but he so loved the world. John 3.16 says that he gave his only begotten Son. That's Jesus. God in the flesh. Jesus had a fully divine nature. He was God. He is God, eternally God. But he also took on human nature and those two were fused together and he took on human flesh and he came into the world and he came to show us who God was, to identify with our experience, to enter into our suffering. Jesus knew what it was like to be betrayed, lied about, hungry, tired, thirsty. He knew what temptation was like, but he overcame every single one of those temptations. He lived a perfect life and ultimately he became the only human being who ever had the right to not die. And yet he chose to lay down his life and die for us so that once he picked back up his life, he could give eternal life to every single one of us. It goes back to John 3.16 for God, so love the world. That he gave his only begotten Son. That whosoever should believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus is more than a man. He's the Son of God. Who's Jesus? Jesus is number two. More than one way among many, Jesus is the only way. Jesus said in John 14, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus said this about himself. He said, you want to know who I am? I don't just know the way, I am the way. I don't just know the truth, I am the truth. I don't just know life, I am life. You know, there are a lot of people that you can follow. You can go down to the local bookstore, Barnes and Nobles, or you can jump on Amazon and you can find a ton of books under the title self-improvement. And they're going to tell you their story. This is how, fix your life. This is the way to find happiness. This is the way to find peace. But none of them can say to you, I am the way. There are a lot of religions, just like we just read in Josh McDowell, who can tell you, if you follow my teaching, it will become a way. But the Bible is very clear in Proverbs. It says, there is a way that seems right unto a man, but in the end, it leads to destruction. You know, you don't know where a way leads you until you get to the end of it. If you follow Buddha, you'll get to the end of your life, and you'll realize that it was incomplete and that there was no way to extinguish your desires, that there is no personal God who loves you, created you, or has any purpose for you. And the best you can hope for is to be reincarnated and do it all again until you get it right. If you follow Muhammad, you'll always live your life wondering if the creator, if the ultimate God who is the judge is ever pleased with you, because it will be dependent on you, on you doing enough good to outweigh your bad. But if you follow Jesus, you don't have to wonder where the end is going to lead you, because in the resurrection story, we see where it leads because Jesus is the way. It leads to life. And I'll tell you what, right now, people are looking for a lot of ways to do things. They're Googling, they're YouTubing, how do I do something? You can't figure it out. You can't save yourself. You are dead in your sins, but to whosoever believes and trust that Jesus is the way, that he is the truth and that he is the life to as many as believed, he gave them the right to become the children of God. John chapter one says to as many as believed, if we'll believe that Jesus is more than just one way among many, but we say he is the way. He's not just his truth. You know, we live in a day where everybody wants their own truth, but there is only one truth that matters. And it is the truth of the one who is the way, because if we'll follow Jesus as the way, we'll walk in his truth. It will lead to his life, the kind of life that never ends. You can live beyond 70, 80, 90 years here on this planet and have eternal life forever. This life is the training ground for the next. Jesus is the only way to experience eternal life. Who's Jesus number three? He's more than an influencer. He's Savior. He's more than a moral example. He's our Savior. A lot of times we come to Jesus and we say, God, I'm going to get my whole life together and then I'll follow you. Or, you know, once I clean up my act a little bit, then I'm going to go back to church. Or, once I've shown my wild oats a little bit and kind of, you know, had my fun, then I'm going then I'm going to become a really religious person that's pleasing unto God. So many people live their lives with that kind of mentality or so many people are so afraid of praying or asking for the Lord to forgive them because they think that they somehow have to earn it. Can I just tell you today, you can't save yourself. If you could save yourself, then the cross is meaningless. If you were responsible for finding forgiveness for your sins, then Jesus going to the cross was a huge waste and his resurrection means nothing. But when we look at the cross, beloved, listen to me. When we look at the cross, what we see is a Savior, a rescuer, a redeemer. Jesus does for us what we could not do for ourselves. Romans chapter five, Paul says this in verse number six, for while we were still weak or without strength, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even die. But God showed his love for us that when we were still sinners, Christ died for us. You know, one of the biggest problems that we have in our world today is we don't understand that we are enemies of God, that we are sinners, and that we are unrighteous, because that goes against our pride. What we want God