The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is good news. Jesus said, I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep know me and I lay down my life for the sheep. Jesus died to deliver his people out of darkness and to deliver them into the marvelous light of God. And if you're a Christian this morning, you believe that Jesus died to save you from sin, to save you from death, and to save you from condemnation. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, you believe that Jesus was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, that the punishment that brought us peace was on him and by his wounds we have been healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us to his own way. But the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all. But if you're a Christian, how is it that you can be certain? How is it that you can be sure that Christ, that God, has truly forgiven your sins? Or how is it that you can be sure that Jesus' sacrifice was acceptable to God? Well, because of the resurrection. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins, says Paul. If Jesus never rose from the dead, the fact of the matter is we are still in darkness. We are still lost sheep and we are still condemned. But God has raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification, Romans 4.25. And so death and darkness have been defeated. Jesus was nailed to a cross, the righteous for the unrighteous. The good shepherd laid down his life for the sheep, but he rose again. Jesus said, the reason my father loves me is that I lay down my life. only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. See, it was impossible for death to keep its hold upon Jesus, said Peter at Pentecost. You see, death had no claim on him and death could not overcome him. He who is the author and perfecter of life. And yes, Jesus was executed as a criminal. He was publicly shamed. He was humiliated, dishonored, beaten, spat upon. He was tortured. He was crucified. But in the glory of the resurrection from the dead, Jesus was vindicated. Jesus was vindicated and exalted by God the father in the power of the spirit. In the words of Paul, Jesus was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. You see, the resurrection, it assures us that it is finished, that he has done it, that he is risen, and that he is victorious. If Jesus was not raised from the dead, there is no gospel. And so it is therefore essential, absolutely essential for us to understand the significance of the resurrection. The resurrection assures us that Jesus' sacrifice was indeed acceptable to God. And it does assure us that Jesus is Lord. But there is more that must be said. There is far more that must be said. We must also understand that the resurrection was an event of cosmic significance. It was an event that changed the very fabric and future of all the universe. Yes, the resurrection is, it is about Jesus' vindication by God. The resurrection is about Jesus' exaltation. And it is the wonderful wellspring of our comfort and confidence that Jesus' sacrifice was indeed acceptable to God, yes. But Jesus' resurrection is also about the glory and the good news of new creation, of cosmic universal redemption. You see, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, it changes everything. And if we fail to truly understand this point, we actually fail to fully understand the gospel. and therefore we fail to fully understand just how good the good news truly is. To quote C.S. Lewis from his book Miracles, the New Testament writers speak as if Christ's achievement in raising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe. He is the first fruits, the pioneer of life. He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the king of death. Everything is different because he has done so. This is the beginning of the new creation. A new chapter in cosmic history has been opened. Would you please turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 5, verse 17. 1 Corinthians 5, verse 17. Second Corinthians, thank you, John. Second Corinthians, chapter five, verse 17. Yes, you'll be very confused if you turn to First Corinthians. But allow me to pray for us before we continue. Father, we are so thankful that you sent forth your Son into this world to redeem our people and to redeem your creation. And Father, we know that this morning we cannot understand We cannot perceive what you have done unless you give us understanding, unless you open our eyes, unless you are with us by your spirit. And Father, we gather this morning as hungry sheep longing to be fed, and we pray that you would feed us this morning from your word, that you would nourish us, that you would strengthen us, that you would confirm to us your good and precious promises, that we would rejoice, that we would be thankful, that we would glorify you, our God. In Jesus' name, amen. So 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17. Paul writes, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old has gone, the new is here. Now I want us to first consider what Paul means by the old has gone and the new is here. And what does Paul really mean by the old? And what does he really mean by the new? Well, it seems obvious enough, doesn't it, that the new refers to the new creation, that Christian's experience in Christ. Look what Paul says just before he talks about the old and the new. He says, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. And so at first glance, the old, then, would appear to be that experience of life pre-Christ, before Christ. However, I believe that there is more to it than that. Not less than, but something gloriously more than. Paul is, in fact, making a distinction here between the old and, on the other hand, the new that is far greater, gloriously greater, than our own personal experiences of salvation. To quote the great Dutch theologian and biblical scholar Herman Riddibas, when Paul speaks of new creation, it is not merely in an individual sense, but one is to think of the new world of the recreation that God has made to dawn in Christ and which everyone who is in Christ is included. If you're a Christian, it means that you are a new creation. It means that you belong to the new creation, but the new creation is nonetheless something far greater than your own personal experience of it. It's perhaps something like this. It's something like the difference between being an American citizen and the United States of America. You may be an American, you may belong to America, but you are one tiny little thread in the great tapestry that really is this nation. In comparing and contrasting the new and the old, Paul is contrasting two ages, two universal realities. In Galatians 1.4, Paul writes that Jesus gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age. This present evil age is what Christians have been saved from. The old has gone. And they have been saved into the new creation. The new has come. And let's focus, first of all, a little bit more on the old, or what we might call this present evil age. Just give you a heads up. This is going to be pretty bleak. The world As creation, has it always been identified or characterized as evil? No. The