Have you ever heard the phrase, “It sounds to good to be true.” Some incredible offer that promises you great results with little cost or effort. A while back I was wanting to shed a few pounds and sure enough I was walking in Wal-Mart and saw this bottle that said, “Hollywood Miracle Diet…lose 10 in two days, guaranteed.” I thought 10 pounds in two days, this sounds great…and for only $20...I’d be a fool to not buy it, right? Well, when I got it home I realized that you couldn’t eat anything for those two days, and all this miracle diet was only a jar of fruit juice. Denise said, “Way to go Barry, you just paid $20 for a V-8. Amazing offer, yet it was to good to be true.
When we come to Easter, we hear of some wonderful offers that sound on the surface that our just to good to be true. Offers that are so outrageous that many scoff at the very mention. But what makes these offers different. Easily, you can trust the one who is making it. God Himself wants to make you an offer that you can’t refuse. And this morning, I want us to look at these wonderful offers that Jesus offers us this Easter. These are offers that Jesus offers you free of charge, because His grace has already covered the cost.
The first offer Jesus offers comes from the cross. And the promise is this…that you’re past can be forgiven. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, or no matter how jaded your past may be, because of what Jesus did for you upon the cross you can be forgiven of all the wrong you’ve ever done. And many of us have committed many wrongs. And if you think you haven’t then I want you to think about this for a moment.
How many times a day do you think you sin? How many times do you neglect to do something you should do? Or when you do something you do it with a selfish motive? Or you think a lustful thought or angry thought? How many times a day? Lets say you are a super saint and you only sin 3 times a day: one bad thought, one neglected deed, one word you shouldn’t have said. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? But multiply that by 365 days and that is 1095 sins a year. If you live to be 70, you’ll have 76,550 sins against you. And to be honest, those aren’t just little sins…some of those are big ones. And did you know that just one of those sins is all that is needed to condemn you to hell, because if you break just one of the laws of God than that makes you a lawbreaker. And we are not guilty of committing one but of thousands upon thousands.
But because of Easter, the promise is that no matter how much you’ve sinned, no matter how awful of a person you’ve been up to this point, all that can be washed away because of what Christ did on that cross for you. In A Forgiving God in an Unforgiving World, Ron Lee Davis retells the true story of a priest in the Philippines, a much-loved man of God who carried the burden of a secret sin he had committed many years before. He had repented but still had no peace, no sense of God’s forgiveness.
In his parish was a woman who deeply loved God and who claimed to have visions in which she spoke with Christ. The priest was skeptical. To test her said, “The next time you speak with Christ, I want you to ask him what sin your priest committed while he was in seminary.” The woman agreed. A few days later the priest asked. “Well, did Christ visit you in your dreams?” “Yes, he did,” she replied. “And did you ask him what sin I committed in seminary?” “Yes.” “Well, what did he say?” “He said, ‘I don’t remember’“ Jeremiah 31:34 in the New Living Translation says, "And I will forgive their wickedness and will never again remember their sins."
That’s good news! And it’s much needed news. There’s a Spanish story of a father and son who had become estranged. The son ran away, and the father set off to find him. He searched for months to no avail. Finally, in a last desperate effort to find him, the father put an ad in Madrid newspaper. The ad read: “Dear Paco, meet me in front of this newspaper office at noon on Saturday. All is forgiven. I love you. Your Father.” On Saturday 800 Pacos showed up, looking for forgiveness and love from their fathers. I wonder how many Pacos do we have right here with us today? You’re Heavenly Father stands ready to forgive, all you need to do is admit your need and come to Him in repentance, and all can be forgiven. Tabula Rasa-A clean slate. As if it never happened.
Now also through the message of Easter, we have second promise, a second offer we can’t refuse, and that is that through Easter not only do we find forgiveness from our past, but also we find purpose for today. We find purpose for today because first of all the cross tells us just how valuable we are. If you don’t believe that God thinks the world of you, just consider what all He did to win your affection.
