MELVIN M. NEWLAND, MINISTER
CENTRAL CHRISTIAN, BROWNSVILLE, TX
A. This is the Sunday after Easter, & for several weeks we have focused our attention on the last few days of Jesus’ life in Jerusalem.
In our Bible classes, during the morning worship services, & in the beautiful choral cantata we recalled His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the last supper with His disciples in the upper room, His betrayal by Judas in the garden of Gethsemane, the illegal trials of the night, & finally, His crucifixion & burial. Jesus was dead. It was all over.
But of course, it wasn’t. And last Sunday we witnessed to His resurrection, & celebrated in the shifting of emotions from sadness & despair to rejoicing & anticipation of His return. And the whole Christian world joined in the celebration of this event.
But today is the Sunday after Easter. The holidays are over, & we’ve gone back to work, & we’ve realized that the world is still out there. People are still struggling with financial problems. Marriages are still failing, & there is still violence in the streets. All the things that were there before Easter are still there. And we begin to realize that life isn’t as wonderful as we would like for it to be.
ILL. Have you heard the story about a fellow who wore a very painful pair of shoes? He complained to everybody about them, saying, "These shoes really hurt my feet. They’re awful," he would say.
His coworkers got tired of listening to that, so one of them suggested that he just buy a new pair of shoes. The guy answered, "Well, believe me, I’ve thought about it, but I’ve decided not to."
"You see, I hate my job. Every day I come to work, punch in & then spend 8 hours of drudgery. I hate every minute of it. Then I go home, & at home I have a wife who is never satisfied. She nags me day & night. All the time it is just nag, nag, nag."
"Then not long ago, my daughter & her husband moved in with us, & they have two of the most obnoxious kids you’ve ever seen. They run wild all over the place, destroying the furniture, tearing up the house."
"On top of that, my mother-in-law is living with us, too. And every night she grabs the remote control, sits down in my favorite chair, & I have to watch the TV programs she wants to watch."
He said, "I tell you, with all these problems in my life, the only real pleasure I have is in taking off these shoes."
APPL. Have you ever felt that way? Maybe life isn’t nearly as wonderful for you as you had once thought that it would be.
ILL. I heard about a birthday card recently that shows a guy in his underwear sliding down a banister. The card reads, "As you slide down the banister of life, may all the splinters go your way."
Now the truth is that splinters don’t always go our way, & life can be very painful. So what can I preach about on the Sunday after Easter, as we face the realities of our world today?
B. Well, I wrestled with this & decided to turn to the last page in the Bible, to the 22nd chapter of the book of Revelation, vs’s 16-17. These are the words of our Lord to the apostle John, spoken nearly 70 years after His resurrection & ascension back into heaven.
John had been exiled to the island of Patmos, put there by the Romans during a time of great persecution. So Jesus appeared to John with a message for the church, a message of victory, a revelation of the future. And what was revealed to John is what we now call the "Book of Revelation."
Then, as the revelation drew to an end, Jesus spoke these words that we find in closing verses of the Book of Revelation. Listen to vs. 16, "I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root & the Offspring of David & the bright Morning Star."
And then He goes on to say in vs. 17, "The Spirit & the bride say, `Come!’ And let him who hears say, `Come!’ Whoever is thirsty, let him come; & whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life."
C. Now if you look at yourself or at someone else you know rather well, you begin to realize that most of us are seen as rather onesided personalities, & we are often described by just one word in other people’s thinking.
This person is a happy person. Or that one is a melancholy person, or studious, or angry, or nosy, or busy, or lazy. On & on can go our impressions or descriptions. Napoleon was a warrior. Columbus was a discoverer. Martin Luther was a theologian. And Edison was an inventor.
Now the problem is that one-sided personalities attract certain people but repel others. Not everybody likes prophets. Not everybody likes theologians. Not everybody will follow a warrior. Some will & some won’t.
D. But when we come to Jesus we find nothing in Him that repels. He is stern & yet He is gentle. He is the good shepherd, but He is also a lamb. He is the High Priest, but He is also a sacrifice. He is King of Kings, but He is also a servant. He represents the very best, & if we’ll look at Him & study Him & emulate Him we’ll become the kind of people that God created & intended us to be.
PROP. And in our text this morning Jesus is called both a Root & the bright Morning Star. Can you think of two things that are further apart? Can you think of two objects more different than a root that is in the ground & a star up in the heavens?
I. HE IS LOCAL & YET HE IS UNIVERSAL
A. First of all, I think this tells us that Jesus is both local & universal. A root is local. It stays pretty much in one spot. It sinks its tentacles deep into the soil. It is a part of the terra firma where the feet of laborers walk & children play.
And Jesus is very much a part of this world. He left the glories of heaven to come into our world as a baby, Mary’s child. She wrapped Him in swaddling clothes & laid Him in a cradle of straw. He lived among us, & died for us, & today He is my Savior & my Lord - & yours, too. He is with us as we gather to worship. He really is local to every one of us.
B. Yet even as the stars are universal, so is Jesus. Wherever you go you can see the stars. Whether you’re in the country, or in the city, or standing on the seashore, stars are a part of the heavens we see. They are a part of the universe of Almighty God.