scriptures teach us that the world fell into darkness and evil. In Genesis 1, we're told that God created the heavens and the earth, and he saw that it was good. Yes. In the beginning, the good God created a good world. But human creatures rebelled against their creator. They failed to love him, to trust him, and to obey him. Eve was deceived and Adam willfully rebelled. They chose death, forsaking the God of life. And God had said that if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die. A question for you, when they ate of the tree, Did they, in a sense, immediately at that moment drop down dead? Is that what happened? No. No, God's judgment did come upon them, but in God's mercy, it did not come upon them all at once. Rather, the power of sin and death and the devil did overcome them. They experienced the corruption and real destruction of true human existence. And death came first upon their souls before it came then upon their bodies. From the moment that they ate of the tree, death did overshadow them. From that moment forward, they lived their lives under the very shadow of death. And from Adam, sin and death came upon all people. In Adam, all die, says Paul. And in Romans, he writes that sin came into the world through one man and death through sin. And so death, it spread to all men because all sinned. And sin, it has permeated. It has corrupted and distorted every part of our human nature and experience. It has distorted. perverted, our desires, our wills, our minds, our relationships, our actions, everything. Writing to Christians, Paul reminds us how we were once held captive by the power of sin and death and judgment. To many of us, these are very familiar words. Paul writes, you were dead. You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. And in Titus 3.3, Paul writes how we were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, and enslaved, by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated, and hating one another. I told you this first part was going to be bleak. But it gets worse. Death not only corrupted and perverted human nature, but also corrupted and perverted God's good creation. In Genesis 3, 18 to 19, God said this to Adam. Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree which I commanded you, you shall not eat. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return. And in Romans 8, Paul writes that all creation has been subjected to futility and is in bondage to corruption. Now God is light. God is life. God is love. Now what is the opposite of light and life and love? It is darkness, death, and hate. When the spiritual beings, the angels, and when humanity rebelled against God, turning from him and forsaking his fellowship, that was a movement away from light into darkness, from life into death, and from love into hate. and from blessing to judgment. At the fall, the whole universe was thrown into chaos and disorder. Amazingly, God is so gracious that things are not as bad as they could possibly be. That is true. We do still enjoy, and unbelievers still enjoy, some small measure of joy and peace and life in this present evil age, but things are certainly not as they should be. The life that human beings experience after the fall, it is so shrunken down, so diminished that we should hardly call it life at all. And if you take a match and you light it, it will produce light and heat. But the light and heat that it emits is so feeble so flickering and so promptly extinguished. Such is human life east of Eden. It is feeble, flickering, and promptly extinguished. Now God's response to human rebellion is first one of judgment, and that is good, because God is good, and because God is just. But almost immediately after the fall Adam and Eve, they experience an overflow of God's amazing grace. God drew near to them and promised to them that he would not forsake them. He would not forsake his creation, but redeem it. And the Bible is essentially the story of God's mission to redeem and to reconcile the creation to himself. And throughout the Old Testament, God makes many great and precious promises to save and to bless the nations and to liberate creation itself from corruption. To give you some examples, Isaiah 25 verses 8 to 9, the prophet writes that God, these are amazing words, will swallow up death forever. The sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces. He will remove his people's disgrace from all the earth. The Lord has spoken. In that day, they will say, surely this is our God. We trusted in him and he saved us. This is the Lord. We trusted in him. Let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation. And then hear these words from Isaiah 65 verse 17. God speaks. He says, see, I will create a new heavens and a new earth The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. God promises to swallow up death, to wipe away tears, to remove his people's disgrace from all the earth, and to create new heavens and a new earth. And has God kept his word? Has God fulfilled his word? Yes. To quote the apostle Paul, no matter how many promises God has made, they are yes in Christ. And so through him, the amen is spoken by us to the glory of God. When humanity fell, a great darkness fell, and it fell upon all created things. Darkness descended, but God in his grace spoke into that darkness, promising that a new day would one day dawn, that evil would not prevail, that creation itself would be set free, that death would be defeated. But God did not only speak into the darkness. God entered into it. The word has become flesh. In the words of the great Heidelberg catechism, The eternal Son of God, who is and remains true and eternal God, took to himself, through the working of the Holy Spirit, from the flesh and blood of the Virgin Mary, a true human nature without sin. Jesus is truly God and truly man, born in the likeness of sinful flesh, yet without sin. And then hear these amazing words. 2 Corinthians 5.19, Paul writes that God, was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And then also in Colossians 1, 19 to 20, he writes that God was pleased to have all of his fullness dwell in Jesus, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. God took on flesh and entered into this world of darkness and death to redeem it, to reconcile it to himself. God in Christ entered this evil age and God in Christ walked through the valley of the shadow of death and God in Christ condemned sin in his flesh. Romans eight three. Now, this is where it really gets amazing. When Jesus rose from the dead, he swallowed up death forever. When Jesus rose, light dispelled the darkness. And when Jesus' body breathed again, the new creation burst forth. A dam burst and the life of heaven invaded and overthrew the powers of darkness, breaking creation free from corruption. and from futility. With the resurrection of Jesus, the new creation has come. The new is here. But it has not yet come fully. The Jews believed that the resurrection would be a singular event, that it would all happen at once at the end of history. And they likewise believed that the new creation would come only at the end, at the end of time. But with the resurrection of Jesus, it has already begun. The new creation is