Easter 2025

Hope Rising. That is the name of the series that we're gonna launch this Easter morning. My name is René, another one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. Whether you've been here a thousand times, or this is your first time, I hope you feel welcomed and really loved today because we are having a ball, if you cannot tell, here on this stage. And let's thank the worship team, by the way, for doing a wonderful job. It was so awesome.

And I want to try what Kyle did with you. Christ is risen. Amen. Amen. Well, I want to start my message this morning with an amazing true story of a shipwreck. So this happened on November 22nd, 2012, off the coast of El Salvador. And this man, Jose Alvaranga, and a friend of his, were professional fishermen. They go out fishing when a sudden storm hits.

He radios a desperate SOS, and that's the last anyone hears from him for 438 days. He's lost at sea for 14 months. His boat drifts, no working motor, no GPS. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, his rescuers stop searching. His family, of course, holds his funeral. What they don't know is that after a year, Jose Alvaranga is still alive on that boat, catching fish, drinking rainwater.

Until one day, over a year later, the sky above him suddenly fills with seagulls and Alvaranga stares as a tropical island emerges from the mist. It is this very island, this is a photograph of what's called Tile Islet. It's part of the Marshall Islands chain. He had drifted for 14 months over 6,000 miles. It is the longest distance anyone has ever survived at sea in recorded history.

So he swims the last 10 yards to shore, grips the sand like it's gold, and then stumbles into a beach house, owned by a couple who took this photograph, astonished to see this wild-looking man. And Alvaranga is saved, looking a lot like somebody else I've seen in a similar situation. I can't seem to put my finger on it, but his family gets word he's alive. They can't stop praising God. Can you imagine their emotion? You could almost say that it's like a resurrection.

He's flown home, he's reunited with them, but remember I said that there were two men originally in that boat. Alvaranga's crewmate, Ezekiel Cordoba, younger, stronger, more athletic, but he kept repeating, "We're not going to make it. We're not going to make it." He stopped hoping, stopped eating, and one day stopped living. And he slipped into the sea.

How did Alvaranga keep going for more than a year after that? Well, he fought for hope on the daily. He said he prayed constantly. He kept imagining life after rescue. The friends he'd meet. In detail, he'd imagine the meals he would eat. He told himself his life had purpose, that he must survive, for nothing else to tell Ezekiel's mom how much he loved her, which was a vow he later fulfilled when he got back to the mainland.

So do you understand? There were two men literally in the same boat. The exact same chances for survival. The exact same circumstances. The only difference was hopelessness or hope. And that's always the difference. Hope Rising is the name of this new seven-week series that we start today. I'm so stoked about this, and here's why we want to do this.

I've been reading so many headlines like this recently. I read this one this week. "Despair is in the air." It says that hopelessness is linked to higher mortality, worsening mental health, and hopelessness has doubled in America in recent years. So happy Easter, everybody, but here's the good news. Research says hopeful people are happier, healthier, feel better, live longer, achieve more, which is why we want to raise hope.

In this series, we're going to be looking at the latest research on hope, easy habits that can inspire hope, scriptures that will raise your hope. And my wife and I just put together this little booklet to go along with this series. It's got 30 daily readings, and you can pick this up for free. We're not even going to take your filthy money. You can pick this up right outside.

Now, we don't have enough for everybody to take a stack for their 50 closest friends, but we have enough for you to have a copy. And if we run out, we're going to have some more next weekend. But every single day in these little one or two-page readings, there's a story about hope. There's a Bible verse about hope, and there's a prayer about hope. So you can kind of get this next month. You're going to fill your hope bucket.

And then on the day that we're going to wrap up the series, seven weeks from now, June 8th, we're going to break ground on the Hope Center. Isn't that an appropriate way to end this series? If you don't know what this is, this is going to go where those old modular buildings, those portables are on our campus. This is going to be the new permanent home for all our community outreach ministries, like support for people in recovery, in grief, going through all kinds of different mental health challenges.

And crucially, half of the bottom floor is going to be for our People's Pantry Free Grocery Ministry that distributes food weekly to people. And by the way, thank you so much for bringing in so much food in the lobby today. Give yourselves a hand, because you are raising people's hope by doing that today. Thank you so much.

So let's kick this series off with a great story. It happens on the very first Easter, Gospel of Luke, Chapter 24. Two people walking along a road totally hopeless when they meet a very interesting stranger. I love this story. Verse 13. "Now that same day, two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened."

