Beloved exiles, I greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And the first thing I want to say this morning is He is risen. He is risen indeed. Well, brothers and sisters, I'm not going to sugarcoat this. Today, I would say that on the surface is one of the saddest Easter's I think I've ever experienced. I mean, you know, Resurrection Sunday is traditionally a time of great celebration all throughout the world. I mean, think about it. Families all throughout the world, churches all throughout the world, typically and traditionally on Sunday, come together into houses of worship throughout this globe to lift up the name of Jesus who has been resurrected over death, hell, and the grave. Families typically wear their Sunday best. People who don't normally come to church come to church on Easter. We call those people Christers because they come to church two times a year, Christmas and Easter. Christer. There they are. They're there on Sunday morning because even though they may not know what's going on, they know that everybody goes to church on Easter morning. Everybody knows what the sermon is going to be about on Sunday morning, on Resurrection Day, and yet they still come. Families have their traditional get-togethers as they're gathered around the table with their ham and their scallop potatoes and plenty of candy for the kids. And it's during this time that, you know, I think of the lyrics of that great Easter song by Keith Green. Hear the bells ringing, they're singing that you can be born again. Hear the bells ringing, they're singing Christ is risen from the dead. And yet, there are no church bells ringing today. Most churches aren't even meeting in the state of Virginia, let alone in the United States, let alone throughout the world. So much of the world is on lockdown due to the spread of COVID-19 and government restrictions on public meetings. And so accordingly, there's something of a proverbial elephant in the Zoom virtual meetings around the world. You know, it's that elephant that's saying, hey, you guys are acting like there's something to celebrate when in reality, there's nothing to celebrate. I mean, you can't get together with extended family because of the bans. You can't go to church. And even if you went out and bought a paisley colored Easter dress or suit, you can't wear it. Nobody's going to see you and nobody's going to care. Well, I'd like to respond to that proverbial elephant in the Zoom this morning by saying this, Mr. Elephant, None of those things are what Easter is about. Whether or not people got together in churches or with families, whether we have ham and scallops or Top Ramen, if you're sitting at home in a beautifully paisley colored dress or suit, or if you're in your pajamas, the fact of the matter is that Resurrection Sunday isn't about any of those things. Resurrection Sunday is about that moment in history when Jesus Christ ripped away the shackles of death and rose victoriously over death, hell, and the grave. And the disruption of our traditional ways of celebrating that historical event never can and never will change what He's done. No microphones were harmed in the filming of this video. So as disruptive as all of this is, the fact of the matter is that we can still enter into the joy and the life-transforming message of the resurrection of Jesus Christ right here where we sit, even though we're not in the house of God where we would love to be right now. We can celebrate alone as the apostle did in Revelation 1, verse 10, as he was exiled to that island of Patmos in the first century. or we can celebrate with our immediate family or in any group of 10 or less people in the state of Virginia. And we can lift up the name of Jesus, no matter how many people we are, whether it's one or many, and say He is risen from the dead. Let me also hasten to add this morning, and preachers, especially of Reformed ilk, are going to remind you of this. Let us remember that every single Lord's Day, is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ over death, hell, and the grave. Sometimes people get irritated when they hear Christmas music that's in October or November, but the same thing applies to Easter. Sometimes People get irritated when we sing a hymn on a Sunday morning in July that's talking about Jesus' resurrection. Well, let me tell you something. Every single Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It was on the first day of the week that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. And so the church took their cue from that. And they moved that first day under the authority of Jesus Christ, moved the day of worship from the seventh day of the week to the first day of the week. And ever since then, what have we been doing? We've been celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the first day of the week. So you know what? You know what we're going to do as a church when we are finally able to assemble again? We're going to celebrate Easter once a week for the rest of the year. That's what we're going to do. We're going to celebrate Easter once a week for the rest of the year. Now, let me also say this. I've given you some random thoughts this morning. I'm going to continue down that trail of random thoughts. Don't get me wrong here. I want to make it clear that it's very sad that we can't meet together in order to celebrate this momentous event. I want to be doing that. I've made that clear over and over again. The elders weren't happy that we had to cancel services. Even now, I've got a plan that I'm going to pitch to the elders on our next elder meeting of how we can get a little bit closer to getting together in our next worship service. We'll see what happens. It's sad. It's sad that we're not meeting together. Don't get me wrong. It seems to mean, I want you to listen to me here, it seems to mean that providentially we have all the raw materials in our present circumstances to force us, if we're willing, to focus on what really matters this