Participants: Pastor Dwight Nelson
Series Code: NP
Program Code: NP032616A
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00:09 >> Good morning, and happy Sabbath. 00:12 What a glorious day to be at church, isn't it? 00:14 It's a beautiful day to be here. I invite you to stand as we give 00:18 praise and prayer to our God and our King. 00:25 Pray with me. Holy, holy, holy is God Almighty who was, who is, and who ever 00:33 shall be. Father, may our hope grow strong today. 00:38 May our love endure and may our faith be a testament to what we know to be true, that Jesus came 00:45 to this Earth. He lived, he died, and was resurrected and promises to come 00:51 again. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. 00:55 Sing "Christ is Alive," hymn number 182 with us this morning. ♪♪ 01:32 [ Congregation sings ] 02:55 Amen. [ "Mighty to Save" plays ] 03:21 [ Congregation sings ] 04:17 ♪♪ 06:39 ♪♪ 06:57 [ "How Deep the Father's Love For Us" plays ] 07:11 [ Congregation sings ] 08:04 ♪♪ 10:16 ♪♪ 11:17 >> Oh, Happy Easter Sabbath to you, boys and girls. 11:20 Nice to have you. I got a little show and tell 11:22 today. In this white bag is something 11:25 from Cuba. 11:27 The country of Cuba. 31 one of us from the seminary were down there for -- what was 11:32 it? -- 10, 11 days. I wrote it up for your mom and dad in the blog. 11:36 But two weeks from today, don't miss it -- We got a big report, big screen, pictures and all. 11:41 The whole team will be here. But so, this is from Cuba. I'm gonna show you -- Have you 11:47 ever seen one of these? These are something. Have you ever seen one? 11:53 Ta-da! This is not just a block of wood. 11:59 This is a box with the Cuban flag on it. This is a box. 12:07 This is a mystery box, no box like it anywhere on Earth. And I have it right here. 12:16 I need a volunteer, all right? Young man in the blue shirt. What I'm gonna do is I'm 12:21 gonna -- because this box can be opened. I'm gonna give this box to this 12:25 young man. And would you please open this for us, all right? 12:28 So, he's got the box. He's gonna open the box for us. Then I want to show you. 12:31 It's just such a cool, little box. What's the problem with him? 12:37 Could you open the box? [ Laughter ] Oh, no, don't break it. 12:42 [ Chuckles ] So, he's got the box. What's he trying to do with the 12:45 box? >> Open it! >> Trying to open it. 12:47 >> Trying to open the box. What's his problem? >> He can't open it. 12:50 >> That's exactly right. He can't open it. Yeah, go ahead. Try that. 12:56 [ Chuckles ] No lock on it. Come on. What's the problem? 13:03 Well, let me try it. Let me just try it. And this is the part I'm really 13:08 nervous about. [ Laughter ] Because you and I will both go 13:12 home early. Okay. So, here's a box. 13:16 No, I can't... It sounds a little hollow. Let me just try this. 13:22 I don't know. Oh! What?! 13:28 Look at that! It's a mystery box. Has a secret, little drawer that 13:34 goes in like this. And nobody can find what's inside because you have to know 13:41 just how to open it. And when you know how to open it, it opens! 13:47 You know, there's some people that think this is what the grave is. 13:50 They think that when you go into a casket, when you go into a coffin, adios. 13:54 We'll never see you again. That's what some people believe the grave is. 13:59 But this weekend, we're celebrating somebody who came from far away to this Earth. 14:03 What's his name? >> Jesus! >> We're celebrating Jesus, who 14:05 came and went into the grave. And because he knew the secret and had the power, just like 14:11 that, on Sunday morning, what happened? Satan said, "He'll never get out 14:16 of my grave now!" And on Sunday morning, voilà! Jesus rose. 14:22 And because he's opened the grave, nobody has to be afraid of going into a wooden box ever 14:26 again. You don't have to be afraid if you have Jesus. 14:32 Amen. Thank you, Cuba, for that wonderful lesson. 14:36 Who would like to thank Jesus for opening the secret mystery box for us so that we never have 14:42 to be afraid again? I need a young lady. I've got a young lady right 14:46 there. All right, let's close our eyes and fold our hands with Sissy as 14:53 she thanks Jesus for opening. >> Dear Jesus, thank you that, on Friday, you died for us to 15:03 save us from death because of our sins, and thank you that you paid the price for us and that, 15:13 on Sunday, you woke up and you came out of your grave. And thank you that you promised 15:22 that one day you would come back and save us and take us home to Heaven with you. 15:27 In Jesus' name, amen. >> Amen. That was such a beautiful 15:31 prayer. That was the whole gospel. Beautifully done. 15:34 Thank you, Sissy. God bless you, children. Remember what Sissy just prayed. 