Now this is three days after Christ's crucifixion, so everything that had happened meant they were talking about how just a week ago they were on that same road marching into Jerusalem, thinking Jesus is the Messiah, and now they're walking on that road out of Jerusalem because Jesus has been crucified. And it says, "As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself," this is the risen Jesus, "came up and walked along with them, but they were kept from recognizing him."

Now I don't know exactly how they were kept. I mean it could have been something supernatural, or it could have been like some kind of a first-century Jedi mind trick. I'm not the Messiah you're looking for. Or it could have just been that out of context. I mean he's dead. They just didn't imagine that they would see him. Sometimes that happens to us, right?

Once I was visiting another church here in town, in Santa Cruz, and during the greeting time midway through, I turn around and there's two women behind me, and one of them looks at me and says, "You know, you look a little bit like a pastor at another church in town." His name's Pastor René. And at this church they gave all the visitors name tags, and so I folded my arms and slowly put my hand over my name tag and said, "I've heard people say that." Yeah.

But it came back to bite me because then the second lady says, pointing at me, "No, he's much older." Thank you. But it gets better because we sit down for the sermon and afterwards I kind of felt guilty because I'd misled them. And so I found him over by the coffee and I said, "You know, I gotta tell you, I actually am Pastor René." And one of them looks at me after a beat and says, "No, you're not." And walks away! That's how it ended!

So maybe that's what's going on here. I don't know. But what happens next? He asked them, "So what are you discussing together as you walk along?" I just love how in all the resurrection stories the risen Christ is so playful. "Hey guys, what's up?" And they stood still, their faces downcast. And I love this little detail because remember they were walking along the road it has just told us, and now they stop. And they look at him like, "Are you kidding me? You don't know what's been happening here in Jerusalem? Everybody knows about this."

And one of them named Cleopas, and freeze there for a second because this name Cleopas, very interesting detail in the Gospel of John, it says that Mary, wife of Cleopas, was at the crucifixion. So who do you think this might be walking here with Cleopas? Could be. Likely it's Cleopas and his wife, Mary. Cleopas asked him, "Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in the last days? Like, are you seriously the only idiot that doesn't know what happened?" And he's talking to Jesus.

So Jesus goes, "What things? About Jesus of Nazareth?" they replied. "Really? Tell me more." Well, he was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. But the chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death. They crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. We had hoped. Say those three words with me. We had hoped.

Those have got to be the three saddest words in the English language, right? That's even sadder than we have no hope because we had hoped and now we don't have hope anymore. And maybe you've been there. I've been there. I had hoped that Dad would be cured of cancer. I had hoped that Mom wouldn't die. We had hoped we would have children for years before we were able to conceive. I had hoped I would get that job. You've probably been there too. It feels terrible.

They had hoped that Jesus was going to redeem Israel. Now, when we hear the word "redeem," we think of religious things. They didn't. Here's what this meant for them. Pure political. For centuries, their country, Israel had been under foreign oppression. And the Bible said one day God would send a great Messiah to set them free. And they had hoped Jesus was that guy. Seemed like he was the guy. Seemed like he said he was the guy. But now Jesus is dead. And it's over. We had hoped.

And then they say, and it keeps getting worse because now his grave's apparently been robbed. Some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning, didn't find his body. And it's so easy to hear their tone of voice in this. They came and told us they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. But some of our companions went to the tomb. They didn't see Jesus. They saw nothing. It's hopeless.

So here's what you're seeing with these two. The story kind of the frame, the meta-narrative they're living their lives by is we need a Messiah to set us free politically now. And when that doesn't happen, there is no hope. So what does Jesus do here? It's interesting because he could have done his appearing disappearing trick that he does later. Here I am. Now you see me. Now you don't. Now you see me. Believe. But he doesn't do anything supernatural. He does something that you and I could do as well. He takes them to the Bible.

I love this. He said to them, "How foolish." And by the way, the word there in the original Greek is kind of like our English word knucklehead. And I think he kind of said this affectionately like, "You knuckleheads, how foolish you are and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets," that's another way of saying the Old Testament scriptures, "he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself."

