Seasonal

John so John 20. Early on the first day of the week while it was still dark, Mary Magdalen went to tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter, and the other disciple the 1 Jesus loved and said, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don't know where they have put him So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.

He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then, Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there as well as the cloth that have been wrapped around Jesus' head. The cloth was still lying in its place separate from the linen. Finally, the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went inside.

He saw and believed They still did not understand from scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to where they were staying. Now Mary stood outside the team crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the team and saw 2 angels in white seated where Jesus' body had been, 1 at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her woman, why are you crying?

They had taken my lord away, she said, and I don't know where they had put him. At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there. Which did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him. Jesus said to her, Mary, she turned towards him and cried out in Aramay, Raboni, which means teacher Jesus said, do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the father. Go instead to my others and tell them, I am ascending to my father and your father, to my god and your god. Mary Magdalen went to the disciples with the news. I have seen the Lord and she told them that she that she told them that he had said these things to her.

On the evening of the first day of the week, when the disciples were to gather, With the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you. And after he said this, he showed them his hands inside, the disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again, Jesus said, peace be with you. As the father has sent me, I am sending you. And with that, he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit.

If you forgive anyone sins, their sins are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven. Now Thomas, also known as Didymus, 1 of the 12, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other Cybels told him, we have seen the Lord, but he said to them, unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my fingers where nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. A week later, his disciples were house again, and Thomas was with them.

Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, Put your fingers here, see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting. Believe.

Thomas said to him, my lord and my god. And then Jesus told him, because you have seen me you have believed, lessons are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Thank you very much for reading that. We're going to come back to that passage a little later. Amazing.

It's such a wonderful passage. My name is Pete Woodcock. I'm 1 of the pastors of the church group visiting. It's great to have you with us. Amy's right in front of me.

It's her birthday today. Resurrection Sunday. We're not gonna sing happy birthday, though. She said, thank you for that. Yeah.

I can give you 1 of these haribos though. Here we are. Let me give you a present, and then the kids will hate you for it. There we go. That will cheer you up.

Happy birthday. I wanna start I wanna start with this little poem. I I love I love this writer. It's is Bob Dylan, and I often quote him. And this is from a song called Broken, and it should come up.

This is some of it. It's not all of it. I love this because he picks on all kinds of random things that are broken, and it's it's called broken. Broken lines, broken strings, broken threads, broken springs, broken idols, broken heads, people sleeping in broken beds, ain't no use jiving, ain't no use joking. Everything is broken.

Broken cutters, broken sores, broken buckles, broken laws, broken bodies, broken bodies, broken and bones. Broken voices on broken phones. Take a deep breath, feel like you're choking. Everything is broken. Broken hands, broken plows, broken treaties, broken vows, broken pipes, broken tools, people bending broken rules, hound dog howling, bullfrog croaking, everything is broken.

I love that. I don't know why. I'm sure you don't. But I love that sort of thing. Because there's something, you know, just sort of randomly Yeah.

Look, when you look around, everything is broken. And this this is my first point actually, that we live in a broken world with broken people, and I think it's pretty obvious. It it doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what you've been through. It doesn't matter what you're currently going through.

Or what you're going to go through in the future. Every single 1 of us really has to admit that we're broken. We're not together. There's something wrong with our lives. When there's something not quite right.

And even more than that, there are things that look extremely smashed apart. So deep down, we know this, even the proudest person that you could get. Surely you're you're going to say that we do live in a broken world. And and that you're broken and we live amongst the broken people. We're broken.

Not things are not perfect. They're not what they ought to be. Now there's times in your life where you have nice little perfect things, but you go back very often to a broken world, my life, in my relationships, this world internationally very clearly. It's a very, very broken world, and we need to admit that. I'm broken.

You're broken. The world's broken. It's broken. But That's easy to admit, but there's something worse than that. Not only are we in a broken world, things aren't going like they should.

We break. We break things. We actually break things. And even things that are for our good, we break we break them, have you noticed that? It's always you know, all you always know when there's a school holiday in Chestington.

You just go down to the local park, the swings, and the slides, and you'll see broken. For some reason, I'm always walking a past when there are a group of vandals breaking them. And then they wanna break me. And it's it's an it's just an amazing thing. A park that is put up for their enjoyment.

They break. The bus stop that they use. They smash. It's sort of like a madness. Now again, that's easy to see, but what about us?

