OUTLINE
1. INTRODUCTION – EASTER THEMED TV SHOWS
2. A DECREASE IN BELIEF IN GOD AND RELIGION
3. AN INCREASE IN BELIEF IN THE AFTERLIFE WITHOUT FAITH
4. BUT EVEN THOUGH CULTURE CHANGES GOD HASN’T CHANGED
5. RESURRECTION (AND AFTERLIFE) ONLY COMES BY FAITH IN JESUS
6. A QUICK SUMMARY OF THE EASTER STORY
7. OUR TWO-FOLD COMMITMENT:
- BELIEVE AND TO LIVE LIKE JESUS
- TO DIE TO SELF AND TO PUT JESUS ON THE THRONE
Good morning. Happy Easter! He is risen! Hallelujah! If you want to follow along today, we are going to be looking at Luke 24:1-9. While you are looking that up, I have a quick question. How many of you happened to see the TV show this week called The Passion. It was a modern-day rendition of the passion of Christ, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Basically, instead of taking place on the streets of Jerusalem, it took place on the streets of New Orleans. It was hosted by Tyler Perry. It got some mixed reviews, but it gave Easter some much needed exposure. We know that this time of year the networks want to put shows with religious themes on TV. I think Morgan Freeman, who is not the most religious guy, is doing a five-part series called The Story of God. Even though we see a heightened interest in spiritual things during this time, we also see in cultural in general a general decline in interest about topics of God or Jesus or any sort of religious topics.
I was doing some research this week and came across a recent survey. The statistics were quite dire. One part talked about the increase in disbelief about God. I think in 1980 13% of the younger generation questioned the existence of God. In 2014 that number had risen to 30% of especially the young people out there questioned the belief in the existence of God. Consistent with those trends, the survey also revealed less interest in prayer and going to church. The interesting thing was that the statistic also revealed that, although people are less interested generally in God and religion, they seem to have a heightened interest in the afterlife. In 1974, 73% of Americans believed in an afterlife. That number is now closer to 80% of the people believe in an afterlife. Although the author did not give any reason why this was occurring, she did quote one of the conductors of the survey as saying “It was interesting that fewer people participated in religion or prayed, but more believed in an afterlife. It might be part of a growing entitlement mentality thinking you can get something for nothing.” We live in a culture of entitlement. If you are an American, you feel like you are entitled to a lot of things. If the survey is true, it seems like this sense of entitlement is spilling over into the religious sectors. So much so that some people have the attitude I am going to believe whatever I want. I am going to live whatever way I want, but I still feel entitled to have the afterlife. I still feel entitled to have some sort of a resurrection without any sort of faith commitment. That is what I would call resurrection light or resurrection without commitment. It is not surprising that we live in a culture where people are being less and less committed. We see it obviously when people are waiting longer and longer to get married. They maybe just live with each other because they want to keep their options open. People are less likely to pursue a long-term career or hang on to a job because they want to keep their options open in case something better comes by. Even cell phone companies like Verizon understand that people are becoming less committed. Now they have thrown away the commitment to a two-year cellphone contract because they know that people are less likely to be committed. It makes sense if people aren’t going to be committed to something like marriage, like a job, or even a cellphone contract, they are certainly not going to be committed to some sort of a faith or particular religion. But it is funny that even though they don’t want to be committed to a particular faith, they still have the expectation that they will experience some sort of resurrection when they die and some sort of afterlife, whatever that is. They want to bend the rules so to speak. The rules that have been in place for the last 2,000 years. My understanding is the rules are not changing. There is no intention of them changing. God doesn’t operate according to the whims of culture. He doesn’t say I am going to take a pulse on culture and see if they agree with commitment or not. He says that the resurrection that comes through Jesus Christ takes a commitment. It takes a real faith commitment. It doesn’t just mean that you understand the Bible stories. It doesn’t mean that you are simply involved in a church. Those things are good, but what God is looking for are full-fledged disciples of Jesus Christ. People that are so enthralled with the kingdom of God and what is offered through it that nothing short of a whole-heart commitment will do.
I remember hearing a pastor a few years ago by the name of Tony Evans. He tells a humorous story that gives a pretty good picture of commitment versus involvement. He tells the story of a chicken and a pig walking down the road. The chicken says to the pig I think we should open a restaurant. The pig says what would you call it? I would call it Ham and Eggs. The pig scratches his head and says I am not too sure about that because you would be involved in that venture, but I would be committed. It is a silly story, but it makes a good point. The chicken would only be involved dropping off some eggs here and there. The pig is going to give his skin. He is going to give everything he has got. He is going to give his entire life. That is what God expects of us. He expects that we don’t just know the stories, we don’t just get periodically involved, but that we are committed. We have some skin in the game. That should be expected because we know, as the Easter story tells us, that Jesus had some very real skin in the game.
