Good morning everyone! My name is Matt Martinez, and I am the pastor here at Renovation Church Shoreview. Happy Easter!

Last week, we had our Grand Opening for Renovation Church Shoreview- and it was unforgettable! Because right in the middle of our first service, the power went out- not just here at Turtle Lake Elementary but for an entire city grid in Shoreview. And yet, something incredible happened. Nobody left.

All 623 people who came to our services stayed, worshipped, and heard the teaching of the Bible. Even in darkness, God was not absent. I could also read my notes for my message because the front two rows all got out their flashlights on their phones. The power eventually came back on in that first service, and I have not stopped getting messages from my friends asking how in the world Renovation Church Shoreview shut down the city.

And so, in light of last week’s Shoreview power outage… our Easter message for today feels especially fitting:

The Light Has Come

My son has this habit of falling asleep with every single light on in his room. When I go down to check on him, it’s like an interrogation room in there. The lights are blaring, but he is innocently sleeping. I asked him about this, and his reason for keeping all the lights on is because he does not like the dark.

I tried a compromise and put in a night light, but it wasn’t enough. I tried two night lights, but he got scared, and turned on all the lights again. Turns out, he doesn’t like the shadows the night lights create on the walls either, so he needs every single light on to get rid of every shadow he can see.

It’s normal for little kids to be afraid of the dark, but our struggle with the dark doesn’t go away because we grow up. The dark room of our childhood matures into:

The uncertainty we feel when we see and hear about all of the stuff going on in the world.
The darkness becomes the weight we carry of our relational struggles
The darkness can mature into our own private pain or shame.

With all this darkness and uncertainty, we can get disoriented and lost in life.

But there is hope. We believe the Bible is God’s lamp of truth in the dark. By reading and obeying the Bible we should not feel like we are in an interrogation room, nor should we feel condemned. The Bible invites us to follow Jesus and find freedom from the darkness.

We can discover pathways forged in the pages of the Bible by people who have walked through darkness by resting in the saving grace of Jesus.

Bible

We are what's called a Bible Teaching church. We teach through a passage from God’s Word each week, verse by verse so you can better understand the Bible. We are going to read a passage in the Bible now, and we’d love for everyone to read along. There’s a Bible under every chair if you need one. If you are using the Renovation Church Bible under your chair, you can turn to page 472 of that Bible. Our passage today is Isaiah 9:1-2.

There are probably no churches in America/perhaps the world except ours reading these verses today on Easter. They are traditionally read in the Christmas season, and they are near the top of the most popular verses to be

read at that time. And so a natural question you should be asking yourself, and should be asking me, is why? Why these verses now?

These two verses are a part of a larger prediction or prophecy given by a guy named Isaiah approximately 700 years before Jesus was alive. He writes about God coming to earth as a man named Jesus. Jesus grew up, and while he lived, he performed miracles, healed the sick, and fed the hungry. But most importantly, he was crucified on a cross. His death was to save us from our sins. He was buried in a tomb and on Easter Sunday he rose again. Signaling that the darkness of sin has lost its power over us if we believe in Jesus and receive the gift of grace he offers- that is Easter.

We don’t have Easter unless Jesus comes to save us- and that is why I want us to take a closer look at these verses today.

Let’s read now, Isaiah 9:1-2, starting on page 472 we will start reading where you see the big number 9 in the Renovation Church Bible.

9 Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—

The people walking in darkness

have seen a great light;

on those living in the land of deep darkness

a light has dawned.

Easter is a perfect time for Christians to be reminded that the darkness in the world is real—but it is not ultimate. And so the first thing we should remember this Easter is

Things we should remember this Easter

1- The Light of Jesus can be found in the least likely places in our world.

Let’s read verse one of our passage again.

9 Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—

The first verse in Isaiah 9 names a place in Israel called Galilee which will receive honor. This would have been interesting for ancient biblical listeners and readers because Galilee was considered a sleepy little town where nothing important should happen. It was actually taken a step further, and Galilee was considered uneducated, unimportant, and certainly not worth any honor.

The names of places communicate something to people. The city of St. Francis or St. Anthony here in Minnesota are named after monks who lived centuries ago, who dedicated their lives to the pursuit of Jesus. The city of St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota, was named after the apostle Paul in the Bible who was a key figure in building the church after Jesus was resurrected. I grew up in the state of Wisconsin. The name of that state means… no one knows.

