This Is It

English

This Is It!

Acts 13:26-41

This is it. This is what it's all about. If what we celebrate today did not happen, then there is no reason to be in church today. In fact, there is no reason to have this or any other church at all! On Easter Sunday, we remember that Jesus Christ, God's Son, came into the world, lived the life we should all have lived but haven't, died on a cross on Good Friday in our place, and then defeated sin and death by his resurrection from the dead. If that really happened, then we have hope to offer our mercy-needing, sickness-ravaged and death-plundered world. If it didn't happen, we don't. As Tim Keller wrote in his The Reason for God, "If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead."
So, this is a good day to be in church. For those of us who are Christians, we talk about many things in church because our faith applies to every part of our lives. But, today, we go to church and remember the foundation of everything we believe and everything we do, i.e., that Jesus rose from the dead. And, for the many here today who may not go to church so often, this is the day you should go to church because today we talk about what this faith is all about. As the Apostle Paul said, "If Christ has not been raised from the dead, our faith is futile... But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead... (1 Cor. 15:17,20).
I am particularly excited about speaking this Easter because my Dad is present. My Dad has been a Christian for many years – many years! But, let me tell you something about my Dad. My Dad still has his sense of wonder at the good news that God loves us so much that he sent his son Jesus, who loves so much that he died for us. He still is thrilled by his conviction this loving God is also powerful enough to overcome sin and even death by his resurrection. When that message is proclaimed, my Dad has always beamed with joy. So, I'm going to proclaim it and join him in the joy of its truth.
This Easter, 2014, I want to go back to the beginning, i.e., to the very first sermon we have that the Apostle Paul preached. I'm convinced his words can guide us today. He was speaking to a group of people who were not Christians about what is at the heart Christian faith. What did he say?

#1: There is a God – and he at work in the world (13:13-22).
Most human beings have always believed that there is some sort of reality other than just the physical, empirical world. Some have believed in everything being somehow divine, i.e., pantheism. Some have believed in a plurality of gods, polytheism. Some in a deity that is distant from the world, deism. Today, I'm quite sure that most of us gathered here believe that there is some sort of spiritual reality greater than our material universe. There are and always have been atheists – but never very many. The Bible declares to you that there is a personal God. In fact, the entire Bible opens with God basically proclaiming, "I am here, I have made everything, and I am ready to enter into your life."
When you walk into a church and ask what people believe about God, you should find us saying things like Paul said in the first part of this first sermon. What I want you to notice this Easter is how Paul declared that God is present and involved in human history. Let's look at just some of what he said:
• In v 17, God chose Israel from all the people of the earth for a special purpose. God made the people great during their stay in Egypt and then God led them out of Egypt with an uplifted arm.
• In v. 21, God gave to Israel her first king, Saul. And then, God removed Saul.
• In v. 22, God raised up David the son of Jesse. God chose him to be king—a young shepherd who was good with a sling shot and liked to write songs. God took Saul down and put David up.
• In v. 23, God sent a Savior, Jesus—and it's not as though God was an impersonal force behind the flow of history. No, God did it "as he promised." He had planned long before, and spoken of it long before. God did it all, according to Paul, so that when it happened, we would know God was doing it.
I could go on and on about this but I think you get the point – God is real. God is present. God can be known. And, God is at work in history. When you believe that, you can see why Christians believe in prayer and why genuine Christians do not give up when difficulties come. We believe God is doing something greater than we could have imagined and we learn to speak with him and to trust him.
Paul was saying what I believe from the depths of my own heart and my own experience: There is a great and glorious God. You can know him. You can count on him in this world. Christians believe there is a purpose for what happens in this world because we believe God is active in history. In fact, the Bible's message is that, when God is done with his work, everything in the universe will be made right. Evil will be judged. Broken relationships will be reconciled. Sickness will be vanquished. Death will be no more.
If you will understand the Christian faith, you must begin with this wonderful thing about God. There is a God. He made the world. He is at work in his world. I tell you this today: This same God is here and ready to enter into your life.

