Many people know the message of Easter. But it's a message they don't want to know! Simon Manchester explains why this attitude doesn't make any sense...
Here is my transcript of this excellent message...
We tend to see what we want t see
There's a story which you may have heard me tell before of a lady who goes around the high schools warning people of the dangers of drink. And she gets two glasses and puts them on a table. One she fills with orange juice and the other she fills with beer. Then she takes a can of live worms and drops a live worm into the orange juice and it swims happily. And then she drops a live worm in the beer and it swims for a couple of seconds and then has a kind of stroke and drops to the bottom.
Very confidently she turns to the class and says “Okay what’s the lesson?” And a big boy at the back puts his arm up and says “Well miss, if you don't want to get worms I would suggest you drink lots of beer!” And the point of the story is that you tend to see what you want to see.
We are in an Easter-refusing world
And I want to suggest to you that we are in an Easter refusing world. Not that people will be refusing the easy egg part of the week but they will be refusing the profound importance of the resurrection. The idea that we can tell the world in which we live that there is a safe passage through the grave does not appeal to lots of people if it involves Jesus.
That's the problem and therefore we mustn't pretend that everybody just doesn't know the facts of the resurrection. People don't want to know!
The evidence for the resurrection is excellent
The need is very great and the funerals keep coming. The evidence for the resurrection is excellent but it is unwanted. There is a kind of repulsion to get away from the message. I’m reminded of the game you play with when you were children perhaps with magnets where you would try and get the North Pole and the North Pole of the magnet to come together. But they just wouldn't!
And so it is with the message and to the listener today, there is this great repulsion. If the evidence could be put in front of people, most clearly and persuasively, many people would find a way of avoiding it. That's the problem. People are bicycling away from the good news.
If you want to see what escapism looks like, just look at what is said when a celebrity dies as we've had in the last week, and we'll probably have every week. The response will be “they've gone, awesome fiction, they are now playing rugby in heaven.” There won't be the reality of the hope of Christ.
If you want to know what realistic hope sounds like I want to read you from the apostle Paul in the New Testament. These verses come from 2 Corinthians Chapter 5.
Awaiting the New Body
2 Corinthians 5 1-105 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2 Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, 3 because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
6 Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7 For we live by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.
I want to just point out in my few minutes this afternoon four little phrases which I hope you will take away as best you can and be glad about.
1. We know...Words the world doesn't like
First of all Paul says, we know.
The believer knows, that the tent body, this tent body, will be one day replaced with a building-solid body. In other words we're going to go from frail to strong. We're not going to go from solid to vapour. The believer is going to go from feeble to strong and the apostle Paul says we know this.
And we know is the phrase that the world says we shouldn't say. So people will say “you mustn't say we know this. You can say you think it, you can say you hope it, but you can't say you know it.”
When I drive with a cab driver I'll often ask the cab driver as a piece of conversation if he's ever taken anybody famous. And after a little bit of naming of certain people, some very famous, some not so very famous, I will say "Well I'm not famous but I work for somebody who's famous." And then he will say “Who's that?” And I'll say, “I’ll give you a clue. This person has been through the grave and back.” And the guy that I was travelling with not too long ago, a lovely Chinese driver, he said to me “Nobody has gone through and back. Nobody.”
I felt that an unusual response, because most people have heard there is somebody who's gone through and back and therefore there is an expert on the grave. And Paul says We know because we've got history on our side. An event has happened.
Some of you know that the southern tip of South Africa used to be called the Cape of Storms and then in 1488 Bartholomew Diaz went under the South tip of Africa and they renamed it the Cape of Good Hope. Now it would be very unusual today if somebody said “You can't go under the tip, it can't be done, it's too dangerous.” We would say to them, "No! “There's been a historical journey under the tip of South Africa.”
The believer knows where he'll go when he dies
And so it is with Jesus. There has been a movement through the grave and back and the grave has been changed by Jesus.
