REMEDY
The Remedy for Hopelessness
“The resurrection gives my life meaning and direction and the opportunity to start over no matter what my circumstances.”
-Robert Flatt
Intro: So, here we are at Easter 2009. Nearly 2,000 years have passed since Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave. That’s a long time to us. I mean, most of us will live a maximum of around 100 years here on earth. So the story of a man who lived 20 lifetimes ago tends to lose its meaning to us. I mean, it’s a great story, but what does it have to do with me?
-I don’t know about you, but I want Easter to matter to me. I always approach this time of year with a sense that something special should happen, but it doesn’t always happen. Because life is busy. There’s so much going on that it’s a challenge to really just take the time that’s necessary to truly appreciate Easter and let the reality of what it means sink in to my heart.
-So over the past couple of weeks I’ve started asking God, “Father, would you just make Easter real to me this year? Would you show me what your son’s resurrection means for me in my life?”
-And the more I’ve had these thoughts in my heart, and the more I’ve prayed that prayer, the more I’ve felt God nudging me to the most unlikely places for the answer. You see, when I want to read the Easter story, I usually go to the Gospels. You know, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I read about a man named Jesus. I read about his death on the cross. I read about his resurrection 3 days later. And that’s that. Great story. But, and I hope this doesn’t sound blasphemous, sometimes when I read that, it feels…common. I read it or hear it and I’m left feeling like it should mean more to me. I guess it’s because I’ve heard it so much throughout my life. Do you know what I’m saying?
-And so I’ve been praying that prayer lately. “God, would you show me what Easter means for me and my life.” And I’ve felt Him leading me away from the usual passages of Scripture and I’ve felt like He’s letting me in on the big picture. The whole story of Easter. And that’s what I hope we’ll all experience today. Because if you’re like me, you know a little sliver of the Easter story like the back of your hand. The part about the cross and the empty tomb? You know that part. You could maybe even quote it chapter and verse. But the cross? The empty tomb? They’re only part of the story God’s been writing. Big parts, sure. But only parts. So, we’re going to talk about the cross and the empty tomb today, but from a little different perspective. Because more than anything, I want you to leave here today knowing in your heart why Easter matters to you. And I want you to know the whole story of Easter…because it is the most epic story the world has ever known.
-We’re starting a series today I’ve titled, “Remedy.” And for the next 7 weeks we will be studying the book of Romans on Sundays. Why Romans? Because there if you had to take one book from the Bible to explain what it means to walk with God, to live a life sold out for Jesus, this would be it. Paul explains the Easter story throughout this whole book. What it means for you and me.
(Prayer)
The Whole Story of Easter
-Today we’re going to talk about God’s remedy for hopelessness. If we’re going to understand the whole story of Easter today, I think it would be good to look at it like we would look at a good story. In parts. In a movie, they call them “scenes.” Different scenes in a movie take you through the story that is being told. Think about your favorite movie. You don’t just pop in a movie to watch one or two scenes, do you? No, you watch it from beginning to end. That’s what I want us to do with the Easter story, today.
-There are 4 major scenes in the story of Easter that we need to look at this morning.
Scene #1 is The Hopeful Beginning.
1. The Hopeful Beginning (Gen. 2-3)
A. A loving creator
B. A holy God
C. A rebellious creation.
-Now, we’re not going to linger at this scene for very long. Consider it the backdrop for the rest of the story. The opening scene of God’s story unfolds with a loving creator who is a holy God. He creates a creature called “humanity” in his own image. He loves them. He provides for them. He puts them in charge of their own kingdom. He walks with them and talks with them as friends, even though He is the King of a much bigger Kingdom. He gives them free will, even through He could force them to obey Him, only asking that they do what He asks of them. It was everything that the humans could ever ask for. The entire scene is full of hope.
-And then the scene changes. The sky darkens and the thunder echoes in the distance. The creation has rebelled against the Creator. The subjects have rebelled against the king. The humans decide that they would rather do what they want to do than to do what their loving, holy God has asked of them. So the King lets them. He withdraws His presence from them and banishes them from perfect fellowship with Him. They go from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows…with one choice. No wonder it’s referred to as “The Fall.”
-It was such a hopeful beginning. But humanity turned it into a hopeless problem. We still do. And it’s still a problem. Why? Well, that’s where Paul’s letter to the Romans comes in….and the plot of the whole story thickens.
2. The Hopeless Problem
-And here’s the big problem: God’s wrath against sin.
A. God’s wrath is against all sin. (Rom. 1:18)
Scripture: Rom. 1:18
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.”
-Paul opens his letter and lays out the problem in dramatic terms. There’s not much fluff or candy-coating that comes when you talk about the wrath of God. I mean, there just can’t be. It’s not an easy thing to talk about or even think about. And man, how we love to NOT think about the wrath of God.
