Thank you Mark and Kerry Well, it's always a great privilege for me to get to do this to be able to stand before you and Unfold God's word It's a particular honor to be able to do so on a Sunday like Easter when I recognize There's a lot of people who aren't ordinarily here at Christ the King and So it's it's a way to responsibilities a little bit intimidating and I want to invite you before I begin to ask God to help me and To help you we're going to be talking this morning about how God and the resurrection is broken through to us I want to invite you silently right now to just ask God to break through first to me and Then to you so would you bow your heads right now and silently ask the Lord to do that?
Father, I do thank you so much for the privilege of this time And I pray that you would now take my mind and actually think through it that you would take my lips and speak through them And that you would take all of our hearts and set them on fire with love for your risen son to save your Jesus and his name we pray Come in Well, it's a great privilege also for Ellen and me to have my parents in town this weekend for Easter weekend and yesterday My father and I did something that we've done regularly since I was nine years old. We went out and played tennis and And you know as I think about my life and some of the most precious memories Many of them occurred on the tennis court with my father But I got to be candid with you It always it wasn't always as much fun as it has been in more recent years because early on when I was just learning to play I mean he was merciful. He was he was merciless He would take it to me every time and just slaughter me and I don't know about you But it's never quite as much fun to lose as it is to win Chalk it up to the red hair, but you know the anger would get to me and it just wasn't always the best of situations But then after persevering over time There was a breakthrough and I won and it's been a lot more fun ever since Now We all have breakthrough moments in our lifetime many of them probably for you are in the realm of sports last year in Houston It was a breakthrough moment that the aftros made it to the World Series. Maybe this year. They'll break through a little bit further When you think of the exhilaration that comes from breakthrough moments in sports They pay all in comparison of course to more monumental breakthroughs Imagine for instance where we would be worldwide if Jonas Saul hadn't broken through and discovered the polio vaccine Just imagine where we'd be Imagine where we'd be if the allied forces hadn't broken through in the beaches of Normandy and Provelled against the Nazi regime in Hitler and just think where we'd be Imagine where we'd be if Steve Jobs hadn't broken through and invented the iPod I mean it would just be disastrous
Well of course there's some breakthroughs that are Monument all in others that are just really cool When you think about your own life There are areas. I'm sure where you can pinpoint you say there's a real breakthrough right there in my career In my marriage in my family And then I'm sure there's also areas in your life where you'd recognize you know, I just feel stuck I feel powerless and Maybe I've given up hope But I really more than anything long for breakthrough for there to be dramatic change. We're all there if we're honest And you know, there's probably no more significant than really important relationships in your life You've got an important relationship in your life. You just feel like it's stuck like you closed in And there's no breakthrough. That's what you're really long for Well in the Bible we learn that in the most profound relationship in all of life Our relationship with God that that's how it was that because of human rebellion Human beings following our first parents Adam and Eve We told God that we didn't need his teaching. We didn't need his guidance We didn't need to submit to him. We could go our own way and find ourselves And so as the prophet Isaiah says we all are like sheep and we've gone our own way And as a result all sorts of chaos and difficulty and challenges have flooded in And what you and I find is that we are broken down That we're frozen in our relationship with God and what we need more than anything else is a dramatic breakthrough Well the good news is that in the resurrection in the Easter event What the Bible proclaims is that God has indeed broken through In monumental ways it is the event of the ages and the repercussions are unbelievable You know when you think about the New Testament authors It's sort of like the popular television show CSI crime scene investigators All of these New Testament authors are sort of standing back Intently observing the event of the resurrection And meditating reflecting looking for clues and then writing down the pages of the New Testament All that God had embedded in this incredible breakthrough event And probably the high water mark of distilled theological reflection on the resurrection is in the passage that we have before us this morning It builds various red a segment of 1 Corinthians 15 what I'd like to do in this very admittedly difficult passage Is sort of in a panoramic view from 20,000 feet look at this incredible chapter that is like a pot of gold And what we want to do is pick out of this pot of gold three golden nuggets and hold them up and admire The profundity of what God has done for us in breaking through at the resurrection and getting at the question What are the implications for me in the resurrection God's breakthrough event the three nuggets that we want to focus on are these that in the resurrection God has broken through to anchor us in the past To assure us of our future and to bring about powerful affecting transformation in our present day to day life all right, so those three things first of all God has broken through in the resurrection to anchor our life in the past Now I don't know about you, but oftentimes in my own experience and as I talk to