Special

And, if you would like to, turn in your bibles, if you've got a Bible to Acts chapter 2, Those words will appear on the screen as well.

Acts 2 and we're gonna be reading verse 14 to 39. This is god's word to us this morning. Then Peter stood up with the 11. Raised his voice and addressed the crowd. Fellow Jews, and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you.

Listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk as you suppose. It's only 9 in the morning. Now, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel. In the last days, god says, I will pour out my spirit on all all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophecy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days, and they will prophecy. I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke.

The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the lord will be saved. Fellow Israelites, listen to this. Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by god to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which god did among you through him as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by god's deliberate plan and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.

But god raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. David said about him. I saw the lord always before me because he is at my right hand. I will not be shaken. Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices.

My body also will rest in hope because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead. You will not let your holy 1 see decay. You have made known to me the paths of life. You will fill me with joy in your presence. Fellow Israelites, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day.

But he was a prophet. And he knew that god had promised him on oath that he would place 1 of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead and nor did his body see decay. God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. Exalted to the right hand of god, he has received from the father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.

For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said, the lord said to my lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both lord and Messiah. When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, brothers, what shall we do? Peter replied, repent, and be baptized every 1 of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The promise is for you. And for your children and for all who are far off and for all whom the lord our god will call. Please. Christ has risen. Welcome.

My name is Pete Woodcock. I'm 1 of the pastors of the church, and what what a great day. I wanna start to think a little bit about background noise and background music. Background music can have a massive effect on us, whether we're you know, we consciously hear it or not. And that's why the film industry spends so many, you know, so many billions on getting the right background music.

Think of the effect of a simple dumb, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum Imagine putting on the psycho music as background to your morning shower. You know, that's this is too much, isn't it? Or a more recent film, which it it had a deeply unsettling effect on me. Is called, zone of interest. Anyone seen that film, zone of interest.

It's a very powerful film, and it's, it's about the commandant of of Auschwitz and it's it's a it's a it's a true story. And he's the common, dante of that, Auschwitz concentration camp, and he lives with his wife and his 5 children, the other side of the ball of Auschwitz. And so, you follow his family. You never go into outfits. You never go over the wall.

You just follow normal German family life. They've got a swimming pool. They play ball. They eat together. The wife is growing flowers.

They entertain. And all normal life is going on, but the soundtrack is turned up on this film. And you hear the background music of what's going on beyond the wall, gunshots, screaming, trains coming in, furnaces, burning all the all the way through the night. It's very disturbing. Background music.

Early, on Thursday morning, I was, sitting outside in my garden, and the sun was rising up. I was listening to the birds singing. And birds singing to us is is a lovely thing. But, actually, you need to understand it can be very therapeutic, can't it? It's very beautiful.

I love it, dawn. But you you've gotta understand what the Robin is saying. The robbing is tweeting very nicely to us, but it's basically saying to another male Robin, look, yeah, you come into my patch. I'll pick your eyes out. That's what it's saying.

Or it or it's saying to the woman, alright, love, come and have a look at my net. It's better than, that twits, you know, or it's saying cat, cat, cat, cat. Background noise. And that got me thinking, what's the background music to the universe? What is the background music?

Or what's the background sound that you have? That you may not notice, but it's there. The background going on. Take all the songs in the whole world. What would be the overall sound if you stood back and you listened to them all at once?

From the from the really happy songs, the songs of desire and the songs of brokenheartedness, the songs of anger, the songs of sadness, all of those falling in love songs, and all of those love lost songs. What would be the predominant sound if you just could hear them altogether? Or take all the laughter and the cries and the the joyful praise of a a newborn child, and put that alongside the brokenhearted bereavement of a funeral service. What would be the predominant sound in the world, do you think? Or take all the happiness of creating and molding and designing and painting new things, perhaps your house.

Or your garden or an art installation because you're creative. Compare that all the joys of creating something new with the utter despair of an earthquake or a tsunami or the bombs of war. Well, what's gonna be the loudest sound out of that creation or a bomb when you hear the world? Or take all the fun and the smiling at the wedding and put it alongside the disappointment and angry faces of the divorce court, or take all the songs of life. And compare them to everything that dies.