Easter season. In other words, there's a sense in which this Easter could potentially be, listen to me, it could potentially be the best Easter we've had in years. You say, oh, that's a tall order, Josh. How so? Let me explain. I want you to think about it for a second. Christian holidays like Christmas and Resurrection Sunday, they're these weird eclectic train wrecks of Christ and culture. I want you to imagine that you've got one locomotive coming down the tracks, and that locomotive coming this way is Christ. It's Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. If in his crucifixion he said, it is finished, then In the resurrection, he said, it is confirmed. This locomotive of Christ is the hope that one day we will be resurrected. It is us singing about that resurrection hope. It is us reading about that resurrection hope from the word of God, joining together in congregations and singing and hoping and confessing and praying for this resurrection hope to come about. It is about us being reminded of this resurrection hope through the ministry of the word. So that's our first locomotive. It is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now let's say you've got another locomotive coming the opposite direction. And this locomotive is culture. It's all the cultural accoutrements or all the cultural relics that have sprung up over the years via tradition. that have clustered together around this religious thing called Easter. So I'm thinking, of course, of Easter bunnies. Where did that come from? Easter baskets, Easter eggs, paisley colors, Cadbury eggs, candy-coated marshmallow bunnies called Peeps that everybody likes to get and hold and play with, but nobody really likes how they taste. Now, all of these things are fine as cultural fixtures. There's nothing wrong with them in and of themselves. I love me a good, hollow, chocolate Easter bunny, okay? But now I want you to imagine that this locomotive of Christ and this locomotive of culture, they have a head-on collision. Everything's mangled together indiscriminately to where you can't tell heads from tails. I mean, you've got an empty tomb with Easter eggs hidden inside and kids are trying to find... I mean, everything is just mangled together. You know what? That's what Resurrection Sunday is to most people on the street in today's world. I've asked non-believers, even some professing believers, what Easter or Resurrection Sunday is about, and as they ramble off their answers, it's painful, and not one time do they mention anything about Jesus raising from the dead. Now listen. Culturally, most of us don't have any problems with these extra things, as long as they stay in their place, right? I mean, that's why, listen to me, when we come into the sanctuary of God to worship the Triune God, we try, at least here at Grace Covenant Church, to keep those cultural relics out of the sanctuary of God in our worship, listen, so that we can make it abundantly clear what God has promised to us and what it is we're hoping for. We don't want to mix those things so as to give a mixed message. What do I mean by that? In our worship, we're not hoping for the Easter Bunny to come and bring us candy. In our worship, we're not hoping for Santa Claus to come and bring us presents. No, no. In our worship, we are lifting up and clinging to the promise that Jesus Christ will come, the resurrected Son of God, and resurrect our bodies unto a new heavens and a new earth, a world and a then time free of pain, free of COVID-19, free of disease, free of strife, free of contention, free of all the mangled things that this world presents as a result of sin. So this Resurrection Sunday, as we experience a significantly scaled down version of the typical cultural version of Easter, let it help us to focus more intently and with greater focus on what Jesus Christ has given us through his resurrection. Does that make sense? Again, I'm not happy and I'm ready. I'm ready for us to jump right back into worship the way God has instructed us to worship. I'm ready, Lord willing, next Easter to be able to come together in the house of God and apart from our worship, do all those cultural accoutrements and relics that culture has given us. But during this time, think of it as something of a cultural fast, a cultural fasting where We try to, in some sense, it's not all together a fast, but in some sense scale down those cultural fixations, those cultural fixtures and just focus on the raw, unadulterated message of resurrection that comes in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And you know what? You could do that even now. When this message is over, what I encourage you families to do is to think of more ways in which this modified form of worship in our spiritual exile, this time of stay-at-home bans and restrictions, can help us to think about and dialogue about and appreciate what Jesus gives us in the resurrection. Take some time as a family to talk about why you are looking forward to the resurrection. Maybe it's because some of you deal with chronic pain and you're looking forward in the new heavens and the new earth to never deal with that again. Maybe it's because some of you are tired and sick and tired of the corrupt politics of this age. You know the new heavens, the new earth. It's a theocracy. Only Jesus will be reigning. So there's not going to be any corruption, so you're looking forward to that. Maybe it's because you recognize, as Soren Kierkegaard did, that death is like pounding a square peg into a round hole. Death is an anomaly. Death is weird. Death takes your breath away. and you want to spend some time this Easter thinking about a world where the ravages of death have not adulterated this world that we know, but there is a new heavens and a new world where death has been eradicated. Take some time in this minimalist approach to Easter to think about and meditate on those things. So what I'd like to do finally this morning is I'd like to think in something of a a fresh way about