Hope Church LV Sermons
Easter 2013
How many of you have ever made a New Year's resolution, let me see your hand. You've made a New Year's resolution at some point. How many of you made one this year, right? And I'm not as willing to admit that one, right? Because it's now March, right? And researchers tell us that by now, 88% of all New Year's resolutions have already gone by the wayside. Anybody want to give testimony and I'm not going to ask for that this morning, right? But 88% of them have already gone away and yet, year after year after year, we continue to make New Year's resolutions. Why is that? There's one blog by what's called the World of Psychology and in that blog, a writer writes and says the reason we make them is because of the allure starting from scratch. The beginning of the year offers a fresh start, a clean slate. The writer said it's the possibility of transformation that is the essence of hope. We want to change, we want a fresh start, we long for a clean slate, the opportunity to be made new. I'm reading a book right now that I've actually read a number of years ago, but I'm reading it again. It's a book by a man named John Ortberg. The book, really the title says it all. The life you've always wanted. In that book, John Ortberg describes a moment in his day and I want to read you a little excerpt because I could really identify with him and I think many of us today will be able to identify with what he says here. He says, "When I look in on my children as they sleep at night, I think of the kind of father I want to be. I want to create moments of magic. I want them to remember laughing until the tears flow. I want to read to them and make the books come alive so that they love to read. I want to have slow sweet talks with them as they are getting ready to close their eyes. I want to sing them awake in the morning. I want to chase fireflies with them and teach them to play tennis and have food fights and hold them and pray for them in a way that makes them feel cherished. I look in on them as they sleep at night and then I remember how the day really went." I remember how they were trapped in a fight over checkers and I walked out of the room because I didn't want to spend the energy needed to teach them how to resolve conflict. I remember how my daughters spilled cherry punch at dinner and I yelled at her about being careful as if she'd revealed some deep character flaw. I yelled at her even though I spilled things all the time and nobody yells at me. I yelled at her to tell you the truth simply because I'm big and she's little and I can get away with it. Then I saw that look of hurt and confusion in her eyes and I knew there was a tiny wound on her heart that I'd put there and I wished I could take those sixty seconds back. I remember how at night I didn't have slow sweet talks but merely rushed the children to bed so I could have more time for myself. I'm disappointed and it's not just my life as a father. I'm also disappointed for my life as a husband, friend, neighbor and human being in general. I think of the day I was born when I carried the gift of promise, the gift given to all babies and I think of that little baby and what might have been the ways I might have developed and mind and body and spirit, the thoughts I might have had, the joy I might have created. Where does this disappointment come from, you write? A common answer in our day is that it's a lack of self-esteem, a failure to accept oneself. That may be part of the answer but it is not the whole of it, not by a long shot. The older and wiser answer is that the feeling of disappointment is not the problem, it's a reflection of a deeper problem. My failure to be the person God had in mind when He created me. I don't know where you are when you hear that today but maybe it resonates with you. Maybe you are at a place in life where you'd love a fresh start. I grew up playing sports, I loved all kinds of sports and matter of fact my boys now play sports yesterday. We spent eight and a half hours at a basketball gym watching a basketball tournament, right? So I'm glad today I'm standing up and not sitting down. I sat in bleachers as long as I could sit in them yesterday. I love sports but I prefer the backyard variety of sports to the real league sanctioned sport and the reason I prefer the backyard variety of sport is because there's a magical phrase in the backyard variety of sport that doesn't exist in league sanctioned sports. You know what the magical phrase is in backyard sports that I love? Do over! That's awesome, right? I mean it's the bottom of the ninth you strike out, do over! The last second of the game you take the shot, you don't even hit the goal, do over! You ever wished in life, do over! You just hadn't turned out the way you thought it would. Easter, Easter is about some incredibly good news, let me tell you what the good news is. God has made a way for you and I to be made new. God has made a way, God has made it possible for us to be made new. Let me show it to you in the Bible. If you have your Bible, I want you to open it to 2 Corinthians 5 verse 17. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 17, Paul is writing about this very idea right here in this verse. We're going to put it up on the screen if you don't have a Bible with you this morning. Listen what it says. "For if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature, the old things passed away behold new things have come." What a great promise! One of the things that I love to do when I read the New Testament when I study the Bible is I love to read it in a lot of different English translations. In the Bible, the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic, the New Testament originally written in Koinek, Greek. What we have today, we have the translation of God's Word into our language and it's the Word of God for us, but we have many good solid English translations of those original manuscripts and one of the ones that I love to read in the New Testament in particular is by a great Greek scholar named J.B. Phillips. You may have never heard of J.B. Phillips, but his translation, the Phillips translation of the New Testament is one of the absolute best translations. It's hard to find, but I want to put 2 Corinthians 5, 17 up on the screen in J.B. Phillips translation and I want us to all read it out loud together. You ready? 1, 2, 3. "For if any man is in Christ, he becomes a new person altogether. The past is finished and gone, everything has become fresh and new." That's worth saying amen about right there, amen? I mean, if I don't add anything else to it, that is worth coming for. We have the opportunity in Christ to be made new. Now what I want to do in the time I have left is I want to ask and answer three questions about this idea of being made new and then we'll be finished. Here's the first one, why? Why does a person need to be made new? Now maybe you're here this morning and you would say pastor, yeah, there's some things in my life that hadn't turned out exactly the way I wanted him to be, but I mean, I'm not a totally horrible person. I haven't robbed a bank this week or I didn't steal a car on the way to church just to get here this morning. I hadn't killed anybody, right? I'm not a terrible person. Why do I need to be made new? I want to show you three reasons from the Bible, why every one of us need to be made new. Every human being needs to be made new. Here's the first one. We are all born with the same problem. We're all born with the same problem. The Bible teaches us that God created us to live life in the context of a relationship with Himself. God made us to live in fellowship with Him. Here's what that means. You and I will never experience the fullness of life. You and I will never experience all the satisfaction and contentment that we desire in life apart from a relationship with God. God created life. God knows best how life is designed to work, it wasn't man's idea, it was God's idea and God designed us to live our lives in the context of a relationship with Himself. Now, here's what the world says and here's how deceitful the enemy is. The enemy says, "Oh, if you give your life to Jesus, if you become a Christian, if you get involved in that faith stuff, you've got to give up really living. You've got to give up life." But the reality is, according to the Bible, God made us to know Him and to love Him and to be loved by Him. And until we have a relationship with God, we'll never be satisfied. And that's why every human being seeks to feel that emptiness on the inside. That longing that says there's got to be more to life than what I'm living. Now we try to fill it with all kinds of different stuff, but let me tell you what it is. It's a God-shaped vacuum. We've been created for fellowship with God and until we enjoy fellowship with God, we will never experience life as it was meant to be lived. Now, the problem is we all come into this world. We're born without the ability to have a relationship with God. You say, "Well, that's messed up, and you're absolutely right." Pastor, didn't you just say that we were created to live our life in a relationship with God, and yet we're all born into this world without the ability to have a relationship with God? The very reason we were created, we come into this world and we can't have that? How did it get like that? Well, I'm so glad you asked this morning. You have to go all the way back to the beginning, the book of Genesis. In the book of Genesis, we read where God created human beings. The very first two human beings ever on planet earth were Adam and Eve. God placed them as husband and wife in the Garden of Eden. And the Garden of Eden was a symbol of man's perfect relationship with God. We don't know how long they were there. We don't know if it was a week or a month or six months or a year or ten years. We really don't know. Here's what we do know. As long as Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, the Bible teaches us that they enjoyed a fellowship relationship with God. Every day God would come into what the Bible calls the cool of the day. He would come and He would fellowship with Adam and Eve. And they would spend time in fellowship with God. And then they enjoyed life and dominion over all of creation, everything that God had given them. But God spoke something to them. Look at the screen, Genesis chapter 2 verse 16. Listen what the Bible says, "Then the Lord God commanded the man saying, 'From any tree of the garden you may eat freely, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from the day you eat from it, you will surely say it out loud, die.'" Sounds simple enough, right? Here's the world I've made, here's this garden, it's plush, I've created it for you, I've created you to live and fellowship with me. You've got dominion over everything on planet earth, the earth is a box for you to enjoy. God says the only thing that is off limits, don't eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because in the day you eat of it, you will surely say it out loud again, die. Genesis chapter 3, listen what the Bible says in verse 6, "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was of delight to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and," what, eight, "and