#2: The Center of God's plan is Jesus – who he is and what he did
In Paul's sermon, his point is that all that God is doing in history points to one great event, i.e., Jesus' coming into history. In his first sermon, Paul said in 13:24-25, that as great as prophets like John the Baptist were, they were not the center of God's plan. Jesus is.
One of the main points to be grasped about this is that all Christians have always believed that the death and resurrection of Jesus really happened. Other religions center on having their adherents do certain religious practices or learn certain religious insights but the Christian faith centers on the Jesus of history and what he did. This is one reason I was so moved by the testimony Dr. Gita Govahi gave this morning. She wrote me, "I am now very sure that everything that has happened in my life has worked to bring me to this moment in time right here as I stand before you." So, Gita was aware of God's guiding presence in the world. Gita went on today to say this: "I was in my twenties when I started feeling that Jesus is very close to God -- perhaps closer than anyone else. It was the person and the ways of Jesus that drew her to this day.
With that in mind, read Paul's sermon from 13:32-36 and you'll see he cited many different Scriptures. His point was that all of the Scriptures are connected in this way: They all point to Jesus. In other words, what Paul was preaching was that Jesus really lived, died on a cross, and rose from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus was God's plan. It's a fact of history. Paul said, "Jesus appeared to many people over many days (13:31)." In fact, Jesus made resurrection appearances to over 500 people in Jerusalem.
This record shows that the crucified Jesus was meeting people in Jerusalem so often that, when Paul was taken to court before Governor Festus, Paul simply told him in Acts 26, "Governor Festus, ask King Agrippa. He knows Jerusalem. The king is familiar with these things, and I can speak freely to him. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner."
In other words, this claim that a man who was truly dead has risen from the dead was witnessed all over the country. "We know Jesus died – really died. But, he has risen." Remember this: All this had happened just about 15 years before these events were recorded in Acts. The witnesses were still alive when Acts was written. Paul was saying in court, "The king knows this is true. The evidence is indisputable."
Lee Strobel was Yale-educated journalist with the Chicago Tribune who decided to do research on the claims of Jesus after his wife was converted to Jesus. Being an avowed atheist, Strobel fully anticipated that he would find the claims to be bogus. To the contrary, as he read about Jesus, Strobel, like Gita, found him to be the kind of person who was the way he had always envisioned God (if there is a God) would be. And, he found the evidence of Jesus' claims strong. He wrote about these witnesses in Jerusalem: I went to a psychologist friend and said, "If 500 people claimed to see Jesus after he died, could it have been a hallucination." He said a hallucination is an individual event. If 500 people have the same hallucination, that's as big a miracle as the resurrection.
I want to say today that if you want to understand the Christian faith, you must look at Jesus. See what he taught and you will find wisdom. Look at how he lived and you will find life as life was meant to be lived. And today, you must also look at what he did. He rose from the dead. It happened.

#3: The Promise of Easter Faith -- Fulfillment
When you believe in the resurrected Jesus, you begin to find fulfillment for the deepest longings that every thoughtful human being has. Let me mention three:

First – There is injustice all around me (the longing for the world to be made right).
A lot of things have happened over the past years that appear to be senseless and unjust. Genocide in places like Cambodia, Rwanda and Armenia. More recently, 44 school shootings in 24 states since the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. In our own church, Matthew and Grace Huang still unjustly imprisoned in Qatar. Do you ever have times when you see things in this world and say, "That's not right? That evil should be punished... That person got away with murder..." There are authorities in this world that sometimes work hard to bring justice: Parents in homes. Judges in the courtroom. Teachers and principals in schools. Still, we know human authorities often fail at bringing justice. And, if this world is all that is, then it is truly an unjust world. But, God says at Easter, "There is life beyond this world." And, God promises, "Evil will be punished. Goodness will be rewarded. I am a just God and I will make all things right." Jesus' resurrection is the evidence that God is greater than all the evils in this world. He promises that eternity will show that justice prevails.

