Hope Has Come
Easter 4/24/2011 Psalm 137:1-5 Matthew 28:1-10
What road has brought us here to church today? No matter where we started from, all of us eventually chose Euclid Avenue or East 79th to come to this building, but that’s not the kind of road I’m talking about. There is something in our lives that drove us to be in church this morning. There is a road we’re traveling on that has brought us to hear a word from God.
Let’s go back to the first century and meet a man called Jesus of Nazereth. Actually he was more than just a man, because He was sent by God to make a difference in the life that each person ever born would live and to determine where each person who dies will spend eternity. He told us what he planned to do with his life.
One day at the very beginning of his ministry Jesus walked into a place very similar to a church. He walked over to the pulpit and said, “Luke 4:18-19 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, [19] To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
Well this was not the first time this passage had been read, so everyone was eager to see how Jesus was going to preach from the text. Instead of preaching, he sat back down. He could feel the eyes on him in the room, as people were thinking, “okay man, you’ve announced the text, now go ahead and preach it. Don’t be shy. Go ahead and finish what you started.” To end the awkwardness of the moment, Jesus said, “today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Now for hundreds of years, the people had been waiting for someone who would come into their lives and bring them hope. They were looking for someone who would be sent from God with power and authority to change their lives. When Jesus said, what he did, he was saying, “I’m the one you’ve been looking for all these years. I’m the one sent by God to make a difference in your lives.”
If someone were to ask you what is Easter all about, what would you tell them. Well it’s a time to dress nice, a time to have special services, a time to give Easter egg hunts and it’s a time to think about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Well you’re right, Easter does involve all of these `things in today’s world. But one of the things that stand out most about Easter is that if offers Hope.
When we look at what Jesus said about why He came, we find Hope. Jesus said the Spirit of the Lord is on me because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. What does that mean? Today some of us think we’re poor, but we are no where near as poor as we use to be. When I was born, we use to live near the butcher pen where they slaughtered animals. It was always stinking and smelling from the remains of the animals slaughtered. But I found out from my aunt, that my grandmother, who had 13 kids, would go and sometimes get out meat from the trash bins at the butcher shop in order to put some food on the table.
What good news did Jesus have the poor. Well first of all, Jesus lets us know that God had not forgotten the poor. God has equipped the poor to strive for something better and offers a hope for something greater than they have today. I know where my family was, and I know where we are today. Some of us were poor because of racism and institutional structures like segregation, red lining, and discrimination with last hired and first fired. God has removed many of those barriers for us today.
Today we are poor more often than not because of the road we choose to travel. Nothing keeps African American poorer, than our sexual appetites. We see the glitzy videos on BET with the bling, bling, and the dances, and the free wild kind of love, and the music and we think that’s where it’s at. We spend a lot of time chasing after girls and women, and they spend a lot of time teasing us with the way they dress, and eventually we hook up in somebody’s apartment, hotel, back seat or some other place. The result is usually not what we plan. It is a very expensive form of pleasure even though in the beginning it looks free. Babies are expensive, but you don’t see them in the videos. Child support payments are expensive but you don’t see them pop into the videos either.
This is not the message Jesus preached to the poor. Jesus’s message is that you are of great value in the eyes of God. Do not let others use and abuse you. Everything Jesus has to offer leads to life. It does not matter what you have done up to this point, and I pray your choices have not become irrevocable but even if they have , God still loves you and wants to give you the best that you can have from this point on. Don’t rob yourself of your future for some cheap thrill or temporary relationship today. I know you think it’s going to last a life time, but it won’t. If it was going to last, he or she would have already committed himself or herself to you.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ means that Hope has come for you to have the strength in God to become what God wants you to be. God will give the power to say no. God will give you the power to walk away. God will give you the power to see that you are more than what you are settley for
Jesus said he came to proclaim freedom for the prisoners. Anybody who has been locked in prison knows what’s it like to want to be free and have it denied. How do people arrive in prison. They take a road that promises some kind of satisfaction in life. But somehow something unintended happened and now there’s no way of escape. Another great enemy in our community is drugs. I’m including the illegal ones like cocaine and crack as well as the legal ones like Johnny Walker Red and Vodka. You’re in prison when you’re drug addict or alcoholic. But you’re also thrown into prison when you’re the parent or the child or the loved one of addict or alcoholic. When we make bad choices we are not the only ones to suffer.
Drugs destroy families. We are under the delusion, that I can handle this. The reality is some of us can handle more than others, but not of us can handle as much as we think we can. Sometimes addictions will come upon us like the speed of lightening, but other times it’s a slow storm brewing over the plains coming ever so slowly but coming all the less. We can get on the road to despair and think nothing will ever change. But Jesus said he came to proclaim freedom for the prisoners.