ever since then, for centuries and centuries you women have gotten the bad rap," right? I know some of you husbands, you know it's your wife as soon as I read that and said, "See, there's all your fault," well, would you read the rest of it? And she gave also to her husband, said out loud, "With her, you get the picture now, right? Oh honey, it looks good to me, go ahead!" Here's the first guinea pig on planet Earth, right? Adam says, "Oh, I think it's fine, you go ahead, and he takes a step back to see what happens," right? Adam figured God made her, God made another one, let's see how this deal works out. Adam was given the responsibility to spiritually shepherd the heart of his wife and Adam steps back and says, "You go ahead, you go first." And when Adam sees in his opinion that nothing happened, he said, "You know what honey, good idea, I think I'll take a bite too," and it says, "And he ate." Now God said, "If you eat of that tree, you're going to do what?" Said again? They ate of that tree in verse 6, so verse 7 says, "And they died," right? Wait a minute, I mean if that's what verse 7 said, it'd be a short book, The End, right? They did die, they died spiritually, here's what that means. They lost the ability to have a relationship with God, you say, "How do you know that?" Because guess what happened in verse 7 and 8, in verse 7 and 8, God came into the garden to meet with Adam and Eve, and what does the Bible say they did? It says they hid themselves from the presence of God, they'd never done that before. They'd always been waiting on God, they'd always enjoyed sweet fellowship with God, but now they've died spiritually, they lost the ability to have a relationship with God, and the Bible says Adam and Eve hid themselves from the presence of God. At the end of chapter 3, listen what the Bible says, "Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to cultivate the ground from which he was taken, so he drove the man out." What was the Garden of Eden? It was the symbol of man's perfect relationship with God. Here we find God banishing Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Why? Because they died spiritually, they lost the ability to have a relationship with God. The Bible says he drove the man out, and at the east of the Garden of Eden, he stationed the cherubim in the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve died, and they lost the ability to have a relationship with God. You say, "Pastor, it's a great story, it's 2013. What does that have to do with me today?" Ever since Adam, every human being that's been born, has been born in Adam. The Bible says, meaning we come into this world dead to a relationship with God. In Adam, we all die, and we come into this world without the ability to have a relationship with God. Listen to me, the whole story of the Bible from Genesis chapter 3, verse 6, all the way to the end of the book of Revelation. Let me tell you what the whole story of the Bible is. The whole story of the Bible is God redeeming that which we lost in Adam. He's redeeming it in the person of Jesus Christ. You say, "Preacher, I don't know if I believed that all this with Adam and Eve really has any effect on me today. Well, let me prove it to you. I'm going to show it to you in the Bible. Look at it on the screen. Romans chapter 5, verse 12, listen to what it says, "Therefore, just as through one man Adam sin entered into the world and death through sin," you hear what it's saying there? Because of Adam, we all died in Adam. Death came into all of our lives spiritually, dead to God, through sin entered through one man sin entered the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sin. Here's what the Bible says. "Adam, we all died, and because of Adam, every person since Adam has been born into this world dead to a relationship with God." You say, "Where's the proof of that? It's the last phrase of the verse." He said, "Because all sin, the evidence of our being dead to God and alive to sin is we all make the same choices Adam and Eve did. We all choose to sin against God." We're born dead to God, alive to sin. My wife and I next in May of this year will celebrate 21 years of being married together and we got married. We were really young. I was 20. Christi was 19. We were in college and God brought us together. We got married and our plan was we were going to finish school, wait about five years, start having kids and you know how those kinds of plans work out, right? Three months into being married, we got pregnant with our first child, our oldest daughter, Hannah, who was a persinging just a moment ago, and Hannah was born into the world and now for the last 20 years or so, Hannah's been kind of raising us, right, as parents. We had her in our home, but you know, I learned something when we were very young there and got pregnant with Hannah. I learned that Christian people can say some of the dumbest things, right? You do know that, right? I mean, they'll do it with good intentions and they'll do it with a very sincere heart, but Christian people can just say some really dumb stuff. And here we were, this young couple in college, pregnant with our first child and all these Christian people kept coming up and putting on, "Oh, brother, this is going to be so hard." I'm telling you, you guys going to have it so tough, it's going to be so difficult, man being in school, being married, that's tough, and boy, then when you have kids and they started just laying it on thick about how difficult parenting is and how hard it is and how difficult those early years are and diapers and you can't ever say, "Oh, by the time it came time