Amen. He has risen. He has risen. He has risen. He has risen. He has risen. Amen. He has risen in deed. And this morning what we're going to do is look at the resurrection from Matthew's perspective, from Matthew's point of view, through the eyes of Matthew and his gospel. So if you'll turn to chapter 28 with me. And the first thing that I want you to see this morning beloved is simply this, that the resurrection is the dawning of a brand new day. Look at what Matthew says in his gospel, chapter 28 and verse 1, after the Sabbath at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. Beloved, the resurrection means that we live in a brand new day. Look at the language here, after the Sabbath on the first day of the week. I want to submit to you that this is not only the first day of the week, this is not just the first Sunday of the resurrection, but this is the beginning of a brand new day, a new age, a new era, a new epic, a new time in which the past and the future meet in a way like they have never met before. This is a new day. Saturday was the last day, not only of Holy Week, but the last day of the old age and everything in it. When Christ died and was buried, the old age and everything in it died and was buried with Him. Behold, all things, old have passed away and all things have become new. We live in a new day, a new era, a new epic, a new time when the past and the future have met like no other time before and the resurrection began that day. It inaugurated that day for us. The resurrection is a brand new day. And that's the day you and I live in. We live in the day when we have resurrection life. We live in the day of God's grace. This is the day of His grace, beloved. This day, the day that has begun with the resurrection and the day that will continue until He returns again. Luther used to say, I only keep two days on my calendar. This day and that day. This day, He meant the day of grace. You and I live in this day, the day of grace, beginning with the resurrection, going all the way until He comes again. And then He said that day and that day, beloved, is the day of glory when Jesus Christ comes back and all of His splendor and all of His majesty ruling and reigning here on this earth, setting up His kingdom in which we will all live as His subjects, as His sons, as His daughters, of the king of kings and the Lord of worlds. Amen. This is a new day. But you know what? I don't know about you. But sometimes I forget what day I actually live in. It's not just because I'm getting older there. But sometimes I live in one of three other days, other than the day that was inaugurated by Christ's resurrection. You see, sometimes I live in yesterday. Sometimes I live in the past. Sometimes I think that, yes, somehow, yesterday was a better day. Yesterday was a happier day. Yesterday was a more glorious day. Yesterday was a more supreme day. A superior day. When I think like that, you know, I think if I had a theme song for that, it would be the one written by the Beatles. You remember the song, right? Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away. You remember the refrain of that song? You remember what the refrain was? The refrain of that song? I believe. And yesterday, that's the confession of faith. That's the acknowledgement of people who live in yesterday. You know, for those people look back and yesterday is a day in which we did things right. Yesterday was the day that we want to emulate and to model ourselves after. These people cannot live in the present or they cannot live in the future. Everything for them is about yesterday. But there's another day we sometimes live in instead of the day of the resurrection. That's tomorrow. For people who live in tomorrow, tomorrow is always a better day, right? Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow will be a better day. The present is too hurtful. It's full of too much trouble, too many problems, too many circumstances beyond our control. And so we live for tomorrow. The pain and the problems and the reality of today are more than we can bear. And so we live for the future. We live for some tomorrow. But then tomorrow comes and what? It's not any better day than today, is it? And so some people live in yesterday. Some people live in tomorrow. And then there are those people who live in today. And we have to be careful here because the people that live in today, it almost sounds biblical, right? I live for today. The evil of today, right? The Bible says, is sufficient thereof. So don't think about what tomorrow will bring but live what? And this day, it sounds biblical. And there is some biblical essence to that. But the truth of the matter is beloved. We are not called to simply live in today as in this instant, as in right now, as in the present. People like that are people who don't look back at all to the past. They have severed themselves from the past. And they severed themselves from any shaping or molding the future to come. And they say, I only live in the now. I only live in the present reality. They're pastless, futureless people with no connection to the past and no connection to the future. I live in today. I live in now. They live for the instant. They live for the moment. Beloved, that is not a biblical sense of time. Biblical sense of time understands that we live in one big day. That was begun at the resurrection and continues to the second coming. We live in a day that looks back at all that God has done in the past. It looks at all what God is doing now in the future and that looks forward. All that God is going to do in the world to come. That's the day we live in. And that day gives meaning to the past, meaning to the present and meaning to the future. We live in a brand new day. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice. The scripture says, and be glad in it. It's a day of the resurrection and it is a beautiful day. My wife sometimes reads books that were written by this lady named Barbara Johnson. I don't know if any of you other ladies have read any of Barbara Johnson, but she's kind of a humorist. She brings about spiritual truths through her life stories and her life experiences. And secretly and occasionally I have picked these books up and read them myself.