Now they don't know it's him yet. He's saying, "But look at what it says about the Messiah. It's right in front of your faces." And it doesn't say what Bible verses he took them to, but I believe it had to, one of the places you took them, had to have been the book of Isaiah chapter 53. Now this was written centuries before Christ. We have scrolls with this from centuries before Christ, but look at some of these verses. This is from verse five. "He was pierced for our transgressions." He was crushed for our iniquities. "The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed."

It's amazing. He's saying, you've been saying the cross is a problem, but the cross is the solution. It's how your sins can be forgiven. And look at the details in Isaiah 53, like verse nine. "He," this Messiah, "was assigned a grave," so he's going to die, "with a rich man in his death, though he had done no violence. And you know Jesus's body was laid in the tomb of a rich man named Joseph of Arimathea. And even the resurrection is in Isaiah 53, verse 11. "After he has suffered, he will see the light of life. My righteous servant will justify many and bear their iniquities."

It's amazing. And if you find yourself skeptical, it would be worth your while to grab a Bible, open it to Isaiah chapter 53, and read the whole thing. Because these verses describe what happened, why it happened, how it happened, before it happened. You know, I love classic art, and I love that Rembrandt loved this story so much that he sketched it and drew it and painted it and doodled it again and again and again throughout his life. He was like obsessed with this story of the road to Emmaus.

Like here's his drawing of Jesus walking up to these two on the road unrecognized. And then as the Bible says, they get to their house, and the Bible says that they invite him in. It's late, stranger, stay for dinner. And then the Bible describes the moment that Jesus says, "Hey, why don't you let me say grace for the food?" And I love that in this painting, they're looking at him. This is a split second before the realization dawns. And the reality of who they have been talking to is starting to dawn on them.

The Bible says, "While he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and began to give it to them." And it's at this moment, as sketched again by Rembrandt, that the light begins to dawn. I don't know if they see his nail pierced hand as he hands him the bread, or if he leans forward a little bit into the candlelight, or if a supernatural veil is lifted. But suddenly it says, "Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him." They're like, "Oh, my word, you aren't Jesus?" And I love this next line it says, "And then he disappeared from their sight."

Again, this playful resurrection Jesus goes something like, "Gotcha, ninja smoke bomb," when he just vanishes. And again, the Rembrandt painting of this moment, it's interesting if you know Rembrandt, he's always capturing things that happened the split second before the climax. In all these paintings, you probably notice that he's just like, "What? It's Jesus!" While Jesus is leaning back about to disappear into the shadows and vanish.

And the Bible says, "They asked each other, 'We're not our hearts burning within us, as he explained the scriptures.' And it says, 'They take off, run all the way back to Jerusalem, burst into the room where the other disciples are hiding. They start to say, "You'll never believe what just--" And before they can finish, while they were still talking about this, it says Jesus himself stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.'"

Can you imagine what--what--well, the Bible says what happened next. Everybody freaks out. They're screaming. Jesus eventually gets them calmed down and ends with this, "I am now going to send you what my father has promised, but stay here in the city until you've been--" I love this phrase--"clothed with power from on high." And the Jesus movement explodes out the door of that room to the rest of the world, and it has never stopped.

Great story, right? Now, you might be saying, "Well, that is a great story, but what does that have to do with my life today?" Well, here's what it has to do with you. It shows the heart of the risen Jesus toward you when you are hopeless. The risen Christ gives me hope the same three ways that he gave them hope in those days. Very easy, very obvious, right?

Number one, even when I don't recognize him, he is present. Just like they didn't recognize Jesus, didn't mean he wasn't there with them, helping them, because Jesus said, "Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you." And, you know, maybe you are on that road they were on right now, maybe this weekend, maybe this last week. You got the phone call. You got the diagnosis. You lost the job. The road you were on a few days ago, now you're walking the exact opposite direction. I had hoped, and Jesus is walking that road right next to you. You are not alone.

And then second, when I feel hopeless, this shows me that God has a plan. God has a much bigger plan than I can see. You know, when Jesus is showing them those scriptures, he's showing them God's design for this, goes back centuries and goes forward millennia, and I need to remember that too, no matter what I'm going through, God's got a bigger plan.

It's like sometimes I think I'm always trying to do a dot to dot picture to make sense of my life. And all the events that happen to me are like little dots in the dot to dot picture, and I do my best to connect the dots, and what I mean is I'm trying to see how it all fits together to make some sense, but the problem is I can only see a few dots at a time. And when dots appear that don't fit what I think God's going to be doing for my life, it's like, well, that took me by surprise. This doesn't make any sense. I don't understand God's plan, so there must not be a plan.