for us to go to the hospital and have the baby, we're terrified over this beast that is about to be born into our home," right? Thinking, "What is going on?" We go to the hospital, Hannah's born and she doesn't look anything like anything. They describe this sweet little precious baby and we bring her home from the hospital that first night. We lay her down in her crib to go to sleep. We lay down in our bed and eight hours she slept the first night. We won't come though. Y'all just all been doing it wrong, right? We're just the first set of perfect parents to come along. I mean, y'all just messed it up. Day number two we go through, everything goes great, comes nighttime. We go to lay Hannah down in her bed thinking, "We got this thing licked, we go lay down in our bed, we're just about to drift off to sleep," and then the stillness of that moment. From the other room, and I know what's happened, right? Somebody snuck into my house. Somebody has gone into that nursery and they have Hannah by the throat and they are literally squeezing the life out of this baby. So with all the protective instinct of a new dad, I jump up in the darkness, I run through the bedroom, I flip on the light in the nursery, I scoop her up out of the bed screaming and she looks at me and says, "You know what Hannah did? She lied. There wasn't anything wrong with her. Let me ask you a question. Who talked that baby had a lie? I mean, we'd only had her for a day. If you think I'm exaggerating when we finish the service this morning, just take a car and drive to the nearest Chuck E. Cheese restaurant. When you get to Chuck E. Cheese, you go position yourself at a table closest to what they call the ball pit, right? Do you know what goes on in the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese, moms and dads? You know what's happened? World War III, right? Who taught those little boys and girls how to be mean? Who taught them how to be selfish? Who taught them how to kick their friend? Who taught them how to pull hair? Who taught them how when they're confronting to go, "I mean, where'd all that come from? It just comes what?" Say it naturally. I want you to think about what you just said. The root of the word naturally is the word nature. What you're saying is that's just who they are. It comes naturally. They're acting according to their nature. What is that? Let me tell you what that is. They're all born into this world dead to a relationship with God and a life. Listen, we're not back there in nursery this weekend teaching kids how to be bad, right? We're back there trying to teach them how to be good. Why? You don't have to teach us how to be bad. That comes naturally. That's who we are. We don't need a course on that. We come into this world dead to God and alive to sin. And here's what Paul's saying, "We'll never experience life." Listen, you can try. Give it your best shot. Feel that emptiness with whatever you can grab a hold of, but listen to me. You will never find life until you find Jesus. We're all born with the same problem, but let me give you a second reality. We're all in the same predicament. You see, because we come into this world dead to God and alive to sin, we find ourselves in a difficult situation. You say, "What is that?" Well, there's a big fallacy out there that exists, and here's the way the fallacy goes. The fallacy says, "As human beings, we all get one shot. We get one shot to live life the best we can. We try as hard as we can to be as good as we can. We try to do as much good as we can. And at the end of life, the fallacy says, "We'll all one day stand before God and there'll be these huge enormous scales. On one side of the scale, we'll pile up everything that we've done that's good. On the other side of the scale, all the other stuff, right?" And then we stand back and we hold our breath as the scales taught are hoping that after it all settles out that God says, "Well, you did the best you could. Just come on in." Now we call it a lot of different stuff, but you boil it down and at the core of human existence, that's what a lot of people believe. You get one shot at life, you do the best you can, you hope for the best in the end. There's a problem with that. It's not what the book teaches us. You see, the book from God says it goes another way. How many of you have ever heard John 3, 16 before? That's a softball toss, right? Everybody knows John 3, 16. Was it say, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." But look at John 3, 17, "For God did not send His Son into the world, the judge the world, but that the world through Him should be saved." And then we stop reading. We don't read verse 18. Look what verse 18 says, "He who believes in Him is not judged. He who does not believe has been," said out loud. Judge already, whoa, back up the trunk. You hear what John 3, 18 says? "I'm not awaiting some future judgment where I stand." No, no, no. Here's what he says, "Because I'm dead to God because of my life of sin," here's what the book says. "The gavel of justice has already come down. I'm guilty before God. I'm not waiting to find that all I'm waiting on is the sentencing. The verdict is in. I'm not trying to somehow earn a right standing before God. I'm guilty before God." The Bible says we've already been judged, and that leads me to the third of these three reasons we all need to be made new. We're all facing the same pimp. You see, because we're all guilty before God, we're dead to God and alive to sin. The Bible says the wages of sin is death. Because of our sin, we're separated from God. If we die separated from God, we spend eternity separated from