At the time of Jesus, Rome thought Jerusalem was nothing important. The people who lived in Jerusalem didn’t like the title they were given of “not important”, so they would look at a place like Galilee and put all of the negative titles on them. There is even a quote from one of Jesus’ disciples, “Nothing good can come of Galilee.” Imagine someone saying that about your hometown.

We can tend to create hierarchies of places and people depending on what we associate with that name. But Jesus shows up in an “honorless” place, and people experience the glory of the Lord there. Renovation Church Shoreview meets in an elementary school gym, and we sit in those nice, comfortable metal chairs. But look around, we all gather here each week because we experience the presence of Jesus in this place. This is one of the unique things about Christianity.

A number of other religions do have their gods coming to earth and interacting with humanity. But in these religions, the gods are always above it, still commanding and in charge. And never, would those gods of those religions subject themselves to suffering and death.

This world has a lot going on in it right now. Just read the news, you feel the anxiety, you hear the questions about the future with the economy or war or AI. The world when Jesus walked the earth had different, but just as challenging issues back then, and Jesus chose to come and experience them with us.

Theologian Karl Barth writes

“In every other religion, man is seeking God. In Christianity, it is God who is seeking man.”

Jesus saw our world in sin and came into it to suffer and die and then be raised again in order to redeem us!

Which should lead us back to our passage in Isaiah 9. We will read verse 2 now.

Isaiah 9:2

The people walking in darkness

have seen a great light;

on those living in the land of deep darkness

a light has dawned.

Things we should remember this Easter

2- The Light of Jesus can illuminate the darkest places in us.

In studying for this message, I heard about a scientific article that was written years ago. The article was a theoretical experiment on what would happen if the sun instantly turned off. If this was to happen, a number of things would take place:

by the end of the day the whole earth would be 0 degrees, by the end of the year it would be negative 100 degrees, and then stabilize at 400 degrees below zero.
Second, photosynthesis would stop immediately, taking all of the plants and oxygen with it. And if anyone survived those two things…
And finally, we would lose the main source of vitamin A and D and our bones would become fragile and start crumbling.

In other words, without the sun, without light, we have no life.

When the prophet Isaiah is writing this passage, he writes the words ‘deep darkness’, or it could also be translated as ‘death shadow’. Isaiah wants to create an image that

death and darkness go together the same way that light and life go together.

Throughout the Bible, the light and life are often associated with the person of Jesus. The darkness in the Bible is often used to describe the world of evil, death, and judgement, or even the lack of knowledge of God.

Our verse talks about people walking and living in darkness- walking and living in death. When many people read this they assume this verse is talking about a spiritual darkness or spiritual death. While that is true, Isaiah is also speaking very practically, because the reality is that one day, we will all end up in the ground.

Let me share an illustration I heard and modified for our Easter Sunday- let’s see if it works:

It’s Easter Sunday, and you have come home after church. And for lunch, you have cooked a beautiful ham. You pull it out of the oven, it’s warm and steaming, it smells good, and you set it out on the table. But then (thought experiment), you don’t touch it for four hours. That beautiful ham is now cold. But then you leave it out and don’t touch it for four days- now, that ham smells and people in your home have to stay out of the kitchen because it is disgusting. But you keep going and leave it out for four weeks sitting on the table, and everyone has moved out of your home, your dorm room, or your apartment because it is now a health hazard.

Isaiah, in this verse, is painting the reality that sooner or later, sometime, we will go the way of the Easter ham that is left alone. The changes in our lives can be gradual, and go largely unnoticed. But the trajectory of our lives is towards darkness and death.

Unless…

There is another kind of Light that comes to give us life.

Picture: CARLSBAD CAVERNS

I read this story of a couple who took their son and daughter to Carlsbad Caverns. The tour of the famous national park includes a dramatic moment at its deepest point underground. Upon reaching the lowest point, the guide turns off the lights, to show just how dark the darkness can be. Enveloped in complete darkness, the little boy began to cry. Immediately, the voice of his sister was heard, “Don’t cry. Someone here knows how to turn on the lights.”

Isaiah 9 is telling us that Jesus knows how to turn on the lights- and he already has!

You may be wondering, who really is this Jesus and how does he overcome the darkness in our world and in us?

