Introduction We live in one of three ways. One option is to CONSERVE the good. I am “conservative”, but the question is always WHAT does one conserve? Most conservatism today simply preserves what we quickly decided would be the status quo after WWII. The second way is to TEAR DOWN what’s there. But to quote Chesterton, we rarely stop to ask, why was this put here in the first place? Then we expect that good will POOF! magically appear in its place. The third way to live is to punt on the first two options and simply consume. Keep the iPhone updates coming, belly up to Costco, and don’t worry about the rest. Yet our world crumbles. Planes fall apart in the sky. Cities collapse. And we think a new president will fix it. We need another way to live. We need the power to create again. Where does the POWER to cre­ate come from? It comes from the God of Easter, Who creates, and when man falls, has the power to raise us again. The God of Creation After all, the Bible does not be­gin with, in the beginning, God tore down what was there, and then started over. Nor does it say, in the beginning, God conserved His goodness, from the forces of darkness. Nor does it say, God exists, and we exist to feed Him. It says, in the beginning, God created . . . Every­thing. And the Bible ends, contrary to popular belief, NOT with, Behold, I’m so mad at you, I’m gonna burn it all. Nor does it say, behold, a paradise where you can consume all the grapes and virgins you want. It says, Revelation 21:5, Behold, I am making ALL things NEW. The God Who is there is a God of CRE­ATION, and by amaz­ing grace, RE-CREATION. Everything you see bears HIS fingerprints. Even those things created by the great industrial might of men - they are only imitating their Heavenly Father and HIS great industrial might, when He created the heavens and the earth, out of literally nothing. Thus what we need most is to know Him and His creative power. The reason why we don’t have the wisdom and spirit to CREATE anymore; the reason we are content to let tyrants and communists create FOR us, in our place, is that we are disconnected from the God of creation and His Spirit of creation. His Spir­it, which appears next in Gen­e­sis 1:2: The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Here we are immediately introduced to the concept that the God who is there IS one, but is at the same time, somehow, plural. There is one who WILLS creation - that the Bible will later call the Father, and a Spirit who oversees creation. Then in the third verse of the Bible, we see HOW He creates - by speak­ing. There is the WORD of God, who speaks. And when He speaks, worlds are created. That which is formless and void takes shape. That which was useless becomes fruit­ful. When He says, “Let there be light,” that which was dark becomes LIGHT. God is three-in-one. And within Him there is frictionless creative industry at work: the Father wills it, the Word speaks it, and it is created through the Spirit. The Eternal Logos Now the an­cients, even those who had noth­ing to do with the He­brew Bible, still sensed that this WORD existed. They per­ceived that there was some unchanging, eternal WORD - call it TRUTH - call it WISDOM - in the universe, by which the world was created and existed and held together and is built up. They sensed that therefore one must KNOW this WORD. The ancient Greeks had a word for this Word - they called it the LO­GOS. And the apostle John proclaims, in his gospel, “I found him.” So he begins his gospel much like Genesis: John 1:1–2 (ESV): In the beginning . . . was the Word (in Greek, LO­GOS) and the LO­GOS was with God, and the LOGOS was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. John is saying, the LOGOS that you sense there is real, and He was there, in the beginning. He was WITH God, and yet at the same time IS God. And so, John says, John 1:3 (ESV): All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. John is saying, when you read the speak­ing parts of Gen­e­sis, "Let there be light," that's this eternal LOGOS talking. And when He SPEAKS, His very words have the power to CREATE. Because, v. 4: John 1:4–5 (ESV): In him (the LO­GOS) was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the dark­ness has not over­come it. He is the CRE­ATOR of all life, be­cause LIFE ex­ists in Him. And when he speaks, he cre­ates, and re-cre­ates anew. Who is this lo­gos of the ages? It is, John says, Je­sus. To this cos­mic claim, John gives many truths and signs of proof. I will point out one truth and one proof. The Lamb of God The truth is the way Jesus is described in John 1:29. Be­cause it has, at first glance, NOTHING to do with life, but only death. John the Baptist calls Jesus, The Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. “Lamb of God” is a refence to the Old Testament, and the Exodus. The people of God were enslaved in Egypt, and on the night that God delivered them, he commanded them to take a lamb and sacrifice it, spreading the blood of the lamb over their doorposts, so that God would Passover their sins - for they were just as sinful as the Egyptians - maybe more so. And then they were to EAT the lamb. They were to do all this in faith, faith that God would deliver them from darkness and give them life. And John is saying, this is why Jesus came first to die on the cross. Because before we can have life, which is to say, before we can be restored to God, we need our sins taken away from us, cleansed from us. ”Disburse! Nothing to see here!” Now, we are a generation that no longer believes in sin. We believe in almost anything else. Because sin is guilt, and the last thing we want is to be confronted with our guilt. This is because we are already overloaded, bloated with guilt. We're like Leslie Nielsen in front of the exploding fireworks factory in the movie The Naked Gun - "Nothing to see here, nothing to see here." But the evidence of our sin explodes everywhere. Our world RUNS on unforgiven GUILT. And our guilt separates us from God, and therefore, from the LOGOS, and therefore, from light and life. This is why today our elites can be so craven, so smart in the ways of getting power and wealth, and yet at the same time be so destructively and tragically DUMB. Because our guilt separates us from the ancient LOGOS. So God sent Jesus, the LOGOS, first as the Lamb of God, to take AWAY the sins of the world. He did this by dying on a gory Roman gibbet. The Romans put Him there; they just wanted to conserve their status quo. The Jews put Him there; when they saw what He did with