here, present tense. It has arrived. And we live in the time between the times. Jesus is risen, but Jesus is returning. And when he returns, evil will come to an end. All final rebellion will be judged and all things will be gloriously made new. But Jesus is the very first fruits of the resurrection. and his resurrection guarantees the resurrection to come. So that in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, Paul writes this, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection from the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive. but each in its own order, Christ the first fruits, and then at his coming, all those who belong to Christ. Jesus was raised from the dead, and one day Jesus will raise his people from the dead. And one day Jesus will raise up all creation out of bondage to death. In Romans 8, Paul tells us that creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. That is good news. Okay, let's find our way back to 2 Corinthians 5.17. The old is gone, the new is here. There's a lot packed into those words, isn't there? But now I want us to very briefly consider the first part of this verse. If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. Or if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, depending on your translation. How is it that a Christian becomes a new creation? How, or rather, participates in God's new creation? The answer is, they are in Christ. Because a Christian is united to Jesus, they are united to him and the very power of his resurrection. And so that by the power of the spirit and through faith, we are united with Jesus. And in being united to Jesus, we are raised to newness of life. Paul puts it in this way in Romans 6. Our old self was crucified with Christ. Notice this union language of with and in. Our old self was crucified with Christ in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing. so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. But one who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead, he will never die again. Death no longer has any dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once and for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. So, Therefore, you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. If you are a Christian, you must understand that you were once spiritually dead in sin, but now you are spiritually alive in God. God has brought you out of darkness and into his light. God has brought you out of death and into his life. And God has brought you out of misery and into his love. The old is gone. Behold, the new has come. So the resurrection, it changes everything. And of course, the resurrection of Jesus is not something we simply know about, is it, as Christians? We don't just simply believe it intellectually. We experience it. we experience the reality of the risen Christ. I don't mean by that that we've seen him or we've touched him, but that he has invisibly, yet personally and powerfully revealed himself to us. We do not gather this morning to remember the life of an important, influential, historical figure whose name was Jesus, whose body and bones long ago returned to the dust of the earth. That's not what's going on this morning. No, we gather to encounter, to experience, and to enjoy the presence and blessing of the risen Christ in the unity and fellowship of God the Holy Spirit. I just want to say that if you're not a Christian, you need to understand that you are living under the very shadow of death. But Jesus can set you free. Jesus can reconcile you to God. In Jesus, you can have peace with him. Jesus can raise up your soul out of its captivity to corruption and death, and he can deliver you from the judgment to come. John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. There is forgiveness, and there is freedom, and there is newness of life in Christ. And if you have not yet come to him, come to him today. So then, the resurrection is good news, the best news, the greatest news. It is an event that changed the very fabric and future of all things. Jesus' resurrection is about new creation, cosmic universal redemption. And without the resurrection, if there is no new creation, then sin and death triumphs. But Jesus is risen. The old has passed away, and behold, the new has come. I want to end with one very brief word of exhortation. We live between the times, as I already said, between the time of the resurrection and the return of Christ. We live during the overlap of the ages, right? With the resurrection of Jesus, The new creation has now come, but until the return of Christ, this present evil age endures. It's still here. Christ will come again to make all things new. But until that time, we still live at mid the evil present age. And so then it's important that we think about this just very briefly. How then do we live? How do we live between the times in Daniel chapter 12, Daniel spoke about the resurrection. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise, catch this, shall shine like the brightness of the sky above. Daniel writes that God's redeemed people will shine like the brightness of the sky above. It is true that we await the resurrection of our bodies. It's true that we await the glorification of our bodies and souls, but we nonetheless have already, present tense, been raised up with Jesus to newness of life. Spiritually speaking, God has already, in the words of Ephesians, raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places. And we are not alone. Jesus is with us. even by the power of his life-giving spirit. And this means that even now, present tense, we can shine like the brightness of the night sky. And we must shine as stars admit this present evil age. We must proclaim Christ. We must shine forth Christ into this world of darkness. We must live as those that are dead to sin and alive to God. We must live as God's people in unity, humility, and love. And with our words and in our actions, in all that we do, and with the power of the resurrected Christ at work within us, we must give testimony to the truth and reality that the old is gone and that God's new creation has now come. Let's pray together. Father, we praise you and we thank you That though we rebelled against you, that though we sinned, you are a God abounding in love and mercy. That you sent forth your son into this world, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life. And that Jesus in and through all that he has done and accomplished is redeeming all things to himself. He is making all things new. Father, we thank you that you have given to us a living hope because Jesus is alive. And Father, we thank you so much that even now you have raised us up to be with him in the heavenly places where we enjoy every spiritual blessing. Father, we pray that you would be with us by your spirit, that we would shine forth into this present evil age, the very light of Christ, that people around us would see that the new creation has come, that light and life has come to a world that is in bondage to death. We pray that you would encourage us greatly this morning as we reflect upon the great things that you have done for us and for our salvation and for your glory. In Jesus name, amen.