Sermon Central
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The Resurrection Story Series
Contributed by Chris Anderson on Mar 15, 2023 (message contributor)
Summary: When Jesus was crucified, the message was relayed all across the land that the Messiah was dead. But later, on the third day, the fog would lift. What looked like a crushing defeat was nothing more than the set-up for an incredible victory of sin, death, and hell.
Everyone in this room has a relationship that we haven’t reconciled or have been unwilling to reconcile. Things have been said about you, done to you, or not done for you that you simply cannot forgive. If you’ve been here the last several weeks, that’s been the subject of many of our sermons. Someone smarter than me once said that forgiveness is often the gift that everyone likes to receive but no one likes to give. But guess what we see in John 21. That Jesus forgives and restores better than anyone else you know. And nothing you have done is bigger than the grace and mercy He offers. You cannot out-sin His forgiveness. Know how I know? Because of how He treated Peter here. Peter had stabbed Him in the back…denied even knowing Him in His most desperate hour. But Jesus offers reconciliation for repentant people. And in a world being dominated by a cancel-culture, I don’t know of a more needed reminder that God doesn’t cancel those who confess…instead He restores them to usefulness.
God offers mercy and if we would keep reading about Peter, we would learn that God used him in incredible ways in the early church. Don’t skip over that – not only did God forgive his past denial, He did not penalize him for the future. God didn’t cancel Peter – He restored Him. And this Easter, He will do the same thing for you that He did for Peter shortly after the FIRST Easter, if you will humble yourself, confess and turn from your sins, and turn to Jesus to receive forgiveness and mercy.
Let me wrap up by asking a question that was asked to the women when they arrived at the tomb on that first Easter morning. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” The reality is that some of you are doing the same thing today and you don’t even realize it. You’re searching for life in things that don’t offer it. It’s like running to a graveyard and trying to find love and friendship.
Here’s what I mean by that…you are searching for ultimate fulfillment in THINGS that cannot offer it. C.S. Lewis once said, “Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” You are running full speed down a dead-end road that leads to a graveyard. If you are pursuing a life of pleasurable experiences, how is that going to serve you when you are in the nursing home? If you are pursuing money, how is that going to serve you when you give it all away at death whether you want to or not? If you are pursuing business, what will your identity be when you retire and are replaced? If you are leveraging your life for the here and now, how is that going to serve you in the life to come? Let me ask this another way…what’s your 100-year plan?
You see, God has a 100-year plan for doubters and disappointers and it’s called Easter. In Easter, God raised Jesus from the dead and in doing so, He defeated sin, death, and hell. But listen to me carefully…Jesus is not offered to those who repeat a prayer and go on with the same old life. You see, Jesus is not a vaccine against Hell. Jesus’ offer to Peter and Thomas and everyone since them is to be willing to abandon the life they are living to follow Jesus BECAUSE when we die to self, we find life in Him. And if you repent of your sins and choose to follow Jesus, then at the end of your life’s race, you won’t find a graveyard, you will find a tomb that is absent of a body, and yet filled with love.
