March 31, 2024
Easter with Kingsway 2024
- Matt Nickoson
Sermon Notes
Did you know that God has a name, and it’s not “god”?
YHWH or Yahweh? - It means I AM.
Exodus 3:13 NIV
Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
Exodus 3:14a NIV
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”
“In essence, it doesn’t actually matter who you are… what matters is who I AM.” – Dr. Tim Mackie
Exodus 3:14b-15a NIV
This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.'"
Exodus 3:14b-15 NIV
"This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation."
John 8:54-56 NIV
Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and obey his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”
John 8:57 NIV
“You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”
John 8:58 NIV
“Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”
John 8:59 NIV
At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.
In calling himself “I AM”, Jesus was cluing us in that he is not just an ordinary man… HE IS.
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
John 11:21-22 NIV
“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
John 11:23-24 NIV
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
John 11:25-26 NIV
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” - John 11:25-26 NIV
John 14:1-4 NIV
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God ; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
John 14:5 NIV
Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?"
John 14:6-7 NIV
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
Luke 24:1-8 NIV
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’” Then they remembered his words.
Luke 24:11 NIV
But they (the Apostles) did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.
1 Corinthians 15:3-8 NIV
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas (Peter), and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. – The Apostle Paul
Jesus really is alive and He really is life!