Why Easter Still Matters

SERMON: 2015-04-12--co1515--why-easter-still-matters SOURCE DURATION: 00:34:37.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The entire provided transcript constitutes a continuous theological exposition, starting with an anecdote (Moon landing) and concluding with reflections on the resurrection and a hymn reference. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, the year was 1969, and the date was July 24th. I wonder who here remembers what happened on that day, anybody? The landing on the moon was July 20th. The first walk on the moon was July 21st. July 24th was the splashdown in the Pacific. And the reason I mention that is because in the aftermath of welcoming back the three astronauts who had that first moon landing, then President Richard Nixon enthused in a moment of getting carried away, he said, "This is the greatest week in the history of the world since creation." And I remember thinking, "Well, I can understand your enthusiasm because the scientific accomplishment of landing on the moon and coming back home was remarkable. Do you realize that the computer that navigated Apollo 11 to the moon and back had all of 64 kilobytes of memory? You compare that with your cell phone today, and it is unimaginable that they managed to pull that off. It was a huge feat." And I don't blame Richard Nixon for getting carried away, but, of course, he was wrong. Because from a biblical point of view, the greatest event in the history of the universe was not the landing on the moon, but rather the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Listen again to these verses from 1 Corinthians chapter 15. They've referred to these last week. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, if we can have those words up, "For I delivered to you as the first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. I delivered to you as a first importance." Throughout the New Testament, we are told there are two life-shaping events that mark the passage of history. The first is the crucifixion of Jesus that we celebrated a while back on Good Friday, but the second is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And in the time that remains this morning, I want to try to share with you four reasons why the resurrection of Jesus Christ is of first importance, not only for the Christian believer, but for all of the world. Reason number one, the resurrection of Jesus is a vindication of who Jesus is. It is a vindication of who Jesus is. Now if you're familiar at all with the gospel story, and I'm sure many of you are, then you will know that Jesus made some incredibly outrageous claims about himself. He claimed to be the Son of God. He claimed to be the Messiah, that is the one ordained of God to bring the whole world back into harmony with God and with itself. He claimed to be without sin. He claimed to be the one who one day is going to come and judge all the peoples of all nations at the eternal judgment seat at the end of history. He made some outrageous claims about himself. Now making claims about yourself is not a difficult thing to do because there's lots of people who do make those kind of claims about themselves. Most of them are dead, and if they aren't already, they're going to be. And their claims disappear. C.S. Lewis put it well concerning the Lord Jesus when he said in that very famous quote in mere Christianity, he said, "A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the level with a man who says that he's a poached egg, or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice, either this was and is the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse." The resurrection of Jesus is a vindication of the claims of Jesus. It means that he is what he said he is because nobody can raise himself from the dead. It's a very important thing to consider. If you're dead, you're dead. And it takes power outside of yourself to bring you back to life. And that can only be done by Almighty God, who created the whole universe out of nothing, and who has the power to overcome death. And so the resurrection of Jesus was God's way of saying to everybody, "This man is who he claims that he is. He is the Son of God chosen by me to bring salvation to the world." Listen to how Paul puts it in Romans chapter 1, verse 4, he says, "Jesus, through the Spirit of Holiness," now look carefully, "was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord." He was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead. Let me say it again, the resurrection of Jesus is God's way of affirming that Jesus is who he claims to be. Now in case you haven't caught that yet, that's got huge implications because it means that whatever Jesus said about himself is absolutely true. And so when Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life," no one can come to the Father but by me, what that means is that unless you come to faith in Christ, you cannot be saved. You cannot have a relationship with God outside of Jesus. And when Jesus says, "Take up your cross and follow me, I'm coming at the end of history to judge the living and the dead," that means we have to take seriously what he says about how God expects us to live because he wasn't just whistling in the dark. He wasn't just mouthing pious platitudes. He was revealing the very heart of God, whatever he said, God backs up. And at the end of history, when he comes to judge the living and the dead, he's going to judge all of humanity by his standards and those who have been in relationship with him through faith are going to enter into the new creation. Those who have rejected him through unbelief are going to be separated as goats