15:39 Thank you, Jesus. You are the one who has opened the box for us. 15:48 [ "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" plays ] 16:24 [ Congregation sings ] 18:23 ♪♪ 18:48 [ Congregation sings ] 19:35 >> O, God, we sing our hope, ours the cross, the grave, the skies. 19:43 Now set that hope ablaze and send us into this dark world. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. 19:51 Be seated, please. 20:09 On this Easter Sabbath, two stories and a commentary. 20:14 Story number one. Russell Baker, syndicated and 20:21 Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, New York Times, 20:24 stories from his memoir entitled "Growing Up." 20:31 5-year-old Russell -- his daddy is sick, sicker than the little 20:37 boy realizes, by the way. 20:39 Here we go. "It was a gentle, pastel, Indian summer morning, warm and sweet. 20:45 I wandered around the backyard until the sun burned off the frost. 20:48 And after a while, my mother came out. 'The doctor's here,' she said. 20:52 'He's going to take Daddy to the hospital in Frederick so he can get better. 20:56 Come and kiss him goodbye.' To my surprise, my father was fully dressed and seated in the 21:01 doctor's small roadster at the front of the house. I walked across the lawn to the 21:06 car, and he leaned out the window and smiled, but he didn't have much to say to me. 21:11 Just, 'Daddy'll be home in a day or two. Be a good boy till I get back.' 21:16 My mother held me up, and he gave me a kiss. 'We'd better be going,' the 21:20 doctor said. My mother set me down and leaned into the car and kissed him. 21:24 She and I watched the roadster together until it passed over the brow of the hill, headed for 21:29 the Maryland side of the Potomac. The next day, I set off on one 21:34 of my daily wandering expeditions, taking the road toward the creek. 21:40 I was down there by myself. You could always find something entertaining to do around 21:43 Morrisonville. Climb a fence. Take a stick. Scratch pictures in the dirt. 21:47 There were always cows around, or a horse. Throw pebbles at a locust tree. 21:51 I was busy at this sort of thing when I saw my second cousins Kenneth and Ruth Lee coming down 21:57 the road. Besides Doris and Audrey, my sisters and me, they were the 22:02 only children living in Morrisonville. Kenneth, two years older than I, 22:06 was our leader. He was coming down the road with Ruth Lee following, as usual. 22:10 I was happy to see them. We usually played in the fields and around the barns and straw 22:14 ricks together and I was glad now to have company. When Kenneth walked right up to 22:18 me, though, he stared at me with such a stare as I'd never seen. 'Your father's dead,' he said. 22:26 It was like an accusation that my father had done something vile and criminal, and I came to 22:30 my father's defense. 'He is not,' I said. But, of course, they didn't know 22:34 the situation. I started to explain. He was sick. In the hospital. 22:37 My mother was bringing him home right now. 'He's dead,' Kenneth said. 22:43 His assurance slid an icicle into my heart. 'He is not either!' I shouted. 22:47 'He is too,' Ruth Lee said. 'And they want you to come home right away.' 22:52 I started running up the road screaming, 'He is not!' It was a weak argument. 22:58 They had the evidence and gave it to me as I hurried home crying, 'He is not. He is not. 23:03 He is not.' I was almost certain before I got there that he was. 23:09 And I was right. Arriving at the hospital that morning, my mother was told he 23:13 had died at 4 A.M. in 'acute diabetic coma.' He was 33 years old. 23:20 When I came running home, my mother was still not back from Frederick, but the women had 23:24 descended on our house, as women there did in such times, and were already busy with the 23:28 ritual housecleaning and cooking that was Morrisonville's instinctual response to death. 23:33 With a thousand tasks to do, they had no time to handle a howling 5-year-old. 23:37 I was sent to the opposite end of town, to Bessie Scott's house. 