Easter Series

It’s hard to explain all that those few minutes of listening to that did for my heart. I sat and cried. I needed help overcoming more than what I had done. I needed help overcoming the conclusions that I had reached about myself as a result of what I had done. Peter needs help with that. My guess is that we could all use some help there too. We are going to dive hard into that next week so come back. For today, how would you finish this statement? I am just _____________. I don’t know your conclusion or how you would fill in that blank. Let me fill it in for every single one of us today, it’s just like the song says “I’m just another heart in need of rescue, waiting on love’s sweet charity”. We don’t have to wait any longer. That is the hope of Easter.

Do we need to rethink the conclusions we’ve reached about Jesus? I have sat in the seat that Peter is sitting in heading into the very first Easter. I need to overcome the promises I have broken, things I have done, and conclusions I have reached. The only explanation for my story is this. I was another heart in need of rescue and a risen Jesus rescued me. See, we don’t believe that Jesus is alive because the Bible says so. We believe it because people saw Jesus alive, they saw him crucified, they saw him alive again, and then they wrote about it. The cowards who ran when he was arrested, denied knowing him to a middle school girl, who thought that he was going to stay dead and that the story was over were ultimately willing to die themselves rather than deny what they had seen, Jesus had risen. If Jesus can do that, if he can overcome death what is there that he cannot overcome in our lives and stories? Let’s finish with this, Romans 8…

34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us… 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

As you sit here today, Jesus couldn’t love you more, nothing can or will ever separate any of us from his love. Our rescue cost him everything. The power that we need to overcome is right in front of us and it costs us nothing.

So, let’s take a little time and space to think about that. In just a second I am going to pray and the band is coming out and we are going to do one last song. As the first few verses of the song are being sung we are going to pass some trays up and down the aisles with a little cracker and a little cup of juice representing the body and blood of Jesus. If you are a believer in Jesus, he’s your savior, you believe that he died for you, maybe even for the first time today…take it and hold it. I am going to come back up in a few minutes and we will take it together. There’s absolutely no shame in that we are glad that you are here. The song says “though I keep searching for an answer. I never seem to find what I’m looking for”. Why can’t today be the day that that changes. So here I go again on my own, running down the only road I’ve ever known. Like a drifter I was born to walk alone. No you weren’t. The path you have walked in the past doesn’t have to be the one you walk in the future. There’s a different path. You like Peter are just another heart in need of rescue and that is exactly what Jesus came to do for you. Let me pray for us.