from the sheep. The resurrection of Jesus is proof positive that Jesus is all that he said he was. That's one lesson to learn concerning the resurrection. The second is this, it validates, it validates the way of the cross, it validates the way of the cross. Now, what's the way of the cross? The way of the cross is God's way of bringing about the restoration of all of creation. Let me picture it this way. As you know, this represents the creation of the world, God's desire for creation. God is at the center. We are in relationship with God because we're in relationship with God, we're in relationship with each other. Genesis 1 and 2 is the story of Adam and Eve in relationship with God, in relationship with each other. Sin comes along, we rebel against God, we come under Satan's authority, we become selfish, it's all about me, it's all about you, the result is conflict and life spirals into despair and hopelessness. And all you have to do is listen to the news, read the newspaper or look at your own life or the lives of people around you and you know how real this is. From wars that wage between the nations, from husbands and wives that fight and can't get along to children who are out of control and who are rebellious and a world bogged down increasingly with foolishness, we know the reality of a creation that groans under the curse of sin. And so throughout history, the big question is how do we get back to paradise? And if we can have those circles back up for a moment, there are biblically speaking two answers as you know. One is we can make it happen ourselves. If we try hard enough, we can get rid of the consequences of sin. If we appeal to technology, if we use our wits, if we use the advances of society, we can somehow or another, if we do enough education, if we can advocate enough democracy, we can get people getting along with each other and we can have peace on earth and goodwill towards men. It is from one end to the other that while there are many good things that we can do, there is one thing we cannot do, and that is regain paradise lost by our own efforts. Why? Because none of our own efforts deal with the original issue, which is separation from sin. And so the message of the cross is God's approach of bringing us back to himself. God's word says that since the problems began with our rebellion against God and going our own way, the only way we can get back into wholeness is to reverse that process, which is to acknowledge our sin and to confess it before God and to seek God's favor so that God can restore all things to himself. You've heard me talk about this before, Genesis chapter four shows the two lines that come from the descendants of Adam and Eve. There's Cain on the one hand and there's Abel who gets killed by Cain, replaced by Seth, and the descendants of Cain are in rebellion against God, don't want to submit to God because his pride gets in the way. He builds a city and in building a city he says to God, I don't need you, I will make life happen the way that I want to make it happen. Then if you read through the genealogy of his offspring in Genesis chapter four, first of all he names the city after himself or after his son, because you see in the world it's all about you and making a name for yourself, and then you have that whole story of how you see the development of technology and music and you follow that generation to the seventh generation, you end up with Lamech who is a man of violence and that's a brief snapshot in the opening chapters of scripture of where the world is going without God, it bogs down in violence and in anguish. Then there is Seth and the line of Seth has none of the accomplishments that you read about in the line of Cain, it's a very interesting thing. All we are told about the descendants of Seth is that in the days of Enosh whose name means weak they began to call on the name of the Lord, did you know that? And it's God's way of saying, it's God's way of saying there are two ways of approaching the miseries of life. One is you try to make them go away by yourself and the harder you try the worse it gets because the end is violence, or you can come to God and you say, God I made a mess of things, I don't know how to fix this, I need you and I need your mercy and God steps in and he makes it happen. And so the seventh generation and some of you have heard me talk about this before in the line of Seth leads to Enoch and what does the Bible say about Enoch? He walked with God and God took him and you see the contrast between these two generations. So when I'm saying the resurrection of Jesus validates the way of the cross, I'm saying to you what God validates in the resurrection of Jesus is that the way to success in life is not first and foremost by trying to make it happen yourself, by pulling yourself up in your bootstraps, by cultivating all of your advantages and doing all of the things the world says you need to do to be successful and to accomplish something because even if you gain the whole world at the end of that, you're still going to die and it's all going to be gone. The way to success is the way of faith, it's cultivating a relationship with God through faith in Jesus because at the end of history and in between, it is God who is watching over his children and he is the one who gives us what we need when we need it. Am I making sense when I'm talking about two different ways of life? It's the way of faith versus the way of unbelief. The resurrection of Jesus is a vindication of the way of the cross and why do I emphasize that? I'll tell you why. Because when you look with your eyes around you, it doesn't always seem to work. Isn't that true? I mean