23:41 Poor Bessie Scott. All afternoon she listened, patiently as a saint, while I 23:46 sat in her kitchen and cried myself out. For the first time, I thought 23:52 seriously about God. Between sobs, I told Bessie that if God could do things like this 23:58 to people, then God was hateful and I had no more use for Him. Bessie told me about the peace 24:03 of heaven and the joy of being among the angels and the happiness of my father, who was 24:07 already there. This argument failed to quiet my rage. 24:12 'God loves us all like His own children,' Bessie said. 'Well, if God loves me, why did 24:17 He make my father die?' Bessie said I would understand someday, but she was only partly 24:22 right. That afternoon, though I couldn't have phrased it this 24:27 way then, I decided God was a lot less interested in people than anybody in Morrisonville 24:33 was willing to admit. That day, I decided God was not entirely to be trusted. 24:40 After all, after that, I never cried again with any real conviction, nor expected much of 24:49 anyone's God except indifference, nor loved deeply without fearing it would cost me 24:54 dearly in pain. At the age of 5, I had become a skeptic, began to sense that 25:00 any happiness coming my way might be the prelude to some grim cosmic joke." 25:10 Sad, isn't it? Makes you wonder how many of us had been living for years with 25:19 an abandoned hope born out of a broken heart, chasing hope from an empty tomb, a new season. 25:34 But what hope is there? Story number two. Let's go to it. 25:40 The Gospel of Mark, the dramatic, terse Gospel of Mark. Mark Chapter 16, the last page 25:46 of the Gospel. Mark 16. Story number two. 25:54 Mark 16:1. 26:23 "Who will roll the stone away?" Maybe that was the haunting 26:29 question that we heard over and over again this week through the 26:35 din and the dust and the smoke and the flame, the fury of 26:44 another city, yet another city added to the roll call of 26:48 terrorist targets. Poor Brussels, Belgium. 26:52 Who rolled the stone away? Who will deliver us from this 27:01 death? 27:09 Verse 2 again. 27:23 Wasn't that what the little 5-year-old Russell was screaming 27:27 into that afternoon air as he cried all the way home? 27:32 "He is not. He is not. He is not." 27:35 I want you to see Russell's words written as an adult. 27:41 Celebrated writer. Put him on the screen for you. 27:45 I just read them to you. 28:27 And by the way, not even the brightest minds on Earth have figured it out. 28:35 In the March issue of this year of the New Republic magazine, literary critic William Giraldi 28:42 ravingly reviews Katie Roiphe's new book on death. She entitled the book 28:47 "The Violet Hour." "The Violet Hour," a phrase borrowed from T.S. Eliot's 28:51 "The Waste Land." Let me read just a piece of his review of her book. 28:58 Giraldi writing, "A writer's dying" -- because she's gonna study five dying authors -- "A 29:06 writer's dying can seem the coda to his work, since one definition of the poet and 29:12 novelist is, or should be, someone who's been preparing to die all along -- someone whose 29:17 imaginative life is usurped by the inevitability of our flesh, and the consequences that 29:23 inevitability has for the spirit." He goes on, "In 'The Violet 29:27 Hour,' Katie Roiphe delivers a composite of daring beauty on the deaths of Susan Sontag, 29:34 Sigmund Freud, John Updike, Dylan Thomas, and Maurice Sendak. 29:39 In the slow fade of her five writers -- cancer came for 29:44 Sontag, Freud, and Updike; a stroke felled Sendak; Thomas 29:50 decimated himself exuberantly with drink -- Roiphe finds" -- 29:54 and now he quotes her book -- she finds 'glimpses of 29:57 bravery'" -- as they're dying -- "of beauty, of truly terrible 30:01 behavior, of creative bursts, of superb devotion, of glitteringly 30:05 accurate self-knowledge, and of magnificent delusion. 30:08 'I think if I can capture death on the page,' she writes, 'I'll repair or heal something. 30:15 I'll feel better. It comes down to that.'" But does it really? 30:20 Does it come down to that? You capture death on a page and that settles it? 30:26 But maybe we couldn't capture death anywhere else anyway but on a page. 30:35 Story number two continues. 31:04 I found a cheerful, little poem written by the 19th century English poet John Clare. 31:09 A cheery piece, quietly builds to the last line that ends, by the way, with a question mark. 31:15 I want to read it to you. If you're like me, when somebody reads poetry and I can't see the 31:20 words, I mean, it's just -- I just can't quite get it, so I want you to see what you're 31:24 hearing. Reach into your worship bulletin, your Easter bulletin. 31:28 The study guide is there, which is a collection of the quotes in this teaching. 