I suspect that most of you know the basics of the Easter story, so I don’t feel the need to repeat the whole story, but I thought I would give the highlights just in case you forgot. The Easter story is represented by three symbols. The manger, the cross, and the tomb. Some of you are thinking, I might not know the Easter story, but I know that the manger is associated with Christmas. Yes it is technically associated with Christmas. But the reality is that the Easter story finds its beginning in the Christmas story. The Easter story finds its beginning in the manger when God sent his son, Jesus, down to earth. Emmanuel, God with us. To be with us. It is a story that we celebrated three months ago. The story of an awesome, wonderful God who saw our sin problem and sent his son Jesus Christ to deal with that problem so that we can have full restoration back to God. We can have that peace with God. The story doesn’t stop at the manger. If we went through the gospels, we would see that the story continues on. We see that Jesus Christ was a man who walked this earth 30-plus years. We don’t know exactly how long. But he walked this earth and taught in phenomenal ways. We have been going through the series called The Sermon on the Mount and we see that Jesus taught things that nobody else could ever teach and nobody else ever said. An amazing teacher. We also see that he didn’t just teach, he hung with people. He hung with people that normally other people wouldn’t hang with. The prostitutes, the sinners, the lepers. He would even minister to those people. We know that he was a miracle worker. The first miracle being the story of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana. We see all sorts of miracles throughout the Bible. We see him calming the storm. We see him giving sight to blind Bartimaeus. We see him raising Lazarus from the dead. We see him casting out demons. In the midst of all that he keeps proclaiming that the kingdom of God is here. It is now. The invitation is to you. We know that as wonderful as those words were, some people didn’t like it. It just didn’t sit well with some people. Especially the religious authorities. So they conspired to have Jesus arrested and charged him with blasphemy and ultimately put him on the cross. The thing we celebrate by calling it Good Friday. It wasn’t good for Jesus, but it was good for us. Some of you participated in that last Friday where we were able to carry a cross from one end of town to the other end of town to celebrate that Good Friday event. We know that Jesus hung on the cross for several hours. During that time he went through a lot of pain. He went through horrific suffering, and then he died. The body was taken off the cross and given to a man by the name of Joseph of Arimathea who wrapped him in some linens, placed him in the tomb, and had the soldiers put a bolder in front of that tomb. We know that the story doesn’t end there. The cross leads to an empty tomb.
That is what brings us to today’s passage. If somebody has the gospel of Luke 24:1-9 open, it would be appreciated if he/she would stand up and read it. (Scripture read here.) That is an amazing story. A story that starts at the Christmas story and ends with the resurrection story. It is a great story. A great beginning and a great ending, but would we expect anything less from a great God? I don’t think so. It is an amazing story. The implications are that God doesn’t want us just to know about the story or to simply be involved in the church. God is expecting that we put some skin in the game. Really, what he is expecting is that Christ’s story would become our story. That his death would become our death. That his resurrection would become our resurrection. That we would die like him that we might live by him. When we talk about dying, it involves dying to two things. Dying to sin and dying to self. The word sin does not get a lot of press in culture today. It is hard to even get a real definition of it. The original definition had to do with archery. It meant missing the mark. It is the idea that the archer would pull back a bow and let the arrow fly. The arrow would fall short of the mark. This case the mark being the divine will of God. God’s desire for your life. Sin is when, technically, you miss the mark. You fall short of God’s divine will for your life. That is not a bad definition. But the problem is it makes us think that when we sin, we just have bad aim. That is all it is. But it is so much more than that. Sin at its core is really a flat-out rebellion against God. It is a rebellion. It is like the Frank Sinatra song ‘I Did It My Way’. That is really the attitude that people have. I am going to do it my way. I really don’t care what God thinks. I am just going to live my life the way I want to live. That is a rebellious, sinful attitude that results in a manifestation of evil acts. External physical acts like we see in Paris and Brussels to internal evil. Evil that resides within the heart. It is the sin that keeps us separated from a holy God now and really for all eternity. God’s chief characteristic is his holiness. I hate to say it but some of our chief characteristics are sin. Sin cannot commune with God. The holy God cannot mix with sin. We have a problem, but in Romans 5:8 it says “God demonstrates his love for us that while we were still sinners (in other words while we were still stuck in the mire of our sin) Christ came and died for us.” That is an awesome thing.
That is Jesus’ role in our salvation. What is our role? Our role is to believe, for one, that that actually occurred. That historical event did occur and Christ died for our sins. More than that, it is to demonstrate that belief by being willing to die to our sins. You just saw a baptism. I love baptisms because it is a perfect picture of what we do when we die spiritually. The person goes under the water, which is represented as death. Death with Christ. Christ died for our sins. We go under water, we identify with that death. We die to our sins also. Not only that, we get up and come out with a whole new commitment. A commitment to live a changed life. A different sort of life. A life of holiness. A life where we seriously try to live like Jesus Christ. We actually get involved in training to live like Christ. That training involves things like prayer and Bible study and worship and all these types of things. What happens is eventually we get to a place where we are no longer entertaining sin. We no longer feed sin. You can’t feed something that is dead. The apostle Paul says it best. He says are you going to keep going on sinning? How can you? The sin died in you. It is dead. It is over. It is gone. There is nothing there, so you can’t live in sin anymore. The initial requirement is simply that we are willing to die to our sin.
The second commitment for eternal life is that we are willing to die to self. Is there anybody in here that is a little selfish? If you don’t think you are, ask your spouse. We are all a little selfish. Dying to self doesn’t just mean becoming less selfish, although that is part of it. What it means is we are willing to take ourselves off the throne of our lives. I have said it before that everybody in the world has a kingdom. Some have very small kingdoms. Some have very large kingdoms. But we all have a kingdom. We all have a realm where what we want done is done. Where our will is done. So if we want to die to self we have to remove self from the throne and place Jesus Christ on the throne, so it is no longer our will be done, but it is his will be done. What that means is that Jesus doesn’t play second string to anything at all. He doesn’t play second string to your job. He doesn’t care how busy you are in your job. He doesn’t play second string to your finances. He doesn’t play second string to your hobbies. He doesn’t even play second string to your family. There is a passage in the gospel that talks about that. Jesus said if anybody is going to follow me, he has to hate his family. He has to hate his mother and his father. He has to hate his very own life. Jesus is using this rhetorical device called hyperbole, exaggeration, to make his point that nothing should get in the way in your relationship with the Son of the Father.
It is really quite easy. If you want to experience eternal life, you have to have a commitment. You have to have a two-fold commitment. That you are willing to believe that Christ died on the cross for your sins and you are willing to die along with him to your sins. And that you are willing to die to self and place Christ on the throne. Those two things will really pretty much guarantee you, I think, a spot in heaven. The Christian life is more than just getting your free ticket into heaven. It is living the resurrection life right now. Thinking again about the baptism, when the person is placed underwater we say buried with Christ but then we say also raised to walk in the newness of life. A new life. When you come out of that baptistery, you are a new creation. In 2 Corinthians 5:17 it says “If anybody is in Christ, he is a brand new creation.” He is like a brand new baby coming out of the womb. He doesn’t come out alone. He comes with the spirit of Jesus Christ walking in him. He walks with Jesus and Jesus directs the way and gives you a sense of purpose and begins to shape you and conform you into his very image. It is a two-fold commitment. It is a commitment to die. Nothing less than death. Die to sin and die to self. I suspect in a crowd like this there are people saying I don’t think so. I really like my stuff. I like my time. I like my hobbies. I really like my family. Not sure I am ready for that type of commitment. My response is too bad, so sad. It is bad. It is sad. It is very sad. You are never going to get an invitation like this again ever. The God of the universe is standing out there saying come on. I am welcoming you back home. Come on back home. Don’t wait too long because you don’t know what is going to happen when you leave here today. People that were sitting at the Brussels airport didn’t know what was about to happen when they were about to get on that plane. You don’t know what is going to happen to you when you leave this place today. That is too bad that you let the things of the world block you from that relationship with God. It is not only sad. It is really tragic. It is tragic in the sense that you are taking a crapshoot because you are banking on the idea that there is no hell. I know some people say I don’t believe in a hell. If there was a hell, I wouldn’t believe that a loving God would ever put me there. You may be right. There may not be a hell in the sense that you think of a hell with devils and pitchforks and flaming fire and all that kind of stuff. You may be right about that. But you are wrong about the fact that God wouldn’t place you there. God does love you. He would place you there because if you are willing to reject him in this world, he loves you so much he will say if you don’t want me in this world, I love you so much I am going to give you what you want and I am going to give it for all eternity. A life totally separated from God. If that’s not hell, nothing is. You say, Chuck, you are getting little harsh today. It is Easter time. We should be talking about bunnies and peeps. I realized it is harsh. It is a matter of life and death. You have to understand it is a matter of life and death. So I decided I wasn’t going to come here and give a nice fluffy little sermon that speaks about God’s forgiveness and love and then get people to accept Jesus come forward and we would have another 20 or 30 people in the church. What I realized is I don’t have to worry about whether you accept Jesus. Jesus really didn’t care if you accepted him. What he cared about is that you would be thankful enough to know that you are accepted by God. He didn’t care if he was accepted. But he did want you to accept the invitation. He painted this beautiful, phenomenal picture of the kingdom of God. He gives you an invitation and says come on in. It is ready to go. All you have to do is receive it. He said to his disciples “Follow me.” Follow me into the mysterious waters of baptism that we really don’t know what it means, but we know it is so important. Follow me into this strange thing called ministry that you have no idea what it is going to involve. Follow me into this phenomenal thing called the kingdom of God.
In closing, thinking again about that quote. I imagine there are some people here that maybe want something for nothing. They want that resurrection light. Although you might get something for nothing in this world, you are not going to get something for nothing in the kingdom of God. Nothing less than your death to self and death to sin will do because God expected nothing less of his son Jesus Christ. When you are willing to make that commitment, you not only have resurrection, eternal life, you have the resurrection that comes through Jesus Christ. The resurrection in this life now. The abundant life that begins now and carries on for all eternity. As we transition to this time of communion, the communion table is a reminder of Christ’s death, but it is really a reminder of our death. It is a weekly reminder of our baptism. It is a reminder that on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took bread, broke it, and said this is my body. It is broken for you. Then he took the cup of wine and said drink this. This is my blood that has been shed for you. He said whenever you do this, you proclaim my name until I come again. Let us pray.