-In our culture, we’ve created a cafeteria-style of Christianity, where we get to pick and choose who we want to believe God is and what it means to follow Him and we get to leave out anything that makes us uncomfortable. And there’s little that makes us more uncomfortable than being confronted with the notion that God is wrathful against sin. We’ve come to the point where at the mere mention of God’s wrath, we turn away and say, “Oh, not my God. He’s a God of infinite love. He could never be angry or upset at anything I do.”
-We’ve accepted a caricature of God as a kindly, grandfatherly, impotent buffoon who just pats us on the head when we sin before just grinning and sending us on our way. And in so doing we make the same mistake that Adam did. Paul describes it as “suppressing the truth.”
-And the truth is this: God hates sin. He doesn’t just tolerate it. He doesn’t just dislike. It doesn’t just get under his skin. He hates it. Sin is rebellion against His holiness and against His love.
B. God’s wrath is revealed now. (Rom. 1:24, 26,28)
-There’s another element of the problem that seems to make things even more hopeless. It’s that this wrath…this burning hatred of anything that is against God…is being poured out on humanity as we speak.
-Now, you’ve got to hang with me, here. Because this is where some of you will be like, “Oh I’ve heard this garbage before. God gonna send all these bad things to happen to me if I sin. Blah, blah, blah.” No, that’s not what I’m saying and anyone who tells you that He does doesn’t understand the nature of God’s wrath. Some people like to think that bad things happen to us or to our country or to some group of people because of sin in their lives. But that’s not it. That’s not how God reveals His wrath. Paul paints the picture of how God pours out His wrath on sin. And if you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss it.
Scripture: Rom. 1:24, 26-28
“24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another….26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. 28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.”
-Paul uses sexual sin as his example because that’s the sin Jews tended to look down upon the most. But he could have just as easily used anything else as his example. He’s not singling out sexual perverseness as the revelation of God’s wrath. His point is not what God’s wrath is, but rather, how God’s wrath is revealed.
-And did you notice a certain phrase Paul keeps coming back to in those verse? “God gave them over.” There’s a great lesson about God’s nature in those words. If you’ve wondered about God’s nature, about how He works in the world, this is an important part of the answer.
-“He gave them over.” In others words, God’s wrath isn’t just way out there somewhere, someday when you die if you don’t come to Jesus and if you say a prayer on your deathbed you’ll be okay. It’s being revealed right now against sin. It’s being revealed right now in our lives, in that ultimately, God lets us have our way.
Illustration: Have you ever seen a kid who thought they knew how to do something that they really didn’t know how to do? I remember when I was a kid I went fishing with some friends and their dad and the dad offered to help me bait my hook and teach me how to cast it well. I refused because I didn’t want to look bad in front of my friends. He knew that I didn’t have much fishing experience and could probably see what was coming, but he let me have my way. A couple of moments later I cast the line and the hook and line went about 4 feet backwards over my head and hooked my friends’ dad right in the thumb. That was a lot more humiliating than it would have been had I just let him help me.
-Hey, you know what? The worst punishment this side of eternity that God could give you is to let you have your way and live with the consequences of your sin. And that’s exactly what He does. Tell God that you want nothing to do with Him, and He’ll say okay. Try to go your way instead of His Way and He’ll let you. Tell God to be quiet, that you’ll have control of your life instead of submitting to Him and He will honor that request.
-That is how God’s wrath is revealed in our lives. And maybe you’re here this morning and you have never turned your life over to God. You’ve lived your whole life up to this point doing what you want to do. You’ve rejected any notion of God’s love for you and His offer of salvation. How’s that working out for you? Do you feel anymore fulfilled than you did 5 years ago? Have you ever discovered your life’s passion and purpose? Do you have any peace whatsoever in your day to day life? If you look inward and can’t answer those questions with a resounding “yes!” then you know about the wrath of God, whether you realized it before today or not. Because you’re living it. And everything can look good on the outside, but on the inside, you feel empty. You know something’s wrong. But you use every excuse you can think of to put off facing the truth. That you’re dead inside.
-And here’s where things get really bad for us. There’s no excuse for us to live this way.
C. There is no excuse for sin. (Rom. 1:20)
Scripture: Rom. 1:20
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”
-You can’t sit back and say that there’s not enough evidence. You can’t wait for some kind of miraculous sign. You can’t say, “maybe another time.”
-Everything that God has made, including you and me, bear witness to the fact that He is God and we are not. And if He is God and we are not, then we are out of excuses. Period.
-But now, let’s just get right down to it. We have all sinned. And that’s what makes the problem universal. We’re all in the same boat.
D. We have all sinned. (Rom. 3:23)
Scripture: Rom. 3:23
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
-There’s not a person in this room who can say they haven’t. There’s not a person on this earth who can say haven’t. We still fall. Just like Adam, we rebel.
-So, if we’ve all sinned, and there’s no excuse for sin, and God’s wrath is being revealed right now against all sin, then the situation would seem pretty hopeless. The story should end here. The story should end as a tragedy.
