In Between Heaven & Earth

Not sure how it went for you this last week. We call this Holy Week, as it’s that week between Palm Sunday and Resurrection Sunday. We had an Easter reading planned here at Gateway, and it was fun just to join in that. We sat and read with people, but I personally had a very tender week where my times with God just seemed to be like he was just kind of… he just knew the spots to get my heart this week.

Things are happening, and I want you to know, after 30 years of following Jesus, it’s amazing to have moments where you’re still learning and God’s showing you something about yourself, or you’re learning something through Scripture. And yet, sometimes you can also get into a rut because at the end of this week, we had Good Friday, and it was a great time. If you have not been to a Good Friday service, I encourage you to go next year at one of our locations. Good Friday services are an amazing time together, just really sitting and reflecting on who Jesus is and the work he did on the cross for us.

Then we gather in two days like this on Sunday, where there’s resurrection, and everybody looks good. I mean, you guys look good! Somebody, just in case nobody tells you, you look amazing. That new dress or that new shirt… you actually wore a shirt! You never know, right? I have a coat on and people are freaking out like, “Who are you? You don’t have a coat on.” I bought this four months ago because it was on sale. If you don’t know me, I am a cheapskate. I found it on sale for 30 bucks, so we’re going to take it.

But in the middle of all this week, we come to this place of stirring. Maybe you don’t even know you’re being stirred. Here is what we know: we know that lights and sound and teaching don’t actually bring us to know Jesus. Scripture tells us that His Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, is what draws us in. Some of us have been stirring in life, and some of us have been stirring in our spiritual life. This stirring has brought me to a tender place.

What I want to do is go back to Scripture, which is what we should do anyway. For those of us who are following Jesus and those who are exploring faith, that really becomes the foundation for us. With podcasts and teaching and all this stuff happening around the world, we can easily get caught up with people’s teachings and forget to go back to God’s Word. So what I want to do today is ground us in Scripture as we understand who Jesus is and the work that he did.

The Resurrection Morning

Luke chapter 24, if you have your Bibles, go and take them out. We’re going to use them today quite a bit, and if not, you can follow along on the screen:

“The first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb where Jesus was laid. And they found the stone that was covering the tomb rolled away from the tomb. But when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. And while they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them, and 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’s not here. He is 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.”

For over 2,000 years, tens of millions of people around the world have celebrated the risen Savior with all sorts of traditions. One of those is when somebody says “He is risen,” somebody might say “He is risen indeed,” which is my favorite one. It’s like an exclamation point. Let’s practice that. He is risen! (Response: He is risen indeed!)

That’s called a call and response. It’s a way that we participate together, stay present, and lean into Scripture. That’s how I want you to posture your heart today—to lean in and be present. Whether you’ve been following Jesus a long time or if this is your first time in a church, can we have that posture?

The In-Between Space

On weekends like this, we can forget that we live in a space that many of us don’t like to acknowledge: the in-between. Some of us have lived in a space in between a diagnosis and healing; in between a prayer you prayed and an answer that you have not quite received; in between the loss and the restoration of that loss. If we’re honest, many of us have lived in the in-between more often than we’d like to admit.

As we show up this morning, some are coming with joy and celebration, and yet some of us are in a place where we feel kind of stuck in the middle. Here is what Easter says about this: God does some of his deepest work in the in-between.

We want to fast-forward from Good Friday to the Resurrection, from a tomb to an empty tomb, from suffering to celebration. Yet, what happens between Friday and Sunday is Saturday. Many of us don’t like to sit in Saturday because it’s quiet; it’s silent. This is what the disciples had to do. On Good Friday, they turned their back on Jesus and ran away. It’s not lost on me that all the people who ran away were men, and all who stayed were women. Yet on Saturday, all had lost hope. It only took 24 hours for them to forget the words of Jesus.

Saturday feels like you prayed, but nothing changed. It feels like you trusted someone, but it still fell apart. It feels like absence. In this country, we don’t do well with suffering or sitting with loss. We are designed to win. We change schools, jobs, and partners to win. We are addicted to winning. Yet Jesus asks us to sit with him on a silent Saturday, and it causes a major tension in us.