What's the background music? What's the background music of your life? And what's the background music of the universe? Well, I want to suggest that sadness is the sound of the world, isn't it? I think it's louder.

Sadness. Have you noticed how hard it is? To make meaningful music that is joyful and not just saccharine. Now I I know there is joyful music. Of course, there is.

And there's dance music, and you, you know, it gets get something like the Irish dancing music, and it's it's it's terrific stuff, of course. Isn't it? Well, I'm talking about you put words to it. How do you how do you make a joyful song with words that isn't saccharine and a bit sickly and twee? No.

There there are some, but it's hard, isn't it? I I I go to, the tate modern regularly, I I like looking at modern art, and modern art seems to me largely full of despair probably why I like it, and brokenness, and it concentrates very often on the ugly. Not always, but very often. And it's a challenge. It's a challenge I put, and if you're an artist.

It's a challenge I always put if I meet an artist Can you paint or can you create something that is joyful? Really joyful? And it's hard, isn't it? It's his hard. It's harder than something that's despairing.

Joy is the missing element often in our in our planet, isn't it? Joy, deep seated contentment that comes out in the happiness? In the Bible book of Romans, Paul writes this, we know that the whole creation has been groaning. He seems to be saying the song of the universe is groaning. Groaning.

Can you hear it? You might be going through a happy time at the moment. Can't you hear the cries? Can't you hear it? Listen carefully.

But if you listen a little more carefully, You might find in the groaning, some overtones of hope. You might find that. I think the song of the universe is a lament. But it's a lament with strong overtones or undertones swelling up. Undertones of hope to the point of of joy.

The universe creation has the now of pain suffering and sadness, but it has the groaning of expectation. Let me just read that sentence that I didn't finish off from Paul again. We know that the whole of creation has been groaning. There's the song. But listen, as in groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

There's a groaning with an expectation of joy. There's a real pain. I guess every woman that's had a child will tell us that it's it's a real pain. You know? Those of us blokes look on and think what's the problem?

But, you know, they're screaming out in pain But the pain they go through, and it's always amazes me that a woman has another baby. You know, what's up with these women? But because there's at the end of the pain, there's joy in the lament in the sadness, in the groaning. Paul says, for the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of god to be revealed. So the song of the universes are longing desire.

Painful now, absolutely, but knowing that the pain has a purpose, that the pain is leading to a conclusion, that there's a crescendo, there's a liberty at the end of the groans. Now you could sum up the music of the universe, I think, and the song of creation with the words that are said about Jesus who went through the pain of the cross. It says for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross. The background music, that background music, if we can hear it, and it takes faith to hear it, as I'll show you in a minute. That background music is the music of the first Easter, the passion of Christ, immense suffering, powerful emotions.

You go through it, the garden of gethsemane. If you know that story, powerful emotions that Christ went through. Powerful emotions. Not my will, but yours be done. You go to the arrest of Jesus when the Roman soldiers came boldly with the temple guards up the hill to arrest him in in gethsemane.

Powerful emotions, Peter, wanting to chop the bloats head off, but missed and cut his ear off. Powerful emotions, and then have cowered this running away. And then the false and illegitimate trial down at night, down in the high priest cell. Powerful emotions going on as they lie and manipulate the truth. And then the beatings and the mockings, powerful anger, and despising, and the treating of a person as a non human, And then the crucifixion, powerful emotions, and then the taking down of the dead body, and then the the burial of the tomb.

Do you see these powerful groaning emotions? The background music. If you take that Easter story, seems to go from jaws to psycho, to the zone of interest, and even the birds seem to be, you know, playing in an Alfred Hitchcock film. It's a horror, isn't it? But then, from that groaning, the swirling up from a lament The pain turning into anticipation, the pain of childbirth, to the mourning of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the firstborn of a new family.

The child is born. The resurrection of Jesus introduces us to something radically new in the fabric of the universe. It transforms the way that we can deal with reality. It's incredible. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the first glimpse of the breaking dawn of the new sky that is gonna flood in its brilliance into the new heaven and the new earth.