The first step to freedom is a desire to leave your chains of bondage behind. Do you want to think differently? Do you want to live differently? Do you want to be something different. If you are, then I want you to know that Hope has come. When Jesus Christ rose from the dead, he conquered the most powerful force to grab a piece of our lives and that is death.
Death is pulling us closer to the grave everyday. But Jesus destroyed death’s ability to destroy us. When we ask Christ to come into our lives, we are giving him permission to make a change in us. We often pray, “Lord if you do not do something to change him or her soon, I’m going to lose my mind.” Well my friend, I hate to tell you this, but you might lose your mind. God did not call us to change someone else. God called us to change us.
What we need is a new way of responding to the situation we are in. Our prayer should be, God change me, so that I can handle this situation. There’s not a thing in our lives that God can’t change if we give him permission. Change may mean you’ve got to quit trying to fix the situation. You may need to quit trying to take responsibility for somebody else’s actions. You may have to stand up to somebody and tell them no, this is not going to go on any longer.
On the day Jesus was crucified, most of the disciples were somewhere hiding, scared for their own lives. A few weeks after the resurrection, those same disciples were boldly willing to die for their faith, because the Holy Spirit was living inside of them. They had a boldness in God they had not known before concerning their lives. It wasn’t that the people had stopped hating them and threatening them. God had just given them a new way of reacting to their threats. Tell your neighbor, you do not need to lose your mind. Just look at the situation differently. You do not need to stay prisoner to what has captured you. There is a way out if you’re willing to pay a price. But don’t forget, you’re paying a greater price by staying where you are. Hope has come, because Jesus said, “I will never leave nor forsake you.
Jesus said he came to give recovery of sight for the blind. Jesus healed many blind people in his day. As a matter of fact, all the blind people that came to Jesus were healed, except according to Jesus, those who refuse to see. Have you ever seen somebody that has refused to see? You tell them, if you drop out of school in the 11th grade, your chances of getting a good job are practically out the window, but they insist they know they’re going to make it and have all the things in life they want.
Have you ever refused to see what others might see when they look at you? There are some parents and grandparents who think they are simply doing an outstanding job as parents, but their kids despise them, because they are overly critical, mean, cruel, and just all around messed up. All they ever do is fuss and complain. There are some kids who think they are wonderful to have around the house and any parent would be glad to have them. But their parents see them as lazy, ungrateful, unappreciative, and disobedient. Their attitudes smell and their mouths are full of back talk. We all think we look better than we really do. It’s natural because we love ourselves which is also natural.
But love has a tendency to make us blind. How many of you have said, “child what on earth do you see in him or in her.” “I know you think he’s all that, but have you noticed how he still be looking at other women.” Or have you noticed how she only comes around when she needs something. Or don’t you think you should take your time with him, since he’s already had five divorces. Since we love ourselves, we become blind to our area of weaknesses. We choose to overlook them.
When we give our lives to Christ, Jesus is going to help us to recover our sight. Jesus does not open our eyes just to show us heaven. He opens our eyes to put us on the road to change. Jesus says to us, “now let’s deal with this problem of selfishness.” The first thing we want to say is we’re not selfish. Selfishness appears in a number of ways. 1) You have got to have your way or win every argument. 2) You got to have the last word. 3) You’re going to spend on yourself and you don’t care who needs what or what bill you haven’t paid. 4) You borrow money from people, never pay it back, and don’t bring up the subject.
5) If somebody tears up your stuff, if they don’t pay for it, they out of your life as far as you’re concerned. 6) If somebody hurts you, they might eventually get forgiven, but they have got to pay a little bit first and 7) You are not going to tithe, because your money is your money and the little bit you give to God is God’s. Being selfish is nothing more than putting our plan for ourselves above God’s plan for our lives. The only reason we choose to disobey God is selfishness. God I want to do what I want to do right now.
The good news is that we don’t have to stay selfish because Hope Has come. The word of God tells us to let the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead live inside of us. That’s how we recover our sight. We start seeing things from God’s perspective and from the perspective of others. Our decision to have limited view and limited sight can keep us in the dark.
One little girl was playing hiding and go seek with her father. Every time he would find her, she would immediately close her eyes. She thought that as long as she couldn’t see him, he could not see her. Closing our eyes to the truth doesn’t make it go away. Choosing to be blind does not eliminate the areas of our lives that need to be changed.
Jesus told us he came to release the oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. To be oppressed means to just be burdened down with situations and people in your life that you simply just can’t seem to get away from. God does not look at the burdens in our lives and do nothing. Jesus says, come to me all you who are weary and I will give you rest. There is a lot of suffering in life that we experience that we simply bring on ourselves. Let’s face it, if we had not of made the decisions we made, we would not be in the predicament we’re in today.
