Easter Sunday Sermon – The Christ Event - March 23, 2008
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.
Three buddies were discussing death and one asked the group: What would you like people to say about you at your funeral? They answered each in turn.
"He was a great humanitarian, who cared about his community", said the first. "He was a great husband and father, who was an example for many to follow," said the second. "Look, he’s moving!!" , said the third. Pause.
Well, today we celebrate that Jesus Christ is risen. Hallelujah. Christ is risen! Hallelujah. The Saviour is risen. Hallelujah.
In every corner of the earth today, in every nation, whether it is legal or illegal, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is celebrated today. No muzzle can contain this astounding good news. No government can squelch this celebration.
No power of darkness can cast its shadow over the astonishing event we celebrate today. Jesus Christ triumphed 2000 years ago over Satan, over death and over the power of sin. His triumph, victory…is your victory, your hope, your life, your future.
You and I and the person beside you are intimately and intricately connected to the Christ event. The Christ event. Planned before the world began. An original and critical part of God’s plan. Before Genesis chapter one. Before what we know as the beginning.
How can this be? How could God in the beginning, knowing that all of his creative energy, all of his love, all of his beauty and goodness and kindness…
How could God plan this, knowing that everything good and right and extravagant and perfect that he would do for humanity would result in the terrible journey to the cross?
How could He walk in the garden with the first man and the first woman, enjoying sweet fellowship, when He knew, He knew that He would end up in another garden…a garden called Gethsemane, where he would be betrayed?
Abandoned. Forsaken. Beaten. Bruised. Murdered… In cold blood, treated like a common criminal. My god… How terrible, how horrible was Good Friday.
But more importantly… The simple question… why? Why in the world would He have done such a thing? Why did He do this? Why did He CHOOSE to suffer?
Well, there was a reason. There were at least three reasons. Reasons that can be hard to swallow.
Reasons that have brought great minds like C.S. Lewis to the breaking point.
Reasons that have baffled philosophers. Reasons that, at one level are so simple…and yet at another level quite overwhelming.
The first reason He suffered is this: Because He wants you. Because He wants you. That can be hard to swallow. “God wants me? What does God want with me?
I hear someone saying: “You know what, preacher, what I know of God… stuff that you just said… that he’s perfect… that he’s beautiful… and other stuff like… he’s holy. What could someone like that want with someone like me?” I think we’ve all wondered about that, no matter how long we’ve followed Jesus.
You see, everyone of good conscience struggles, sometimes REALLY struggles with who they are on the inside. There’s what others see on the outside, and then there’s what’s really on on the inside.
And you know what? Most of us don’t feel too beautiful on the inside. In fact we can often feel just ugliness on the inside. And that leaves us feeling unworthy. And so we struggle with feeling unworthy.
And then we read books that try to convince us that we should not feel unworthy. And so we bolster our self-esteem so we feel less unworthy. Less powerless, less sinful, less wrong and more right. But you know what? Jesus didn’t come for the powerful.
He didn’t come for the good guys, for the righteous ones. He didn’t come because the world or you ro I finally got it all together and was good enough for Him?
No. What does the Scripture say? Romans 5: 6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Ro 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 1 Peter 18 For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.
Jesus died to bring you to God. Why? Because God wants you. Not some idea of who you are. Not you at your Sunday best and most refined. He wants all of you. He wants you in all of your rawness and vulnerability, all of your doubt and insecurity, all of your most real self…that is what God loves.
That is what God finds beautiful about you. The real you. That is what He is able to work with. When He has what’s real about us, good and bad, He is able to do marvelous things.
You are wanted by the Creator of the cosmos. Not only wanted, but, as the Scripture says, You were in God’s thoughts well before He walked in the garden with Adam and Eve.
Let’s read this together:
Eph 1: 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will--6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
The next point is equally hard to bend our brains around. Because Christ is risen, you are forgiven. What does that mean? All that stuff that bugs your conscience that you’ve done.
Those actions that may have hurt others in the past. Those things that you’ve done and that you do that just kind of hurt only you. Because Christ is risen, you are forgiven at the asking. And being forgiven, you are free.
Free to grow. Free to explore the world around you and the world inside you. Free to live a life that works…the life God intends for you.
But…let’s be truthful…there’s a serious problem here. You are free in Christ, but your freedom is a terrible frustration to someone.
There is an enemy out there. Any enemy who, like all enemies, want us bound. Captive. Enslaved. Broken and shattered and hopeless and pointless and fruitless.
The Word of God tells us pretty bluntly that “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith…” 1 Peter 5:8-9
So…we’re not called to obsess. We’re not called to be freaked out. We’re not called to worry or to be shocked when we see evil rearing its ugly head in others or when we are tempted.
We’re called to simply…resist. Stand firm. And there’s a promise in James chapter 4: 7 “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you”. We’re called to resist the devil. We’re told that when we do that he will flee. He will stop harassing. He will stop influencing us to doubt and tempting us.
