It's an exciting thing to be loved by God. And 1 Corinthians 15 is an exciting part of God's Word because it tells how God loves us and how that love works through our lives and gives us our greatest victory.

"I want to remind you of something."

The apostle begins by telling these people whom he hadn't seen in five years, "I want to remind you of something." It's important that you and I remember some things that are vital. All of our lives we've heard stories about people who don't remember well, who are . We hear about professors. I've never met an professor. There have been plenty of times in class when my mind was absent, but never the professors.

A professor was having breakfast with his family. His wife said to him, "Now, remember. This is the day we move. When you come home, go to the new house and not this one." All day he knew there was something he was supposed to remember, but he couldn't remember what it was. He went home after class, and the house was empty.

"Oh yes, we moved. I wonder where we moved to."

He saw some children playing in the yard. He said to a little boy, "Do you know the people who used to live here?"

The boy said, "Yes, sir."

He said, "Do you know where they moved?"

The little boy replied, "Mother said you would forget."

Easter is a time to vividly remember some things. Does it remind us of the power of God? Indeed, our God is a wonderfully powerful Lord, and he demonstrates that at Easter. We can think of the power of God. Think of his power in creation.

Several years ago a scientist wrote an article entitled, "Seven Reasons Why I Believe in God." He said, "Consider the rotation of the earth. Our globe spins on its axis at the rate of one thousand miles an hour. If it were just a hundred miles an hour, our days and nights would be ten times as long. The vegetation would freeze in the long night or it would burn in the long day; and there could be no life."

He said, "Consider the heat of the sun. Twelve thousand degrees at surface temperature, and we're just far enough away to be blessed by that terrific heat. If the sun gave off half its radiation, we would freeze to death. If it gave off more, we would all be crispy critters."

He said, "Consider the slant of the earth." I think he said degrees. "If it were different than that, the vapors from the oceans would ice over the continents. There could be no life."

He said, "Consider the moon. If the moon were fifty thousand miles away rather than its present distance, twice each day giant tides would inundate every bit of land mass on this earth."

He said, "Think of the crust of the earth. Just a little bit thicker and there could be no life because there would be no oxygen. Or the thinness of the atmosphere. If our atmosphere was just a little thinner, the millions of meteors now burning themselves out in space would plummet this earth into oblivion. These are reasons," he said, "why I believe in God."

Several years before the Hubble telescope, I heard Dr. George Schweitzer of the University of Tennessee say that with telescopes we could see miles. That's one followed by zeros. He said the distance across our galaxy is five hundred quadrillion miles. That's five followed by seventeen zeros. He said the number of stars in our galaxy is over a million; and the number of galaxies is over a million; and the number of stars that at that time they had identified was over one hundred sextillion stars. That's one followed by zeros.

I don't understand numbers like that. When I hear those figures, I'm like the fellow who saw an atomic explosion and said, "Wow, that atom bomb is dynamite."

A. Christy Morrison, an expert in this field, stated that the mathematical probability of any two of those one hundred sextillion stars ever colliding is so remote that it can't even be figured with mathematical tools.

To say that a , mathematically created universe just happened is about as credible as saying Webster's Unabridged Dictionary was accidentally published because of an explosion in a printing factory, or that a Boeing 747 was assembled when a tornado swept through a junk yard.

When we see this great thing that God has created in the universe and the world around us, we join that Russian Christian who was the first to sing,

"Oh Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder

Consider all the worlds thy hands have made.

I see the stars. I hear the rolling thunder.

Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee,

How great thou art. How great thou art."

God has been at work in history. That's what Easter is about. He came down here, became one of us, became a part of us. God came in a body and sacrificed himself for our sins. He came out of his grave and said, "I'm living; you can live too."

Our calendars, the things we plan our days around, are based on the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to this earth. He's been at work in history.

He opened the Red Sea for his people. He stopped the mouths of lions for Daniel. He fed Elijah. He defeated Napoleon with a snowflake. He saved England with a fog at Dunkirk. He chipped away the Berlin Wall. He shredded the Iron Curtain.

Easter is a time to celebrate that our God is a powerful God, but it's more than that. Easter is a time to celebrate the fact that God entered this world and became a part of our history, but Easter is more than that.

Easter is your greatest victory because of what Christ did for you.

Easter is about the powerful God at work for us and in us. Easter is about confident living forever for those people who link their lives to him. Easter is your greatest victory because of what Christ has done for you.

The apostle begins by saying to remember that Easter is based on facts: Jesus Christ died; they buried him; and he rose again on the third day. What makes these facts a gospel is that Christ died for our sins, just like the Scripture said, and he was buried. The word went out over the country, "He's dead and buried." Then on the third day he burst out of that grave, just like the Scripture said.

What did he say when he came out of the grave? Did he say, "Look at how powerful I am. Look at this wonderful thing I've done. So now you can say, 'My God's better than your god'"?

No. He said, "Because I live you can live. I did it so that you may have victory."

Paul concludes by saying, "Where, oh death, is your victory? Where, oh death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Your greatest victory is the victory over sin. Can you picture the loving Physician? The Lord God who made us, tenderly laying out the body of humanity on the operating table of the world, and there with precision and with love and grace he makes his incision and lays bare the moral and spiritual malignancy in our lives? We say, "O great God, O great Physician, what's wrong with us?" His diagnosis in Romans 3:23 asserts, "For all have sinned."

We're sinners. "Well, Lord, we don't take sin very seriously." Sin is such a little word. We laugh at it. Is sin a serious thing? He says, "Yes, it is serious."

The prognosis is fatal. The wages of sin is death. Sin is what has messed your life up. Sin is what has perverted the purpose of your life. Sin is your rebellion against who you are. For you and I to rebel against God is just as wise as rebelling against oxygen by refusing it. It causes death. It's the reason life is unfulfilled. It's the reason we're haunted by dreams we can't create, tortured by laws we can't keep, driven by goals we can't reach.