31:31 Pull it out. Right there at the top, you see John Clare's poem. 31:35 Title of his poem, "The Instinct of Hope." You see it there? 31:39 So, you'll hear it and now you'll read it at the same time. Not putting it on the screen. 31:44 Okay? "The Instinct of Hope." "Is there another world for this 31:53 frail dust to warm with life and be itself again? Something about me daily speaks 31:59 there must, and why should instinct nourish hopes in vain? 'Tis nature's prophecy that 32:05 such will be, and everything seems struggling to explain the close sealed volume of its 32:10 mystery. Time wandering onward keeps its usual pace as seeming anxious of 32:15 eternity, to meet that calm and find a resting place. Even the small violet feels a 32:22 future power and waits each year renewing blooms to bring, and surely man is no inferior flower 32:30 to die unworthy of a second spring?" Is he? Is she? 32:39 I'm gonna read those last four lines again. 32:57 And when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been removed. 33:02 What is this second spring of which the poet speaks? Maybe only in the dank, the dark 33:11 chilled air of a sepulchre we can know the truth. Verse 4 again. 33:55 What a conflicted ending to this dramatic gospel. Manuscripts indicate this is 33:59 probably the actual ending, conflicted in the end, because every reader who will read this 34:06 story lives in a conflicted world where hope and fear and faith and doubt are mixed in a 34:13 terrible embrace. 34:21 Wow. Chasing hope. I mean, what else can you do 34:27 with hope but chase it? Chasing hope, a new series for a new season. 34:36 Because the fact is, this fall, there will be something called hope trending, a crash course on 34:43 how to live without fear. You look at the cover of the bulletin, it says 29 weeks and 34:49 counting away. So before hope trending, why not chasing hope, the season that 34:57 precedes it? What else can we do with hope but chase it? 35:04 The apostle Peter. There's a line he writes, and we go to it. 35:11 And the reason we can go to it is because, as you know, many scholars believe that Peter 35:15 himself, the big fisherman Peter, he was the personal mentor and father figure for 35:20 young John Mark. Do you remember John Mark, who Paul took under his wing, this 35:24 intrepid missionary Paul, on that missionary team, but Paul sent the boy packing halfway in 35:31 because Paul apparently didn't brook crybabies and sissies on such major missions as this, and 35:38 so, shamed, John Mark returns to Jerusalem, where his mother lives. 35:44 But the wise fisherman saw a diamond in the rough. He put his arms around that boy. 35:52 Scholars tell us that, in fact, the Gospel of Mark is really the gospel according to Peter, 35:56 because did you notice only in the Gospel of Mark, the angel says, "Go tell his disciples and 36:01 Peter." You can bet Peter hung on to that one word of hope for a 36:08 long, long time. So, we've heard Peter's recitation of the resurrection, 36:13 and now we go to Peter. Come on. Let's go. 1 Peter. He only wrote two little letters 36:17 in the New Testament. This is the commentary to the two stories. 36:21 Here it comes. 1 Peter 1. Near the end of your Bible. 36:26 1 Peter 1. Let's go. 36:33 We go to this line because, as it turns out, the resurrection of Jesus Christ turns out to be 36:42 the tour de force of the Gospel Proclamation in the New Testament. 36:47 It is the quintessence of the Gospel. Watch. 36:52 All right. 1 Peter 1. 36:53 Oh, let's just begin the letter where most letters begin -- at 36:56 the beginning. "Peter, an apostle of 36:58 Jesus Christ, to God's elect, exiles scattered throughout the 37:01 provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and 37:04 Bithynia" -- That would be Turkey, Asia Minor today -- 37:07 "who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the 37:11 Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit" -- 37:14 Good night, we've got the whole Trinity here -- 37:16 and they've been chosen "to be obedient to Jesus Christ and 37:21 sprinkled with his blood." Now, notice the next line. 37:25 "Grace and peace be yours in abundance." 37:28 And I love that line. We haven't even gotten -- we're 37:30 chasing hope, but we've run into grace and peace on the way. 37:33 Let it be in abundance. Let it be for you in abundance. And why wouldn't it be in 37:38 abundance when you have the entire Trinity on your side? Did you get what we just read? 37:44 God the Father -- who is He? God the Father is the one who, with foreknowledge, picks you 37:48 out before you were in your mother's tummy. Said, "I want that girl to be 37:52 born. I want that boy to be born." And by the way, if you are alive 37:55 today, you are alive because of the foreknowledge of the God of this universe. 