The Descent and the Victory

There are two passages of Scripture that give us understanding of what’s happening on this silent Saturday. First Peter chapter 3 says:

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the spirit. After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits.”

What does that mean? It means Jesus walked in an earthly defeat on a cross, yet in the spirit world, he was walking in victory. He goes into the depths of darkness and declares the good news.

Then we go to Ephesians 4:8-9:

“Therefore it says, ‘When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.’ (In saying, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?)”

Jesus went to places we could not go and should not go, and he plucked out the righteous and led them to victory. He did not descend as a victim; he descended as a warrior. He was announcing to every power of sin and every spiritual attack: “You did not win. You don’t get to win.”

It reminds me of growing up in a Pentecostal church. We had “victory marches.” Somebody would get inspired and start a spiritual conga line around the building. As a kid, I thought it was weird, but now I get a glimpse of what Jesus was doing. He was speaking to the darkest parts of your soul saying, “You do not win.” He leads us to victory even when it doesn’t feel like victory.

Victory in the Struggle

We have a false notion that victory is like a ball game—the final score. But victory is what’s happening in the middle of a struggle. Some of the greatest hymns were written by people who were slaves. They didn’t wait to be free to sing about victory; they penned them in the middle of the in-between because they knew God was with them.

Do you remember “Baby Jessica” in 1986? She was eighteen months old and fell 22 feet into a well in Midland, Texas. For 58 hours, the whole country watched. One man, Robert O’Donnell, was willing to be put down into a tiny tube to save her. When he descended into that darkness, he knew there was hope. He could hear her. And when he ascended, he ascended in victory with that child. Jesus descended into darkness knowing your life was worthwhile, and when he ascended, he ascended in victory.

Colossians 2:15 says, “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” The cross, a sign of torture, was twisted by Jesus into a sign of power. The world thought he was losing. They put a purple robe on him, a crown of thorns, and mocked him as “King of the Jews.” But the reality was Jesus was overtaking evil.

Living From Victory

I found a reading that captures the paradox of the cross:

“The cross was not God losing control; it was God exercising it. Not God abandoning his plan, but fulfilling it. Not God being defeated by evil, but defeating evil by being defeated. This is Christus Victor—Christ the Victor—not merely forgiving sin, but overthrowing the very powers that enslave us.”

Saturday tells us that God’s silence does not mean God’s absence. God’s hiddenness does not mean God’s inactivity. On Saturdays, everything important was actually happening even though humanity could not see it. When we surrender, we give the outcome to Him.

In Luke 24, the angels ask the women: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Why do we look for hope in hopeless places? Why do we seek out brokenness to find healing? We are human; we want to take control because we cannot see God. Yet Resurrection Sunday declares a hope that cannot be taken. Career hope can be lost, relationships can break, health can fade—but the hope of Jesus is secure.

We live in the tension of the “already” and the “not yet.” We are called to be people who are not waiting for victory, but living from it. Think of a confident four-year-old in a store. They own the place because they carry the confidence of their parents. You and I are sons and daughters. Victory is not mine to win, but I get to share in it because of Him.

You live based on someone else’s victory all the time! You wear a Longhorns jersey even though you weren’t on the field. You wear a Michigan hat but never made a basket for the team. The one who created you says, “Join my team. Wear my jersey. Walk in my victory.”

From Belief to Confession

If Christ is in you, the same spirit that raised Him from the dead lives in you. Do you walk in that confidence? Or are you living with the mindset of “not yet”—thinking you’ll have peace when or joy if? Easter shifts us to “already.” Already forgiven. Already loved. Already held.

Once you receive that, it’s not just for you. We are called to bring heaven to earth. We shouldn’t just wait for our cup to run over; we are supposed to let it run over to give to someone else. Every act of forgiveness, justice, and love pushes back the darkness.

If you are in that in-between season of belief—where you believe but haven’t surrendered—Romans 10:9 says: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” That word “saved” means your soul is no longer in grave danger of being separated from God.

Today, if you want to go from death to life, from believing to confessing, I invite you to take that step. Risen Jesus, we trust you in the in-between. We follow you in faith. We live in your victory now and forever. Amen.