We make vows. We make promises. And presumably, when we make them, we think they're good. I'm going to commit to these vows. I'm going to commit to these promises, and then we end up breaking them.

We're vandals. We're vandals with people. We break relationships, even with people we love. We find ourselves easy to break. 1 philosopher describing sin as broken actually, which is good, I think.

He says this, that sin, the bible idea of sin, is the vandalism of shalom. I love that. The vandalism of shalom. Now, shalom is a Hebrew word That means wholeness. We often translate it as peace, and that's right.

There's peace amongst us, shalom amongst us. But it's much more than peace. It's a sense of completeness of back to things as they ought to be. Oughtness, if you like, that there's a harmony, a settledness. There's no war, there's no struggle, there's a flourishing of that which is good working together.

That's what Shalon means. And that is what God is the God of? The God of Shalom. And if you read the Bible, you see that it's our sin. It's our disobedience.

It's our breaking of God's really good laws that are really good for us. Just really, really good for us. But god is a good god and wants the best for us, but it's our breaking of those laws And even more than that, are breaking away from God that's caused all of the brokenness, and trouble, and lack of salaminess. It's a bit like, you know, God should be like that hub in the center of a wheel. You know, there it is.

There's the center of the wheel, and then all of the the spikes and things are going from from that to make a wheel whole, but if you remove that, the wheel just collapses. Or if you move it out of the center, the wheel collapse or if you put something that really shouldn't be there in its place, the wheel collapses. And that's what's happened. The Bible says. We've broken off from God.

We've broken off from God. So shalom is broken. We were made to be complete with him, but sin wrecks everything. It wrecks harmony. It wrecks shalom.

And because of sin, Even it wrecks us internally. It's interesting when you read the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It's a fantastic truth. Because it shows us that when adam and eve go against God and reject God and break off relationship with God, everything goes wrong. You have the ecological problem.

In other words, nature starts to go wrong. Instead of there being shalom with humans and nature. There's all kinds of problems. And then relation ships go wrong. Man and woman start to argue with each other.

The social aspect has gone wrong. There's a social problem now. An ecological problem, a social problem. And then there's there's a psychological problem. We ourselves now are broken.

So we're thinking beings. We have a thinking part of us, a feeling part of us, a willing part of And all of those functions now were all just broken and muddled up and so we're confused and there's no harmony even within the psychological problem. And so that's what's going on. Sin is a vandal sin vandalizes, breaks a fundamental relationship with the living God. So that now The things I want to do, I don't do, and the things I don't want to do, I do, says the bible.

Who will save me this wretch of a person, the Bible says? Don't you find that? You do things you don't wanna do and you don't do the things you wanna do. Don't you ever found that? You go out sometimes, you get it.

I don't know about you, but you get up and think, positive. Yeah? I'm gonna tell my wife I love her. I'm gonna serve her. And then suddenly, you come into the kitchen and there's like, well, who put that there?

Well, does it matter? Well, it does matter. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't matter. And suddenly, you know, what?

You know? It's all her fault, of course. But, you know, and then you chuck the flowers away. It's amazing how how the things you wanna do, you don't do, and the things you don't wanna do. You do.

Brokenness. And that's what the Bible is saying. That's our world. That's the world we live in. And of course, I haven't dealt with this yet.

Death. It's the ultimate picture of brokenness. Death. And you get that in the garden. Death.

We move away from God. We break relationship from God. And everything now. It's so hard to keep good things good, but death shows you that we're broken. When the soul is separated from the body.

If you've ever laid half your heart in a grave. You know how painful separation is. Those of you have lost family moms and dads, perhaps over the COVID years. It's death, it's separation. It's it's something wrong.

It's more than broken. It's like devastation. So that's my first point. But that leads me to the second point. I mean, that's that's a good Easter Sunday morning, and that's cheered you up.

Don't have an egg and get on with life. No. But here we are. Here's the reality. The prince of peace, the prince of shallon.

This is really what Easter's about. This is the whole Christian story, really. He's the mender of a broken world. Jesus is called the Prince of Shaelong. Here's 1 little little sentence.

From a book in the bible, New Testament called Romans. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. You can spin that on. Sorry to that.

Sorry. There we go. 1 more. That's it. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

And again, although that's a Greek word for peace, it has the same sense of the Hebrew word for peace, shalom. It's togetherness, its wholeness. Now, that's an amazing sentence. We have peace, Shelam, togetherness, with God. The thing that we broke off from, The hub's back in the middle of the the wheel through Jesus Christ our Lord.