what it is that Jesus has done for us in the resurrection. And I want to try to present this to you, like I said, in a fresh way so that you can maybe hear it differently, maybe identify some texture and some contours and some shape to the resurrection of Jesus Christ in a way that you haven't before so that you can cling to that resurrection hope with freshness and zeal even in this time when the world is looking at the church and quote-unquote having pity on us. Don't pity those who are going to raise from the dead. So let me give you three ways this morning. Three ways in which resurrection speaks to our exiled woes. Let me say that again. three ways in which resurrection speaks to our exiled woes. In the last few weeks I've been talking about this motif or this theme of exile. And I've been thinking about this because as I said a few weeks ago, It's when the Jews went into exile in 587, 586 BC, they were shipped off to Babylon for 70 years, that as I said, they had to modify their worship. They couldn't worship in the prescribed way that God had directed them, so they had to modify their worship. And I made the application that we as the church likewise cannot worship in the way that God has prescribed that we worship, that is corporately together as one body. And so we have to modify our worship, whether that means in Zoom, or whether that means a pre-recorded video or watching worship songs and singing with them to YouTube, which, by the way, I can't stand, but it's the next best thing. We have a modified worship. But it got me thinking. It got me thinking about this theme or this motif of exile in the Bible. And what I want to say is that the more I thought about it, the more I realized, and as I poured over particularly the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament, I've realized that this motif of exile is much more pervasive than just the Jews going in to exile in Babylon. So here's what I want to say. Listen to me very carefully. In the Old Testament and even in the New Testament, the concept of exile is thought of as death. Exile is death, and return from exile is resurrection to life. Let me say that again. I'm speaking metaphorically here in a way that the combined authors of the Old Testament and even into the New Testament think about this concept of exile. Exile is painted in such a way that it is death, whereas return from exile is resurrection alive. Let me give you three ways in which that's the case. The most obvious way from scripture that we see this is when we go to the very beginning and we find our parents in the garden. You know the story. Adam and Eve were put in this lush garden, and in the middle of that garden was what? The tree of life. And many of our Reformed forefathers, the majority of them, in fact, have said that that tree of life, that literal tree of life, was a means by which God sustained Adam and Eve eternally. It was a symbol of their eternal life. It was a symbol of their fellowship with the triune God. But you know, you know the story. They sinned. Adam and Eve fell into sin. They ate of the fruit. And it says in Genesis 3, 24, that as a result, their punishment was that God drove out the man. And at the east of the Garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. I want you to notice that right from the get-go, in the beginning, death is associated with being exiled from this place, this symbol of the garden, which is life. It is fellowship with God. You see, garden was a symbol of fellowship with God. And we are now separated from God. The curse of death will be reversed by the coming of the seed of the woman. We see that in Genesis 3.15. But until then, all of humanity is exiled from God. They are driven out of the garden where that fellowship of God is experienced. Why are we broken off from God? Because God is wholly other in His holiness. He is completely impeccable. He is without sin. He is without blemish. And yet we, on the other hand, are blemished. We are marred, we are stained by the sin of our mother and father, but also by our own sin. We add sin to sin. We add misery to trouble. So even from the beginning, there is this latent hope that the seed of the woman would bring them back into fellowship with God. The disobedience of the first Adam exiled them from the garden, but the obedience of the second Adam, you see, brings us back into fellowship with God. It is no wonder, then, that in Revelation chapter 20 we see that the saints are resurrected. And then we see in Revelation 21 that John describes the new heavens and the new earth, and then in Revelation 22 As John descends down and narrows in on Jerusalem in that new earth, he describes a river of life that runs through Jerusalem. And on either side of that river of life, what do we find? Verse two of chapter 22, the tree of life, with its 12 kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month, the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. Beloved, listen to me. Paradise lost will be paradise restored because of what Jesus Christ has done in the Resurrection. So this Resurrection Sunday, let me remind you that what we celebrate on this day is that God will restore our broken bodies with healing. The Tree of Life We will come back into contact with the tree of life. And you know what? Can I say something? I actually believe in the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel, with one caveat. It will be in the new heavens and the new earth. And resurrection is what spawns it. We will be healed. Our diseases will be eradicated. We will have all the wealth that one could possibly imagine. So yes, the gospel brings us health. It brings us wealth. It brings us prosperity. But not in this time. In this time we are called to suffer. But as we suffer, we carry with us, or we cling to, the anchor of hope that is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So the first way in which resurrection solves our problems is that it brings us back to the garden from which we were