people I find that We feel out of control that we are being pushed and tugged From all different directions that were like a little tiny boat on the midst of a Very turbulent sea and the currents are rough and they're about to overwhelm us A lot of us feel that way. I mean there are just so many challenges and temptations and fears and regrets and obstacles and emails. I mean it just doesn't stop And then for some of you it's not so much that you feel out of control as it is You just feel that you are drifting at sea that you have no real grounding no direction What both groups need those who feel out of control and those who feel adrift But they both need but we all need is an anchor we need a grounding In life and and really that's what Paul is getting at more than anything in this whole chapter because he gets to the end of it and he says this in verse 58 therefore another words the end game of everything we're talking about is this be steadfast Immovable and there was life is so complicated so difficult But if you want to be anchored if you want to have a firm grounding in life you will find it only in the breakthrough event Of all the ages the resurrection of Jesus Christ because What Paul then does in the first 11 verses of first Corinthians 15 is he says Because that anchoring that grounding in life will come only through what the Bible refers to as the gospel The gospel is the good news about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ And that's what I mean by anchoring us in the past. I mean Face it a lot of us live our lives in the past There's been some horrible event in our past that has defined you and shaped you and you just you're stuck in that You can't get away from that or what people think about you either in the past or your peers now Or you're projecting out in the future based on the past experiences of your life And what the Bible is saying is when you base your life on those dynamics which most of us do if we're honest We will simply drift and we'll fill out of control but if In exchange We base our life in the grounding of Jesus has passed His life death burial and resurrection We will find stability and anchoring in our life. That's what Paul says at the beginning verse three For I delivered to you as a first importance and in other words you want to keep the main thing the main thing in this Overly confused life here's what it is That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures that he was buried that he was raised in the third day in accordance with the scriptures The scriptures the scriptures What the scriptures do is they show us the truth about Jesus and about ourselves How we need that angry and that's painful to see sometimes my parents while they're here staying in our oldest daughter Anna's room and my dad was thanking Anna because they had to you know Looter out of their room for the weekend and thanking her for that my dad said the one thing though He really wasn't that thankful for was the mirror that sits on her vanity Because this one of those mirrors that really magnifies everything And he says I look into that and I'm scared. I mean it's a little bit too close for comfort everything is magnified Okay, that's what the Bible does You look into the Bible and it's a mirror that magnifies everything It's so easy to hide our imperfections our frailties our sin From other people but you can never hide from God and his word shows us the reality of the condition of our soul To be anchored to keep the main thing the main thing Is to recognize and admit and confess before God the reality that we see in his word about ourselves And then trust in the reality that the Bible teaches about Jesus that he died for our sins. We don't have to live in our own past With the guilt of all of our frailties and fallenness we can live in the hope of the resurrection Being anchored in Jesus's death for us And Paul goes on he's saying this is so important that he highlights how the resurrection Was not something that happened in secret I mean there was at least 15 different occasions where Jesus appeared after he rose from the dead with people talking with them Eating with them interacting with them touching them There was even one instance where Paul said there were 500 people at once And he says you know basically you could go and interview them because most of them were still living at that time I mean this is an event where you know If CNN and Fox News it existed in that day they would have been there on the spot covering it live and interviewing everyone It's not like so many other strands of teaching in life because listen We're always going to anchor our life in something someone else's opinion some form of teaching and what Christianity claims is to be the unique Message the grounding anchoring hope of life I find it interesting there's a gallop poll taken that shows that 80 for excuse me 84% of people who do not go to church Believe Jesus rose from the dead There's a disconnect. I mean it's very post-modern of course But all you got all these people to believe Jesus rose from the dead and yet the carryover the obvious repercussions in a person's life the response don't seem to come forward What the resurrection is as an anchoring grounding hope is like a giant billboard That says you've got to come to terms with who you really are With the reality of Jesus who didn't claim to just be another religious leader or philosopher He claimed to be the way the truth the life And you say I know but that's that exclusive stuff about Christian faith. It's always bothered me But we will always base our life on the teachings of someone You might say why'd rather Jesus to be just a good moral teacher sort of someone that I can lean on as a consultant In my life, maybe you've got you know other religious leaders or philosophers like Plato Confucius or practically speaking maybe it's Oprah and Dr. Phil. I don't know who it is for you But what Jesus claimed was not to be a good teacher But to be a savior see and