The other thing about the apostle Paul, when he says we know, he has integrity on his side. He has the integrity of Jesus because Jesus promised that the believer would go through also.
The most famous words that have been spoken at millions of funerals around the world are these words “In my Father's house of many rooms,” said Jesus. “I will take you to be with me that where I am you may be also.” And then he said this lovely sentence. “If it were not so I would have told you.”
If there was nothing I would have told you. “But no,” says Jesus, “I will take you to be with me.” So there's nothing arrogant about saying we know where the believer will go. It may be arrogant to say we can't know, when Jesus has gone through and has promised to take his people through.
How wonderful that God will turn the tent into a building as he's promised and one day the believer will look back and say “Boy the body I had for this world, it got it got frail so fast but the body that I have for the new creation is so wonderful."
Life moves us into physical decay
I don't know whether you find cameras disappointing. I find cameras deeply disappointing because they keep up with the decay, the decline. But cameras are really telling the truth aren't they? We're moving on and it's time to take Jesus seriously. So Paul says we know. We have moved from fiction to non-fiction.
2. We groan
Second thing he says is, we groan. He says it twice. We groan. We groan. This is the groaning of the weary traveller. You know - that experience where you've been living out of a suitcase for weeks and you finally get home, close the front door. “I'm home!” This is the groaning of the marathon runner, finally getting to the tape. “I've finished! Now I can relax on the ground."
This groaning is not complaining or whinging. This is the groaning of arriving and the apostle Paul says that believer groans or longs to arrive. Not to escape but to arrive. Of course will never groan well if we have decided there is no future. And we've decided that the present isn’t going to be everything we want. We won't grown well in those circumstances. We will grown badly, because we’ll notice that everything is slipping out of our hands.
As the great Martin Luther said “I've held many things in my hands and I've lost them all. But the things I've placed in the hands of Christ I still possess.”
Over the weekend I was looking at the Sunday papers and I saw a very sad article talking about three ladies who'd become widows quite young. One of them had a husband who died at 58, one husband died at 45 and one had died at 40. It was a very sad article but what was even more sad was the response of the ladies. Because the response in the face of something so big was so small. It wasn't as if they thought, reflected, asked questions or did their homework on what was in front of them.
One of them said “I've learned to live in the moment.” Another said “I now picture my grief going into a container. And the third, “I'm just making the most of the time I have.” In other words I'm on a travelator and I'm not thinking about the beginning and I'm not thinking about the end I'm just going to stand on the travelator. There's something tragic about that. But we do live in an Easter refusing world.
Paul says knowing the homecoming for the believer, we groan, longing to arrive. There will be a resurrection body not he says a naked spook but a resurrection body in a new creation where all the plans of God will come to their goal.
Tim Keller says in one of his books, speaking to the Christian, “You're not going to float around but eat and love and sing in degrees of joy and power that you cannot imagine.” “In fact,” he says, “you'll be with Jesus Christ and you will have the life that he has planned and the life that you have longed for.
Is this just wishful thinking? It's actually just unpacking what Jesus himself said on one occasion which is that he longed to get back to the father. And the apostle Paul said he longed to get to Jesus. So we know this. We groan.
3. We are confident
Thirdly, Paul says, we're confident. Twice he says we're confident. He doesn't mean self-confident. He means we're buoyed up by the facts. In other words we are bold, courageously confident. We know that if we're here we're not there with Jesus. When we are home with Jesus we won't be here. It's pretty obvious isn't it? If we're here we're not there. When we're there we won't be here and he says in the present we walk by faith. We walk by faith and not by sight. In other words we're realists. We're not expecting paradise here. Every now and again we may get a little glimpse of paradise but we are realists. We do not expect the new Premier to produce paradise. We don't expect the Prime Minister to ever do it. We don't expect the President to do it or the King.