-But it doesn’t.
-The story doesn’t end there because of Easter. But you can’t appreciate Easter without first appreciating the hopeful beginning and the hopeless problem. If this story were being told in one of those old-time movies, now would be the intermission. Things look bleak. But as the scene opens for the 3rd part of the story, the hero arrives on scene. And He isn’t what anyone is looking for.
3. The Remedy for Hopelessness
-The hero’s name is Jesus. And He is God’s remedy for the hopelessness that consumes our lives. He was God in the flesh. The Bible says that for Jesus and by Jesus the whole universe was made. And through Jesus the whole universe is held together. But He didn’t come proclaiming that or demanding any special treatment. God came to Earth as one of us.
A. God came to Earth as one of us. (John 1:14)
Scripture: John 1:14
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”
-He can relate to all our struggles, all our hurts, all our pain because He stepped down into our hopeless problem. And He didn’t stop there.
B. Jesus absorbed God’s wrath on the cross. (2 Cor. 5:21)
-The hero didn’t just step down into our place, He took our place. He stepped in between us and the wrath of God and took the punishment for sin. The punishment of death. He did it so that we wouldn’t have to.
Scripture: 2 Cor. 5:21
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
-Jesus, who was completely righteous and holy, took our unrighteousness and our ungodliness upon Himself and received the sentence that should have been ours.
-And the King died in the place of His rebellious creation. And He was buried in a borrowed tomb. And He didn’t stop there.
C. Jesus established a new order when He rose from the
dead. (Eph. 2:1, 6-7)
-And this is why Easter is so important. Jesus didn’t stay on the cross. And He didn’t stay in the tomb. God the Father, in the 2nd most miraculous display of His power, raised Jesus from the dead 3 days later. The hero hadn’t just conquered sin. He hadn’t just taken our place and absorb God’s wrath. He established a new order when He rose from the dead. A new order in which humanity, the rebellious creation, no longer has to fear death but is offered a place at God’s table. Jesus offers to reconcile humanity’s relationship with God one person at a time.
-Believe or not, I think God raising Jesus from the dead was only the 2nd most miraculous thing He’s ever done. #1 on the list is that just as God raised Jesus from His physical death, He offers to raise you from your spiritual death. He offers to make you a new person. A new creation. Life in a new order. He offers to reconcile your relationship with Him through faith in Jesus.
Scripture: Eph. 2:1,6-7
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins…and God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”
-This story truly is incomparable. The kindness that God has expressed towards us in Jesus is indescribable when you consider the big picture. And God, who has been writing this story from the beginning, turns to you and says, “It’s not over, yet. There’s still a part left to be written.”
-And it’s your part.
4. How You Can Take Part in God’s Story
-Here’s your chance to find hope. Here’s your chance to play your part in God’s new order.
A. Repent of your sin. (Acts 17:30)
Scripture: Acts 17:30
“In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.”
-Repent simply means to turn around from the direction you’ve been going.
B. Put your trust in Jesus. (Romans 10:13)
-There’s a reason it’s called faith. Faith is a trusting relationship. You trust that even through you can’t see Him, God is real and He loves you. And even though you might not always feel like it, you submit your life to Christ’s control. And you trust that as you do, He will draw you a little closer to Him.
Scripture: Rom. 10:13
“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
C. Turn control of your life over to Him. (John 1:12)
-By faith, turn your life over to God’s control.
Scripture: John 1:12
“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…”
-You might think, “There’s got to be more to it. What’s the catch.” There is no catch. God just wants you to trust Him. He wants you to let go of you pain, your fear, your emptiness, your cynicism…and trust Him. Every good relationship is rooted in trust. And that’s all God asks of you. Trust Him. Trust in the sacrifice of His son. Trust in His resurrection. And live.
Conclusion/Invitation
“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
-Henry David Thoreau
-God says, “no, let me write your story.” And let it be a chapter in my story. That why Easter matters to you. Because today, God invites you, through Jesus, to accept His gift of a new life. To find hope right now. And to have hope for tomorrow.
-God, I know that you are God and I am not. I know that I can never be good enough to earn your love. But I believe that you sent your son, Jesus into the world to die for my sins. I believe that only He can restore me to the life you intended for me to have. Jesus, I give myself to You. I commit my entire life into your control. Thank you, Jesus, for dying on the cross me. And thank you for rising from the dead 3 days later. Today, I ask that you would raise my heart from the dead and make me like you. Amen.
-If you sincerely prayed a prayer like that today, you just made the best decision you could ever make. Would you do me a favor? If you made a commitment to Jesus today, there’s a card in your bulletin I’d like you to fill out and hand to an usher on the way out. We’re not going to show up at your house and embarrass you, but we do want to support you in your new life. We can’t do it on our own, and I just want to shoot you an e-mail this week to encourage you.