to be is, God, I'm a good person, I want you to be good to me, and we ask God all the time, I'm doing good Lord, why are you allowing bad things to happen to us? And we've misunderstood that we're living in a sinful, broken world where we have rebelled against God. And what we deserve from God is we deserve judgment. We deserve to go to hell for eternity, because we have rebelled against God, we have injured others, we are broken on the inside, we're unrighteous, we're sinners. And instead of God condemning us, what does he do though? Jesus comes and he offers us salvation. He says, I don't want you to be lost. God desires that none should perish, but that all should reach repentance. What does it require of us? When we look at the cross, we see the love of God. We see Jesus as made a way for our sins to be forgiven. 2 Corinthians 5.21 says that he who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. Did you hear that? Your sins, your brokenness, my sins, my brokenness that I deserve to pay the full penalty for? Jesus came, and he's the only human being who's ever lived sinlessly. He stepped in my place and he said, you stand in my place, I'll stand in yours. You take my righteousness, my right standing before the Father, and I'll take your sin. I'll take your judgment upon myself so that you can have right standing before God. What does he do in that moment? He saves us from ourselves. He saves us from the power of sin. He saves us from an eternity separated from God, the Father. He saves us from an eternity of punishment for what we've done and rightfully deserved, and the only way he does that is he becomes, he exchanges everything that we're not for everything that he is. He takes our place. This is Jesus. He's a beautiful Savior. We've got to stop trying to fix it ourselves and we need to turn it over. We need to stop trying to be our own guru and we need to let Jesus be Lord. We need to stop accusing God of not being fair and recognize that he is incredibly merciful, that we don't want what we deserve. We actually want what we don't deserve. We want grace. We want God to forgive us. This is who Jesus is. Number four, Jesus is more than a life improvement coach. He actually is a deliverer and a healer. Jesus isn't just calm. God isn't just giving us the Bible so that we have nice good principles to live our best life now. That's not why Jesus came. Jesus said in Luke chapter four, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. Healing of the brokenhearted, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom to the captives. Jesus has come to deliver us. And here's what I want you to know today. I don't know what you might be experiencing. You might be a follower of Jesus and you're still fighting battles. You might be someone who's familiar with Jesus and you're tuning in because it's Easter weekend. Somebody invited you but you know that on the outward your hands look free. But if you really stop and you think about it internally in your heart and in your soul, you know you're a captive. You're bound by fear. It controls you. You're captivated by addiction. You've tried over and over and over again to get free. You're trying to be a better person and be kinder to other people. But there's hate, there's racism, there's division, there's bitterness, there's pride that you know keeps coming up and self-destructing relationships, affecting the way that you see the world. And you know it's easy to just ignore our chains and become comfortable in our chains. It's easy for a prisoner in jail to just allow himself to become identified with the serial number on the back of his orange jumpsuit. And it's easy for captives spiritually to just allow their lives to get sucked up and my whole identity is wrapped up in that addiction, that sin that I keep giving into, that pride that affects everything that I do in my life, that bondage because we've believed a lie that we can't be free. I want you to know Jesus overcame the grave when he rose from it. Jesus healed the sick. Jesus set free the captives. Jesus forgave sinners. Jesus gave recovery of sight to the blind. And whatever it is that you are facing today, I want you to know who Jesus is. Jesus is a deliverer. Jesus is a healer. He can heal you. He can deliver you. If you call on his name today, Roboni, teacher, Lord, I believe it's you. Heal me. Deliver me today. I want you to know that that same power that raised Jesus from the dead is able to meet you wherever you are in this moment and set you free. Lastly, I want you to know this, that Jesus is more than a historical figure. Jesus is the soon-coming king and the judge of all the earth. The historic creeds, apostles creed, the Nicene Creed that the church for 2,000 years has anchored our faith to, says this, we believe that Jesus will come back to judge the living and the dead. You want to know who Jesus is? Jesus is coming soon. And we can think to ourselves, oh, life's just going to go on as normal. It's always going to be like this. But whether it's a moment that we are not looking for or that's unplanned in our life, where suddenly we're confronted with our own mortality, and we know that we're going to step out of this life and stand before God and give an account for it, or whether it's the day when Jesus returns, because make no mistake about it, the same Jesus that predicted he would rise from the dead is the same Jesus in Acts chapter 1 who told his followers, in the same way that you see me