God. We not only miss out in this life, we miss out on the life to come. That's why Paul writes, and he says, "We all need to be made new." Well, then let me ask a second question this morning. How can a person be made new? We'll look back at our text, 2 Corinthians 5-17, "Therefore, if anyone is," what did it say, "in Christ." "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature." You see, here's what the Bible says. "You and I, as human beings, were born in Adam." We were born dead to a relationship with God. We were born alive to sin. But now in Christ, we have the opportunity to be made new, who we were in Adam. We have the opportunity to be made new in Christ. Paul is teaching us here that the way to newness is through a relationship with God. He said the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life. You hear that word, life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And listen to me, that's the whole story of Easter. About 2,000 years ago, God sent his son. Jesus came into the world as God took on human flesh, became a man. The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ as a human being lived a sinless life. He perfectly fulfilled the law of God. And it was his sinlessness and his holiness that qualified him as our substitute. And on the cross, Jesus offered his body as a sacrifice for our sin. The wages of sin is death. Why did Jesus die? On the cross, Jesus took all of your sin and all of my sin, all of the death that I had inherited in Adam. Everything that was mine because of Adam's sin and because of my sin. Jesus took all of that on himself and Jesus Christ died. On that Friday afternoon, Jesus cried out from the cross. That is finished, everything that needed to be done to atone for my sin. Jesus accomplished, but thank God the story didn't end on Friday. Jesus did not just die for our sin on Sunday morning. The reason that there are millions and millions of people all over the world today celebrating is because on that first Easter Sunday morning, God raised Jesus from the dead as a testimony that God had accepted his sacrifice for our sins. And now by being in Christ, we get the opportunity to be forgiven of our sin and given that which we lost in Adam a personal relationship with God, not religion, not morality, but in Christ. We get to be made new. I love the way Paul said it. He said, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things have passed away, behold, new things have come." That little phrase "have come" is important because it is in the perfect tense in the Greek language. Now, the perfect tense is a very important tense in the Greek language. It means something that has happened in the past, but it is not just finished. It is something that has ongoing continuous results in the future. Here is what he is saying, "Because of Jesus, I have been made new." It is done. It is finished. Here is what that means. When God looks at me, God does not see me as a sinner trying to do the best I can. God does not see me as somebody who is halfway home. No, when God looks at me, he sees me as brand new, not dead in Adam. He sees me alive in Christ, not because I deserve that, not because I have earned that. It has been given to me in the person of Jesus Christ, but then it goes on to not just talk about something that is done and finish. It talks about something that is affecting my life today. Here is the point. I have been made new in the sight of God, but now practically I am being made new day in and day out. What is true about me positionally, God is now working out in my life practically and conforming me to the image of Jesus Christ. That is the glorious good news of Easter that we have the opportunity in Christ to be made new. It means I get a clean slate before God and it means that God is working out in my life daily conforming me to the image of Jesus. Then there is one last question I want to ask and answer and we will be finished. Who? Who can be made new? I know what some of you are thinking this morning, Pastor, I appreciate what you are saying there, but preacher, you do not know who I am. You do not know some of the stuff I have done in my life. You do not know how dark my journey has been. I know preacher for some folks they can be forgiven, but preacher, you do not know who you are talking to. Well, you are right, I do not. Let me show you the verse again, therefore if anyone, say that word out loud, anyone is incorrect. Let me ask you a question, are you anyone? We are all anyone. I want to close by reading your verse of Scripture, it is in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Now in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, Paul is writing to a group of Christians and I want you to listen to what he says. 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 9, we are going to put it up on the screen, here is what he said. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor feminine, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetges, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. I know what you are thinking, that is what I told you. I do not have a job, that is my list, that is who I was, that is my life. I mean, he just said right there, none of those people will inherit the kingdom of God, but read the next verse, such were some of you. But you were wise, but you were sanctified. But you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God. You know what Paul says there, yeah, that is who I used to be. But thank God, that is not who I am anymore, I have been made new in Christ. So here is the big question of the day, have you ever been made new? [ Silence ]