We do all kind of things to prove to somebody that we love them don’t we. When Denise and I were first dating, we were walking down the hallway to the place where the crew from my ship was staying there in Pascagoula. As we walked down the hallway, Denise smelled some cologne that one of the guys had sprayed and she said, “Mmmm, that smells like Eternity…I love Eternity!” So that next day, the first thing I did was catch a bus to the mall, and I went on a search for Eternity cologne. Now that day I couldn’t really smell to good, so I asked the lady behind the counter for some Eternity and she gave it to me and to tell you the truth…it smelled like sewage water. I gagged when I smelt it, it was that bad. But Denise liked it, so I asked the lady how much it was and she said, “$60.” $60 for a little bottle of cologne, that was half of my paycheck! But Denise liked it and I wanted her to like me, so for the next year or so, when ever I saw Denise I poured on that nasty sewer water, just to win her affection…and it worked.
But if I was willing to go that far, imagine how far God went to win your heart. This past week I got a chance to speak to the best congregation I have ever spoken to, and I hope I don’t make yawl jealous but they were the most courteous, the most attentive audience I have ever preached to…this was my daughter’s preschool and kindergarten classes. I had a chance to conduct their chapel service and explain to them the crucifixion of Jesus, and I asked them, how much does Jesus love you…and I had them spread their arms out as big as they could, farther, farther…then I said He loves you that much and to make sure that you never forget that , He had His hands nailed in place.
Jesus endured all the agonies of the cross, the scourging, the beatings, the spit, the mocking, the humiliation…all because He thought you were worth it. He looked at all of our sins, and He knew the only way for those to be forgiven is the perfect sacrifice, so Jesus said, “I’ll do it.” Why? Because He thinks you’re worth it. And if God thinks the world of you, don’t you dare think otherwise.
Also contained within the Easter message, we find that we have a purpose higher than ourselves. We often talk about how Christ can solve our problems, and we often talk about the big ones…like losing a loved one, or struggling with an addiction or suffering from a terminal illness. But for some of you that doesn’t pertain to you. There are people here in this sanctuary that simply do not have any huge problems. Occasionally, your computer may get a virus, or your lawn mower may break down, or you may spill coffee on the carpet, but besides that you really don’t have any problems.
You may not have any problems, but there is a sense of deep emptiness inside. You silently long for a deeper experience in life. You are tired of the mundane. You feel that there has to be more to life than what you are living. You get up go to work, come home go to bed. Get up go to work. Come home go to bed. Success is nice, but you long for significance. You long for meaning. In Jesus Christ we find that meaning. {I was reading a testimony a while back from Kirk Cameron. Some of you might remember Kirk Cameron from the 80’s hit show “Growing Pains” where he played the character Mike Seaver. At this time in his life, Kirk had everything going for him. A hit TV show, plenty of money, had pretty girls falling down in front of him…(I never seemed to have that problem…most just ran away from me.) but even with all this, His exact words were, “Things were great except for those few moments right before I went to bed. I felt like it was all worthless and I felt empty inside.”
He felt empty but then one day a friend shared the Gospel story with him, and he said, "I put myself on top in my life and I put God on the bottom. I didn’t want to continue living on the top of the world and go on with God still at the bottom. I just closed my eyes and said, ’God, if you’re real, I really need to know. If You’re there and You love me, would You show me in a way that I can really understand.’" Kirk said there was no flash of light, but something changed. "God heard me. He was real. It was just this sense of something more real in my life than I had ever known before. Nothing compares to knowing Jesus Christ."}
And in Christ you find that. We find a love that is beyond comparison where the God of this world, the second person of the Trinity, the One in whom all the things were made gave His life just for you, and in the empty tomb we find the assurance of this hope. And also a reminder that are desires are no longer of this world. Our purpose is no longer to satisfy the cravings of this world. But we have a new home prepared for us. A home in Heaven waiting for us. You know, the bible makes it clear that everything in this world is going to be destroyed, and with that in mind, why do we spend so much time focused on these things. If I was on the Titanic as it was slowly sinking into the icy waters, I wouldn’t be concerned with rearranging the furniture on the upper decks, and that is what many of you are doing with your life right now. Your so concerned with the enjoyments of this world, that you have neglected the one thing that will always remain, and that is your soul. And in the cross and the empty tomb, we find a purpose. We find the One to whom we pledge our allegiance to. The One to whom we would lay our life down for. Why, because of who He is and what He’s done.
