You Get What You Deserve Things Jesus Never Said Luke 23:32-33 32 Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. 33 When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him [Jesus] there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. Luke 23:41-43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” We deserve , but God makes us . Ephesians 2:3-5, 8-9 3 Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions… 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—9 not by works, so that no one can boast. Matthew 12:38–40 (NLT) The Sign of Jonah 38 One day some teachers of religious law and Pharisees came to Jesus and said, “Teacher, we want you to show us a miraculous sign to prove your authority.” 39 But Jesus replied, “Only an evil, adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign; but the only sign I will give them is the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. Psalms 103:10 He [God] does not punish us for all our sins; he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve. Jesus’s resurrection doesn’t help people from bad to good, it makes dead people alive. So what? “If the resurrection of Jesus Christ really happened, then ultimately, God is going to put everything right. Suffering is going to go away. Evil is going to go away. Death is going to go away. Aging is going to go away. Pancreatic cancer is going to go away. Now if the resurrection of Jesus Christ did not happen, then I guess all bets are off. But if it actually happened, then there’s all the hope in the world. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories,” …there are indelible human longings that only fantasy, fairy tales, or sci-fi can really speak to. He says that all human beings have a fascination with the idea of escaping time, escaping death, holding communion with other living things, being able to live long enough to achieve your artistic and creative dreams, being able to find a love that perfectly heals. Tolkien says: why do we have those longings? And as a Christian, he thinks the reason is that we were not originally created by God to die. We all deep down kind of know that this is the way life ought to be, and if the resurrection of Jesus Christ happens, then all those things are literally going to come true for us. – Timothy J Keller (NYT Op-ed piece, April 11, 2022) CONTINUING THE CONVERSATION 1. Why do you think people are afraid of death? 2. How does it make you feel when you think about God making you alive instead of giving you the wrath & death you deserve? 3. Why might this statement change someone’s view of the Christian faith? “Jesus’s resurrection doesn’t help people change from bad to good, it helps dead people come alive. 4. What’s your favorite part of the quote from Timothy Keller’s Op-ed NYT Piece?