But before we resist, we submit to God. We lay down our pride. We lay down our selfish wills. And then, we bow down before the throne of the living God.
That’s how we become free. We realize that we owe our liberty to God. Sin captivates and keeps us captive. Christ liberates and keeps us free.
The Bible says in Psalm 103 that God removes our sins as far as the east is from the west. Do you understand how far that is? Let me just give you a hint.
If you were to travel north from anywhere, at what point would you begin going south? At the north pole.
But if you were traveling east from anywhere, at what point would you being going west?
You could go east forever and never be going west. That’s how far God removes our sins from us when they are forgiven.
God has cast our confessed sins into the depths of the sea.
“Our Saviour kneels down and gazes upon the darkest acts of our lives. But rather than recoil in horror, he reaches out in kindness and says, ’I can clean that if you want.’ And from the basin of his grace, he scoops a palm full of mercy and washes our sin”. Max Lucado said that.
So… You are wanted by God. He desires to walk with you in the garden as the song says. He wants the kind of intimacy with us that WE need in order to live life to the fullest and free-est. You are forgiven by God. There are no chains linking you in bondage to errors made and wounds inflicted or absorbed that Christ cannot break.
Finally, because Christ is risen, WE have a mission. And you, together with your brother beside you and you sister beside you, you are the bearers of Christ’s mission. His mission to bring this message of love, this message of freedom to a world utterly entangled in sin and brokenness.
A world starving for God. A world that is broken. We know that world. We came into the gathered community of God’s people from that world. We are still in that world, though the Scriptures say we cannot be of that world if we really, truly want to be free. WE have a mission.
“How am I suppose to do that? I can’t do that. I wish this preacher would shut up already”. Well, you know what…the mission of Christ, the mission of His church, is mostly a wordless mission.
It’s a message that needs to be conveyed a lot more in actions than in words. A lot of us are skittish about witnessing to others.
We feel this terrifying pressure in our chests and we start breathing heavy and develop this nasty flopsweat whenever we start to think we’re supposed to preach at everyone.
There is one way to fulfill Christ’s mission, and it’s the same way that helps us at a gut level to own Christ’s mission. Christ’s mission is to love. That’s it. Pray and think and be creative about this one question and this one question alone:
How can I love? How can I love this person or that person or this friend or this enemy, or this stranger. What can I do to bless them? What can I do to extend a hand? Who can I comfort? Who can I feed? Who can I visit in prison?
Who’s in the hospital and they need someone to sit with them for a while?
It’s true that if we want the advantages of love, then we must be willing to take the risks of love. Pour all of your creative juices into answering this one question and you will do a few different things: You will live an abundant life.
You will have a lot of good friends.
You will feel the purpose for which you were created. You will feel God’s pleasure. And…and this is cool…you on occasion will have people wonder out loud why it is that makes you different.
What makes you stop and talk to a person begging in the street? What makes you volunteer to help people? Why does your smile seem to go so deep into your spirit? And when they discover that your reason is Jesus and all that He has done…they will be compelled to consider Him.
For most Christians…simply loving people with the love Christ gives us is how we live out our mission. There are some, gifted in evangelism, who just know how to talk to someone they just met and within a short time, conversation naturally and genuinely leads to God.
Thank God for such people. We have people like that here at CATM. But for most of us, God’s call on our lives is as simple as it is profound and challenging: Just love.
An old deacon was leading in prayer using one of his stereotypical phrases, which was “Oh Lord, touch the unsaved with Thy finger.” As he intoned this phrase in this particular prayer, he stopped short.
Other members came to his side and asked if he were ill. “No,” he replied, “but something seemed to say to me, “Thou art the finger.”
There is one Christ event. One moment in history when everything changed. One moment when hopelessness and despair was dealt a crushing blow. One moment when your life and mind life received the promise of being enfolded into the love of God.
Now we are at another moment. A moment where we stop to consider the impact of the Christ event on our lives. Will we nod and say: “That’s nice. I’m glad I came to church”? Or will we respond with wonder at the empty cross, the empty tomb?
Will we say “The Christ event is my event”. 28 years ago this past March 15 I received a similar challenge. Every year since then, the challenge is new and fresh…with God calling upon me to once again turn to Him and proclaim: “Because He lives…I live!”
Will you take a moment right now to speak to God in silence? In your thoughts, will you quietly and reverently consider the goodness of God?
Will you embrace the fact that when you trust Jesus’ Christ and believe in His sacrifice for your sins, you are forgiven, and reconciled to God.
Will you carefully consider the love of God and the promise of that love…that He wants you, that He forgives you, and that He has given us together a mission to fulfill.
Let’s pray in silence for a moment.
Holy God, the events we mark on this weekend…the bleakness and sadness of Good Friday and the power and joy and glory of this Easter Sunday…they are such a gift to us…to remind us of Your humility and Your love and Your mighty power.
Turn our longing hearts and thirsty souls to You once again, that we might live joyfully and for the One who laid down His life and took it up again on that first Sunday of resurrection. This we pray with gratitude in the name of our risen King, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
