What Does Easter Mean?

A. "Control freak" test taken from Cosmopolitan Magazine

1. You decide to go on a cross-country trip with friends. When your group gets lost, you:
   a. Don't even notice.
   b. Have one friend read the map while you read the road signs. Two heads are better than one.
   c. Commandeer the wheel and go into Lewis-and-Clark mode. If anyone is going to get you out of this fix, it'll be you.
2. Your flight is delayed six hours, and you're forced to sit helplessly on the runway. You:
   a. Lead the other passengers in a rousing rendition of "row, row, row your boat." You'll get there when you get there.
   b. Deal for the time being but make sure to ask the airline for a free meal or some other form of reimbursement.
   c. Take a hostage.
3. You are interviewing potential roommates to share a spacious 2-bedroom apartment. To get a good feel for the person, you ask for:
   a. Only a name. You go with your gut.
   b. A list of references.
   c. A urine sample.
4. You were out with the flu, so you're a bit behind at work. You:
   a. Let anyone and everyone pick up your slack. When you're sick, you're sick.
   b. Ask a coworker for help and promise to take her to lunch in return.
   c. Take enough antihistamine to dry up a Great Lake and shun any assistance. No one has your special touch.

If you answered "C" to most or all of these questions, then you are a control freak. Many of us are borderline control freaks.

B. And yet we've lived long enough to know that life is not in our control.

• We cannot control the past.
• We cannot control the future.
• We cannot control other people.
• We cannot control our health.
• We cannot even control our own thoughts sometimes.

C. We are not in control, but God is. The Bible makes it absolutely clear from beginning to end that "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world and all who live in it; for He founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters." (Psalm 24:1-2) Psalm 103:19 says, "The Lord has established his throne in heave, and His kingdom rules over all."

• God's control extends over all things, including our lives. Proverbs 21:1 "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; He directs it like a watercourse."
• God is in control. This is what Jesus meant when he said, "no one takes my life away from me, but I lay it down of my own accord."
• This is what Jesus meant when he stood before the Roman official, Pilate, to be questioned and he said, "You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above." Jesus understood that God is in control.
• This is what Jesus meant when he hung on the cross and said, "It is finished." God is in control and the work that the Father sent me to do is now done.

D. God is in control and we can accept what God gives as a gift or we can strain against it like a fish trying to jump out of a stream onto the shore. We can learn to trust God and rest in His control or we can battle against it and put unbearable tension on our relationships, and on our health.

• Jesus told us to "seek first the God's kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."
• Jesus' disciple Peter told us that everything we need for life and godliness has been given to us.
• Doesn't it make sense that stress is not good for us physically, emotionally, or spiritually? We were not meant to be control freaks. God is in control. We were meant to live our lives in a posture of radical trust. That's what the Bible means by faith.

A. Because of the resurrection, something new has happened in the connection between God and humankind. Forgiveness. The earliest Christian preaching made the announcement of forgiveness one of its central themes. "Christ is risen, therefore, we can be forgiven."

B. Forgiveness involves the forgiver absorbing the effects of the wrong themselves. If you owe me money and I decide to forgive it, then I absorb the loss myself.

C. This is what God has done for us in Christ!

D. Paul gives us a technical explanation of this in Romans 4:23-25

• "Credited to him" - he did not earn it
• Righteousness means in right standing with God.
• The key is believing that God raised Jesus from the dead.
• Does not mention the word forgiveness in this passage, but that is what Paul is talking about in verse 25a.
• Justification, declared in good standing.

E. Jesus did not die to set an example for us. He died to pay the penalty of our sins. He died to secure our forgiveness.

F. Word search on "forgiveness" yielded an interesting article in Cosmopolitan that urged its readers to forgive themselves. It talked about the heavy burden associated with carrying guilt for past wrongs.

• This is right but it doesn't work. I want to suggest we can't really forgive ourselves until we experience the forgiveness of God.
• Not long before she died in 1988, in a moment of surprising candor, Marghanita Laski, a well-known secular humanist and novelist from England said, "What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness. I have no one to forgive me."

G. When I was young, we had an unwritten rule about "do-overs." There had to be a reason. There had to be justification. Jesus is the reason that you and I get do-overs.

H. The resurrection of Jesus means that we are free from our past, we are free from guilt. We get a divine do-over.

A. Stole this from Father Tom.

B. Death is not the end. It is a passage. The resurrection proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.

C. John 14 is one of the most intimate and most comforting passages in the entire Bible. But I don't think the disciples got it until after the resurrection, because it is the resurrection of Jesus that proved his point.

D. This is what Jesus meant when he said to the thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in paradise." He meant that we too will be resurrected because he is resurrected.

E. Again, I want us to focus on one of Paul's arguments found in 1 Corinthians 15:12-23. In this argument, his readers are assuming that Jesus was resurrected. They do not doubt that. It is their own resurrection that seems unfathomable.

1 Corinthians 15:12-23

(12) But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? (13) If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. (14) And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. (15) More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. (16) For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. (17) And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. (18) Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. (19) If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. (20) But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. (21) For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. (22) For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (23) But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.

F. If Jesus was resurrected then that means that we can finally and completely put to rest one of our great enemies. Death has no power over us. We do not fear it; we do not dread it if Christ was truly resurrected from the dead.