Resurrection Mercy

A. How great it is to worship the Lord together today, on the Sunday that many refer to as Easter Sunday, or Resurrection Sunday, because it correlates to the Sunday that Jesus arose from the grave two thousand years ago.

1. Praise God that the tomb of Jesus is still empty!

2. Turn to the person next to you and say, “God loves you.”

3. Now say, “Christ died and rose for you.”

4. Now say, “What’s gotten into the preacher today?”

B. The story is told of a group of 4 people who were flying in a small, 4 passenger plane.

1. The group of 4 included the pilot, a minister, and two teenagers, one of whom had just won an award for being “The Smartest Teenager in the World.”

2. As they were flying along, the pilot turned to the three passengers and said, “I’ve got some bad news and some worse news. The bad news is: we’re out of gas and the plane is going down. The worse news is: I only have three parachutes on board.”

3. This meant, of course, that someone would have to go down with the plane.

4. The pilot said, “I have a wife and 3 children at home and they need me,” and with that, he grabbed one of the chutes and jumped out of the plane.

5. The smartest teenager in the world was next to speak and said, “I’m the smartest teenager in the world, and I might be the one to invent the cure for cancer or bring about world peace. Everyone is counting on me,” and with that he grabbed the second chute and jumped.

6. The minister then spoke up and said to the other teenager, “Son, you take the last parachute. I’ve made my peace with God and am ready to meet Him. Take the last parachute and go.”

7. The teenager quickly replied, “Relax, minister, the smartest teenager in the world jumped out of the plane with my back pack rather than a chute, so we both are good to go.”

C. How often have we all made huge blunders and colossal mistakes?

1. Thankfully, most of them are not final or fatal like the mistake of the teenager in the story.

2. But when we make those terrible mistakes of judgment or when we go astray and wander into sin, it can have devastating effects on our lives.

D. This week’s disaster in Baltimore is a great illustration of how everything can come crumbling down in a matter of seconds when something goes wrong and goes off course.

1. A bridge that was properly engineered and had been standing solidly and usefully for almost 50 years was brought down quickly by a huge powerless ship that was adrift.

2. Thankfully, it doesn’t appear to have been a deliberate plan of destruction, although a deliberate plan would have been equally as effective.

E. Satan, our arch enemy, loves to create deliberate plans for destruction.

1. He loves to lead us astray and to lure us into his traps.

2. And when he leads us astray and lures us into his traps, the negative impacts on our lives are devastating and destructive, both in earthly (physical) terms and in heavenly (spiritual) terms.

F. The Bible tells story after story of Satan’s destructive works as he leads people astray and into sin.

1. We don’t have to go very far into the Bible before we see the first trap that Satan set.

2. In the third chapter of the Bible, Genesis 3, we read about Adam and Eve, the very first human beings, succumbing to Satan’s temptation and committing the first sin.

3. But as you know that was just the beginning.

4. Throughout the rest of the Bible, we read about the big falls of some of God’s most prominent people.

5. Like Moses, who was so frustrated by God’s people’s complaints, that he deliberately disobeyed God’s instructions – God told him to speak to the rock, but Moses struck the rock and not just once, but twice.

6. Or what about David, the 2nd king of Israel, who was called the man after God’s own heart?

a. When lust filled his heart for a beautiful woman named Bathsheba, he let nothing stop him from sleeping with her.

b. And then after she became pregnant as result of their hook up, he tried to cover things up by making sure her husband died in battle, which made her a widow, so that he could marry her.

G. I guarantee you that if Adam and Eve, and Moses, and David could have “do overs,” they would all do differently.

1. If Adam and Eve really understood that their act of disobedience would bring sin and death into the world, then I’m sure they would have tried harder to avoid committing that sin.