The Difference Is Your Response | Pastor Matthew Johnson

"The most powerful being there is is also the one who loves you more than anyone has ever loved you. And he is saying he has a redemptive plan for your life." - Pastor Matthew Johnson

Every Easter weekend, somewhere between one and two billion people gather in churches around the world to hear some version of the same message. Pastor Matthew Johnson opened this Easter Sunday service at The Tree Church by asking a simple question: why?

The answer goes back 2,000 years to a man who claimed to be God in the flesh. His name was Jesus. And the things he did seemed to support that claim in ways that nothing before or since has been able to match. Jesus healed lepers with a touch or a word. He opened the eyes of the blind, the ears of the deaf, and the mouths of the mute. He restored a man who had never walked in more than thirty years of life. He multiplied food to feed thousands on more than one occasion. He stilled a storm at sea. He cast out spiritual forces that oppressed people. He even raised the dead.

But Pastor Matthew was clear - as remarkable as all of that was, none of it was the greatest thing Jesus ever did.

What set Jesus apart from every other figure in human history was not the miracles. It was a prophecy he made about himself. Jesus told those closest to him that he would be arrested, that the religious leaders would manipulate the Roman Empire to have him killed, and that on the third day he would come back to life. No one had ever made a claim like that - and no one had ever fulfilled one.

Pastor Matthew did not shy away from the weight of what the crucifixion actually meant. Jesus was beaten, whipped with a device designed to disfigure and cause severe blood loss, and nailed to a cross where he eventually suffocated. The soldiers who carried out the execution were professionals. They confirmed his death with a spear through his side. His body was taken down, placed in a sealed tomb, and guarded by Roman soldiers.
And on the third day, Jesus walked out alive.

That is why billions gather every Easter. Not for tradition. Not for ritual. But because if that event is true, it changes everything.

Pastor Matthew offered two personal reasons for his confidence in the resurrection.

The first was the response of the men closest to Jesus. When Jesus was arrested, his disciples went into hiding. They were terrified, confused, and devastated. These were men who had dedicated years of their lives to following someone they believed would overthrow the Roman Empire - and now he was dead. They went back to their old lives. And yet something happened that turned those same cowards into men who would willingly confront the religious leaders who had Jesus killed, travel to foreign lands with a message that cost nearly all of them their lives, and die as martyrs without recanting what they had witnessed. As Pastor Matthew put it, people do not willfully die for something they know is a lie.

The second reason was personal. Pastor Matthew described a relationship with God that has been real and vivid throughout the vast majority of his life - a consistent experience of God's love, comfort, direction, and supernatural intervention, including healing from a serious back injury sustained in a fall from a ladder. That personal experience, layered on top of the historical evidence, is where his faith stands.

With that foundation in place, Pastor Matthew turned to John 3 and the story of a man named Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee - one of the most religiously disciplined people in all of Jewish society. To reach that status required mastering the first five books of the Bible from childhood, outlasting peers at every level of religious education, and living under an intense system of rules and restrictions. By every outward measure, Nicodemus was the example of what a spiritually serious person looked like.

And yet he came to Jesus at night, in secret, because he was not entirely sure who Jesus was. Pastor Matthew identified three qualities in the way Nicodemus approached Jesus: he was respectful, he was hopeful, and he was unaware. He recognized that no one could do what Jesus did unless God was with him. But he did not yet fully understand what that meant.

Pastor Matthew paused here to note that this posture - respectful, hopeful, but unaware - describes a lot of people who attend church without having fully surrendered their lives to Jesus. People who have fond thoughts toward God, who have seen faith work in someone else's life, who keep showing up - but have never actually crossed the threshold of personal surrender.

Jesus looked at Nicodemus and said something that would have been shocking to anyone who heard it: unless a person is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Not unless he follows more rules. Not unless he gets his life together. Born again - a spiritual rebirth that goes beyond anything religious effort or good upbringing can produce.

Nicodemus was confused, and Jesus continued to explain. He told Nicodemus that he had come from heaven and therefore had an eternal perspective that Nicodemus did not yet have. Then he referenced one of the stranger stories of the Old Testament - the bronze serpent Moses lifted up in the wilderness, which God used to bring salvation to everyone who would look at it in faith. Jesus used that image to describe what was coming. The Son of Man, he said, must also be lifted up - so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Nicodemus did not yet understand that Jesus was describing his own crucifixion. He was planting a seed in this man's heart that would take root over the next two years. But the message was clear: something was coming that Nicodemus could not yet see, and it would make everything he had worked so hard to achieve on his own look like not nearly enough.

That something was the cross.

Pastor Matthew read John 3:16-17 aloud - the verse that appears on signs at football games and billboards and has been printed on more pieces of paper than almost any other sentence in history. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Jesus did not come to condemn. Pastor Matthew made that personal. He described a season of his own life when he could not receive grace because he was so aware of his own brokenness. He knew every lie, every act of lust, every moment of violence, every selfish choice. And rather than bringing those things to God, he kept telling God he would come back when he had cleaned himself up. He had no concept of grace. He did not understand that Jesus had not come to shame him - he had come to save him.

But Pastor Matthew was equally clear about John 3:18. Whoever believes is not condemned. Whoever does not believe is condemned already. Jesus came to save, and yet not all will be saved - because not everyone responds to him. The difference, Pastor Matthew said plainly, is not in what Jesus did. The difference is in how you respond to him.

Pastor Matthew returned to Nicodemus at the end of the message to show how his story concluded. Scripture mentions Nicodemus three times. The first is the nighttime conversation in John 3. The second is a brief moment where he defends Jesus before the religious council. The third is at the crucifixion itself, where Nicodemus shows up in broad daylight - no longer hiding - to help prepare Jesus' body for burial alongside Joseph of Arimathea.

The man who once came to Jesus in secret was now standing publicly at the cross, washing wounds and wrapping a body, honoring the one he had come to believe in. And Pastor Matthew invited the congregation to imagine the moment when Nicodemus encountered the resurrected Jesus - when Jesus would have thanked him for that act of honor, and then reminded him of the conversation they had two years earlier. He told you I would be lifted up. It happened. Now will you trust me?

Pastor Matthew asked the same question of everyone in the room. Do you believe that Jesus is able? Able to save, able to provide a life better than the world can offer, able to carry the weight of everything you have been trying to carry on your own? If the answer is yes, then the only fitting response is surrender.

Pastor Matthew closed the message by describing the moment he made that decision as a child at a Christian concert - nervous, heart pounding, but certain enough to raise his hand. Almost forty years later, he said, that one decision has made all the difference.

He gave the congregation the same opportunity - a moment of quiet reflection, a song of worship sung over the room, and an invitation to raise a hand as a simple physical marker of a spiritual decision. Hands went up across both campuses.

The message was not a sales pitch. It was not a performance. It was a pastor standing before his church on Easter Sunday and doing exactly what the day calls for - pointing people to a risen savior and asking them what they intend to do about it.

Looking for a church in Lancaster or a church in Logan? We would love to meet you on Sunday.

The Tree Church is a community of faith with two campuses in central Ohio, meeting every Sunday at 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM.

Lancaster Campus 837 E Main St, Lancaster, OH 43130

Logan Campus 195 E Hunter St, Logan, OH 43138