He's come to reestablish Shalom, to put things back in order. You remember, So I'm I'm getting to Easter, but do you you remember Christmas? Yeah? Sorry to remind you, but there's several days to go before we get there. But at Christmas, the angel speaking to the shepherds, announcing to the shepherds, what does the angel say to these shepherds These ordinary people on the hillside, glory to God, that's like, wow.

God is amazing. And peace on earth. On this earth, this broken world, You could know peace. That's the announcement of the prince of peace coming. Zachariah, who is John the Baptist's father, talking about Jesus at the birth of John the Baptist and then Jesus was born, talking about Jesus says that he would shine on those in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Complete brokenness there. What to do? To guide our feet in the paths of peace. Do you see that? It here are people in darkness in a world of brokenness, in a world of sin, in a world of violence, in a world where people are breaking people, in a world where it's going wrong, that nothing's quite right.

In a world that death is raining, there is 1 that you can have who will guide you through this world in the paths of, shallon, to governess, peace. And then if you work through the life of Jesus, the people he met I'd love to just go through all of them actually, but we have no time. Just read the new testament. The people he met, the people he brought peace shalom into their lives. Blind people, he made sea, deaf people here, lame people walk, dead people rise, His miracles are an example and a demonstration that he is the peace bringer He says to a a a sea that is massively stormy.

So stormy that the fishermen themselves scared out of their wits and think they're gonna die. He says, be still, and there's a shalom It's back, down, calm, peaceful, useful sea. You can fish in it now. Instead of something that is destructive. So Jesus did these miracle after miracle after miracle He met people, sad people.

We made glad. Dead people alive. Extraordinary I witness accounts of shalom with us. I don't know who's still in Christmas. We're coming to Easter.

But I don't know whether you read the Narnia stories in our Sunrise service. We were having -- that we were having CS Lewis who wrote Narnia. Quoted earlier on. But he wrote these narnia stories in the narnia stories as a Jesus figure. The Jesus figure is his massive lion called Azlan.

Aslan the lion. And when Aslan isn't in narnia, The world is always in winter. It's always winter, never Christmas. Always winter, never Christmas. Nothing to look forward to.

It's cold. It's hard. It's broken. It's like ice. It smashes.

It hurts. There's no joy. There's no fun. But how do you know that Asland is on the rise? How do you know that Asland has come in to Narnia?

The snows begin to melt. The ice begins to thaw. The rivers begin to flow. The birds begin to Twitter. Spring begins to come.

We're on the way. To restoration. That's what Jesus is doing. With his miracles, he's showing us. He's shalom.

And he can come not only to this world but into our hearts. And 4, the icy, pain all hearts that we have. That's what he's about. And of course his greatest miracle is his death and resurrection. We're at Issa.

His death and resurrection. Because in that event, that was his greatest act of restoring, his greatest act of restoring. Listen to this little verse here. It's an amazing sentence. It says, he, that's God, was delivered over to death oh, 0, rather Jesus.

Was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. It's an amazing sentence. It just slowed down. Jesus was delivered over to death for our sin. What's that all about?

And he was raised a lot for our justification. That's the Easter story. That is the whole bible in summary. It's extraordinary. We're gonna come to that in a minute.

But we're, first of all, going to listen to Sophie, 1 of our members, just very briefly, telling us what difference Jesus made in her life, some of the things, then we're gonna sing a lovely song about Jesus going to Jerusalem to die, so delivered over to death. And then we're going to hear Craig, another 1 of our members. Say some of the things that Jesus has made a difference in his life to show you the power of this prince of peace. So let's do, first of all, Sophie, and then we're singing. So I don't know whether Hi.

My name is Sophie. I'm a French and Spanish teacher originally from France. I became a Christian about 11 years ago while I was at university. And and I would say that changed the direction of my life in a couple of ways. First of all, I was quite in a way quite a sad and hopeless person because I could really feel in myself perceiving others that we were sinful.

But I had no answer to that. I had no hope in in front of that, and that really made me sad. And I could see clearly that there was an issue, but I didn't know where to look for the answer to that question. So when I read the gospel, it suddenly opened my eyes to the fact that I had been looking for Jesus for all that time. And it was almost an instance reaction to it for me.

