Thank you once again, Doug, the musician, singers, everybody. Thank you for the It's a lot of hard work and it really paid off. So thank you for that We pray with me Heavenly Father, we are grateful again this day for the truth that we have sung the truth We've professed truth. We proclaim that Christ has risen. He has risen indeed and that's why we're here today We're not here out of ritual. We're not here because this is something we're supposed to do on Sundays We're here because an encounter with the living and risen Christ has touched our hearts and changed our lives Father in my prayer now that you would be pleased to speak through me for your glory For the building up with the body of Christ and for the advance of your kingdom You know the kingdoms of this world and I make my prayer in Jesus the living Christ's name. I'm in Well, they're not a whole lot of Times or points in history we can look at and say that one day that day Everything changed that day that event that changed everything there are a few of those little congregational Participation here. I say to you October 12, 1492. You know that was the day that Columbus said now I stuck the day he's not the day he said sail He left August one from Paulus fame, but he touched ground at a place he called San Salvador a little island The Bahamas chain holy savior was the name of it if I say to you October 31st 1517 my reformed brothers and sisters, you know That was the day Martin Luther a German monk nailed a scroll with 95 issues 95 T.C He wanted to Discuss that was the day that he launched the Reformation that was the day that historians will tell you that he began the modern era July 4th 1776 You know is a day that our founding fathers 55 of them put their names to Piece of paper called the Declaration of Independence began this country the second country in history second nation in history ever started by covenant How about if I say to you August 6,1945 August 6,1945 That's the day Colonel Paul Tevitz Command pilot of the B-29 he named the Enola Gay dropped the first of the only two Atomic weapons every use the only two nuclear weapons every use New war on planet Earth freighted God the last two ever use he dropped on the sea of Hiroshima began the end of that bloody conflict World War II Where July 20th 1969 That's the day a man the alarm strong the command pilot of the lunar module the Eagle First set foot on the lunar landscape followed by Buzz Aldrin. That's the day the first time a human being Had successfully landed on another celestial body and then returned safely. Those are days Where everything changed there are others there are others, but those are days and events that changed the world forever Here's one more. It's the most important one of all We'll read about from Luke chapter 24 Dr. Luke writes on the first day of the week Very early in the morning the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb They found the stone rolled away from the tomb But when they entered they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus While they were wondering about this suddenly two men and clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them and their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground But the men said to them why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen Remember how he told you while he was still with you in Galilee The Son of man must be delivered to the hands of simple men be crucified and on the third day be raised again and Then they remembered his words Let me set the contacts for you if you haven't been reading the gospels you weren't where this is past Thursday night for mind The Thursday it's been very tumultuous week in Jerusalem It begins in earnest on the day that we call Palm Sunday with the triumphant entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem followed very quickly by the last supper with his disciples on Thursday night The betrayal the arrests the mock trial the mockery of trials the scourging the crucifixion and hasty burial on Friday and after that It was very quiet Very somber and for all they knew for an eventful on Friday night and Saturday But it all changed on Sunday morning See the resurrection of Christ is the central events the central fact of our faith Jesus was crucified dead and buried and on the third day he rose again from the dead Amen, we just confessed that not long ago in this very service more than that It's a day that changed everything even more than all the others. Why what's so important about that? I'm glad you asked that question It's a day that changed the way we look at religion The way we look at religion changed it ends by so why I mean don't all religions teach the same thing I saw that very comment or that very question posted on a blog just this past week and you know if it's on the internet You know it must be true, right Just checking I love when people ask that question doing all religions teach the same thing I tell me you got to start what we believe about God see the Eastern religions They're called pantheistic the God is everything all is one and all is God in that sense they are called monistic They teach that God is an impersonal thing a unity of all of life when they may be polytheistic There may be hundreds or even thousands of gods and goddesses a unity of everything They believe in karma not grace what goes around comes around that's it period you do well in this life You're elevated to something higher maybe a Presbyterian who knows you do poorly in this life you come back as a cockroach or a Baptist I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I love my Baptist brothers and sisters. That's why I pick on them. I know they can take it I have no concept of God as a personal or a Personal God or even a person at all. They have no concept of that. He's impersonal and the law of the universe is simply karma Now in the other what we call more or less Western religions the major three being due in chronological or Judaism Christianity and Islam We have this in common We call Abraham as our father and we all believe that God is a person that he created