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Sermons

Easter Sunday

April 1, 2018 Speaker: Dan Wolf Series: Easter 2018: He Has Risen

Topic: Easter Passage: Mark 16:1–8

Refresh
A Recap from Sunday’s Sermon

Preaching Text:Mark 16:1-8

Are you an optimist or a pessimist?  Do you see the world with rose-tinted glasses or darker-tinted glasses?

Mary, Mary, and Solome’s perspective of life was shaped by their eye-witness experience. As they followed Jesus in Galilee and into Jerusalem, their hope swelled that Jesus really could heal physical, relational, and societal brokenness.  But as they watched Jesus breathe his last and laid in a tomb (Mark 15:40, 47), the hope of Galilee turned to the despair of Golgotha.  For many of us, life has a way of stealing our hope and we end up saying about various facets of our life, “__________ will never change.”  Where in your life are you tempted to lose hope?  

But on Easter everything changed for Mary, Mary, and Solome when they heard the surprising news: “HE HAS RISEN!”  For us too, those three words, HE HAS RISEN restores our vision.  They give us a powerful hope that Jesus’ resurrection is the “first fruits” of the restoration he is bringing in our relationships, work, and society (1 Cor 5:23). Therefore, as Christians, we are neither optimists not pessimists, but realists that see with crystal clarity the brokenness of the world, but see everything through the lens of hope.  But the resurrection doesn’t just give us a hopeful perspective but also a hope-filled power because “the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive in us” to help us fight sin and selfishness and join Jesus in his restorative work (Rom 8:11).  

Taking It Home:
How might the fact of the resurrection restore hope to your situation?  Try doing something simple this week to join Jesus in working toward restoration.