It took only 5 months of me reading it for me to become a Christian and commit to that. So that's the first the first thing. The second thing is I would say that it really changed my view of people and it made me perhaps more generous and more open towards them. I was suddenly able to see the good in people a little bit more than I did previously and be more hopeful in that sense and really try to lift people up a little bit more instead of just despairing. So I would say that it probably influenced my my choice of career as well in becoming a teacher.

I previously wanted to become a translator and just work on my own. But I decided to share my love for languages with others as a result of of this change in me as well. I'm not sure that's the only reason, but I think it is 1 of the reasons, and I'm very grateful for that. Hi. My name's Craig.

I work in sales for a tech company in Gilbert. And I was brought up in a Christian home, but I I've been a Christian for the past 7 or 8 years. And when I think about the direction that my life has changed in because of Jesus, I think the first thing would be just in regards to my morals. I'm sure you can imagine working in sales with the pressure of targets, like looming over your head, whether that'd be weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly, it's really easy to fall into the trap of doing anything to close that deal, showing a lack of integrity being dishonest. And that's 1 thing that I now as a Christian, I'm not willing to compromise in those areas.

And I would say secondly and probably the biggest thing is identity. I would say price being a Christian love my identity was found in my ethnicity and my culture. And it was in until I began to read my bible properly, read good books, listen to good sermons and podcasts that I began to see how God viewed humanity and how he viewed those things like ethnicity and culture. I'll quickly realize that those things actually become a nodal zooming. And I realized that my true identity was actually in Jesus and I think the biggest way that's really, really impacted me is it is how I view people as a whole, but it's more so how I view Christians, how I view believers understanding that God is our father and that we are truly brothers and sisters, and I have a genuine love and that love increase when I began to understand the truths that the bible says are not allowing the culture to to dictate to me.

Why I should find my identity and so, yeah, morals and yeah, sure identity in Christ, those things are being key in my walk with Jesus. So we've seen we live in a broken world and we have broken people and we break. We are sinful people. But we've seen that Jesus comes as the great shalom. He's the mender, the peace bringer.

But the third thing I really want to say is is to emphasize that a little bit more. Jesus is the peace bringer, but he mends our relationships with God, and that's the big 1, through death and resurrection. That's why Easter weekend is so utterly central to genity. It's through his death and resurrection that Jesus actually mends. The biggest relationship, problem that we have, and that's with God.

So let's just have a look at this verse again because it is an amazing little sentence from the bible. Sorry. There it is. He was delivered over to death. That's Jesus was given over, delivered over to death for our sins and raised for our justification.

That, as I say, in in many ways, is a single verse that sums up the whole of the bible in to to some degree. Lots of people think the bible is just rules. There are rules there. God tells us this is a good way to live, and we've broken that. But actually, it's really about Jesus.

And it and it's coming and culminating the whole bible on this point. God delivered Jesus over. He delivered. That's deliberate. You know, he actually went out and delivered So I'm I'm going to give this.

So 1 of the most famous sentences in the entire world is God so loved the world. That he gave. He delivered. He gave his 1 and only son, whoever believes in him shall not perish but have life. God delivers.

He gives. And he gives him over to death for our sins. It's a substitutionary thing going on here. He stands in our place instead of me being given the judgment for my sin, my breaking, my brokenness. Jesus is given over for our sins.

He's on the cross, broken for us. So let's go through the Easter event very briefly. On Thursday, before the cross, on Thursday of the first Easter. Before Jesus is crucified, He has a passover feast with his followers, his disciples. There they are, the passover feast, very significant because it's passover time.

Passover in the bible is very significant for the Jewish people. The Jewish people were in slavery. They were being broken by the slavery and the slave masters of of the Egyptians. Under the pharaoh. They were in terrible state, and he would not let those people go and worship God.

And so what happened after a series of events and warnings and and speech to Farrell who didn't listen, didn't listen, didn't listen, didn't listen, and didn't listen, didn't listen after god's kindness to him in warning and speaking. Then god said that any household that does not have the blood of the lamb upon its doorposts will suffer judgment of God. So this angel of death was coming. He's coming to us all, the angel of death. But when the angels saw the blood of the lamb on a doorpost of the Israelites, he passed over.

Death didn't take them. And so that's the passover event that Jesus is celebrating. And now he's explaining it to them. And as they had the feast, look at these words. You may know these words, but these words that Jesus said, some of the words he said, he took bread gave thanks and broke it.