Jesus is exactly the same. He is also universal. Wherever you go today you’ll find Him being worshiped as Savior & Lord. You’ll find Him in the darkest parts of Africa. You’ll find Him in India. You’ll find Him in the Ukraine where excited Christians are able to proclaim openly their faith in Jesus for the first time in over 70 years.
Doors have even been opening in China, & we’re discovering that the church there has grown dramatically even in the midst of harsh persecution. Wherever you can go in all this world the message of Jesus has gone before, sometimes despite the cruel opposition of the rulers, because He is universal.
B. Not only that, He also bridges the differences between humanity. Red & yellow, black & white they are ALL precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children, & the adults, too, of the world.
He bridges the gaps. If there is any hope for us ever to overcome racial bigotry & separation, it must be in the person of Jesus. He is the one who can bring us together & cause us to be brothers & sisters - one in Him.
SUM. When we come to Jesus Christ there is no longer a difference. No white! No black! No yellow! No brown! No rich! No poor! No male! No female! We’re all the same in Jesus. He is local & He is universal!
II. HE IS HIDDEN & YET HE IS REVEALED
A. Secondly, He is hidden & yet He is revealed. Roots are hidden. They do their work down in the soil where we cannot see what they’re doing. We know that during a drought roots automatically sink deeper & deeper into the ground looking for moisture & nourishment. Even while we’re asleep at night the roots of the grasses & plants & flowers of the world are doing whatever it is that roots do. But we never see it, for it is hidden from our sight.
APPL. Jesus is like that. There is a part of Him that is mystery. We’ll never be able to understand all there is to know about Jesus.
Don’t ask me to explain to you how Jesus walked on water or how He fed the multitudes. Don’t ask me to explain how He healed the lepers or the lame.
Don’t ask me to explain to you how God can conquer sin & death by letting Jesus be nailed to a cross & burying Him in a tomb & raising Him from the dead. I don’t understand the grace & mercy & forgiveness of God. That’s beyond my human comprehension.
B. But there is a part of Him that is revealed. When He came into our world John said that we saw Him with our eyes & reached out & touched Him. We sat down across the table from Him, & listened to Him, & absorbed His teaching. And He changed us for all eternity. We beheld His glory in our midst.
You see, when Jesus came into our world He revealed not only Himself but He revealed the very nature & personality of God. So there is a part of God that we can see because of Jesus. And in the same way, God wants others to be able to see Jesus in us.
When we become Christians - when we confess Jesus Christ as our Lord & Savior, when we repent of our sins & are buried with Him in Christian baptism - the Bible says that our sins are forgiven as we are raised to walk in a newness of life, & we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
God’s Holy Spirit is placed deep inside of us. And much like a root down in the ground, no one can see Him there developing within us as we feed on God’s Word, as we pray, as we fellowship with other Christians. But as His influence grows in our life, He will not be hidden. He will be seen.
There is something about a person who is being changed inside by the Holy Spirit. He affects the way you talk with others, how you deal with situations, & even the expressions on your face. When your life becomes filled with kindness & tenderness I think that even the wrinkles on your face will be different, for Jesus really makes a difference in our lives.
ILL. A friend of mine told about attending a funeral where the ladies of the church had prepared a meal for the family & their guests. He said that as he watched those wonderful ladies serve the meal & take care of the family he said to himself, "I could have seen their faces anywhere & I would have known that they are Christians."
In the same way, you can often recognize people who have become hardcore sinners, too. You can see in their faces that they are resistant to God & rebelling against Him. The very way they live makes it known.
Some things are hidden inside of us, while other things are so obvious that all the world can see.
III. HE WAS TEMPORARY & YET HE IS ETERNAL
A. And finally, He was temporary, & yet He is eternal. Roots are temporary, aren’t they? Oh, they grow for a while, go through their cycle, & then die. And a part of Jesus was temporary, too. He came to us in human form & we rejected & crucified Him. We took that temporary human body of His & put it in a tomb & said, "It’s over. It’s done."
Roots may be temporary, but the stars appear to be eternal. When you step out in your yard & look up at the stars, stop for a moment & realize that the stars twinkling in the heavens over Brownsville are virtually the same stars that twinkled in the sky when God breathed into Adam the breath of life in the Garden of Eden.
They are the same stars that watched Noah build his ark, & Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai with the tablets of stone. They’re the stars that hid their faces when Jesus was crucified & laid in the tomb. And they’re the stars that sang together when He was raised from the dead. As far as human time is concerned, they’ve always been there.
There is a wonderful passage of Scripture back in Daniel 12. And it is not talking about Jesus, but about us. Daniel 12:3 says, "Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, & those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever & ever."
B. But we need to understand that there’s a part of us, our body, that’s very attached to this world. Our body is temporary & will only last for a brief period of time. Then it will return to the elements from which it came.
But the real you & the real me, will live forever. So if we’re going to live forever, my question to you this morning is, "Where will you spend eternity?" - with Jesus or without Him? You are the one who will decide for you. The decision is yours.
The good news it is my privilege to proclaim this morning is that Jesus wants to be your Savior & your Lord. He died for your sins, & now He offers himself to you. If you’ll accept Him, if you’ll allow Him to come into your heart & be a part of your life, then when the great trumpet sounds & the Lord comes again, you’ll be with Him for all eternity.
We give you the opportunity to accept Him this morning. We extend His invitation & pray that you will come as we stand & as we sing.
