Living Easter Sunday’s Victory on Monday Morning

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00:00:05.000 | On Easter Sunday we celebrated the resurrection of Christ. He is the victor,

00:00:09.000 | He has defeated sin and Satan and death itself. It's one of the sweetest weekends

00:00:13.000 | of the year for the Church. And then Monday morning hits, and many of us

00:00:17.000 | return to work, and the reality of sin and Satan and death greet us in the morning.

00:00:22.000 | Pastor John, how do we live out the victory of Easter Sunday on Monday?

00:00:27.000 | That's right. I have ringing in my ears kind of the reverse of the famous sermon.

00:00:33.000 | Several people have preached it, where you have the refrain over and over,

00:00:37.000 | "It's Friday, but Sunday's coming." And now you're asking me the question,

00:00:42.000 | "It's Sunday, but Monday's coming." And we need both of those theologies, don't we?

00:00:46.000 | I mean, we need the theology to get us from Friday to Sunday, but we also need,

00:00:54.000 | in this age, the theology that helps us realize our Sundays are so often followed

00:01:01.000 | by Mondays. And here's what I find the most helpful. We need a clear, biblical picture

00:01:10.000 | of what this age is like, and what the expectations are that we can have

00:01:17.000 | as redeemed children of God. And here's a couple of passages that include

00:01:24.000 | the word "groaning" that I had not seen before recently. In 2 Corinthians 5,

00:01:31.000 | it says, "While we are still in this pit," meaning these fallen bodies that are prone

00:01:38.000 | to get sore throats and pneumonia and cancer and wounds, "While we're still in this body,

00:01:45.000 | we groan, not that we would be unclothed." In other words, nobody wants to be bodiless,

00:01:51.000 | he says. We want to be super clothed, overclothed, swallowed up by life.

00:01:56.000 | And then he says, "God has prepared us for that, who has given us His Spirit now as an,"

00:02:04.000 | and then it's usually translated "guarantee." The literal word is "downtainment."

00:02:11.000 | That's really important. I have a downpayment, which has a double-stored edge, doesn't it?

00:02:19.000 | It means only a downpayment, and it means really a downpayment. The "only" means

00:02:25.000 | I'm not all the way redeemed yet, which leads me over there to Romans 8.

00:02:32.000 | That's the one I'm more familiar with, where it says, not only the creation,

00:02:38.000 | but we ourselves who have the first fruits. Now that's the same as guarantee or downpayment,

00:02:44.000 | it's the same idea. First fruits, not the whole harvest, just the first fruits of the Spirit,

00:02:49.000 | and we groan inwardly. So over in 2 Corinthians 5, we in this tent are groaning,

00:02:57.000 | though we have a downpayment of the Holy Spirit, and in Romans 8, 23-25,

00:03:02.000 | we're groaning inwardly, though we have the first fruits of the Spirit.

00:03:06.000 | So the picture there of the era in which we live is the painful reality of the already downpayment,

00:03:16.000 | and not yet of the full harvest and the full payment. So getting that straight,

00:03:22.000 | that all the struggles of this life, of the Monday mornings after the High Easter,

00:03:28.000 | are to be expected. They're to be expected. This is the way God has set it up,

00:03:35.000 | that we groan here. So here's my strategy for Monday morning.

00:03:41.000 | Number one, don't forget Good Friday and Easter. Fix your heart as you wake up in the morning,

00:03:48.000 | every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, all the way through, on the fact that whether I feel it or not,

00:03:56.000 | and whether the evidence is around me convincing me of it or not, the cross means I'm loved.

00:04:02.000 | And Easter means that love is victorious, and He will not stop loving me because the highest cost

00:04:10.000 | has been paid to obtain me for Himself. That's number one. Number two, He really is with me on Monday.

00:04:17.000 | Whether I feel it or not, He said so in Matthew 28-20. I will be with you to the end of the age.

00:04:25.000 | So believe that. Whether you're high or low, He's with me because He's risen from the dead

00:04:31.000 | and He's alive to help me wherever I am, in whatever situation I am.

00:04:36.000 | And then the last thing is, and it kind of gets us back to where we started, like Sunday's coming,

00:04:42.000 | savor the final great revelation of what happened.

00:04:50.000 | Jesus said, "When you're persecuted and reviled and slandered, rejoice in that day,

00:04:59.000 | for great is your reward in heaven." So I think we Christians should often think about our reward.

00:05:05.000 | That is, think about the resurrection. Think about the fact that I'm going to get a new body someday.

00:05:10.000 | I won't sin more someday. I won't have any more pain and depression any more someday.

00:05:15.000 | It really is coming. He really will be everything to me someday.

00:05:19.000 | Jesus says, "If that's real to you, you'll be able to rejoice now,

00:05:24.000 | right in the middle of the Monday morning's affliction."

00:05:28.000 | Amen. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast.

00:05:31.000 | Please email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.

00:05:35.000 | At DesiringGod.org, you will find thousands of other free resources from John Piper.

00:05:39.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.

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Living Easter Sunday’s Victory on Monday Morning

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