that's the difference because if you're still sitting here going well So I don't really get the import of this for me Here's the difference if you're in your home at night You and your family and everyone's safe and all of a sudden someone breaks through unannounced uninvited That's an offense. I mean you're gonna call the police get that person out of there But if on the other hand you're in your home at night with your family and a fire breaks that and you're all trapped And you're going to perish and then someone breaks through Unannounced uninvited and rescues you That's an altogether different experience That's the picture you have in the Bible That we've got to wake up looking in the mirror of the Bible and recognize that we are trapped in This condition called sin where we're estranged from God and Jesus has broken through in his death burial and resurrection Having delivered us from our sin Do you believe that? How do you respond? Can you say well? I've got to be honest with you I'm not I've had enough experiences with Christianity or with the church. It's like the little child is at the beach And they're all geared up to go into the water and they run down to the water and dip their toe into the ocean And it is frighteningly cold Not that often happens of course in Galveston, but you know They feel it and then they just freak out and run away a lot of you Have dipped your foot into the waters of Christianity and the church and it's been way too cold And you've run away And if that's where you are this morning. I've got good news for you. You're in good company The author of this passage the apostle Paul was in exactly the same mode He cared less about Christianity In fact, he was so opposed to it He was leading up a movement to extinguish the Christian faith in this first century Until something happened Until Jesus broke through to Paul He talks about that in this passage says I'm the least of all the apostles one born untimely But I am what I am by the grace of God see that's the wonderful thing about God's grace He doesn't wait for us to invite him into we doesn't wait for us to invite him into our lives He breaks through unannounced at just the right time when we are powerless When we're about to be consumed and he rescues us Has Jesus broken through in your life? Do you have an anchor in him? That's the first nugget in 1 Corinthians 15 the second one which will move more quickly on this one Is not only in the resurrection has God broken through to anchor us in the past But secondly to assure us of our future I don't know about you, but as I talk to people I'm not sure there's anything that's more frightening than impending death It one level it's kind of humorous because it's an amazing statistic one out of every one will die And yet we'd like to keep it at arm's length We like to play ostrich and stick our head in the Santa but 10 that we're not going to face death It's what the philosopher Peter creeps called our most crudely obvious problem And the other great philosopher Woody Allen said I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens I think that's our sentiment as well It is what Paul called in this great chapter the last enemy It is a violent intruder on God's sacred beautiful created order It's an aberration. It's not what was originally intended to happen But because of human rebellion against God death ensued And the wonderful thing about the resurrection at this point Is that the resurrection again like a giant billboard is shorthand for this That we need not fear death Because Jesus Christ has not only been able to be resurrected But in his resurrection what he did was swallow up death It's like death is the tiny little boat out in the sea and the victory Jesus accomplished in his resurrection Swallowed up death our last enemy. That's how Paul puts it in this chapter There's a story of a man Who was driving in an automobile with his children to the funeral of his wife their mother And you can imagine incredibly uniquely somber moment They were stopped in an intersection and this semi pulled out in front of them turning And at that moment this massive shadow was cast by the semi over the car The father saw a teaching point and he said Children would you rather be struck by the semi or by the shadow And they said well of course the shadow and he says that's exactly what happened to your mother Because Jesus Was hit by the semi of our own sin and God's just judgment upon it We're only hit by the shadow Yes, we will have to face physical death unless Jesus returns prior to our death And that still is frightening at one level, but we can be assured of our sure sure in certain life Because of what Jesus has done in his resurrection The Philosopher Socrates 400 years before Jesus was born drink the poison himlock and lay down to die Shall we live again his friends pressed upon him And he pondered I hope so but no man can know for sure The resurrection says there is a man who knows for sure Because Jesus Christ conquered death Claiming to be the way the truth in the life He is the one that speaks authoritatively and his word has been validated Inventicated by his resurrection you can trust in him Listen if you want to know how to get to the moon you don't come talk to me you talk to a number of you out there who worked for NASA If you want to find the way Across the most frightening thing in life death You go to one who is conquered it to Jesus and he will show you the way He said indeed I am the resurrection and the life he who believes in me Though he died yet shall he live do you believe that that's the question the resurrection is begging for you to ask honestly of your soul The great theologian and Oxford professor John O and years ago land as deathbed His assistant was riding his final words in the way of a memo to his friends and relatives The first words that She wrote down where I am still in the land of the living And he yelled out stop scratch that out Use these words. I am still in the land of the