The resurrection of Jesus turns the background music from lament to joyful hope. To embrace the resurrection of Christ is to wake up with a a new reality, a strikingly, strikingly different world. If we understand what's happened here. It transforms our senses. It changes us radically.

The sad song of death is now turned into the painful joy of childbirth. It's a big difference. Death is defeated. Death has been swallowed up in victory. Jesus has changed the background music from jaws to the hallelujah chorus.

That's the difference. Since if our life is towards death and the jaws music, we're gonna act very differently if our life is towards the hallelujah chorus, aren't we? We'll walk differently, think differently, live differently. Entropy, which is what the scientists say that the whole world is all coming to, the end, the end, entropy, the end. If you listen to the Brian Coxes, Professor Brian Coxes of the world, entropy.

It's the end. It's all coming. It's gonna come that this dust, he says, that this stardust in the end will all be gone. The whole universe will be gone. Every life will be gone.

Entropy. Entropy and death now because of the resurrection are no longer the bully words that they pretend to be. This is truly, truly, truly good news. This is the greatest day in history that we're celebrating. The day, death died.

But how? How did Jesus change the background music of jaws to the hallelujah chorus. 50 days after the death and resurrection of Jesus, the disciple Peter stood up. He was a completely changed man. He'd gone from running away and hiding and being a coward and denying Christ to seeing Christ resurrected, and it changed his whole life, and how he's boldly preaching in Jerusalem.

In acts chapter 2, verse 22, fellow Israelites, he stands up. Listen to this. Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by god to you, by miracles and wonders and signs, which god did among you through him. As you yourself know, you know this story. You know what he did.

You know who he is. He's not preaching miles away. He's preaching where this very event happened. This man was handed over to you by god's deliberate plan and foreknowledge, and you with the help of wicked men put him to death by nailing him on the cross. But and here's the verse I want us to think about for a few more minutes.

God raised him from the dead. Freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep hold of him. There's the hope. There's the change in the music. There's the death of the day death died.

Now all of that was my introduction, and I've got loads of points, but we won't be that long. First thing I want you to see from that verse, God raised him from the dead. God raised him from the dead. How do you change the music from doors to the hallelujah chorus? How does that background music then affect us?

God raised him from the dead. Now the word raised means to lift up to pick up to raise something takes effort. You know, I go to the gym. I'll see these blokes with great, big muscles. And I look at them, and they're they're pushing this stuff up.

And I think, I can do 50 percent of what that bloke does. Drop it. It's easy that bit. I can do that. I can do it as well as him, in fact, better than him.

Right? But raising is a different issue. You have to rate it takes energy. Katie Perry and a whole load of celebrities went up for 12 minutes or whatever it was, out of the atmosphere, and it took masses amount of energy. You know, we're supposed to be saving the planet, aren't we?

For fuel, but we stuck up a few celebrities, and it a massive amount of fuel, and masses amount of energy. To push to raise. It shouldn't just float up. Coming down is a different issue, isn't it? What then if the weight that's being raised here is death?

Picture the the waiters' death here weighing us down. Who isn't gonna be weighed down to the grave by death? It's way beyond our power, isn't it? Death? Way, way beyond our power.

You can go to the gym and you can have the biggest muscles and you can train and run and weight lift, and you could eat the best food, but you cannot lift death. Can you? You can't do it. You're powerless. You can buy the creams.

I mean, how they get away with this? I don't know. You know, the creams, the anti aging cream. What a lie that is? I mean, it fills up a few holes and some cracks, but it's not anti aging, is it?

Yeah? It's not like, oh, I put this cream on, and now I'm I'm celebrating my fiftieth birthday. Oh, I'm now 35. It's not anti aging. It fills a few cracks in, makes it a bit shinier so you can't quite see the ridges.

And, you know, it's it's You can't reverse your birthdays. No one's been able to reverse death. No 1 can lift it, but here it says, god raised him. That's Jesus. From the dead.