In Psalm 137 in the bible, the people were captives in another land as prisoners of war. Their captors wanted them to sing and dance some of the joyful songs they used to sing in Jerusalem. But the prisoners said, “how can see sing the Lord’s songs in a strange land.” They were in a strange land because of their disobedience to God. Our decisions do eventually catch up with us, and what seemed at the time to be the easier choice, ended up costing a lot more of our lives. How many of you here today paid a whole lot more for some situations than you had intended to pay when you made the choice to go for it.
All of these things Jesus had come to do, looked like they were going to go unfinished when he was hanging there on the cross. He claimed he was voluntarily giving up his life for us, but it sure looked as those the Roman soldiers were taking it from Him. When he died, despair set into the hearts of his followers.
On the first Easter Sunday, Mary and Mary Magdalene were not really on the road to the tomb, even though that’s the way they were going. They were traveling on the road to despair. They fully expected to find a dead body in which they could pour some oil on it one last time. Their main concern was how they could roll back the stone which blocked the grave and may have weighed some 1 to 2 tons. They had no hope of seeing Jesus alive again.
When they got to the tomb, God had already sent an angel to remove the stone so that they could be escorted in. They were the first to hear the message, “He is not here; he has risen just as He said. Come and see the place where He lay. Now go quickly and tell his disciples. He has risen from the dead is going ahead of you into Galilee.
These two women were on the road to despair only to discover that Hope had come in the form of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When I asked you in the beginning, what road did you take to get here this morning, I was asking what in your life caused you to be here. Ultimately there is only one road that leads to God and that’s through Jesus Christ. But unless you travel the road to despair, you cannot appreciate who Christ is and what He has done on your behalf.
Despair will cause you to realize, there’s nothing I can do to measure up to being a good person acceptable in God’s eyes. For unless we recognize God’s judgment upon our lives for the wrong we have done, we cannot receive God’s mercy because we will think we will not need it. Good news is only God news, if it keeps us from some bad news.
Here’s the good news of the gospel, the hope John 3:16-20
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. [17] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. [18] Whoever believes in him is not condemned,
Now comes the bad news. but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. By choosing not to believe in Christ, we remain in the condition we are in. The condition is not one of being okay. It’s one of remaining under judgment, so that when we die, we leave God no alternative but to let us pay for the wrong we have done by spending eternity into the lake of fire. Going to hell is the ultimate form of selfishness. We get exactly what we demand. The right to choose our own destiny.
Easter is about the reality that Hope has come in the form of Jesus Christ, not only to change our lives today, but to alter our eternity forever. You cannot have the blessings of God indefinitely while choose to do as you please. But if you give your life to Christ, you will have hope that no matter what tomorrow may bring, you’ve got God on your side to make it through.
Sermon Outline Pastor Rick
“Hope Has Come” Easter
4/24/2011 Psalm 1:1-6 Matthew 26:62-68, 28:1-10
A. What Road Brought You Here
1. East 79th Or Euclid
2. The Reason We Arrived
B. A Preacher Sent To Make A Difference
1. Sent By God To Determine Destinies
2. The Sermon Defining The Ministry
Luke 4:18-19 (Today’s New International Version, ©2005
)18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
3. Will The Preacher Preach
4. He’s The One
C. The Real Meaning Of Easter
1. The Fun, The Games, The Clothes
2. The Hope With The Resurrection
D. Good News To The Poor
1. What It Means To Be Poor
2. God Remembers The Poor
3. What Keeps Us Poor
4. Only Showing Half The Story
5. The Expensive Parts
6. Jesus—You Have Value
7. It’s Not Too Late
8. Demand More
E. Freedom For The Prisoners
1. The Desire To Be Free
2. What Went Wrong To Get Here
3. Community Enemy-Drugs
4. The Legal & The Illegal
5. Others pay A Price
6. No We Can’t Handle It
7. On The Road To Despair
8. Making The Choice For Something
Different
9. Jesus’ Power Over Death
10. Just Give God Permission
F. My Choice To Respond Differently
1. Ask For Help For You
2. Taking A Stand
3. The Disciples From Cowards To
Courageous
4. What’s The Price Of Freedom
G. Sight For The Blind
1. Jesus Heals The Blind Except
2. Refusing To See
3. Love Will Blind Us
H. Our Eyes Opened To Deal With
1. Selfishness
2. My Fight, My Word, My Money
3. My Feelings, My Choice
4. God’s Spirit & Power
J. To Be Released From Oppression
1. Jesus Says Come
2. Psalm 137 Strangers
3. Decisions From The Past
K. Easter Sunday Morning
1. Road Of Despair
2. He Is Not Here
3. Need Despair Before God
John 3:16-20 16For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 All those who do evil hate the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.