the world out of nothing That he is not part of his creation But he is separate from and above his creation now we diverge greatly from there Our Jewish forebears and I have the greatest of respect for our Jewish forebears if you come from a Jewish heritage I thank you for what Jews and Judaism have given to the world and to our faith Jews believe God's a person. They don't they don't believe he's the Heavenly Father of Jesus now the New Testament They believe you get to have in those that do believe in heaven. They don't all they believe that you get to have in my acts of Benevolence by acts of charity by acts of kindness and passion They do not share our belief in the vicarious atoning sacrifice of the spotless Lamb of God Jesus of Nazareth They don't believe that that could possibly justify them before God. They do not share our belief in salvation by grace and Then jumping over chronologically in history jumping over to Islam Muslims do not believe in salvation by grace either they believe that they get to heaven by obedience to the Quran period They believe that God is Simply a great accountant in the sky that the end of every life you'll meet us and you will have a tally Well, the good things we have done and all the bad things we have done which everyone outweighs Good outweighs the bad you go to heaven Men get 72 virgin women you get. I don't know something short end of I guess and And if you are if you're bad outweighs the good you go straight to hell. That's it. There's no grace There's no concept of grace in Islam Christianity is alone in believing We are justified made riding God's sight By the grace of God through faith in Christ alone We also believe that there is one God believe we believe he exists in three persons Father's son and the Holy Spirit and then at one point in time God sent forth his son born of a born of a woman And that that son grew into a man Who took upon himself the sins of the world and actually became the sins of the world? Your sins and my sins and he paid the price that our sins deserve When his body was rent and his blood was poured out on an old rugged cross We believe we get to heaven by God's grace who faith in that atoning sacrifice that Christ has made for us period our good deeds add precisely zero To the equation. Well, why do them then camp? Simply as a way of expressing our gratitude to God for all he's done for us We don't do good works in order that we might be saved No, we simply do good works because we have been saved as response to our salvation And if that sounds to you if that's startling That sounds to you like it's unbelievable if that sounds to you like it's too good to be true Congratulations, you got it. You have understood it better than our great many theologians I could name Dr. D James Kennedy What said in a sermon that someone said to a pastor look there are hundreds of religions maybe even thousands of religions in the world What makes you think yours is right? The pastor said no my friend near mistaken. There are really only two religions in the whole world do and done Do and done all the other religions tell you how to get to heaven by what you must do Do these good things and what you must not do Avoid doing these bad things all the other religions in the world teach you some variation off of those themes of do and don't do Christianity is alone in preaching the gospel of Done because when Jesus About his head on that cross with his arms Spread out his hands and his feet nailed to a wooden Roman jibbit When Christ died on the cross and about his head he said it is finished It's done and Those are the only two religions in the whole wide world Christianity is alone and believing that the dead is paid in full do or done Which is yours? Which is yours? The resurrection that day it changed everything it changed the way we view religion it changed the way we view sin It changed how we look at sin a London newspaper decades ago sent out a questionnaire a one sentence questionnaire one question to a bunch of the leading intellectuals and influencers in London at the time what is wrong with the world GK Chester and sent back a two-word reply I am because GK Chester understood it. It's my sin and And it's yours and that is what has gone wrong with the world our culture Especially our dominant media culture. They think sins joke They think it's an archaic term something that belonged to a former more privy of lesson lightened time Alan Blue made the comment over 25 years ago in our culture the only sin left is intolerance the only virtue left is tolerance What would it be like if someone could get airtime and say hey Charlie Sheen you're not winning you're Sinning what would the what would the response be from our dominant culture? They'd either be scandalized outraged or they'd laugh us right off the screen the cross of Jesus that horrifying death of Jesus on that Roman jibbit That should be the end of any notion that sin is a joke Sin caused Jesus his life Sin is what he died for it's not a joke It's not simply an alternative. It's a matter of life and death the death of Jesus. See we're not for the resurrection We wouldn't pay any attention to the cross of Christ We have paid no attention to the crucifixion. Jesus would be one more misguided Roman martyr who fell afoul of the Roman authorities for getting a little too big for his sandals Jesus would be no more important in history than maybe Judas Mccabius Maybe even less so Jesus would just be one more misguided martyr his death only makes sense to us as an intoning sacrifice for our sins The cross means a death that only man could owe and required a payment that only God could make and that is the beauty and The genius of the gospel that one man God and man together could go to the cross to make that payment They don't need to pay for that death the only man could owe and make that payment the only God could make the resurrection It's the validation of all of that. That's why the Apostle Paul About 30 years after the cross of Christ had taken place the Apostle Paul had an encounter with the risen Christ on the road of Damascus and