He broke the bread. And he said to them, this is my body. Given for you, broken for you, do this in remembrance of me. So like the lamb was broken and killed, I'm going to be broken for you. I'm gonna be your passover lamb.

And then it says in the same way after supper. He took the cup, cup of wine, saying this cup is the is the new covenant in my blood. It's poured out for you. I'm going to go to a cross, and I'm going to be broken where you should be broken. I'm gonna be like the lamb.

So that the passover will pass over you. I'm going to shed my blood. That's the Thursday. After they'd eaten, they went out to gethsemane, and they had to do a quite a long walk, and it was the middle of the night. And in gethsemane, Jesus is troubled.

The peace bringer is troubled, we're told. There's trouble going on in Jesus, and he prays that he would do God's will. Then he's arrested in gethsemane. He's taken down into Jerusalem into the priests house, the religious leaders house, and there's false trials going on, and liars are speaking. And people are using their mouths in ways that only broken people do with lies And they're spitting at him and laughing at him and hitting him.

That's Thursday. Friday. He's been up all night in a trial and mocked and laughed at. Crown of thorns on his head, you say you're a king and his face is bleeding, and they're laughing at him. Early morning, still awake.

He's then taken to the Roman governor pilot And the religious leaders, even though it's early morning, stir the crowd to say crucify him break him, kill him, destroy him. It's extraordinary, isn't it? Because the crowd are just like us, Because this 1 was making a claim on our lives. We don't want him as king. But, Kylot, who was not a nice man, said, this this is wrong.

This I find nothing wrong with this man. I don't find anything wrong with this this man, but they shouted out crucify him. Kill him. God comes into our world, break him, kill him, destroy him. That's the that's what we're like.

That's what sins really like. We're not just broken, we're fistering, with anger against God. Break him, destroy him. And pilot says he's not done anything wrong, and then he brings up this other man called Barabbas who had done lots wrong, who is definitely guilty, and everyone knows it. And look at these words here.

With this, he went out again, that's pilot, went out again to the Jews and said, I find no basis for a charge against him Jesus. But it is our custom for me to release to you 1 prisoner at the time of passover. It's our custom. Do you want me to release the King of the Jews, Jesus? And they shouted, no, not him, give us barabbas.

Now, Barabbas was taken part in a rebellion. Barabbas was a known murderer and a rebellious man And people were saying we'd rather have barabbas than Jesus. And Jesus took Barabbas' place. That is an extraordinary picture of what Jesus is doing. He's delivered over to death for our sins, So like Barabbas was set free, guilty, and the the the 1 who was not guilty is judge and condemned and killed and broken on a cross.

So Jesus was doing that for us. I mean, it is an extraordinary thing. Because in another conversation that Jesus has with pilot, pilot sort of says, you know, what's going on here? Why don't you answer and all that of stuff, and Jesus Jesus says that there are 12 12 legions of angels that could come and support me. So be careful pilot.

12 legions of angels. If you go through the bible, you see that 1 angel in the book of Isaiah, 1 angel kills a hundred and 85000 soldiers, 1 angel. There was a hundred and 85000 soldiers. In 12 legions of angels, that's 70000 angels. They can kill 295001000 people on the basis of what happened in Isaiah.

Jesus is the powerful 1 here. But he's delivered over. It's it's not that, oh, poor little weak Jesus, he could have called 70000 angels and destroyed a billion people, like that. But he chose to die. He stood in Barabbas' place as he stood in your place.

The God who gives us good laws that you have broken, and I have broken. Stands in the place and takes the punishment. My god, he says, on the cross. My God. I'm abandoned.

Separated. The breaking of shallon. So that we could come back to God. His body is broken. That's the good Friday we call it.

He's then laid in the tomb, and the big Boulder is put over, and a Roman guard is placed there. But on Sunday morning, This is what happens. The first person who sees Jesus alive is is not actually the Roman Guards. It is Mary. It says early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalen went to the tomb and saw a stone had been removed from the entrance.

Mary Magdalinde, you know her story? She was an extremely broken woman. She's described as having 7 demons in her. She was a broken woman psychologically, mentally, physically, She was a wreck, and she meets Jesus. And it changes her shalom in her life.

And now here she is. She's at the tomb and she's seen Jesus broken and crucified and killed by professional execution as the Romans, and she's there, broken herself. And the story we read and it the story that what happened on that first Easter. She's standing and looking around the tomb and she doesn't understand why anyone would take the body, these vicious nasty people. They'd not only kill him.