37:59 I don't care who your mommy was, and I don't care what your daddy did. 38:03 The fact is, you're alive today because there is a divine being who chose you before you were 38:10 born and said, "I want you, girl. I want you, boy. 38:14 You're gonna follow me for the rest of your life." But it's not just God the 38:18 Father. You have God the Spirit. What does the Spirit do? 38:20 He does this sanctifying work. And what is that? Espiritu santo, as I've been 38:24 learning to say in Spanish, in Cuba, what does sanctifying mean? 38:29 It means the Spirit has reached into your life. Get this -- He has pulled you 38:33 out of the pack. He's pulled you out of the crowd. 38:35 He's separated you from the gang. "You're no longer a part of 38:38 them. Boy, you stay right here with me. 38:40 You and me. You belong to me, girl. You stay here with me. 38:43 I have separated you for me." That's what sanctifying means. And then you have Jesus with the 38:48 code language of Calvary, sprinkled with his blood. It's because of Jesus that the 38:53 Good Friday is good. The entire Trinity is on our side. 38:59 What's not to like about that this Easter? No wonder grace and peace be 39:04 yours in abundance. Rest in God. Oh, but you were chasing hope. 39:10 That's right, Peter says. You're chasing hope. Let's go. Verse 3. 39:21 Not a dead hope, not a half-baked hope -- a living 39:25 hope, a vibrant, pulsating, breathing, living hope. 39:29 "I have given you a living hope." 39:32 You hold on to that hope. 39:39 And how has he given it to us? Ah! Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 39:46 From the dead. You see, Good Friday's not enough, not if you're God as He 39:54 is. Good Friday -- yes, oh, Good Friday was eternal love's 39:57 sacrificial death for the entire human race from beginning to end. 40:00 Oh, yes, without Good Friday, we would not even be here today, but the death of Good Friday 40:06 means nothing without the resurrection of Easter Sunday. Easter Sunday is the divine seal 40:14 of approval on this tour de force. The atonement ratified seal. 40:22 And never to be broken. Only when God arose was the seal affixed. 40:33 What was declared by faith finished on Friday, really got finished on Sunday. 40:41 Wow. That's why the New Testament just repeats and repeats and 40:47 repeats. No Easter Sunday -- There is no Good Friday. 40:52 Which, by the way, is precisely Paul's point. Paul, a buddy of Peter's. 40:57 They didn't always see eye to eye, but they were friends. Paul, who has heard about a 41:02 toxic rumor that is filtering through this newly planted church in Corinth, a deadly 41:07 rumor that suggests, "You know what? All this resurrecting-dead- 41:11 bodies stuff is a bunch of bunk. Intellectually and experientially, it's just bunk." 41:17 And Paul jumps, thunders to his literary feet, and I need you to see what he actually writes. 41:23 Keep your finger here. We'll be right back. But 1 Corinthians 15, the great 41:26 resurrection chapter of the entire Bible. 1 Corinthians 15. 41:31 Paul deals with this rumor. Snap it out. Snap it in the bud. 41:35 Here we go. 1 Corinthians 15:12. 41:47 I don't understand this, folks. Think of the logic now. 41:50 Let me run some logic by you, Paul is writing -- verse 13. 41:56 Because apparently some are saying, "Well, Jesus might have. 41:59 Jesus raised. Okay. But not us. He was a God. We're not." 42:02 No, Paul says. Rubbish. Verse 14. 42:31 And, oh, by the way -- verse 18. "Then those also who have 42:34 fallen asleep in Christ" -- read, died -- "are lost." 42:38 Verse 19. 42:46 You can't have the Gospel without the resurrection. 42:49 You can't have Good Friday without Easter Sunday. 42:52 That's the point. Otherwise, we might as well 42:55 believe the anthropologist -- what's his name? -- 42:57 Ernest Becker. What did he suggest? 42:58 I'll put his words on the screen for you. 43:00 "The soberest conclusion" -- bright mind, now... 43:16 How'd you like that to be the end of your story? "And he became fertilizer." 43:25 If there is no resurrection, you might as well believe with Becker, and Baker, whom we read 43:30 at the beginning. "Grim cosmic joke." Hmm. 43:38 That's why Peter can write with such bold confidence as he does. Now back to where your finger 43:42 is. Verse 3 again. "Praise be," Peter writes, "to 43:45 the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he's given 43:50 us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." 