not Paul on his Backside and changed everything for the Apostle Paul and changed everything for the course of Christian and the rest of Western world The Apostle Paul wrote almost at the end of the letter the first Corinthians his first letter. He said this But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead How can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead then not even Christ has been raised and if Christ has not been raised Our preaching is useless and so is your faith more than that We are then found to be false witnesses about God If we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead, but he did not raise him if in fact they are not raised For the dead are not raised and Christ has not been raised either and if Christ has not been raised your faith is futile You are still in your sins than those also have fallen asleep in Christ are lost if only for this life. We have hope in Christ We are to be pitted more than all men You understand that the resurrection is the validation of the cross and the cross and the toning sacrifice for our sins without either one of those were lost We're fools and we're kidding ourselves but being here this morning all this work all this music very nice nonsense You're being here your idiots listening to a bigger idiot if Christ has not been raised The cross and the tomb go together in the Christian gospel both were occupied for a short time both were abandoned and Both were defeated the resurrection changed the way we look at Religion and truth it changed the way we look at sin and forget it's changed the way we look at life I should say maybe change the way we look at life and death See as we've been reading through the gospels this year again every time I read them I see something new it occurred to me as I read through them again as I've been reading through them again How rarely you ever see Jesus say anything like exactly Peter? That's right John Very good for you James Let me put a gold star on that paper Thomas right next year a plus plus You never see Jesus saying to the disciples. You got it guys way to go Instead if you know much about the gospels you know the porch that they paint of the 12 disciples They're the three stooge of the 12 stooge of the first century and you must remember to who wrote those gospels Either the disciples themselves or people that got their information from the disciples So they're telling on themselves when they talk about themselves being bumbling stumbling Fumbling slow to understand believe Peter always put in his foot in his mouth And then the night Jesus betrayed They all ran off and deserted him Peter denied him These are not the guys you want to have your back in a fight These are not the guys you want to have your back period and yet Within a few short weeks of the crucifixion of Christ They're very public defeat of the man from Nazareth within a very few short weeks of the night They'd run off and betrayed him and abandoned him and denied him Here's Peter In front of the very temple in center of Jerusalem fearlessly boldly proclaiming Christ as Lord as Triumphant over the grave and over sin and over death and hell and John standing right beside with him And the other possible boldly proclaiming the truth of the gospel of Christ and They were dragged before the authorities and they were Reprimand they were ostracized and they were beaten and they were told in air and makes shut up and They said Whether it's right inside of God Do they men or may God you decide that's for us? We cannot help Preaching this gospel. We cannot stop speaking the things that we have seen you've heard You need to know except for John all the original 12 died horrible deaths. You just killed himself The other 10 they were put to death in the most horrific of ways John lived to be an old man But he died and he suffered a he died after having suffered a great deal in his life Paul who was brought in as sort of the 13th apostle Paul legend tells us history tells us to be headed in Rome at the hands of Nero Men don't die for things they know are not true And yet every single one of these men died for the sake of Christ because they would not deny The resurrection of Jesus that he had conquered death and sin and hell what happened? Transform these men from a miserable band of spiritual losers into an unstoppable team of spiritual Gnambraes One thing and one thing only they saw their resurrected Lord and Savior with their own eyes And it made them afraid of nothing and no one they weren't afraid of death because they'd seen through death And on to the other side and the one who showed that to them was a resurrected Christ Dr. David Siemens a missionary to Africa tells him a Muslim became a Christian in Africa Some of his friends asked him why have you become a Christian? He answered well, it's like this Suppose you were going down a road and you suddenly came to a fork the road fork to do direction You didn't know which way to go and there at the fork of the road were two men One dead and one alive Which one would you ask which way to go? And that's why I have followed the risen Christ Whereas before we had a hope there was life after death the resurrection of Christ proves There's life after death the resurrection chains the way we look at religion truth It's sin and forgiveness and life and death And it changed the way we look at God himself People have always wondered if there was a God every culture every tribe every people They've always wondered if there's a God They've always concluded there was one different ideas about what he or she or it were like theories and theologies abound I've already described some of the major belief systems to you this morning what they believe about the God about God or the God The oversold or the one or whatever The message of the Bible and especially the gospels is unique that God is not some distant disconnected Uninvolved impersonal deity He's not a feeble see now grandfather in heaven sitting back in the rocking chair on the front porch of heaven saying oh boys We'll be boys. Let them have their fun He's not a he's not the cosmic