In the Bible there is a guy named Cornelius, who is asking similar questions, when he runs into someone named Peter. Peter was a disciple and close follower of Jesus. Cornelius asks Peter about Jesus and this is what Peter says:

Bible

Acts 10:36-43

36 You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. 37 You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached— 38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.

39 “We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross, 40 but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. 41 He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. 43 All the

prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

This is the Easter story. Jesus died and rose again. He is the Savior of the world and if you believe in Him, you can receive forgiveness from your sins. And at the end of this message, I am going to offer you a chance to do that.

Becoming a follower of Jesus does not mean working hard to get our act together and trying to be more dedicated to Him in our own strength, but actually to stop striving altogether and just rest at His feet recognizing our need to be rescued.

Gospel Invitation

A few years ago, I was driving out in the middle of southern Minnesota somewhere, and I was really low on gas. I pulled into a gas station, only to realize that I didn’t have my wallet. To add to the bad moment, my phone battery was low, I didn’t have a charger, and I couldn’t get a hold of anyone. Then someone saw me in my distress, and offered to help me. And I kid you not, my pride almost got in the way. I almost said, “I’ll figure it out, I got this. Don’t worry about it…” But I thankfully swallowed my pride and accepted the gracious offer that I actually desperately needed… because I was stuck.

For some, pride is the biggest reason we do not take up the gift of salvation given to us by Jesus. We believe we have what we need, we pretend to have it together. In fact, if you chose to spend more of your time in darkness, you may be convinced you like the dark. It’s like sitting in the same room as the rotting ham, you trying to convince yourself that you enjoy the smell of it.

But Jesus’ gift of salvation can free you.

If Jesus is God, if he died and rose again, if he is who he claimed to be, you cannot just like him or be inspired by him. Christians don’t just worship and follow God because we have to, we recognize that darkness is everywhere, and without the Light, we don’t stand a chance. If you want to follow Jesus-you have to embrace the life he desires to give you.

I believe Jesus is the way to eternal life. And I want to give you the opportunity to pray and invite Jesus to be the Lord of your life today.

In John 3:16, it says.

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Sin separates us from God, and that sin demands judgement- an eternity in hell.
But Jesus stepped into our darkness:

He lived for us
Died for us
Rose again for us

Now, you have a choice.

Jesus stepped into your darkness so you don’t have to stay there.
The invitation is simple: step out of darkness, step into light.
If you believe in Jesus, and receive his grace, the judgement meant for you is placed on him.
And you receive eternal life with God in heaven.

I’m going to ask everyone to bow your heads and close your eyes.

If you want to:

Turn from your sins and receive forgiveness for them. I want you to just raise your hand and keep it up so I can see it. You can do that right now.
If you want Jesus to be the Savior and Lord of your life. Raise your hand.
Step into the light, after living so long in the dark of sin. Raise your hand.

PRAYER

Whether you have a hand raised or not, whether you have prayed this prayer before or not, I invite everyone to pray this with me (repeat after me):

Dear God,

I confess to you.

That I have sinned against you.

But God I believe,

that you sent your Son Jesus

To take my place

And God, I thank you

For forgiving my sins

And now I commit to following you

With my life.

NEXT STEPS/CLOSING

Alright, you can put your hands down. Just a few more instructions. For those that raised your hand, you just made the most important decision of your life and we want to help you know what to do next. The worship team is going to sing one final song. After they finish, I am going to come back to give some final instructions.

(After the worship team finishes the song)

Just a couple more reminders as we finish today. We have Easter bags for all the kids that came today. If you have a child here in the service, our greeters will have Easter bags for them at the doors on your way out. If you have a child in Renovation kids, they will get a bag when they are checked out.

Second reminder, because of all the people coming here to church on Sundays, we will continue to have two services each Sunday. But we will be adjusting the times of those services starting next week. The first service will be at 9am and the second service will be at 10:30am. If you felt God today, come back next week and invite a friend to come with you!

Finally, if you raised a hand today (or even if you didn’t raise your hand and you wish you did), we are so excited for you! There are some great steps that you can take now that you have stepped into a relationship with Jesus, and

we would like to walk with you and help you know what to do.

So, as people get up to leave, just come forward to the front of the stage. I will be right here to provide you with a couple of next steps. It may be tough to get through, but just make your way up here where I will be waiting for you.

For those of you who need prayer for anything else. Our prayer team will be on this side of the stage.

Happy Easter! Enjoy that ham! See you next week!

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