43:54 Chasing hope from an empty tomb. I repeat, the New Testament is absolutely unequivocal in 44:02 declaring that Christ's resurrection is the divine seal on the efficacy of his atoning 44:09 death. No resurrection, no atonement, period! 44:19 And thus it is the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus, that ignites our hopes. 44:23 You want to chase hope? You run through an empty tomb. Let me put Eugene Peterson's 44:29 rendition of this. I love this. This is from "The Message." 44:31 I'll put it on the screen for you. 44:33 "What a God we have!" he translates. 44:37 1 Peter 3, 1:3. 44:57 Don't you worry -- "The Day" -- capital "D" -- "is coming when 45:01 you'll have it all -- life healed and whole." 45:05 Did you catch that? 45:07 "And the future begins now." Starts right now. Because in the New Testament, 45:13 the future breaks into the present, and we live the future in the present. 45:20 And that's why we have hope. That is precisely why we have hope. 45:25 "And the future starts now." No matter how dark today is, no matter how wretched your heart 45:33 feels now, we have hope for tomorrow. We have hope now for tomorrow. 45:45 I want to end by reading you a thoughtful essay written by Lewis Smedes, ethicist, 45:50 theologian, taught at Fuller for years. I had the privilege of 45:54 interviewing him. Delightful interviewee, by the way, on our program "The 46:00 Evidence." And this is in his book, "How Can It Be All Right When 46:04 Everything is All Wrong?" I want to end with this. Just read it to you. 46:13 Here it is. Oh, so here he goes. "I bought a brand-new date book 46:17 yesterday." You remember those things? Date books? 46:20 It's all on the phone now, but you remember the date books. "I bought a brand-new date book 46:25 yesterday, the kind I use every year -- spiral bound, black imitation, leather covers 46:29 wrapped around pages and pages of blank squares. Each square has a number to tell 46:33 me which day of the month I'm in at the moment. Each square is a frame for one 46:37 episode of my life. Before I'm through with the book, I will fill the squares 46:40 with classes I will teach, people I will eat lunch with, and ever-lasting committee 46:45 meetings I will sit through." And some of you can identify with that. 46:50 "And these are only the things I cannot afford to forget. 46:53 I fill the squares, too, with things I do not write down for 46:57 me to remember, thousands of cups of beverage, some 47:00 lovemaking, some praying, and I hope gestures of help to my 47:04 neighbors. Whatever I do, it has to fit 47:06 inside one of these squares on my date book. 47:11 I live one square at a time. The four lines that make that square are the walls of time 47:16 that organize my life. Everything I do has to fit in one square. 47:19 I cannot straddle the lines. Each square has an invisible door that leads to the next 47:23 square. At a silent stroke, the door opens, and I am pulled through 47:28 as if by a magnet, sucked into the next square in line. There I will, again, fill the 47:34 time frame that seals me. Fill it with my busyness just as I did the square before. 47:40 As I get older, the squares seem to get smaller." Hmm. 47:46 "One day I will walk into a square that has no door. 47:55 There will be no mysterious opening and no walking into an adjoining square. 48:01 One of the squares will be terminal. I do not know which square it 48:05 will be." Everybody here -- one square without a door. 48:14 "A life insurance person can roughly guess the squares I may expect before I get to the last 48:19 one." Some of you math majors are gonna end up with -- what is it? 48:22 Actuarials. You know, these charts figured out how long you're gonna really 48:27 live. "How many do I have left? How many squares do I have left? 48:31 Okay, "for the sake of illustration, suppose I have exactly 1,029 squares left. 48:36 What difference would it make to me now as I fill up this square, the only one that holds me 48:41 today? Ah, the difference depends not so much on how many squares are 48:45 left, but on what really is going to happen to me when I get to that final square." 48:51 By the way, he was taking down his lights after Christmas, hanging along the eaves of his 49:00 house in California, when he slipped on a ladder and died. That was the last square. 