watchmaker of deism You know he created everything wound it up put him put it in motion and then went on vacations. I'll see at the end He's not the all unifying one of Easter mysticism He's not the force of Star Wars or Zen Buddhism either This is a God the Bible's God the God of Jesus of the gospels This is a guy who gets involved in his creation He rolls up his sleeves he gets his hands dirty. He gets them so dirty That he puts on flesh Becomes one of us birth childhood teenage years early adulthood Family job acceptance and rejection suffering and death Dorothy Sayers. I'd like to read this S air part of it to you at least once a year Dorothy Sayers wrote for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is Limited in suffering and subject to sorrows and death He had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine Whatever game he has playing with his creation He's kept his own rules and played fair He can exact nothing for man. He's not exacted from himself He's himself gone through the whole of human experience From the trivial irritations of family life and the crampings restrictions of hard work and lack of money To the worst horrors of pain and humiliation Defeat despair and death When he was a man he played the man He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile Ladies and gentlemen, this is not just an academic treatment of some ancient religious story I've spoken to you about how the resurrection of Christ has changed everything From the way we look at religion and truth Sin and forgiveness Life and death God and man all come together at the cross of Christ It's not just something we were for jewelry. It is the center point The central event of life on this earth. It's the central fact of the universe of our existence It's not an academic treatment Everything I have said to you this morning I would say to any Like group of Christians or open-minded people seekers inquire skeptics Everything I've said to you if you were a bunch of skeptics I might go more into the historicity the evidence is the proofs of the resurrection. They are there They are compelling everything. I've said to you. I would say to any other group. I want to say something now that I need to say to the family of Kendall Presbyterian Church
over this past year I've had the privilege
The privilege of bearing more of my friends than I can recall in your spirit in any time in my life I have sat right here in this place And looked out over the body. I'm another friend or family member from this church They have died Suddenly they have died after a long battle with cancer Here's one thing I would say they have in common as I have sat with these people as I've held their hands as I have prayed As I've watched some of them die
They have faced their death their diagnosis their treatments their death itself They have faced it with a courage and a grace and a conviction and a hope That this was not the end that we were not saying goodbye forever, but simply I'll see you later They have faced it because of one thing and one thing only They knew in their hearts that the resurrection of Christ means this life is not all there is There's life after death. There's heaven for those who placed their trust in Christ and Christ alone
They knew where they were headed And so they could face death for the imposter that he is They could stare death eyeball to eyeball and say I win you lose And I'll spend the rest of my life eternal life in heaven. We got almighty
I would say this in closing this morning everybody in this room I hope you have many many many more years decades I hope that God calls me home You'll come to my funeral find something nice to say about me. I do I hope that But I know this One day God will call every single one of us to stand before him and give an account In that day what will you say if you're going to recount how good you've been or the churches you belong to let me save you the trouble God is not impressed My only hope As a pastor as a husband as a father now a grandfather as one who's tried to be a Christian and a sincere one if given it my effort As one who's tried to be a good man a good father a good husband a good pastor I will not put any of that on the table before God with my day comes. I will simply say to him I placed my trust in the crucified Dead buried and resurrected Christ and Christ the known And I will hear those words well done good and faithful well done entered into the joy of your master forever When your day comes will you face it with the same courage and conviction and trust and hope and certainty of eternal life that these others I've just mentioned you have done
Ages Fernandez said this Philosophy's point to the truth Jesus said I am the truth moralism's point to the way Jesus said I am the way Fall religions point to the life. Jesus said I am the life and as his calling card is credential He left behind and empty tomb Christ is risen Let's pray together Lord God Almighty we thank you for the truth That you revealed to us in your written word and most especially in the living word That your son came and he was born our birth and he lived our life and he died our death He was resurrected with our resurrection for those who will look to him and place Our hope and our faith and our confidence in Christ and Christ alone Father my prayer this day this moment for those of us who've placed our trust in Christ That we will remember once again how good and how gracious you have been to us and the promises that you've kept for us Most especially the promise of eternal life in Christ And for that man or woman a young person who's here today who does not have that hope in that certainty That today Easter Sunday Be the day the he or she would open their hearts and their minds to Christ The place of trust in him this day forward now and forever for I make my prayer in his name. Amen
We men thank you again for being with us today And now receive the Lord's benediction Go down the love of God the Father the grace and mercy of Christ the risen son And the fellowship and companionship of God the Holy Spirit and live the life. Amen