Anchors for Your Soul
(1 Corinthians 15:3-5)
(Easter, Hope, Resurrection)
(Deductive)
Lucado writes,
Funny how Easter and taxs often fall on the same week.
They did this year. I began this week with 2 major tasks
Prepare an Easter Sermon and pay my taxes.
With apologies to the IRS, one seems very heavenly , the other very earthly
One minute I’m at Calvary, the next the checkbook.
One reminds of how God paid it all, and the next reminds me of how much I have to pay.
Both leave me grateful, first for Jesus dying for me and second for my 3 little tax-deductions.
Then it hit me! What a time to study God’s masterpiece plan to save his children.
For if the cross and Easter do not make senses on a common week full of common tasks, when does it make sense?
That is the beauty of the cross. And the relevance of the empty cave.
They both occurred in a normal week involving flesh and blood people and a flesh and blood Jesus.
It was an ordinary week packed with kids being dressed by impatient parents rushing off to work.
A week of dishes being washed and floors being swept.
Nature gave no clue that the week was different than any other thousand before
The sun took it’s habitual route. The clouds puffed the Judean Sky.
The grass was green and the cat-tails danced in the wind.
Why did God do that? Why did he make it in a ordinary week?
No pomp. No parade. No lights . No warnings.
I think I know why?
Because He wanted this holy week to be an anchor of your ordinary week.
A week full of hurts and disappointments.
He wanted the Cross and Easter message to be 2 anchors for those who have ever:
Felt the weight of yesterday’s failures.
For those who are tired of being slapped by the waves of broken dreams.
For the young mother who had been traded for a younger model.
For those who have had the policeman make a knock on the door.
For those who have crossed a line they thought they would never cross
For those who are familiar with the funeral songs as they lose their loved ones.
He wanted to give hope for those who feel like giving up? For those who want to wave the white flag of surrender?
For those who live with a constant fear of failure and the finality of death.
If you relate to any of those feelings. Then this message has been custom –tailored for you.
The Apostle Paul in our text today gives talks about the to F’s on the human report card of life.
Two burdens that are too big for any back, and too heavy for any biceps.
But in today’s text Paul gives us hope to turn these two F’s into an A
And that A stands for an anchor for our souls. Two anchors for an ordinary week.
Turn with me to 1 Corinthian 15: 3-5 and let’s retrieve this two anchors from the word for our souls.
Read the text.
The first anchor Paul gives for our souls in is verse 3
Because of the cross…
1.) My Failures are Not Fatal
Verse3
That is our first anchor and our first F’ word is Fatal.
Some of you may be saying, ” Why the cross? Easter is about the empty tomb."
Let me tell you cannot have Easter or an anchor for your soul until you have the cross.
The first anchor was polished when Christ died for our sins.
He died for our failures.
Our failures are not Fatal because of the cross.
Jesus took the blame for our failures.
And the punishment for our sins when deserved the fatality of our lives.
At Friday’s Good Friday service I told the audience that the Gospel writer Matthew had a camera at the cross.
And in his photo album. We can find three different pictures
In one of these pictures you can find your face in the crowd.
The first Photo was of those who were
Forced to the cross.
People like Simon of Cymene. Simon was forced to carry Jesus’ cross
I always said that even the few times I went to church I became a drug addict. Because my mom and grandmother drugged me all the way there.
Some of you are in that picture. The husband who comes out of obligation for his wife.
A mother that comes for her children. Others who come out of tradition.
Others who only come to make their community profile more polished.
They are all forced.
Here was the lesson from the first picture
They touched the cross but never let the cross touch them.
Simon had the horizontal beam of God’s love across his back, but was never changed by it.
Here is the lesson: You can be close to the cross but far from Christ
The second Photo was titled
Those who were Foolish at the Cross
This picture is people like the religious leaders that hurled insults at him.
And soldiers who play games at the foot of the cross.
You may be in this picture may be you too make a mockery of the cross with your life and lips.
People in this photo get so close to the timber of the cross but far from the blood.
We huddle around the cross and play our games of hypocrisy, gossip, and back biting.
SO close to the cross but far from Christ.
And you in this picture have a styrophoam anchor for you weary soul.
The third Picture Matthew took at the cross.
Is the one you want to be in. It is a picture of those who found
Forgives through the cross.