It's chick literature to be sure, but I have been known in times when I'm alone and nobody sees me to pick this stuff up and read it. And Barbara Johnson tells this story about one time after particularly hard day at work, of grueling day at work, a day where nothing was going right. Do you ever have one of those days? Nothing seems to go right from the very time you get up in the morning to the time you come home and go to bed. Nothing goes right. Now of course, sometimes the day is like that. Sometimes weeks are like that. Sometimes months are like that. Sometimes lives are like that. But nothing was going right for Barbara. And so she ran. She was running to the bus stop. She was trying to catch the bus. She made it to the bus. She got on the bus and she had to stand up. There was no place to sit and she's swinging back and forth hanging on for the ride of her life. And everybody is just sort of mining their own business. Everybody's just sort of, you know, just gone inside of themselves, introverted. Nobody's talking. Nobody's speaking. It's like everybody's having a bad day. And then suddenly from the front of the bus, there was a booming voice. And he said, beautiful day, isn't it? And she looked around and couldn't see who it was and where the voice was coming from and the man started just saying all of these things, you know, with a completely different outlook from anybody else on the bus. He was talking about, well, this historical site and this cemetery and this church and this park and this historical residence over here. And he kept on going on and suddenly people were coming up out of themselves and they were looking out their windows and they were paying attention to the world that was around them. And he was just going on and on and speaking about, you know, all of the things that were in this city that were so special and worthy of note and worthy of our attention instead of just blindly going through our day. And everybody's attitude on the bus started to change, including Barbara Johnson. And so it came time for her stop and she went to get off the bus and she was looking for where this voice was coming from and she finally found the man up in the front of the bus. He was a rather stop man kind of plump. He had a dark beard and dark glasses and he was holding a white cane. He was blind. Well, but why is it that so much of the time those of us who are supposed to see the day that we are living in, those of us whose eyes have been open, those of us who have been made to see, those of us who have eyes to see and ears to hear, why is it that so often we are the ones that are blind to the new day in which we live. We live in a new day, beloved. It was the first day of the week. It was the first day of a new age, the first day of a new epic, the first day of a new year, the first day of a new time. It's a brand new day and it is a beautiful day. We woke up this morning, the first thing my wife said to me is it's a great day and it is a great day. It is Easter Sunday. I love Easter Sunday. It's the one day of the year that you know the marketplace hasn't figured out how to capitalize on commercializing it. It's not like Christmas is it? They came quite figured out. The best thing to come up with is a little bunny rabbit with some eggs or something like that, but it doesn't have the force. They can't control it. They can't manipulate it. They can't shape it. They can't form it because you can't control resurrection. It's a new day
and because it's a new day, beloved, you listen to me, you hear me, you get a brand new start, a brand new start, a fresh start. Old things have been passed away. We hold all things and become new. What God was doing in creation. He is now finishing in redemption. Don't you dare let this day get away from you without making that start in this new day, but it's not only a new day. It's a new world. Look at verse 2. There was a violent earthquake for the angel. The Lord came down from heaven and going to the tomb. He rolled back the stone and he sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and become like dead men. Beloved, something's going on here. There is something cosmic going on here. There is something mystical going on here. There is something mysterious going on here. Worlds are colliding. Realities are clashing. God's space and our space have come together in a way that they have never come together before. Heaven and earth, the visible and the invisible, the infinite and the finite time and eternity. The natural and the supernatural worlds have come together at this place and at this time and that cemetery and that grave at that tomb like never before and the earth is quaking and life is quaking and isn't it ironic that the one who is dead is now alive and the ones who are alive guarding the tomb are like dead men like corpses. All that that is going on is because a new world is emerging. Heaven has come down and earth has been absorbed up into it and there is a new world order. There is a new kingdom. There is a new nation of kings and priests, a new people of God living in a brand new world. Let me ask you a question. Can you see that world? Do you see it? You know, I was watching the other night after everybody went to bed and all the basketball was off TV. I was watching a rerun of a movie about Cory Temple. Remember that, remember her? Remember the movie The Hiding Place? Have you ever seen that movie? If you haven't seen the movie Hiding Place about Cory Temple, you must see it. I watched it when I first became a Christian. And here they are. These are these two women and their father and their brother in the Netherlands. I've been to their house. I've seen it. They were hiding Jews from German soldiers when the Germans occupied the Netherlands. They had a special room called the Hiding Place and they put Jews there until they were caught until they were arrested, until they were imprisoned, until they were sent to concentration camps. And Cory Timboon was the only survivor. Her sister Betsy died. Her father died. Her brother died. All of them died in the concentration camps. But there's just one scene in which they are inside the dormitory for the women and the concentration camps. It's the most dirty, despicable, bug-ridden, bug-infested, rat-infested place you've ever seen in your life. And there's nothing but misery and oppression and suffering all around them. And people are saying to Cory and to her sister Betsy who are reading their Bible in Romans chapter 8 about how creation groans and about how we groan and about how the Holy Spirit groans for the redemption of humankind. And Cory and Betsy are talking about this new world in which they live, the new world that is part of what it is to be in Christ because of the resurrection. We live in a new world and these people are saying to their where is this new world? This is a death camp. There's slaughtering thousands of people in this one camp. It's nothing but torture and agony and affliction. Where is this new world? And this one scene, these two sisters say, this is a world that you can only see. If your eyes have been opened to see it, you must be born again. And if your eyes are opened by this new birth, it doesn't matter where you are. It doesn't matter how bad it is. It doesn't matter what you are going through. It doesn't matter how much suffering and affliction and oppression you are under. You can still see this new world. Why is it
that those who have been recently born again, those who have recently had their spirits awakened and brought the life, those who have experienced regeneration so recently, almost always see it. And yet those of us who have been walking with the Lord for a long time, we almost never see it. Two weeks ago, when I preached from Romans 8, that same passage of scripture I was just talking about, when we were praying for Omar, there was a young man in this congregation that came up to me afterwards. And he said, can we talk? And I said, sure, we can talk. And he quoted some of the things that I had said in my sermon, and he said, I need help. I know I can't do this myself. And I said, son, you just said exactly the right words. Let's go down front and talk. We went down there and he began to tell me about his life, using drugs, terrible military experience, not a very good relationship with his father, lost his job, lost his girlfriend. We just keep on going down the list, right? And so we're told him again about the gospel. I told him about Jesus, the risen Lord. We were right there. We're sitting right in this pew. And this man, two weeks ago, trusted Christ as his Lord and Savior, rested and relied upon Jesus as he was freely offered in the gospel for his salvation. Call me Monday. We talked. He called me Tuesday. We talked. Wednesday came and he said,