Easter Complete

We got some ducks recently. Actually Michelle got some ducks. They reminded me of the duck my grandmother had when I was a kid, FUNNY DUCK. WE called him funny because he thought he was a rooster. He was raised by chickens and he just thought he was one. He scratched like chickens, pecked like chickens, he even tried to get the hens to be his girlfriend…but they just though he was weird. The other ducks thought he was wierd too, because everytime we woudl catch him and throw him in the creek, they woudl try to drown him until he could get away. Something just wasn’t right with funny duck.

I have known my whole life, and I bet you have as well, that some things just aren’t as they are supposed to be.

Not only did I have Funny Duck, I found out early on that I was adopted by my parents, then my parents divorced, we dealt with addiction in my family, natural disasters led to bankruptcy and losing our family farm…all of it told me that life as I knew it was full of things that didn’t work out the way they were supposed to.

There just seemed to be something working against us at every turn.

It all is traces back to the very beginning

If you read the beginning of the Bible, you will see that everything was created in perfect order....the word for that was shalom…it means peace, but much more than that, it refers to the sense of…aaahhhhh....just as they were supposed to be.

But then in the garden, Adam and Eve were convinced that all they had wasn’t enough, what they needed was more. They fell to the temptation and at that moment, they opened the door to our relationship with God.

From that moment on, in the beauty of the garden, humanity began to live into a new reality of condemnation and alienation.

Condemnation - Alienation

We were separated from God, cast out of the garden and with that came a life of struggle, difficulty and pain. But not only us, the entire order of creation itself was cursed. Curses…difficulty…disease…death.

Those weren’t a part of creation…they came into our lives as a result of sin. And every one of us were born hard wired to know that things just aren’t right.

It’s usually easier to notice it in other people; we see their problems, their issues; but still we know it’s not right. and if we are really honest with ourselves, we know that we have those issues too.

We were created to know that these things just aren’t right...

God gave the law of the OT to help us see that things weren’t right. The law was like a mirror, it revealed how far from good we really were because we couldn’t follow it. People couldn’t be that righteous.

Sin effects everyone. My sin affects me…and often it affects you too. Its unavoidable, because things just aren’t the way they should be.

Then something changed…actually, someone changed things. Jesus.

Jesus came to set things right…he lived a sinless life, died for our redemption, and conquered death in his resurrection.

Jesus changed everything.

That’s what we celebrate today. That’s what Easter is all about.

Jesus dying to pay the penalty for our sin, I don’t mean sin as this esoteric idea…but my sin. Your sin. The particulars of my life that fall short of God’s will. And you and I both know there is plenty of pride, judgmental, selfishness, greed, unforgiveness, gluttony that we need forgiveness.

But that’s not all, he rose again to conquer death. And the last time I checked death affected 10 out of every 10 people.

But that’s not all…God then invited us to join him on his mission.

2 Corinthians 5:17–21 NIV84

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

In making us a part of his mission,

Jesus reverses our alienation.

…sin separates…separates us from God, but also from one another. But Jesus by opening the door to reconciliation and enabling us to be reconcilers enables us to forgive and experience forgiveness brings us together and to God

Jesus reverses our condemnation.

We were condemned to death for our sin. But Jesus reversed our destiny to death and has provided a way for us to experience eternal life. Life that never ends begins the moment we respond in faith to Jesus’s invitation to believe. It’s said that we can be born twice and only die once.

THIS IS GOOD NEWS..AMEN!

That because of Jesus, all my shortcomings become a foundation for ministry!

Knowing this…I still struggled.

The Easter story didn’t really surprise me like it did Mary and the Disciples. When they went to the tomb on Easter morning, they expected to find Jesus’s body…but when they looked inside, they discovered something shocking.

I had grown up knowing that Jesus was God…which I accepted…then of course he would rise again…Jesus loved me - so of course he would pay the penalty for my sins.

All these things I believed…but they didn’t make much of a difference in my life. I was a pretty good person, I went to church…sometimes a lot, sometimes rarely - but I went.

Actually - if you saw me or interacted with me at work you would probably not see anything in me that would make you think I was any different from any other guy…And that, for all intensive purposes, made me a counterfeit Christian. I knew how to use the hymnal, but that was about it. My faith made no REAL difference in my life

Then something happened. Rather I found somethign that changed everything for me.

Much like Mary looking in the tomb, and finding reality, so I found something that changed reality.

I found it one day when I God had stirred my curiosity as to what I believed. I was looking in to see what I believed.

What I found was in the book of Revelation.

Revelation is the last book…a vision…a letter to the early churches. It was a letter to encourage them in difficult times. It is based much on the prophecy of the OT, particularly Daniel and Isaiah.

What I found were words of hope in my struggle for a real faith.

I found hope that Jesus knew things weren’t right…He had a plan for my sin, he had a plan for my life, and God had a plan for all creation.

Paul in Romans 8 talks about how all creation is groaning for the return of Jesus, and that’s what Revelation ch21 describes.

but he was coming back to usher in a new world.

Revelation 21:1–8 NIV84

1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” 5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7 He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son. 8 But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

You see I had had the idea that this world was beyond God’s ability to fix. God’s plan was for us to just escape some day. I don’t know where I got the idea but I always thought that we would spend eternity somewhere out there. That didn’t make much sense to me, if God created the earth and everything in it as GOOD and if sin brought a curse, couldn’t God undo the curse?

Jesus reverses creation’s cry.

That’s when I realized that Jesus reversed the curse, that included our alienation, our condemnation, and creations yearning.

Jesus’s work is complete!

This passage gave me hope. Hope because I knew things were broken…I knew my life was a mess…I also believed that God could make things right. And now I realized that God had a plan for it all.