dying But I hope soon to be transported into the land of the living That's the picture the hope the assurance the breakthrough assurance of the resurrection that we have In the resurrection God has broken through to anchor our life in the past Assure us of our future and finally the final little golden nugget in this wonderful pot of gold call first Corinthians 15 Is that God in the resurrection of Jesus has broken through To in a powerful way affect our day-to-day life Do you like the people watch? I do I love it You know when there is a place where you can just sit and observe all the various strands and colors of humanity Well, when you stroll through the pages of first Corinthians That sort of like you're standing on the sideway side lines of a very busy boulevard All of life in its most colorful array is represented there. There's arguments and anger There's lawsuits and scandal there's sex and shopping. There's worship and work There's wisdom and folly. There's pride and prejudice and insecurity religion and politics and that's just the church. I mean, it is amazing what you have in first Corinthians And you go through all of this and you're sort of worn out but entertained nonetheless and you get to chapter 15 And all of a sudden you have this aridite Theological statement on the resurrection It must have just been an add-on Paul knew he needed something else to at know It was a mighty climax Because what God was saying was this To the pen of the apostle Paul That life in this age before Jesus Christ returns Is incredibly complicated even in the church. Let's not make any mistake about it Life is messy and there are struggles galore And yet there is the great breakthrough reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ Which of course means that in the age to come as we are transported past this life into the next All of those complicated difficult things of that make up the first 14 chapters of the book of first Corinthians will be removed And there will be peace and harmony and God will wipe every tear from our eye and death will utterly Be swallowed up in life You say well, what does that have to do with now? This because it's not simply for the age to come when Jesus conquered death What happened was the new age to come suddenly Broke through into the present age So that you and I can realize substantial healing in this life From the things that plague us because the power of sin has been broken By the breakthrough reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ a whole new world is opening up That's what the resurrection is advertising to us and the possibilities Right now in your life and mine Our astounding As a pastor I hear it a lot I feel powerless. I feel powerless to deal with this situation I feel powerless to deal with this habit in my life I feel powerless to deal with this sourd relationship I feel powerless to deal with my anger with debt With my schedule with fear With lust with greed With my obsession with myself I am powerless Do you feel that way? The resurrection says There is good news because God has broken through and the good news At this point is that when you feel weak when you feel powerless You are actually at a point of tremendous potential strength Because it's at that moment where you are willing To depend not on yourself and the resources at your disposal But to cry out to a very powerful holy and gracious God Who has broken through in the resurrection of Jesus To give us the power that raised Jesus from the dead Enabling us to overcome whatever obstacle we face in this life Earlier I mentioned my father and how tennis became more enjoyable to me when I started to win Well, one of the my father is a remarkable man One of the things that is really remarkable about him Ellen, I've laughed about this I'm convinced he actually has more fun when I win than when he wins My father loves to see his son victorious And I think at that point there's something about my father that resembles our heavenly father That our father Rebels in the victory of his son That's where first Corinthians is headed all of the nuggets of gold in that chapter headed to the great victory of Christ And the great hope that you and I have in this life Is that there is nothing that is hopeless That the resurrection of Jesus Christ cannot break through to There is no challenge no difficulty That the power of the resurrection Cannot enable us in Christ to overcome You know what the real problem is I think for a lot of us We've just we've had so much exposure often on to Christianity over time That we've gotten just enough of it to sort of be inoculated against the real thing So that the life transforming power and potential Of the resurrection that break through power Functionally to us is not real Take sometimes someone who doesn't believe it to challenge us roger garaudi a famous communist thinker not a friend of Christianity remarked about Jesus Christ I don't know much about this man But as I survey his whole life I realize it conveys one message that anyone At any time can start new The resurrection the holy gospel of Jesus Christ stands before you Invites you to break through life through faith in Christ Because God in Jesus showcased his power in the resurrection And if he can reverse death the greatest enemy What can God not do in your life in mind? There is nothing that is hopeless Because of Jesus's resurrection because in the resurrection God has broken through to anchor our life in Jesus's past rather than our own To assure us that we have a future because we are bound together Inextricably in Jesus's future and just as his body was raised as the first fruit So ours will be raised at his second coming and finally He is given to us the ability through the power of the resurrection To see radical transformation in the here and now Those are the nuggets of gold in the pot of gold And all that remains is the conclusion that Paul gives us Thanks be to God who gives us the victory Through our Lord Jesus Christ Amen