But of course there is, because God sees dots I don't see. Dots way, way off my page. And he sees how they all fit together to produce his masterpiece. Now let me say that again. God sees dots I don't see. Would you say that with me? God sees dots I don't see. There's ways that events in your life are connecting to things that happened centuries before and won't happen until generations later.

Jesus saw dots that went all the way back to those ancient prophecies in Isaiah and all the way forward to the new heaven and the new earth. And the Bible says God created you to do good works that God prepared from before the creation of the world for you to do. There's lots of dots you don't see. And just like he was showing them, he's telling you he has a plan and he is present.

And then finally, even when I feel weak, God gives me power. Jesus promised them power and he promises it to you too. Look at this verse. I love, this is one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible, Ephesians 1:19. It says, "I pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God's power." Well, we all know that. Like, yeah, God's got power. He created the universe for us who believe in him. Watch this. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead. Now that's power.

Do you get what he's saying? That wasn't just for, you know, the dead body of Jesus that was glorified and transformed and brought to life again. That same exact power is in you. Not like could be in you. It is in you. There's two amens. It is in you. We find this really hard to believe. But I got to tell you, this is not just Sunday school propaganda.

I've seen this many, many times as a pastor. People tell me, "René, I was powerless over my addiction or powerless over my deep grief or completely powerless over this or that habit. But when I came to realize that I was powerless in my own strength, man, that's when I found God's power. I could not have done this without God's power." This is not, you know, aspirational. This is reality.

After our first service last night, a man came up to me and gave me this bracelet I'm wearing right now. It's a bracelet that says, "Hope." He happened to be wearing it and gave it to me. Now, what's the story behind this? Well, he told me he works for a Christian home near Seattle where men, often men from prison or jail or off the streets, go to get sober. It's kind of a last-ditch place for them.

And one of the first things that he and his staff do for them in a little welcome ceremony is they give each one of them one of these bracelets that say, "Hope." And he told me, through tears last night, he said, "René, you would think we were giving them bars of gold." He said, "They look at these and they weep." Because for years, nobody has told them this. For years, they've been told that they blew it. Life is over to hear, "No, there is hope. That's a game changer."

You know, maybe you're wearing all kinds of labels that other people have put on you or that you keep putting on yourself. Loser, failure, sinner. The label God puts on you is hope. There's so much hope for you, so much potential. And it's not all on you. You have his presence. You know you're part of a plan. You have his power when you simply trust in him.

But you do need to place your trust in him. It's kind of like this. I started with Jose Alvaranga and his amazing story of hope. But you know, his whole ordeal could have been avoided. Let me show you the transcript of his final radio contact. The storm has hit, and he's just two hours from the harbor. And he pulls out his radio and he calls his boss, "Willie, the motor just died." Willie responds, "Calm down. Give me your coordinates." "Our GPS is not functioning." Willie orders, "Lay an anchor." And then the fatal words, "We have no anchor."

Jose had actually noticed it was missing before setting off, but he later told an interviewer he didn't think he'd need it on his short trip. So he cut off mid-sentence, and these were his final words to shore for 14 months. "We have no anchor." Storms are going to hit. And you know what? You just need an anchor. And when the storms come, where is your anchor? The economy? Your job? Politics? Are you kidding me?

The Bible says, "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure." The risen Jesus. Because even when I feel alone, he is with me. Even when I feel hopeless, he has a plan. Even when I feel weak, he gives me power. And it all stems from the fact that Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Amen? Amen.

Let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me? Lord, for some of us here today, life's going great. And we are just super filled with gratitude and joy. And it's just so good. And we just want to give you praise for what you're doing in our lives. But some of us walked in the doors hurting. And we're on a road we didn't think we were ever going to be on. And we're thinking we had hoped. And we need to believe something right now, to believe that you're walking alongside of us, that you're actually here with us, telling us there's something more. It doesn't end here.

And so we want to say, "Jesus, fill me with your hope. Be my Lord. Be my Savior." I don't even understand it all, but I have a feeling that nobody ever does understand it all. But as much as I understand, I want to put my anchor down in this. And Lord, I pray that in this series, Hope Rising, that we would all be infused with hope, that our lives would be changed and we would help other lives to have more hope. And we pray all this in the name the risen Jesus. Amen.