Easter SonRise Message: Celebrate New Life

There are two people that are calling for our hearts to celebrate and rejoice in.

One is our self. That was the temptation Satan used in the Garden, “You can be like God.” It was pride leading to wickedness that led to judgment in the Flood of Noah’s day. It was celebration of man’s own ability that led to the building of Tower of Babel, which God then judged them for, confusing their languages and scattering the peoples. And it continues from their, all through history. Mankind seeking to celebrate themselves, their own greatness, and their own accomplishments. All the while dead in their sins. And even now, the sinful nature in us calls out, tempting us to focus on ourselves. Our wants. Our desires. Our please. Our so-called greatness.

The other is Jesus Christ, and it is HIM that we celebrate today. We celebrate His life which reveals to us the Will of God and the holiness to which we are called, His death which paid for our sins, and especially, His Resurrection which we also share in if we have repented from sin and put our Faith and Hope in Jesus Christ.

In John 3 Nicodemus, a religious leader of his day, came to Jesus, and confessed that Jesus is from God because of the miracles He was doing. Then Jesus answers the question Nicodemus didn’t even ask and confuses him by proclaiming that in order to see the kingdom of God, you "must be born again." And this dumbfounded Nicodemus.

Now, 2000 years later, we have the benefit of looking back on events and reading what is revealed in scripture, and we can clearly see what Jesus meant: The problem of sin is not a problem of behavior but of the heart which leads to the behavior. We don’t need new habits we need new hearts … a new life. Unfortunately, while His meaning can be clearly known, there are many who simply cannot … or will not … understand it in their own lives.

This past Wednesday with the youth we looked at Colossians 1 where Jesus is described as "the firstborn from among the dead." Who is “the dead”? We are, everyone who is ever born. In Genesis, God proclaimed that if Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit that they would "surely die."

God's love and mercy has held back His judgment on sin, delaying the execution of that sentence, but even in His Mercy and Grace, we have to live with the consequences of not only Adam and Eve's sin, but through them we inherited a broken, prideful nature. Our hearts, our very nature is one of pride and rebellion against the God who gives us life and blesses us daily.

 It is because of that brokenness and that prideful nature that we also are deserving of God's judgment, though He chooses to continue to offer Love and Mercy and Grace, delaying the payment our sin has earned. 

And the Bible tells us the payment we have earned: "The wages of sin are death." (Romans 6:23) But it’s not only that we will one day die or that we would be denied eternal life with our Creator. Even now all of creation feels the effects of that death of that brokenness and that fracture. We see the evidence of it everywhere we look. In our own lives, in the lives of our loved ones, in nature and on the news every night. Something is broken in the world. Something is broken inside of us. Something we are powerless to fix.

That is why Jesus tells Nicodemus that you must "be born again." In order for the brokenness of this world and this so-called "life" that we live to be overcome, we must be made new. We cannot do with just a make-over or turning over a new leaf, we need a new life.

And it is in Jesus that we have Hope for that New Life.

Friday, Good Friday, commemorated that on the Cross Jesus paid the penalty for our sins which allows forgiveness, but while that may wash away the stain of sin from our old life, it is not the Cross that brings NEW LIFE but Christ’s Resurrection three days later.

On the cross, Jesus put sin to death, but it is in the Resurrection that He created the way to new life.

“3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

⁵ For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. ⁶ We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. ⁷ For one who has died has been set free  from sin. ⁸ Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹ We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. ¹⁰ For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. ¹¹ So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

(Romans 6:3-11)

What is the answer to the brokenness and suffering in the world … and in our hearts? Jesus Christ. The cause of our brokenness and pride is sin. The answer is new life in Christ.

That IS the Gospel message. When we repent of sin and put our faith in Christ, our sins are forgiven and we receive new life. The healing begins.

But we all have our pet sins. Some of us have lots of them. Some of us are the equivalent of the crazy cat lady, that old lady down the street with 200 cats that dominate and rule her life. Some of us are like that, but instead of a house full of cats we have a heart full of sins and we cater to their every cry and desire. But here the bible says we are FREE from that. Christ has overcome that. But our problem is that we keep feeding the strays and get right back into the very situations Christ died and rose to free us from.

Let us quit giving attention to and celebrating the sinful man in us.

Today, in word and song and tradition we celebrate Christ. But it is in our hearts where celebration must be loudest. And not just for today, but for every day. For the old self, the sinful man in us, though perhaps removed from his throne in our hearts, still calls for our attention. Let our celebration today spur us on to greater affection for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and to ignore the desperate ravings of sin … sin which leads only to death, and instead give our full attention to the rejoicing in and celebration of Christ, who brings us new life.

“1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ² Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. ³ For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

(Colossians 3:1-4)