look at what's happening out in the Middle East, you've got ISIS who is running roughshod over some of the oldest Christian communities in the world. I mean just this past week, they spent their energy destroying the monuments of Assyrian civilization that go back three or four thousand years and it's just absolutely crazy and you look at that and you say, "God, where are you?" and you can imagine being in the middle of this and saying, "Lord, what in the world is happening?" One of the most iconic images that came out of the Middle East just the other day was a little girl who a photographer with a telephoto lens was trying to take her picture and she thought it was a gun and you see her standing there like this with her face in terror wondering if she was going to be shot and I say it's an iconic image because you can imagine the horror, I think we can't imagine the horror. We can imagine that we can imagine the horror of what's happening to Christians in that part of the world and that's been true throughout the course of history and there are some of you here today, you try to walk with Jesus and you try to put your faith in him and you've believed that he's there for you but the more you believe and the more you walk with him, sometimes the harder it seems until you get to a place where you say, "Well, it doesn't really work," and you may not intellectually give up on faith but in your heart, you begin to hold back and you say, "Well, it's too painful, it's too risky, it's too dangerous. If I really tithe faithfully, I'm going to run out of money. If I really pour myself into other people, I'm going to run out of emotional energy and where's God going to be?" And so sometimes it is the most committed Christians who burn out the fastest because they have believed with their hearts and they've been disappointed in God. I mean, how many of us here aren't sometimes at least disappointed in God and we wonder, does faith really work? Do God's ways really pay off? And I'm here to tell you this morning, the tough as it is sometimes, the resurrection of Jesus Christ was a vindication of the way of the cross. Jesus made it his priority to do his Father's will. He avoided every temptation to build his own kingdom. It was never about him. It was always about walking faithfully before God. What was the reward that he received? He was betrayed by his own. He was subject to the miscarriage of justice at the hands of the religious and the political system of his day. On Good Friday, he died a shameful death on the cross. You can understand the despair of the disciples when all their hopes and dreams were smashed. And if ever it looked as if God's way did not pay off, it was Jesus on Good Friday. Isn't that true? But thank God, Sunday was a coming. And on Easter Sunday morning, up from the grave, he arose, I love that hymn by the way, with a mighty triumph o'er the grave. And the resurrection of Jesus is a vindication that no one who hopes in God will ultimately be left hanging because the way of the cross, submission to God through faith in Jesus, is still the ultimate answer to everything that ails the human race. Listen to these words of Jesus, they are, you know these words from, I'm going to move on to these words in Philippians, one of the oldest hymns of Christendom, being found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross, and therefore God exalted him to the highest place, gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. The resurrection of Jesus is a vindication of the way of the cross. And what that means is that while in the short run sometimes it doesn't seem to pay off to be obedient, in the short run it seems like the world runs all over God's people, in the end that will be destroyed in judgment and God's people will be established in the way of truth. I think we need to hold on to that and believe that when sometimes following Jesus gets to be very difficult. So why is the resurrection important? It's important first of all because it is a vindication of who Jesus is, it is secondly a vindication of the way of the cross, but thirdly it releases resurrection life. It releases resurrection life. What is resurrection life? It's life that's gone through the meat grinder and it's come out the other end. Listen to these verses, Romans chapter 6, 5 and 6, Paul says, "If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin." Stick this through with me for just a moment. Why is it so hard sometimes to truly love God with all of our heart and our neighbor as we love ourselves? Why is it so difficult even as believers to put away the old and to put on the new? The answer of course is that in our humanity we share Adam's nature and in order for us to overcome Adam's nature we need to have and to experience the resurrection nature and life of Christ. We can picture it this way, 1 Corinthians 15, 47 and 48, "The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven; as was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth, and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven." When by faith we're joined to Jesus, he enables us to put off the old and to put on the new because the resurrection life and the resurrection power of Jesus now is available for you and me. It is an other kind of life. If you look at the life of Jesus, he loved God, he loved his neighbor even to the point of death. Christ in you the hope of glory and when by faith we're joined to him then we are made alive in a whole new way. Ephesians puts it this way, he says, "And you he made alive when you were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience." And practically speaking it means this, when you and I acknowledge