going, it's the same way that I'm returning. And when I come back, I'm coming back with my saints and my angels, and I'm going to set up a throne, and I'm going to judge nations. I'm going to judge individuals. Listen, no one is going to escape that day. And when we stand before Jesus, the righteous judge and our King on that day, whether it's when we die or when Jesus returns, what are we going to say? Are we going to say, well, I hope my good outweighed my bad? That's not going to cut it, my friend. On that day, the only thing that matters is if we bowed the knee and said, Jesus, you are Lord. I'm not Lord, you are Lord. I submit to you. I repent, forgive me, and God's grace will come in and forgive you and save you. And on that day, you don't have to approach His throne with trepidation. You can approach Him with confidence because you know you belong to Him. You know your sins have been forgiven. Your name has been written in the Lamb's Book of Life. Question I want to ask you is this. Who do you say that Jesus is? Verse number 18, Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord, and that she shared with them all the things that he said to her. You know, it just took one moment where Mary encountered Jesus, even though she didn't know fully who he was when she heard his voice, she recognized him. And my prayer is that this resurrection day where we remember Jesus raised from the dead would be a day that you encountered Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, in the same way Mary did it. And that when you hear Him speak your name, no one can come to Jesus unless Jesus draws them. Is Jesus drawing you today? Is the Holy Spirit convicting you? You may not know it, you can't see it, but right now is your heart telling you that you are a sinner, that you need forgiveness, salvation? Are you a prodigal that has walked with Jesus and gone to church and would have described yourself as a Christian, but yet you've lived really for yourself because you've been familiar with Jesus, but you've not been following Jesus. And now, like the prodigal son and one of Jesus' parables, you're coming to your senses. It's as if God has grabbed a hold of your heart and you know I need to be made right before God. Is the Holy Spirit drawing you today? Are you feeling conviction today? If so, that's not something to run from. Listen, my friend, we need to run to the resurrected Jesus just like these disciples ran to the grave and just like Mary ran from her encounter and said, I have seen the Lord. Have you seen the Lord today? Has he made himself known to you? Because if he asks, this is Jesus who loves you. This is Jesus who came to save you. This is Jesus who will set you free. This is Jesus who soon returning as our coming King and Savior. He's our blessed. This is Jesus who will never turn you away. This is Jesus that the book tells us about. This is Jesus who knows every hair on your head. He knows everything you've ever done, every thought you've ever thought. And yet he loves you. He's passionate about you. And more than anything, what he wants is for you to surrender and yield your life to him and turn over the leadership of your life to him. When Jesus asked Simon Peter, who do you say that I am? Simon's answer was in Matthew 16. You are the son of the living God. And Jesus said, blessed are you, Simon Bargiona, for flesh and blood is not revealed this to you, but my father who's in heaven. And today, if I ask you the question, who do you say that Jesus is? If you would say, I really do believe Jesus is the son of God. I really do believe he died on the cross. And he rose again from the dead. Then either we need to once and for all ask Jesus into our life and confess him to be the Lord of our lives and become a Christian and follow him. Or if we're a prodigal and we've backslidden and we've walked away from God, we need to repent and we need to come home. And we need to do what Jesus said, not just show up to acknowledge a day out of a year, but we need to follow him with our whole heart and our whole life. I want to give you an opportunity right now to receive Jesus Christ and to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord and to confess him as Lord. You see, you can't earn it. You can't purchase it. You can't qualify yourself. The Bible says we're saved by grace. God's favor through faith, which means we believe has nothing to do with our works. Today, if you know you're not right with God and you need to surrender to Jesus Christ, you want the power of Jesus's resurrection life to meet you in this moment right now. If your heart is telling you that you need to get right with God, today is a day where not only will Jesus raise, raise from the dead physically, but Jesus has the power to resurrect lives. And he will resurrect yours today and give you a new life. Pray this prayer with me if that's you. Heavenly Father, I believe that Jesus is the Son of the living God who died for me on the cross and who you raised from the dead and is alive forevermore. I believe that Jesus is the Savior of the world. And I repent of my sins, of my familiarity. I repent for being indifferent. Lord, forgive me. You know my sins. There are many. But forgive me. Cleanse me because of Jesus. And come, Lord Jesus, and sit on the throne of my life. I say that you, Jesus, are Lord. Thank you for loving me, accepting me, saving me, and giving me eternal life. From this day forward, I belong to you in Jesus' name. Amen.