originally exiled. But there's a second way in which resurrection answers exile. We were exiled at the Tower of Babel. You see, the Lord dispersed them. The people of the land are pushed further away in exile from the Garden at the Tower of Babel. And why? If you read that passage in Genesis 11, it says that they were trying to reach up to God. They thought that they were all together like God. They thought that they could be equal to God. They thought that they were rivals to God, when that is ludicrous. They are the creation of God. They are made in the image of God, but they will never rival God. But because of man's pomp and arrogance, God dispersed them by striking them with different languages. We see the reversal, however, of the Tower of Babel at the day of Pentecost. At the Day of Pentecost, nations are brought together through the Gospel and they are filled with the Spirit. The same Spirit, by the way, which raised Jesus Christ from the dead. And in that Day of Pentecost, we have the down payment of the Spirit. Paul tells us this in Ephesians chapter 1. The down payment of the Spirit, which says to us, In mortgage terms, it's called the earnest or the down payment, which says, this is a symbol that one day you're going to get the rest of the package. You're going to get the rest of the promises. But this is my promise, my earnest to you, that what I promised in the resurrection of Jesus Christ will be true of you. The Holy Spirit reverses our exile by bringing us in to the promise of resurrection. But the final way, I want you to think with me here, the final way in which resurrection answers our exile is this. I want you to think of the exile, coming back to Israel. I want you to think of the exile in 587-586 BC. Here Israel, as we know, was in the land, they had the temple, all these things were accomplished as it were. Solomon had supposedly fulfilled the promises of God by building The temple and peace was pervasive throughout the land of Israel. Every Israelite was sitting under his olive branch. But then, as if out of nowhere, and again, it wasn't out of nowhere, God had been telling them for many years, Babylon comes in and ravages Israel, ravages Judah, and takes them captive into Babylon for 70 years, destroys the temple. One of the prophets who was there during that time was Ezekiel. It was actually Ezekiel who witnessed the Shekinah glory of God lifting from the temple itself and going over the Kidron Valley and exiting. The glory of Israel had departed. Ichabod, there is no glory. It was a devastating time for the Jews. And it was during that time, a time of exile, that Ezekiel in chapter 37 had a vision. The Lord gave him a vision, and what he saw in that vision was this valley of dry bones. And Ezekiel prophesied over the bones, and the bones came together, bone to bone, followed by sinews and flesh and skin. And then it says in verse 10, listen, it says, breath entered the bones, and the resurrected people stood on their feet. Now what you need to know and learn a little Hebrew right now, is that the word breath in Hebrew is ruach. And ruach can mean breath, or it can mean something like spirit. And what I believe is going on in this passage, chapter 37, verse 10, is that this is something of a double entendre, there's a double understanding or double meaning to it. It is the breath of God that enters these bones, but the breath of God is the spirit of God. And in verse 11a, the question is put forth, who is this army? And God told Ezekiel, son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. In other words, not the fragmented house of Israel, not Israel and Judah, but it's all of them come together. This is a foreshadowing of return from exile, when everybody is brought back together. And then look in verse 12, God says, therefore prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel. Do you see what God did there in his answer to Ezekiel? He equates return from exile with resurrection. And so you see this motif of exile is death, and return from exile is resurrection to life. You see, the return from exile was resurrection from the dead. And that is why Asaph, one of the sweet psalmists of Israel, who went into exile, said in Psalm 80, verse three, restore us, O God. In the Hebrew, that's literally cause us to return. Cause us to return, O God, let your face shine that we may be saved. You see, salvation, resurrection, is bound up together with return to the land in the eyes and hearts of the people of Israel. Now here's what I want you to see. So also, what does Jesus do when he is resurrected? When he meets together with his disciples, John tells us, he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. Receive the Holy Spirit. Out of the ashes, if you will, of resurrection, Jesus gives the disciples and gives the church, later in Acts chapter 2, the Spirit. We currently have this down payment of the Spirit, which is a promise from Jesus that when He comes back, He will make all things new. All of these promises, beloved, of a new heaven and a new earth and a new body and the eradication of death and the eradication of corruption and newness pervading all of creation comes through resurrection. That's what we're celebrating this morning. We're celebrating that no, we're not able to be in the same room as we do it. but we are together in spirit, and we are celebrating this magnificent promise of resurrection. So as I conclude this morning, I would say in one sense the elephant in the zoom has been answered, but there are still two lingering elephants in the zoom this morning, and I want to address those questions. The first elephant in the zoom is this question, and it's for you Christians. Will you allow the current circumstances and restrictions to spoil your resurrection hope? Or will you break forth in celebration this morning, despite the restrictions, despite the restriction on corporate gatherings, despite the cultural relics of Easter, and say with Joe, for I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. Beloved, this morning, in the midst of all the gloom, in the midst of all the sadness, stop reading CNN for a second. Stop reading Fox News for a second. Stop reading Drudge for a second. Stop reading all the dire predictions by today's priests in the modern culture of what's going to happen in December. Stop looking shortly into the future and look further into the future and find a promise that has been prepackaged for you before the foundation of the world and the person and work of Jesus Christ, resurrection, all things new, new creation, and it is for you. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, Behold, all things have passed, new things have come, new creation. The promise of new creation for you, Christian, has already been implanted in you. It is the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God, as Gerhardt as Voss says, is the environment of heaven. You have the environment of heaven within your breast even now as the Spirit of God has taken up residency within your heart. So this morning, do not let the world dictate how you will celebrate Easter. You let the promise of God drive how you are going to celebrate Easter with your family today. So that's the first elephant, the lingering elephant in the Zoom. Here's the last one. And this is for you non-believers out there, if you are not a Christian, or if you're just a seeker. Maybe somebody sent you this video. You have no idea who this guy sitting in this chair is. You have no idea what Grace Covenant Church is. Maybe you have a friend that sent you this video. But up until this point, for whatever reason, you have not decided to turn from your sins and believe in Jesus Christ. This question is for you. Will you let this resurrection hope, of which I've spoken this morning, be passed up by your unbelief? You see, let me tell you something, dear unbeliever. And I just want you to know, before I go any further, I care for you. Please don't think this as sappy sentimentalism, but even though I don't know you, I love you. I love you enough to tell you the truth. At the end of the age, when Jesus Christ comes back, and he will, he will break through the clouds one day. He is going to resurrect everybody. He's going to resurrect believers, that is Christians, and non-believers, those who are not Christians, whether those are unbelieving Jews, or Muslims, or pagans, or intellectuals, or secularists, or agnostics, or atheists. Everybody will be resurrected. But you see, as our Apostle's Creed says, He will come back to judge the living and the dead. which means there's going to be a great judgment after He resurrects everybody. Everybody will be gathered around what is called the Bema Seat of Christ, where Jesus Christ will judge the living and the dead. And His judgment has nothing to do with your works, how good of a person you were, or how good of a person you were not. Those things are important. You should be a good person. But the judgment on the last day will have nothing to do with how many soup kitchens you helped out with in December. It has nothing to do with how many coins you gave to a panhandler on Virginia Beach Boulevard. It has nothing to do with how many lies you did or did not tell. The fact of the matter is, we're all sentenced to death Okay, even Mother Teresa, okay? We are under the sentence of death because none of us have perfectly fulfilled the expectations and demands of God in the law of God. No, on that final day, we will be judged by this. Have you or have you not turned from your sins and believed in the one who has fulfilled the law on behalf of his people? And that is Jesus Christ. You see, on the last day, the judgment will be about repentance, turning from your sin, and faith. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Can I tell you, dear unbelieving friend, what you are experiencing right now in this COVID-19 pandemic is nothing compared to the hell and fury that is coming upon this creation on the day of judgment. Hell is a real place. I know that it's not popular for preachers to talk about it. I frankly don't care. I love you enough to tell you the truth. Hell is a real place. Many people are there right now in spirit. But one day when Christ breaks through the clouds, he will send to eternal damnation all those who have rejected him. That is all those who have not placed their faith and trust in him. So this morning, I offer you the exquisite opportunity to turn from your sins and believe in Jesus Christ. You do not have to be perfect to come. You just need to be repentant. You need to recognize that your sins have offended a holy God, and yet God offers a way for you to be reconciled to Jesus Christ, and that is through believing in his person and in his work. His death on the cross covered your sins, his life under the law, gave to God an obedience that you could never give. So would you come this morning in faith? Come this morning in repentance and faith and receive the promise of resurrection hope that stands ready for you at the end of this age. Amen, let's pray. Father God, we thank you for the exquisite promise of the gospel. We thank you that within that gospel promise you have given us resurrection hope. We thank you that Jesus Christ has risen over death, hell, and the grave. And we pray, Father, that you would send him from heaven just as soon as is your will to retrieve your church. Until then, Father, help us to boldly hold forth the promise of resurrection hope to all those around us. And may we, as a people, partake of it day in and day out. Father, turn our faces up to you. restore our countenances, and may you be glorified by our witness in this place until you return. We ask all these things in Christ's name, amen. Beloved of the Lord Jesus Christ, receive this benediction. May the God whose watchful eye never sleeps, the God of wonders, power, and love, may He keep your feet from falling and make your thanks endless be until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. Amen.