Now they're mocking him by taking the body. What do they like? And there's a gardener there. And she asks the gardener, but it isn't the gardener. It's the risen Jesus and you just see what happens because it's such a beautiful, intimate picture.

Jesus is risen. He is alive. He did die. And now he's alive. And he says to her, 1 word that convinces her that he's alive.

It's so intimate and personal. Mary. And she says, Robonae, teacher. You're alive. You were dead, but you're alive.

Jesus has come and stored Mary Magdalene. She's 1 of the most famous people in the entire world, Mary Magdalene. Many people have heard of her. People make up stories about her. They make up plays about her.

She's so famous. They do films about her, which are largely nonsense. She's so famous. They get the high grade Hollywood actors to be in those films. She's a very famous woman.

Who was utterly broken, Mary. Jesus speaks personally. Shalom. And then the next story is the disciples without Thomas. There they are not believing Mary Magdalen, There they are huddled up in a room like this, all huddled together, wondering what's going on, broken people, They saw Jesus die and Jesus comes and what does he say to them?

What does he say to them? Peace. Be with you. These blokes who had wrecked so much peace Be with it. Jesus personally, intimately restored peace to his disciples.

And then again, they tell Thomas and Thomas a disciple says, I'm not gonna believe. And so I can put my finger in his hands and in the whole of his side, I'm not gonna believe And what happens Jesus comes again and says, of course, then Thomas? And Thomas falls down and says of Jesus. My lord and my god. It's the next slide.

My lord and my god. My Lord and my God. Resurrection Sunday. The death and resurrection changes everyone. Just look at that verse again.

Go on to the next verse. He, Jesus, was delivered over to death for our sins, and was raised to life for our justification. Justification is a legal word. It means right in the eyes of the law. He was raised to life for our right in the eyes of God.

Mary, peace be with you. Lord, God. You've done it. You've dealt with sin. You've risen again.

We can be right with God through Jesus Christ. Therefore, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Death is not an end. Death now is a doorway, but Jesus is open to a new dimension, a new world. Jesus is lord and god.

The resurrection says that. Jesus brings peace of God. The resurrection says that. His death has paid for our sin. The resurrection says that.

He is the resurrection and the life The resurrection says that he brings peace to Mary. Perhaps to you, Peter. Mary, Thomas. John finishes his book. Or finishes this chapter rather, and says that Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, are not recorded in this book, but these were written that you, you, you.

What's your name? That you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, God's king? The son of God? And by believing you may have life. In his name.

That's what Easter is about. It's about life, shall long, togetherness, knowing God, sins forgiven, wow. Mary, Peter. Peace be with you. Do you know that?

It's extraordinary, isn't it? Isn't that wonderful? I mean, what message could you get? It's better than that. It changed Craig's life, Sophie's life, dynamically, really?

You know, salesman, not wanting to make a sale because he wants to be on If you've never met 1 like that before, he's there. He'll sell something for you. I'm sure he will. He'll do it honestly, though. Sophie, broken by the world, broken her circumstances, and finding peace with God.

But we've got Abri as well. Abri is, in fact, Sophie's Sophie's husband. Now the video has gone wrong unfortunately. But what his words are really important. So we're just gonna see a picture of him, and then hear him.

It's only a minute and a half. And there's some stuff a bit a little bit wrong, but you're you're hearing. This is Avery. Is not here today. Hi, everyone.

I'm Abri. I'm an architect and an urban designer. I'm from Nigeria, but I've spent some of my teenage years growing up in leads. Was Jesus changed the course of my life? Well, as university, I was really into philosophy, trying to understand the world.

As best as I could. And this left me really hopeless, let's say, with them with the way things were. Just didn't understand why we're here what the point of pretty much anything was. And that led me to investigate world religions, including Christianity, And for me, the key thing about Christianity was investigating the resurrection to see whether or not that was true. And I was amazed to find that there were so many historians and and apologists who have put together very, very compelling arguments to say, that this thing actually happened, that a man actually said that he would rise from the dead and actually did rise from the dead.

And so that was extremely compelling to me. Which led me to read the Gospels, led me to read the words of Jesus, and that changed my life. It changed the entire course of my life. And and now, I can say with the Christian writer, CS Lewis, I believe in God as I believe in the sun. Not because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.

And so the world does make a whole lot more sense with Christ than it did without Christ. So I probably may not even be here if it wasn't before Jesus Christ.