That's what Peter's boldly preaching a few days after the first Easter was in place. Publicly saying, you killed him. God raised Jesus to life. I looked up, some stuff about astronauts because Katie Perry had gone up. And, and just how they feel when they've been like on the mere, whatever it's called now.

I forget what it's called, the space station and how they come down. And I was reading about those that have been up there 6 months and how they come down and how they feel the weight of gravity. See, we've got used to it, but they come down and they feel the weight. And 1, astronaut said it's like a huge magnet pulling you down. Strange force welding you to a seat.

He says that even your lips and your cheeks feel heavy. And he said, when he landed, he tried to pick up a bottle of water, but it was too heavy for him. Just a bottle of water. He says you feel all your muscles drag on your bones until you get used to gravit gravity again. By the way, I I I think that happens the older you get because I've noticed that gravity is a lot stronger the older I am now.

Going up the stairs takes a lot more effort than it used to. So I think gravity's getting heavier, but that's the sort of thing. Now if you I wonder if we're like that with death. We sort of adapt to it in the end, but actually it's a weight on us and we try to repress it. We won't talk about death.

There's the jaws music going, but we won't recognize it. We won't listen in to the background music of the zone of interest. We don't like that background. The death is coming. And so we repress it, and in in in and it comes out with all kinds of anxieties in our life.

Because when you repress something, it has to spurt out somewhere. To know that god raised Jesus, from the jaws of death shows that there is a weight bearer on death itself. He can change the music. God raised him. And the change goes on to my second point.

God raised him from death to free him from the agony of death. You see that verse? Jesus, it is utter kindness and grace entered a world of death, knew the pain and the sorrows and the tears of a world under death. That's our god. He knows.

The background music to him was strong. He heard it. I mean, imagine coming from a world where there is no gravity to a world where there's gravity. Imagine coming from a world where there is no sin and death to a world where there's sin and death. That's Jesus.

The weight on him was strong. He didn't turn the background music down. He heard the zone of interest. He heard the cries. He saw his friend die.

He knew what it was like to be in a world that was decaying. He saw the leprosies and the disasters. He saw death pulling people down desperately, desperately down. Death. Is that jaws music constantly in the background with everything we do?

Think of the agonies of death in the world, and yet he's freed God freed him from the agonies of death. Extraordinary thing. Please bear with me here because this is so important. God didn't raise Jesus to the same life. He raised Jesus from a life that's no agony of death.

This isn't resuscitation. I mean, we can resuscitate people. You know, you you can die and some, you know, Abby will come along and start clumping on your chest and, bringing it back to life. You can resuss it, but you're back to this life, and you'll die again. Even Jesus, when he raised lazarus to life, lazarus had to die again.

That's resuscitation. That's not resurrection. This is Jesus. He's done something more. No more will he know the agony of death?

He's the first man of a new death free world. Jesus didn't come back to life. He went forward to a new life, a deathless body, a real physical, but deathless body. See what Peter does in the sermon in acts chapter 2. He's preaching the quotes a Psalm a song from the Old Testament about Christ.

Look at verse 26. Therefore, my heart. This is what Christ is saying. Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices My body will also rest in hope because you, that's god, will not abandon me to the realm of death nor will you let my body see decay? There's no more decay for Jesus.

It's a non decaying body. Nothing will decay in him. No teeth. No entropy. He's freed from the agony of death.

And this is why Jesus was raised on the first day of the week. If you know the Bible and how it all fits together, the first day of the week was the beginning of the new creation. The we're living in the eighth day now. It's not a sabbath. Sunday is not a sabbath.

It's the first day of the week. It's not the end of the week, which we, sometimes Christians get wrong. Oh, the end of the week. And then Monday, so there is the first day of the week. Saturday is the end day of the week.

This is the first day of the week. We celebrate the first day of the week where god goes back to work. That's the Sunday. The Jews still have a sabbath on the Saturday because they celebrate god resting from his work, but we are celebrating that god is back to work. The seventh day of creation lasted throughout the whole old testament.

We're told that there was nothing new under the sun. He finished his work, and he rested as it were. But on the first Easter day, the first day of the week got started working again. And he started working on his creation. Sunday is the new day.

That's why every week, we're celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. And god is recreating everything, but he's changed the order. In the old order, when he first created the world, he created the world, and he ended up with creating adam and eve people. But now he's creating new people in this old world, to be ready for the new creation that he'll make. Do you see it?

This is the first day. He's freed from the agony of death. He's the first 1 among many. And he's making a new creation free from the agony of death. The resurrection of Jesus meant that god had gone back to work.

And unless we understand that, we're not understand the new creation. We're not understanding what it's all about. Which leads me to my third point. It is was impossible for death to keep hold of him. See, verse 24, the third part of it, because it was impossible for death to keep hold of him.

There's a whole load of reasons here, and I've got verses coming out of my ears here, but I'm not gonna take you through them. You'll just have to believe me, and I can show them afterwards. But this is my third point. It was impossible for death to keep hold of him. Why?

It's impossible for death to keep hold of him because of the justice of god. Look at verse 36 in Peter's sermon. Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both lord and savior. Lord and Messiah. God's reversed the human verdict.

God reversed the human court. They said he was too bad to live, kill him. God says he's too good to rot. Raise him to life. God made him who you despised, who you rejected, to be king of kings, vine be the glory.

Risen conquering son. He's the risen conquering king. The music has changed here from crucify him crucify him to lord, lord, king, king, risen from the dead. The world despises Jesus and killed him. And Jesus says, He is the very servant king who came to die to do my will, and I raise him to life.

I exalt him above everything. He's the highly exalted 1. He's the 1 who went down to death in obedience to me and rose again as the highly exalted 1. So everyone will say, 1 day, he's the king of kings, and he's the lord of lords. It's impossible for death to hold him.

It's impossible for death to keep hold of him because of who he is and who is he? He's the life giving god. He's the creator. He's the Messiah, the 1 who rules the universe. He's the 1 that gives life and breath to everyone.

The reason you can breathe your next breath is because Jesus is allowing you to do it. He's giving it to you. He created the world in the beginning, and now he's creating a new world. He's the fullness of life, life in all its fullness. It's impossible for death to hold this life down.

It's impossible for death to keep him because he fulfills all the prophecies of the Old Testament that said that the Messiah would suffer and then enter his glory. That he would suffer for the sins of many and rise again. And there's prophecy after prophecy, and Jesus himself said that I will die and 3 days later, I'll come. And so if those prophecies are true, then it's impossible for death to hold him. And they are true, so he rose again.

We can trust the word of god. On this big issue? It's impossible for death to keep hold of him because he has now paid for our redemption. He has paid the price to bias back the wages of sin is death. If death has been paid, then he can rise again.

And death has been paid. So if he's the lamb of god that takes away the sin of the world, how do I know he's the lamb of god that takes away the sin of the world? Well, he's paid the price of death. He's like the lamb being sacrificed, and now he can rise again because the price has been paid. It's impossible for death to keep hold of him.

Because he's the pioneer and the head of a new humanity. He's the 1 that goes through death. He's the pioneer, the first 1, into a resurrection life. He's the firstborn amongst the dead so that now he's gone through, we can follow. I've given this in illustration before, but I don't particularly like cats.

They come in my garden, their neighbors. I mean, the neighbors are just very nasty. They allow their cat to come and poo in my garden. I don't want cat poo in my garden, so I don't want the cat. So I haven't done this for a little while, but I think I might get back to it now hands away.

I used to wait for the cat to come, and it would come right at the bottom of my garden. There's 2 walls, and they're very, they're very thin, just that the but the cat can get through. And I would wait there with my, my ward my high pressure water pistol. And the cat I noticed has whiskers. And the point of whiskers on the head is because the head is the biggest thing about the cat.

Even though the cat may be fat, it will squash through. If the head can get through, the body gets through. So I would wait until I saw the head, and then I would, you know, squirt it. But once I saw the head coming, I knew the body was gonna come. Because the whiskers.

Jesus is the head now of a new body. If he's gone through, if he's the pioneer, if he's the resurrection, if he's the head of a new body, If the head has gone through, and if we're part of Jesus, then we're part of him. He will take us through. The church is called the body of Christ. He's called the head of a new humanity.

Forgiven, made righteous in Christ. Now there's much much more to say, but how do we respond to this now, my friends? How are we gonna respond to this? In all of that, Jesus has changed death from the jaws to the groaning of childbirth. Do you know that?

Look how Peter finishes his sermon. If you go to verse 34, the lord said to my lord, sit at my right hand. That's Jesus now at the right hand of the father until I make your enemies a foot stall for your feet. You're gonna rule over all the enemies. Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this god, has made this Jesus whom you crucified Both lord and Messiah.

That's who he is. He's lord and Messiah of the universe. What are you gonna do with this? When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles. Brothers, what shall we do?

We were hearing on Friday. What should we do with this Christ? What should we do with this Christ? What a question? He's died.

He's risen again. No 1 else has. What shall we do? Peter replied, repent. Stop living in this world with the jaws music going behind you.

Stop pretending that you're in control. Turn to him. Be baptized every 1 of you in the name of Christ Jesus, for the forgiveness of your sins. Turn to him. Come to the lord, and messiah.

Come to the 1 who's who's a life giver. Come to the 1 who died and has risen again. Come to the 1 that does the thing that you cannot do. You cannot lift the weight of death. Come to him.

Come. Turn to him. What will you do with this death defeating savior? This super what will you do? Come on.

What's your background music? What is what is underneath there? And what's bringing you anxiety? When you see what Christ has done, he changes the jaws music into the hallelujah chorus. When you go to heaven, the number 1 song in heaven, the number 1 song in heaven that's been number 1 for 2000 years.

Yeah? 2000 years at the number 1 slot. Worthy is the lamb who is slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory. Worthy is the lamb of god that takes away the sin of the world. With your blood, you have purchased for god, persons, from every tribe and language of nation and people worthy is the land.

Number 1 song in heaven. When you know that, you start to sing that. And through the reality and pains and the groans of this world, you start to see that there's a there's a new birth coming. There's a new birth coming. Now you have to bear with me, see if I can get through this next bit.

My sister-in-law, Helen, is dying. She may not last the day by the sound of it. My wife is there. The family are there. It's an amazing, moving, powerful moment.

They sent the family a video. And had written a song, based on the Bible for the family members to do harmonies and sing to Helen. There's Helen. She's got a few days left at most. She's there.

And the family of singing, song about god, blessing. It's beautiful. It's powerful. It's a moment of utter pain and sadness. But Anne said what I was preaching on to Helen yesterday.

And she said, oh, I know the childbirth. I know the pain and the groaning, and the morphine that doesn't even take the pain away. I know this, the pain of childbirth. She said that. She said that.

She's saying it to us. Do you know that? Family sang this song of blessing to her. There she was hearing that there's earth coming. A friend of the family who's just come into the family for the first time.

He's just observing. He says I've never seen anything like this. The difference and this is what Anne wrote to me this morning. He sees the difference Christian hope of the resurrection is making on 1 family. And Ann says, let's pray you come to faith.

The sadness, the groaning, but the hope is a very beautiful thing. When it comes to the day that you're dying, what's the background music? Will it be a family singing confidently about god giving hope in the resurrection? Or will you be trying to avoid the jaws? The psycho.

The zone of interest. Come to Christ. Come to the savior. Come to the resurrected 1. Have a new song.

Start singing the number 1 song in heaven. Let's just take a few seconds just to think that through. And then we're going to sing 2 songs back to back. The greatest day in history. Is that right?

And then thine be the glory. Look at the words. Start singing the song of creation. To have a moment, a couple of seconds, and then over to the music group. Heavenly father, we thank you.

That this is the greatest day in history. This is a happy day where we remember Christ risen from the dead. We thank you for all of those things that we have just been hearing, and we thank you that we're because we, your people, are united to a living head, that we will come through death to life forever. We pray that this song of resurrection might be the the dominant song and theme tune in our lives as we move towards this living hope in Jesus' name.