That the grace of God. Even if you are in the first two photos. You can jump out of them and into the third Polaroid.
God doesn’t care about the proofs he only desires you to be in the final family portrait of forgiveness.
And this photo is the only photo you can know that your failures are not fatal.
You can be forgiven. God cares more about where you going than where you came from.
Look at the cross. What do you see?
A minimum wage Roman Soldier drove a nail in his royal wrist.
Look at a beaten, slashed nail-suspended preacher. His face crimson with blood.
His bones peeking through the torn flesh, his body heaving for air.
For what? For You!
For you to know that your failures are not fatal.
How does he do that? How does Jesus Christ make our failures not fatal?
He took our place,. That is the doctrine of substitution
In John Macarthur’s sermon on the ministry of reconciliation he talks about how this happens.
How people find forgiveness through the cross.
Jesus lived a perfect life, so that his life would be accredited to your account.
That is the doctrine of substitution.
And all of your sins and all my sins and all the sins of everyone that ever lived or will ever live was imputed or charged against Jesus’ account.
That’s the doctrine of imputation.
Let me put it this way
On the cross God treated Jesus as if He lived your life.
So that he could treat you as if you lived His.
The great doctrine of imputation. Your sins are put to his account and His perfect life is accredited to your account.
Pause..
Max Lucado writes a lot of these words in his book, "No Wonder they call him a Savior"
"Like a master painter God reserved his masterpiece until the end.
All the earlier acts of love had been leading to this one.
God unveils the canvas and the ultimate act of creative compassion is revealed.
God on a cross.
The creator being sacrificed for the creation.
God convincing man once and for all that forgiveness still follows failure."
That is the first anchor for your soul. That because of the cross your failures are not fatal.
We can’t just hang around the cross because Paul writes in verse 17 that if Christ has not been risen from the dead then our faith is futile or in vain.
That was the first anchor, here is the second
Because of the Cross...
2.) My Death IS Not Final.
Look at verse 4
Paul is talking about that first Easter morning when the Kingdom of Death was repossessed and Hope took up the payments
It is interesting that Paul does not mention the empty tomb per se.
It alludes to the resurrection.
He assumes that the transformed lives that have been to the cross and seeing the empty tomb will be evidence enough.
That death is not final for the person who follows Jesus into he tomb and walks out the other side to eternity.
We learn from the cross and the cave that:
The living must die so that the dying may live.
Can I give you a life lesson?
It is much easier to die like Jesus, if you have lived like him for a life time!
And when you do.... God gives your soul a bedrock anchor that gives you the hope that you death and the death of your loved ones that trust in Jesus is not final!
Death is certain!
In fact, there iseven a web site www.deathclock.com that you can go to.
And it says it is the Internet’s friendly reminder that life is slipping away.
You type in your month and the year you were born. And you type in if are an optimist or a pessimist or normal. Most of you can not click "normal" so you would be one of the other two. ( laughter)
And in a click of a mouse a black screen with a skull will have your death clock counting down to your personal death day.
As of last night I have 1.4 billion seconds left to live.
Now in all honesty. Only God knows the day and hour of our death.
And I don’t believe my life is ticking away.
Jesus, said, I have come so that you may have life and have it more abundantly.
Friends in Jesus we aint living yet.
C.S. Lewis said, this life is only the title page for eternity for a Christian
Now there is two things you can do with death.
You can fear it. Or you can have hope in it.
Let me explain.
The year 1899 marked the deaths of two well- known men.
Dwight L Moody, the famous evangelist and Robert Ingersoll, the famous lawyer, orator and political leader.
The two men had many similarity.
Both were raised in a Christian home
Both were skilled speakers. Both drew huge crowds when they spoke.
But there was a striking difference between them.- their view of God
Innersole was an agnostic; he had no belief in the eternal, but stressed the importance of living only in the here a d now.
He made light of the bible….. the bible was a fable. And obscenity, a humbug, a sham and a lie.
He beloved there was a God but d id not believe he cared personally for each of us.
Dwight L Moody had a different conviction.
He dedicating his life to presenting a resurrected King to a dying people.
He embraced the Bible as the hope for humanity and the cross as a Turing point of history
He left behind a legacy of written and spoken words., imitations of education, churches and changed lives!
2 men. Both powerful speakers and influential leaders.
On rejected God ; the other embraced Him.