So through the Easter message, we find forgiveness for the past, power and purpose for the present, but also when we gaze into the empty tomb…we find hope for tomorrow. A preacher once began to preach and with ferocious fervor he told the congregation, “every member of this church will die one day!” And as he said this a man in the front row began to smile from ear to ear. So again the preacher with increased fervor slammed his fist onto the pulpit and told the crowd, “Every member of this congregation is going to die one day!” And again that same man began to get so excited he could barely contain it. The preacher couldn’t stand it any longer, “Young man, why are you so happy! What about this truth that every member of this congregation will die do you find so amusing!” The man said, “I’m happy because I’m not a member of this church… I’m just visiting.”
Well whether you are a visitor of a member, save the rapture all of us will die one day. We can do all we can to avoid it, we can prolong our life with better living, medicine, and technology…but Death is an enemy that we all must face one day. I saw an amazing statistic that said that 1 out of every 1 persons will die. I’m starting to think that my chances are pretty good. David once said, “there is only one step between me and death.” We all will die…and death is no respecter of persons. It takes the powerful and the meek, the actor and the banker, the rich and the poor, and both young and old alike.
But when we come to Easter, we hear the wonderful words we started off this service with, “He is not here, He is risen!” Because of the empty tomb we know that this life is not it, that something does lie beyond death’s door, and it’s no longer the great mystery it once was because Jesus Christ has defeated death once and for all, and He’s been there and has come back to life. And because He lives, we shall live as well.
I understand that a possum is supposedly an intelligent animal. Now we may disagree with that with the number of dead possums on the road. Someone once asked , “Why did the chicken cross the road?” And the answer was , “To prove to the possum it could be done!” But really a possum is an intelligent animal. When it comes up to a hole, it will not go in to that hole unless it sees two sets of tracks, one going in and one going out. If there’s only one set of tracks then that means that whatever was inside there is still there, but if there’s two set of tracks, then it knows that it is safe to go in.
When we come to the grave of Jesus, we see two sets of tracks, one going in and one going out. And now we know that it’s safe to go in, and Jesus has conquered not only death, but the fear of death as well. Hebrews 2:15 says that Jesus came to, “free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”
I told you that I had a chance to speak to Clarissa’s preschool classes. I actually got to do that twice last week, one lesson was on the crucifixion, the other was on the resurrection. And as we spoke on the resurrection and the hope we have, a little girl named Caelin Smith, the daughter of Brother Jody Smith of our cluster, raised her hand and with a small voice said, “My Me-Ma died two weeks ago.” and she put her hand down. My heart dropped and so I told her again how because Jesus is alive, her Me-Ma is alive and one day her body will be resurrected and she will see her Me-Ma again. And her little eyes lit up. Then another little girl raised her hand and said, “My hamster died!”
But what a great offer we have to know that death is longer the feared enemy, that there is life beyond death, and that we can have this living hope. This past Wednesday I got to preach at the nursing home, and it’s always a wonderful experience but this one was special for some reason. I guess because it was the Easter service for us there and the room where we preach at was packed full. And as we sang, there was a lady who looked to be in her 60’s who appeared to be a victim of a stroke. Her right side of her body was paralyzed, and her arm just hung uselessly by her side, and she was unable to talk in understandable words and she just sat there in her chair looking at me. Then we sang a song…I don’t know why I picked this song but I chose Victory in Jesus, and when we got to the chorus, the men and women…many who were inches away from death’s door began to sing loud and clear. “Victory in Jesus, my Savior Forever!” And that one lady began to just sing as loud as she could. You couldn’t make out the words, but you could make out the heart. And this crippled woman sang with hope. She knew her Savior, She knew she mattered to Him, He sought and bought her, She knew she had a clean slate, and she knew she had a home waiting for her.
That’s the offer that Easter gives to us. And I invite you to take Jesus up on His offer. I’m going to do something that I normally don’t do. I have a $1 bill here, and I want to give it the first person who will come up here and accept it. Now for the rest of you, Why didn’t you take my offer? Some might say that you’re too embarrassed or the pain wasn’t worth the gain. Maybe you feared a catch, a trick or something. Or maybe your wallets are fat already. What’s a buck to someone who has hundreds?
Now let me ask you this. Why don’t you accept Christ’s free gift? The point is this. We talked about these great offers this morning that God gives to us through Easter message and Though it is available to all, it’s accepted by few. Many choose to sit and wait while only a few choose to stand and trust. This morning I want to give you the chance to stand and trust.