that we don't have what it takes to be what God wants us to be and when we turn our eyes upon Jesus and put our faith in him, he not only forgives us our sins but he gives us new life. And this new life does a number of things in us. It opens our spiritual eyes so that we can see God, we can understand him in a new way. The Bible comes alive, he gives us a new passion and a desire to love him and a new ability to say no to the negative things of life that drive us away and yes to the things that God is calling us to. And you know that doesn't mean we never sin, doesn't mean we never fail, but it doesn't mean that progressively things change on the inside because there is new life. He begins to just flow forth just as in spring the dead and the barren earth give birth to new life. So in Jesus there is new life that passionately and powerfully changes us from the inside out. One more step in this whole process, the resurrection of Jesus motivates us to serve the Lord faithfully. I love the way 1 Corinthians chapter 15 ends. It's one of the longest chapters in the New Testament I think only. Luke chapter 1 is longer. Paul has spent all this time spelling out the theology of the cross in the face of people who are proclaiming that Christ has not really been risen and doesn't really make any difference. And then when he gets to the end, when he gets to verse 58, being the kind of pastor that he is, he sums up the practical outworking of all of this theology that undoubtedly went over the heads of many people. But here's how he sums it up in verse 58, "Therefore," remember, whatever Paul uses "therefore," he is talking about the practical implications of everything that he has just been saying, "Therefore, my dear brother, stand firm, let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Your labor in the Lord is not in vain." What ought to motivate Christians to continue walking with the Lord and doing what the Lord calls them to do when so often it looks like there is no payoff? Well Paul says the key is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now think this through with me for just a little bit if you will. Let's be brutally honest with ourselves because isn't it true that as believers sometimes we get weary in well-doing? I mean honestly, do you ever get weary in well-doing? You know you invest yourself in somebody else's life and at the end of the day they throw your love back in your face and they walk away. Ever happen to anybody? Or you dig into your pockets and you try to be obedient to Scripture and you try to help somebody back on their feet and before you know it they just misuse your generosity and they selfishly pursue their own way. Or you know you hear the call of God in your life and you take that step of faith expecting that God will meet you and the bottom falls out of your world and you say, "What in the world did I do this for?" You know it's like you put your hand to the plow and you discover how rough that road sometimes gets and you begin to look back behind yourself and you wonder, "Did I make a mistake?" Anybody here know what I'm talking about? You get weary in well-doing. Why give of myself to God and why give of myself to people when all people do is break my heart, betray my trust, why not just throw in the towel and live for myself, which is what so much of the world does. Isn't that true? What's the antidote to that? The resurrection of Jesus Christ. You know why? Because the resurrection of Jesus Christ means that there's a life beyond this one. And when that life gets ushered in at the end of history, God who has watched every tear you have cried, every loss you have suffered, every difficulty you have experienced will not only acknowledge all of your sacrifices on his behalf, he will richly reward you because he is faithful to his own. And it's that prospect of the resurrection, it's that prospect of the reward, it's that prospect of the new age that makes what we do today worthwhile. And I love the way the Lord Jesus puts it in Mark's Gospel when he says in Mark 10, verse 29 and 30, no one, no one, that includes you and me, who was left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the Gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age, homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields and with them persecutions and in the age to come eternal life. Two rewards, notice that. One is the reward of eternal life, Jesus for the joy that was said before him, endured suffering and the cross. Why did he put up what he put up with? Why didn't he call 10,000 angels? Why didn't he call judgment on a rebellious world? Because for the joy that stood before him, he knew that one day if the father was pleased with him, the father would give him everything that he would ever need and therefore he has received the name that is above every day. And he says if you follow me, that's what's going to happen. But notice, and this is important, the promise isn't just for the age to come, it's also for the here and now, a hundredfold. There isn't a thing you have surrendered to Jesus, but Jesus promises a hundredfold in the here and now so that we can be faithful to him until the very end. The resurrection of Jesus is a vindication. It is a proof, a motivation to help us serve the Lord faithfully. The old hymn puts it this way and with this we're going to end this morning. Not a burden we bear, not a sorrow we share, but our toil he doth richly repay. [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:34:31.740; remove through 00:34:37.000] Not a grief or a loss, not a frown or a cross, but is blessed if we trust and obey. 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