The Word of God does not dwell on convincing us we are sinners. We know that. It is filled with case histories of people who have been reclaimed because Christ has given victory over sin.

Suppose you could talk to Paul: "You hurt God's people. You never respected or honored the Christ. In fact, you blasphemed him. How could you become the world's greatest missionary and author of half the New Testament?" I think he would bow his head and sing in his own way, "What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus."

What about Peter? "You were a , , inconsistent fisherman who smelled of hard work and fish. How could you become one of the most respected and loved people in Christendom?" I think Simon Peter would bow his head and sing in his own way, "I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene, and wonder how he could love me. I'm a sinner condemned and unclean. But how marvelous, how wonderful! And my song shall ever be how marvelous, how wonderful is my Savior's love to me."

Christ gives you a victory over sin, and he gives you a victory in life. A lot of people think Christianity is something you get so you won't fry when you die. It is, and that's good. Believe me. But it's more that that. It's the best life you can live now. He gives you a victory in life.

When I was sixteen years old, I was invited to a church service that some young people were leading. No one sang like an angel; no one preached like Billy Graham. But those young people impressed me. They had something. At the end of that service I walked down the aisle and told the minister, "I don't know what those people have, but I want it."

You know what they had? A personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He'd given them life.

When you walk with Christ, you don't have to experience guilt. Four times in God's Word the Bible says he forgives our sins. He forgets our sins and he remembers them no more. God has thrown our sins in the sea of his forgetfulness and has put up a sign, "No Fishing Here." No guilt when you walk with Christ.

There's no fear when you walk closely with Christ. After forty years of being a minister, I'm convinced that people are afraid of two things. They're afraid of dying, and they're afraid of living. Our Lord says, "You can walk with me. You don't have to be afraid of either because I can give you a victory over both."

In his word to Joshua and Moses and Caleb and all these people he called, to you and to me and to the apostles, he said, "Don't be afraid, for I am with you. There's nothing you face each day that you and I cannot handle together."

A victory in life. To know Christ gives a new perspective in life. There's a new perspective, one where all people are moving from birth to death, from morning to evening, from the beginning to the end. Do you realize that Christians move toward the beginning? We're moving toward life, toward the good, from evening to morning when we link our lives by faith to Christ? The Bible begins that way. In Genesis, we find in the six days of creation, the Scripture says, "And it was evening, and it was morning, the first dayAnd it was evening, and it was morning, the second day." And so it goes through all six days, because when you come to Christ, you're always moving toward the beginning.

Easter announces your victory over sin, your victory in life, and your victory over time. Because when you know Jesus Christ, you become timeless. You're never really going to die.

There's probably no one who has thought about, preached about, studied, meditated on heaven more than the great preacher R.G. Lee. On his deathbed his eyes became bright, and they opened wide. He said, "I see it! It's more beautiful that I ever thought it would be." Moving toward the beginning.

Old Brother Baxter had had a long, hard illness. On his last day alive, someone came to him and said, "How are you doing?" He said, "I'm almost well." Christians move toward the beginning.

When my mother lay dying, she enjoyed her final night. Her granddaughter, Tracy Anne, read the Scripture to her. Tracy read the TThird Psalm, and my mother quoted the last line, "And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." She closed her eyes and went to dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

You link your life by faith to Christ. You're not moving toward end and frustration and fear. You're moving toward life.

Remember Revelation 21 begins by saying, "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth." And 1 Corinthians 15, beginning in verse 35, talks about the new body that we're going to have. We're always moving toward the beginning.

We're moving toward a time when in a perfect body we'll live in a perfect place, and there will be no more going to bed at night feeling guilty because there won't be anything to feel guilty about. No more going to bed at night feeling hurt because no one there will hurt you. Never having another pain. Never being hungry or without clothes. We'll be forever in that perfect place the Word of God calls heaven, because of Christ.

The Easter message isn't just an announcement; it's an offer.

You and I need to know, though, that the Easter message is not an announcement. It's an offer. You must receive the offer and come to know Jesus as your Lord and Savior. We see people with a humanistic philosophy or a view approach the end of this life and they do a lot of interesting things. It's like people who are whistling as they approach the cemetery. Sort of whistling in the dark to overcome the fear.

When I was young, a poem often quoted was "Invictus" by William Ernest Henly.

"Out of the night that covers me, black as a pit from pole to pole.

I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody but unbowed.

Beyond this veil of wrath and tears clings but the harrow of the shading.

Yet the menace of the years finds in self I meet unafraid;

matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul."

Those are brave words. Foolish bravery. Underscored by the fact that the man who wrote them took him own life in utter despair.

Someone wrote a Christian answer to "Invictus," and it goes like this.

"Out of the light that dazzles me, bright is the sun from pole to pole.

I thank the God I know to be, for Christ the conqueror of my soul.

Since he's the sway of circumstance, I would not wince nor cry aloud.

Under that rule which men call chance, my head with joy is humbly bowed.

Beyond this place of sin and tears, that life with him. And he's the aide

That spite diminished of the years keeps and shall keep me unafraid.

It matters not, though straight the gate, He cleared from punishments the scroll.

Christ is the master of my fate. Christ the captain of my soul."

	

Easter offers your greatest victory. Victory over sin. You never have to feel guilty or afraid again. Victory in life. You can know he walks with you. And victory over time. For when you know him, you're never really going to die.

 

Frank Pollard is pastor of First Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi. He is author of several books, including The Bible in Your Life and Keeping Free.

 

(c) Frank Pollard

Preaching Today Tape #175

www.PreachingTodaySermons.com

A resource of Christianity Today International

 

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