With that, let's get started. Today is of course Resurrection Sunday, a special day, and one for which is arguably the most important celebration for us as believers in and followers of Jesus Christ.

It's on this day, this year, that we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the Christ. It's on this day, this year that we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus the Christ,

for He is risen. He is risen indeed.

Join with me in the Gospel of John, the 20th chapter. I want to read verses 1 through 18. This is actually not going to be our text

today, as you'll see shortly, but I wanted to start here. I love John's account of that resurrection

morning. Once you find you way there, if you're able to ask you to stand, and you can follow along

as I read,

where the Apostle John, by the Holy Spirit, writes, verse one, early on the first day of the week,

while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.

So verse 2, she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved.

I'll give you one guess who that was that was the disciple that Jesus loved.

That was John.

He wants us to know that Jesus loved him.

He said, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don't know where they have put him.

So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb.

Both were running, but the other disciple

outran Peter and reached the tomb first. So apparently John also wants us to know that

in addition to being the one that Jesus loved, he was also a faster runner. He, verse 5, bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in.

Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb.

He saw the strips of linen lying there as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus' head.

The cloth was still lying in its place separate from the linen.

Finally, verse 8, the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went inside.

...