49:09 1,029 -- I don't know. Maybe you have 10,029. Maybe you have 29. 49:18 We don't know. "Now, when I get to that final square, what is really gonna 49:24 happen? Two things can happen." Here we go. 49:26 Which of the two does happen tells pretty much what life is and what our world is all about, 49:30 so we ought to face the two possibilities with utter honesty. 49:33 This is no time for make-believe. Here's the first possibility. 49:36 It's that when I walk in the last square, the one with no door, I will be suffocated 49:41 inside of it. The walls of the square may close in on me as it were to 49:45 choke me. All my yesterdays may have only vomited me into this dark room 49:50 with no exit. I may have strutted my petty pace through each day only to be 49:55 seduced into this blank square that silences my sounds forever. I have pretended in all those 50:01 squares to be somebody special. Now I may share my bed with dead rats. 50:07 This could be happens to me 1,029 squares from now. And if it happens to me, it 50:13 likely happens to everybody when he or she slides into the final square of that date book. 50:22 Now, the second possibility is that when I walk into the last 50:25 square, I will discover that the reason it has no door is that it 50:29 has no walls for a door to fit into. 50:34 The four unmovable lines that seal me inside all my other frames are erased. 50:40 The last day of my life turns out to be the beginning of life in new dimensions, free somehow 50:46 because the walls of regulated time have fallen away. The last square is not death. 50:50 It is a new dimension of life." And everything inside of us is going, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, 50:57 whoa, stop, stop, stop. That's not the way it goes. Oh, yes, it is, as he will point 51:01 out. He'll make it right. You'll be surprised what he 51:04 believes. It's coming. "The Christian Gospel comes down 51:08 to a promise that the second possibility is the real one. Our last square is an 51:13 introduction into a new expansive world of perfect peace and total justice. 51:18 When we believe the promise, we have what is called the Christian hope." 51:21 Now, the last words -- I'm gonna put them on the screen for you. Here he goes. 51:46 Look, I agree. "There will be an intermission." 51:49 Now, see? "There will be an intermission, 51:51 of course, between my arrival at my own private last square and 51:54 the arrival of the new world." 52:15 Because of Jesus' resurrection, guess what? This is death. 52:19 Eyes closed. Eyes open. You sleep. 52:26 There is no passage of time. Death will feel a half a second long. 52:31 Eyes closed. Eyes open. Maybe light years have gone by. 52:38 Doesn't matter. Eyes closed. Eyes open. 52:48 He has born us anew to a living hope for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. 52:56 And the future starts right now. Amen. The Brazilian philosopher 53:08 Rubem Alves once wrote, "Hope is hearing the melody of the future. 53:16 Faith is to dance to it." Because the future starts right now. 53:26 Let us pray. O, God, don't let us lose this truth. 53:32 We will chase hope throughout our lives just to know that in Christ Jesus. 53:44 The future is now. And death is shattered. And hope rules forever and ever. 53:57 Seal it in our hearts and give us a new reason to chase hope this new season. 54:06 In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen. Amen. 54:12 ♪♪ 54:31 [ Congregation sings ] 56:52 And all the people said, "Amen." Now may the God of hope who brought back from the dead our 56:59 Lord Jesus Christ fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow 57:06 with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 57:14 >> I wanted to take an extra moment to let you know how grateful I am you joined us 57:18 today. I hear from viewers and listeners like you all across 57:21 this nation, and literally around the world, and I'm thankful, because it's through 57:25 the generosity of the members of this congregation and people like you that we're able to 57:30 bring you this program. So, if what we've shared today has touched your heart, I'd like 57:33 to invite you to become a financial partner with us. Just give us a call. 57:36 The toll-free number, 877 -- the two words "his will." 57:40 877-his-will. Or if you'd rather, go to our 57:43 website, www.pmchurch.tv. Either way, your generosity will 57:49 bless a new generation in cyberspace all over this planet. 57:53 So thank you. Thank you very much for your 57:56 partnership. ♪♪ |
Revised 2016-05-31