Experience the Resurrection Through Abundant Living

Life-Changing Verses – Six Weeks that Can Change Your Life Sermon Series

TEXT: John 11:17-27

TOPIC: Experience the Resurrection through Abundant Living

Pastor Bobby Earls, Northgate Baptist Church, Florence, SC Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013

This morning I am beginning a new series of messages for the next six weeks entitled “Life-Changing Verses, Six Weeks that can Change Your Life.”

Life verses are verses from the Bible that become so personally meaningful as to direct one’s life or even to change one’s life. We might say life verses are transformational.

I have so many life verses. When I preach you will hear me say of a particular passage or verse of Scripture that this is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. Well, those are usually verses I have reserved as my life verses.

On this Resurrection Sunday I have chosen a very appropriate verse as our # 1 Life-Changing Verse, John 11:25, Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.

But I am going to violate my own Life verses rule, because I am adding an additional life verse, or an optional life changing verse.

You might call it, Life-Changing Verse # 1a, John 10:10b, I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.

The resurrection is about life and death. The belief that a man can live beyond this life is not strictly a Christian doctrine. Every major religion holds to some kind of life beyond this life theory.

Buddhists believe in karma. That life is circular. Life is eternal. According to Buddha, our life existed before we were born into this life and it will continue after we have left.

New Agers and Eastern Mysticism such as Hinduism believe in reincarnation. This is the belief that we who live now are simply an aberration of a previous life which will reappear somewhere, sometime, as something else. You may be a better person, but you could come back as frog as well.

But only the Christian faith declares that we who live now can live eternally in a perfect state of existence after this life is over. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is an eternal testimony of just such a hope.

Recorded in the eleventh chapter of John’s Gospel we have the story of the resurrection before the resurrection. In this case, Resurrection resurrects! (Read John 11:17-27).

You can experience the resurrection by trusting in and receiving Jesus Christ!

I. EXPERIENCE THE RESURRECTION BY CONFRONTING DEATH

A. THE CERTAINTY OF DEATH, John 11:17, 21, 32

John 11:17 (NKJV) So when Jesus came, He found that he had already been in the tomb four days.

John 11:21 (NKJV) Now Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.

John 11:32 (NKJV) Then, when Mary came where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Romans 5:12-14 “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:”

Illustration: My sharing Christ with my father, From Genesis 3 to Romans 5:12

Hebrews 9:27 “And as it is appointed unto men once to die,”

Forgotten Statistic: 1 out of 1 people die.

B. THE CAUSE OF DEATH,

John 11:1 (NKJV) Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha.

John 11:4 (NKJV) When Jesus heard that, He said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

We all have a sickness called sin.

Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;”

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death;”

C. THE ANGUISH OF DEATH, John 11:31-35

ILLUSTRATION: We’ve all wept over loved ones who have died. I’ve lost a grandmother, father, mother, and my father-n-law. I remember the anquish of soul. Why did Jesus weep?

I believe our Lord wept over the reality of death and its impact upon His creation.

Matthew 18:14 “Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.”

Ezekiel 33:11 “Say to them: ‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?’

II. EXPERIENCE THE RESURRECTION BY CONFESSING CHRIST

A. CHRIST IS THE RESURRECTION, John 11:25 “I am the resurrection”

Romans 8:10-11 But Christ lives in you. So you are alive because God has accepted you, even though your bodies must die because of your sins. Yet God raised Jesus to life! God’s Spirit now lives in you, and he will raise you to life by his Spirit. (CEV)

Galatians 2:1-20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

Job 19:25-27 For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.

B. CHRIST IS THE LIFE, John 11:25 “I am…the life”

John 14:6 “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

C. CHRIST IS SAVIOR AND LORD, John 11:26-27

Romans 10:9-10 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Conclusion:

Call for decisions for Christ.

Paul said, “That I may know him and the power of His resurrection.”

Do you know Christ? Have you experienced His resurrection living in you?