Second – There is imperfection inside me (the longing for my life to be made right).
On a very personal side, most people have things about our lives that we would like to be free from. These are the things we often hide from those around us. We know we should change but we cannot. We know we need forgiveness. Jesus' death on the cross is for you. When he says he can and will forgive you, he can and will. When he says he will set you free from your past, he will. When he says he will change your life, he will.
Beyond that, I find most people trying to find fulfillment through something in this world. Through personal acheievement or success or accumulation of things... But, again and again, once a person has obtained what he thought would bring fulfillment, he discovers it isn't all it's cracked up to be. Cynthia Heimel wrote an editorial about three celebrities who thought they would find fulfillment through success – then succeeded – only to discover that what they thought would change everything left them empty.
I pity [celebrities]. The minute a person becomes a celebrity is the same minute he/she becomes a monster. (Three well-known celebrities) were once perfectly pleasant human beings with whom you might lunch on a slow Tuesday afternoon. The night each of them became famous they wanted to shriek with relief. Finally! Now they were adored! The morning after the night each of them became famous, they wanted to take an overdose of barbiturates.
All their fantasies had been realized, yet the reality was still the same. If they were miserable before, they were twice as miserable now, because that giant thing they were striving for, that fame thing that was going to make everything okay, that was going to make their lives bearable, that was going to provide them with personal fulfillment and (ha ha) happiness, had happened. And nothing changed. They were still them. The disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable. (from The Village Voice).
What you have been made for is a life with God. Jesus died and rose again to offer that life to you. CS Lewis had asked himself, even as an atheist, "What is it that I am longing for? If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." JRR Tolkien knew Lewis' longing was for what only Jesus could give. Lewis found his longing fulfilled through Jesus. So can you.

Third: There is death in my world (the longing to live).
I know that some people do not think much about the impact of death. But, you should. Once you have lost a daughter – your only brother – friends close to you – you will know how ugly death is. Many of us who are here today have experienced the awful nature of death. And Jesus alone is the one who takes its sting away. He's the only one who can give us the assurance that death is not the end of things.
Let me tell you what happened to me one year. I met with a man, Andrew Furayama, who had been a major church leader in Japan. When I went to him, he was in his hospital bed in Tokyo, suffering from pancreatic cancer. A few days later, he would die. But, on that evening, this physically dying man was very much alive. He, in fact, was encouraging me: "Brother Greg, I want to assure you of the truthfulness of the gospel message that we both have learned. I now tell you that it is real and practical. Death is not the end of things. I am not afraid to die, because Jesus said, 'I am the resurrection and life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.'"
Just before that visit with Pastor Furayama, I had seen a documentary film while studying in Cambridge, England, a BBC production called "Sea of Faith." In this documentary, theologian Don Cupitt told of the time when he, as a young priest, was assigned to visit a dying man at a hospital. Though a theologian and priest, Cupitt was agnostic. Cupitt said that, as he went to the hospital room, the parishioner was obviously in his last hours. As a priest, Cupitt took his religious book and read the appropriate words and prayed the prescribed prayers. But, before Cupitt left, the man died.
As he was going home, Cupitt reported, "I didn't suppose that my words had magically altered the eternal destiny of the man, and yet I felt that it had been worthwhile turning out. And I hoped that, when my time came, someone would do the same for me. I learned that day that religion is the affirmation of human dignity in the face of an indifferent universe."
Though eloquent, Cupitt's words left me empty. Is an affirmation of human dignity all that we people have to offer to a dying world? More personally, which of these two pastors would I want to visit me at my deathbed—Furayama or Cupitt? For me, the decision is not a difficult one. I want the one who points me to the Lord Jesus Christ who is the resurrection and the life.
We know God is greater than any sin in this world because Jesus was able to bear its penalty and overcome it. We know God is greater than any problem we face in this world – even death – because Jesus experienced it and overcame it. In history, Jesus died and rose again! That's what Paul preached about in his sermon. It's what I proclaim to you today. Your family can be different. Your marriage can be different. Your future can be different. You can be different!!
What you are called upon to do is – believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. "...God raised Jesus from the dead... Therefore, my friends, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is set free from every sin... (Acts 13:37-39).

To His glory,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor