Good morning and welcome to Easter with The Edge Church! I'm Neil Schori. I'm one of the pastors here at The Edge, and we are so glad to have you joining us from all over Aurora, Illinois, throughout the US, and even some from other countries. So welcome. Around 2000 years ago, a man named Jesus was killed in the cruelest of ways by being crucified on a wooden cross. He was tormented and mocked by his abusers. It's recorded in the Bible that the crowd yelled at him and teased him and said that this man, Jesus, who had rescued so many other people, couldn't save himself. He bled and died on that cross while asking God to forgive the people for what they were doing to him. He even told a criminal on a cross nearby that on that very day, he would be with him in paradise.
He was buried that night, and then on the third day, something happened that has changed everything: Jesus returned to life from the dead. The gospel of John, chapter 20:
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.
Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).
Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
There is never a Sunday that the message of God's love for humanity doesn't affect someone, but I think that in the era of coronavirus that we're in right now, Easter has a meaning that reaches into the coldest and deadest of hearts and offer something that if we're very honest, we know that we need more than anything else. Today, I am more confident than ever that God is using the worst of circumstances all over the world to get the attention of the people of the world.
Just over a week ago, the surgeon general of the U.S. said that this week—the week that we just experienced—would be like the Pearl Harbor of the greatest generation or the 9/11 of our generation and many days in this past week, we've lost 1000 Americans daily to this virus. We are watching almost every single country in the world have to shut down to deal with this devastating pandemic. Everybody has been affected. Even people close to us. Now, Easter matters more than ever when all of our comforts are at risk. If you have a 401k, you know exactly what I'm talking about today. If you have good health or fragile health, you know what I mean. If you had a view of your future, it has probably been altered, either because coronavirus has impacted your life and/or the life of your friend or family, or it's at least threatened to do so. No one is immune to this virus nor its aftermath.
This isn't really anything new. It just feels new. We've never truly been in control. Maybe we've just had the illusion that we were in control because we've been covered by this American dream. And good healthcare and a seemingly ever-increasing stock market to boast about to the world. But now what we're left with are the tattered remains of what many of us had put our hope into. The coronavirus is revealing to a lot of us and about us. And if you're paying attention, it's showing us what we've made our lives about and how we act when it's taken away. And yet this story is literally as old as time. I want to share a story about a person. Jesus told this story about this man and so many of the people just as they do today, got lost in their pursuit of more things, and they thought that more things would make them happy just like we do today.
Jesus had been teaching thousands of people in the crowd about these important truths of life, these eternal truths, the things about God that are true, that the most important things that actually matter. And then someone said what probably a number of them were thinking, and he really showed that he wasn't grasping that truth at all. The gospel of Luke 12:13-21:
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
(If any of you guys have gone through issues with the States, you've probably had that question or you've had that issue.)
Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves, but it's not rich towards God. At first read as you go through this, it might sound like it's just an issue about a warning focusing too much on money and that is just part of it, but there's so much more for us in it. Just like there's more for us in the story of coronavirus, a pandemic that's caused untold suffering, it is also revealing to us what we've placed, our hope, then what we give our lives over to and how those things ultimately leave us very disappointed. The rich man in the story forgot that God is the one who causes the crops to grow. So when he had this incredible year, he actually took all of his, all of his proceeds, and he spent it on himself because he was the central figure in the story of his life.
His truth was the only truth that actually mattered to him, and he didn't use his increase to help others. He used his increase only for himself and on his increasing desire, which would never be satisfied. The truth is we recognize that, don't we? Because when we get more, we just want more. The rich man also failed to recognize the need for relationships and for wisdom. At the time of Jesus, it was very common for people to gather at the gates of their cities to have conversations about life and to have relationships and to glean wisdom from each other. They discussed everything. It was the place where relationships were formed, and people made good decisions together, but from this story, we know that this rich man didn't have relationships, and it's most likely because he was so focused on getting more for himself. Even his internal dialogue was about himself.
I will do this so that I will have more so that I can take all of that to spend it on me, and then I can relax one day and take it easy for my whole life. There was no room in the rich man's heart for relationships because he really only loved himself. It's really important for us not to look at that story and confuse it with personality types. There are people who are extroverts, and there are people who are introverts. All that extrovert means is that you basically renew your energy by being around others. If you're an introvert, it basically just means that you renew your energy when you step away and quiet spaces, mainly alone, but the rich man was not a personality type. It was a man who bet everything on his fortune. So here's another reality of the rich man's life. The rich man and focusing on himself and his money not only failed to create relationships, but he also failed to consider God's role in his life. James 4:13-15 says:
Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
Do you think that maybe we've placed too much emphasis, too much value on our things? Do you think that maybe we've sacrificed our relationships with people and with the Lord for those things, and maybe for us as Americans, that is, we've sacrificed it on the altar of rugged individualism. We pride ourselves on pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and maybe for you, and it's working really hard so that you have enough for your family, but you recognize today that you've been away from your family for so long that you don't know them as well as you'd like to and you can't really enjoy it with them.
Maybe you were hurt by some people in your past that were supposed to love you selflessly, but they failed you. And right now, for you to this point, it has seemed easier for you to avoid relationships and focus on getting things for just you because you're the only one that you can rely on. Or maybe in the midst of coronavirus, everything has been shaken in your life, and the things that you thought were great have left you wanting, and you realize they're not enough to sustain you. Maybe today you recognize that wealth and health, they're great tools, but they make a terrible God.
Whatever you realize in this time, I want to point you to a greater reality that you were created by God to have a relationship with him, and you were created by God to glorify him with your life. No matter who you are and no matter what you've done, he loves you today, and he wants you to come back to him. Some of you wonder what God really thinks about you, and I'm going to share two verses that are going to show you what God thinks about you today. In John 3:16, it says this:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Some of you, when you hear that, you think that's good for some people, but they don't know what I've done. You think that you're beyond the grace of God. You think that God doesn't want to have anything to do with you. As a matter of fact, you're watching online for the first time because you are scared to walk into a church because you thought things like, maybe the roof would come down on me if I walk into that building because God is so angry with me. Verse 17 answers that for you. Listen to this John 3:17 it says:
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Here's what that means. God is not mad at you today. He loves you so much that he died on a cross so that you may live forever for him. He died for all of the bad things that you've done. He died for all of the shameful things that you've done. He died for every single thing that would separate you from him so that you could come home to him.
I think that you can understand this Easter story is extremely powerful at this time in our history. This is a time like no other time in history. We are sitting mostly in our homes. Almost all people are practicing proper social distance, and we never heard that term before recently. And we're doing that so that we can flatten the curve of the spread of coronavirus. I think that we have more in common with the very first disciples of Jesus 2000 years ago than ever before because they were also hiding behind closed doors. They were afraid of going outside because of what might happen to them. They were in terrible grief because Jesus died, and they were in fear of the authorities that put Jesus to death. They were afraid that if they went out, they would be put to death also.
But here's the good news.
The grave could not hold Jesus, and it can't hold you if you put your trust in him. The grave will take away every single thing that you presently have except for your relationships with people and your relationship with God. Here's the question for you. What will you leave behind? Here's the answer. You'll leave behind every single thing that you own, and someone else in your family or the government will decide what to do with those things. You work so hard for things that you will ultimately leave all behind. The only thing that you'll have are relationships.
Don't be mistaken: one day, you will leave this broken world. We all will. This is not the place that we’ll be permanently. Coronavirus and its effects might have made you just a little bit more aware of this in the last several weeks and if it has done that for you, that is one thing I'm thankful for. I'm broken by the brokenness that people have experienced in our community and around our nation and around our world, but I'm incredibly grateful for God's gracious reminders to us that this is not our home and that we are just passing through. Maybe today you're worried about a family member who is sick, and maybe you've already lost someone to this life, demand, and virus. Maybe you're at home and you're trying to put on enough masks to cover yourself so that when you go out that you don't get sick and spread it to your family.
Maybe you're just sitting in the aftermath of financial ruin because you lost your job or it could be that you're simply terrified of getting this virus and then dying alone in a hospital because of it. Listen closely to me about this. The same Jesus who defeated death, he stands ready to invite you to real life that won't disappoint you. A life that is full, and it's focused on the right things, the eternal things, and there are only these relationships with people and your connection to God himself. If this is you and life really isn't working out the way that you thought it would even just a couple of months ago, turn away from your sin and turn to the only one who can save you from this mess that we're all in. Not one of us who has received Jesus is better than any other person. We've just recognized that the way that we're trying to live life is not working for ourselves, and we turn from our sin and turn to Jesus. This does mean at all that we are close to perfect, but we've asked the one who is to come into our lives and into our hearts.
After Jesus rose from the dead and the word about Jesus spread across the land, the very people who persecuted him had the sense that they needed to escape their guilt and shame and they ask one of the original disciples, Peter, what they were supposed to do, and listen; the answer resonates through all ages and all times and all circumstances. It resonates through pandemics and wars and famines. It resonates across religions and races and creeds and confessions, and it's this, Acts 2:37-41:
When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.
Listen very intently to this. This message is not for a select few. It is for every single person that has breathed on the face of this earth. If you want to ask Jesus to forgive you, if you've been broken down by fear and loss and tragedy throughout these last few weeks, you are not alone. And if you want to ask Jesus to forgive you of your sins today, I'd like you to pray this with me right now.
God, these uncertain times have made me aware that the things I've put my hope to lead me to a hopeless end. I have no control over my health. I have no control over my money. I want to turn away from worthless things, my ways, my sin, and I want to turn to you. God. Thank you for raising Jesus from the dead. I turned to him my only hope in this life and in the next thank you Jesus for life that will never end. Help me to live for you for the rest of my life. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.