The impact of their decisions is seen most clearly the way they died…
Innersole died suddenly. The news of his death stunned his family. His body was kept at home for several day because his wife was reluctant to part with it. It was eventually removed for the sake of the family’s health.
Innersole’s remains were cremated and the public response to his passing was altogether dismal.
For man who puts all his hopes on the world, death was tragic and came without the consolation of hope…
Monody’s legacy was different. On December 22, 1899, Moody awoke to his last winter dawn. In his last slow measured words were
“Earth recedes, heaven opens before me.”
His son Will hurried across the room to his father’s side,
Father are you dreaming?” he asked
"NO! this is no dream Will", Moody said.
It is beautiful. It is like a trance.
"If this is death, it is sweet. God is calling me, ans I must GO. Don’t cal’ me back."
It was a graduation day. A day he hoped for and not feared.
There was no despair. Loved ones gathered around to sing praises to God.
Many remebered the words the evangelist spoken earlier that year in NY City.
Someday you will read in the papers that Moody is dead.. Don’t you believe a word of it.
At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now….
I was born of the flesh in 1837, I was born of he spirit in 1855.
That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the sprit shall live forever..
Dwight Moody had the second anchor for his soul!
He knew that his death was not final!
The next time you find yourself entombed in a darkened world of fear remember that.
The next time pain boxes you in a world of failures.
Remember the anchor of the cross
next time..................
Think about that musty tomb God chiseled into a tunnel to eternity
Because of the cross you failures are not final!
Because of the Cross you death is not final!
Conclusion: ( I wrote this made-up story)
It is the story of a young mother struggling to raise two young boys in Chicago.
Welfare is high and standards are low.
She resorts to selling her body to men to make ends meat.
While the boys are young and in bed , this seems to work fine.
Apart from the guilt and the diseases.
But when the boys got older, they got on, and she had to resign.
But little teen-age Thomas and Nathan though they were better off.
They could say little bags of green stuff for 40 bucks for the guy down the street and hey each would get $10.00 presale.
The new occupation grew to bigger sales and bags full of white stuff.
They drove new cars. Mommy had new clothes. No diesases . No Guilt.
Until……
Until one night the family was driving to the grocery store to pick up few items.
And a huge church on the corner was putting on a passion play.
They could see the cars lined up for blocks. People from all walks of life were standing in line.
Their curiosity got the best of them. They pulled over and went in.
They watched for the first time the life of Jesus in a passion play.
They watched him hang on a cross. They watched him be buried in a tomb.
They saw the smoke machine working hard to reenacted the power off the resurrection.
Silence. Tears. Tears running down the cheeks of Mommy , Tom and little Nathan.
Their tears flushed their souls of guilt and shame, and splashed on the third floor of thier hearts.
A Little chubby preacher walked onto the platform and asked if anyone would like to anchor their souls to the risen Christ?
Without hesitation, the family of three went forward to accept Jesus Christ as there Forgiver and anchor.
The family was radically changed. New life. New Hope No Shame.
They were at the church every time the doors were open.
The church paid for mommy do go back to school so she could become a nurse.
The boys grew up as fine young men. Active in the youth group.
Until…
A few years later the boys were driving home from a church concert.
They drove in the line of fire of the wrong people.
The two boys were shot down.
A reporter, went to the home of the mother to she how she was doing a few months after the e funeral
She had a picture of the boys cut out and pasted on the old brochure of the passion play from a few years earlier.
The reporter inquired, Why she did that?
To his amazement, here were her words,
I want this to be my comfort and reminder that because that night at the Church’s passion play, I learned that Jesus died to make room for my boys in heaven.
And because we accepted Him he will accept me and my boys, regardless of what we have done.
And because Jesus rose from the grave me and my boys followed Him to heaven. Waiting for me to hold them again.
(pause...............)
I still think it is ironic that the IRS and the Empty tomb are saluted in the same week.
Maybe it’s appropriate. Because in a normal week that is filled with death and taxes
We too can find two anchors for our souls!
TO THE READER: SO I CAN BETTER HELP YOU, IF THIS SERMON WAS NOT HELPFUL AND YOU CLICK "NO" BELOW, LET ME KNOW WHAT IT LACKED OR WHY IT DID NOT HELP. CONTACT ME AT NEWLIFE@NCKCN.COM ( I CAN TAKE CRITICISM :0 )
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