Jesus will give us paradise
Difficult isn't it to be in politics today when people want paradise now. Having cut off the future we wan’t paradise now. It's very hard to produce that. But one day Jesus will produce it and it's a tragedy for people to keep hoping that paradise will just turn up around the corner. We're really living on a pirate ship and unless we walk the gangplank over to the King of kings will never arrive in paradise.
One old saint said if you see a man in a darkroom excited by a candle, wouldn't you push open the shutters to show him what is outside? That's what Jesus does at Easter. He comes to the world excited by a candle and he opens the shutters to say there is so much more.
Nobody will get to heaven without faith in Jesus
Have you noticed that Jesus is also central to heaven. We need Jesus to arrive. Nobody will get to heaven without Jesus. You must join him here, but when you get there you'll discover that he is the key to heaven. He's the one who causes all the griefs to disappear. He's the one who causes all the joys to arrive.
4. Death does not make us disappear
So the apostle Paul says we know, we groan, we're confident and fourthly he says we will appear. We're not going to disappear. We're not going to be snuffed out. Everybody says Paul will appear before Christ. I've noticed that a number of people today like to say that we will be snuffed out. But that is to avoid the data. Somebody has said that before you were born you knew nothing and after you're dead you'll know nothing.
But that misses the fact that you have come into consciousness and it's time with your consciousness to take hold of the data about Jesus. The people who say that we're going to be snuffed out don't seem to me to have understood the character of Jesus who said there is more to come. And so we're going to meet Jesus says Paul again. To appear before him. Jesus said the same thing in Matthew 25. “The whole world,” he says, “will gather in front of me." And he says in John Chapter 5 “I've been given by God the job of judgement.”
Welcome him and be welcomed
And so we're going to meet Jesus. We may not die, he may come first. We may not pay taxes, he may come first and the person who has received Christ into their life will be received by Christ into his glory. And the person who has refused Christ from their life will be refused by Christ from his glory.
It's very simple. Welcome him and be welcomed. Refuse him and be refused.
And the key to meeting him safely in the future is now to look back to the Cross where he died and to hear him call out in the words of the Bible “I've paid, it's finished, it's done, I've paid your way. You need to turn this says," Jesus and take hold of the forgiveness which I hold out to you. And when you've taken hold of that forgiveness you and I are in friendship forever," says Jesus.
And you will go through this world in friendship with Jesus and then you'll go through the grave in friendship with Jesus and then you'll come face to face with him and he will say "Welcome!"
That's what Good Friday is all about. At Easter day is the proof of the future. The person who puts their trust in Jesus enters the family of God today. What a joyful thing to do and one day they will enter the presence of God. And when you come face to face with Christ, having put your trust in him, you will find all dangers and all grief are gone and you will find all joys and all benefits have arrived.
Believe your beliefs and doubt your doubts
So as I finish today my friends, perhaps today you're the sort of person who needs to get the facts of Jesus and then build your life safely on the facts. Or it may be that you are a believer and you, like me, need to get the facts more keenly into your system so that you believe your beliefs and doubt your doubts. Instead of doubting your beliefs and believing your doubts. And show the facts of the most wonderful thing. They'll cause a person to come to faith and live forever or a believer to be strengthened in hope.
Lift your gaze not your game
The apostle Paul says we know. We groan. We are confident. We will appear.
And that's why the title of the talk is Lift your gaze and not your game. Because God is not really interested in your performance. He's interested in your interest in Jesus’ performance. And when you lift your gaze to what he has done for you, dying and rising, that's the beginning of the future for you.
When the believer comes home to Christ everything gets better
Jonathan Edwards said when the believer comes home to Christ they'll get a better welcome than they got in this world. They'll meet a better parent than they had in this world. They'll find better company than they had in this world. They'll have a better life than they had in this world. They'll have a better body than they had in this world. They'll have better sight than they had in this world. They'll have better sound than they had in this world. They'll have a better future than they had in this world and they'll have a better inheritance than they had in this world.
And that my friends is good reason to be hopeful at Easter.
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