Lazarus, simply speaking words and raising him from the dead - that was it. He must be torn down. And yet all the people put Him there. They were simply led by the lust of their bellies. But in truth, God put Him there, to ATONE for OUR sins. All the guilt that we have heaped up for ourselves, He took upon Himself, and gladly. And you say, what’s the catch? The only catch is faith. For those who put their faith in HIM, He gives them, in return for that faith, all of HIS righteousness. Full forgiveness, for ALL sin, past, present and future. Friend, have YOU placed your faith in Christ? If not, I invite you to do just that. I want you to experience what I and so many have - the freedom of forgiveness. The sky will seem bluer, and you will ask yourself, what now? And the answer is NEWNESS of LIFE, TODAY. A life of creation. The God of Resurrection For Jesus, Himself, did not stay dead. The third sign was really a duel sign that three days later, Jesus, Himself, walked out of His own tomb, resurrected. And the good news is that all who trust in Him NOW share in HIS resurrection life, TODAY. I emphasize NOW, TODAY because most of us, even Christians, have gotten our understanding of the resurrection, as someone else has said, from Far Side cartoons. We think that resurrection life means living under the soft tyranny of HR hags and nags until we die and meet that great bureaucrat of the sky St. Peter at the pearly gates and are then assigned a cloud to play the harp on. But that is, literally and figuratively, a JOKE. Not any where near what the world needs. Not what we will need when we die, and not what we need NOW, either. But thank God we don't have to wish for something better or make it up ourselves. Because the BIBLE gives us a much brighter image. The theological term for it is UNION with Christ. What this means is that when anyone puts their faith in Christ, he or she is then UNITED to Christ, by the Spirit. This means that all that is true about Christ is true about them, about us, who trust in Him. Paul puts it this way, in the book of Romans: Romans 6:4 (ESV): We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. When Paul says "baptism", he's referring to how the Spirt of God takes the words of God, and just as in the Genesis creation, makes for us a NEW LIFE in God. The Spirit does this by connecting us, or linking us to Christ, in a union, like a marriage union, where what is true for the one is now true for the other. Jesus it the Lamb who takes on all OUR sins, and WE take on HIS righteousness. And more than that, He takes OUR death, and we take on His NEW resurrection LIFE, now. NOT after we die. When we come to Christ, our old self dies with Christ, and we are raised from the dead, NOW, spiritually speaking. Which means that we may, in Paul's words, walk in "NEW­NESS of life," NOW. The resurrection begins at the moment we become Christians. Newness of Life What does this “new­ness of life” look like? It looks like God making all things new, beginning with OURSELVES. This means, of course, personal change. You can't fight unforgiven sin. It's too heavy. But when we ARE forgiven, now we can finally fight that sin, by faith - believing that that sin no longer has mastery over us. We become new, because we ARE already made new. We become who we now are. This means that we can finally begin to take responsibility for what's ours, and release others to God for what's theirs. We can do this because, no matter what we ARE responsible for, we know that God's grace covers it. Which actually FREES us to finally face it, own it, and do the hard work to change it. So WE personally are changed. But as this newness of life works its way into you, it will inevitably work its way back OUT of you, in the form of selfless LOVE to the world. Now that you are justified in Christ, you will no longer see your work and your world as a place to justify YOURSELF. You're now free to LOVE God and your neighbor, through your work, your life, and your time. And you will do this, letting Jesus the Living Word DEFINE for you what love is, FROM His Word. And when we do this, we find the most striking paradox. That LOVE means teaching ALL the nations the commandments of Christ. Why? Because all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him (Matt. 28:18). What’s the proof that? Easter. His resurrection from the dead. Jesus is the King of the nations. And He is the eternal LOGOS, in whom all the nations will find their light and life. And so His mission now is one of LOVE to the nations, which is another way of saying, WORLD CONQUEST - though not by the weapons of man, but by the proclamation of this Jesus. Living in New­ness of Life So what does it look like, to walk in "new­ness of life"? It looks like becoming FREE, for the first time, from the world’s choices for how to live. Therefore it looks like personal growth. But then it ALSO looks like neighbor growth, and town change, and county growth, and nation change, and the world covered with His glory, as the oceans cover the sea. It looks like city councilmen acknowledging the resurrection of Christ. It looks like school principles not just allowing the Ten Commandments, but training children to obey them by God’s grace, through faith. And it looks magistrates consulting His law, to know what is the good they should affirm, and the evil they should punish. So how do we get THERE, you ask? That will come as God's people walk by faith, that God raises the dead - people, towns, nations, and even the whole world. Just like the heroes of old . . . Hebrews 11:33 . . . who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 35 Women received back their dead by resurrection. This is the NEWNESS of life, that we are resurrected to, Christian. Lived by FAITH in the gracious power of Jesus’ words, to give new life, to us and the world. Free now, no longer to live avoiding pain, nor even tolerating it, but courageously leaning into it, with a jolly , holy smirk, what for the promise of victory and life on the other side. Christian: you WILL follow Christ’s path. Yes, you WILL follow Christ through the cross. But on holy Saturday, Christ proclaimed His victory to those who had rebelled against him. And so will you. And in the end, when we see those who have gone before us, and finished the race - robed in glory, they will say, "Wasn't it worth it, to trust in Jesus? Wasn't it worth it, lean into His words, and their power of life? Did we really give up anything at all, for all we have in Him? Wasn't it worth it?" And we will say, Amen and amen.