Good morning.  (Who I am)

Read Matthew 28:1-6

Have you ever heard the phrase, “It sounds too good to be true.”  It’s usually some incredible offer that promises you great results with little cost or effort.  A friend of mine, a while back wanted to shed a few pounds and sure enough, he was walking in Wal-Mart and saw a bottle that said, “Hollywood Miracle Diet…lose 10 pounds in 2 days, guaranteed!”  He thought 10 pounds in 2 days, this sounds great…and for only $20...I’d be a fool not to buy it.  Well, when he got home he realized that you couldn’t eat anything for those 2 days, and all this miracle diet was, was a jar of fruit juice.  Someone later told him, “Way to go, you just paid $20 for a V-8.”  You see, it was an amazing offer, yet it was too good to be true.

When we come to Easter, we hear of some wonderful offers that on the surface sound too good to be true.  Offers that are so outrageous that many laugh at the very mention of them.  But what is it that makes these offers different.  I believe that you can trust the one who is making it.  God Himself wants to make you an offer that you can’t refuse.  And this morning, I want us to briefly look at these wonderful offers of Easter.  These are offers that Jesus offers free of charge, because His grace has already covered the cost.

The first offer that Jesus offers comes from the cross.  And the promise is this, Your Past Can Be Forgiven.

It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, no matter how bad your past may be, because of what Jesus did for you upon the cross you can be forgiven of all the wrong you’ve ever done.  And we have all committed many wrongs.  If you think you haven’t then I want you to think about this for a moment.

How many times a day do you think you sin?  How many times do you neglect to do something you should do?  Or when you do something you do it with a selfish motive?  Or you think a lustful thought or an angry thought?  How many times a day?  Well let’s say you are a super saint and you only sin 3 times a day: 1 bad thought, 1 neglected deed, and 1 word you shouldn’t have said.  Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

Now multiply that by 365 days and that is 1,095 sins a year.  And if you live to be 70, you will have sinned at least 76,550 times.

But, because of Easter, the promise is that no matter how much you’ve sinned, no matter how awful of a person you’ve been up to this point, all that can be washed away because of what Christ did on that cross for you.  In A Forgiving God in an Unforgiving World, Ron Lee Davis retells the true story of a priest in the Philippines, a much-loved man of God who carried the burden of a secret sin he had committed many years before.

In his parish was a woman who deeply loved God and who claimed to have visions in which she spoke with Christ.  The priest was skeptical.  To test her he said:

“The next time you speak with Christ, I want you to ask Him what sin your priest committed while he was in seminary.”  The woman agreed.

A few days later the priest asked, “Well, did Christ visit you in your dreams?”  “Yes, He did,” she replied.  “And did you ask Him what sin I committed in seminary?”  “Yes.”  “Well, what did He say?”  “He said, ‘I don’t remember.’”  Jeremiah 31:34 in the NIV says, “… I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Now, also through the message of Easter, we have a second promise, a second offer we can’t refuse, and that is that through Easter not only do we find forgiveness from our past, but also We Find Purpose For Today.

We find purpose for today because first of all the cross tells us just how valuable we are.  If you don’t believe that God thinks the world of you, just consider what all He did to win your affection.  If you think about it, we do all kinds of things to prove to somebody that we love them don’t we.  We buy them roses, take them out to dinner, get them expensive jewelry, and endure things that we don’t even like to win their affection.

But if we are willing to go that far, imagine how far God went to win our heart.  The only jewelry he got were piercings through His hands and feet.  He was stripped, and beaten.  He endured hanging on the cross for 6 hours and then dying, all because He wanted to win our affection.

Do you understand just how much God loves you?  Let me do something different here.  I use to be a youth minister, and here is something that I would do with the kids.  Stand up for a moment.  With your hands, show me how much God loves you.  Spread those arms out, father, farther, okay, hold it right there.  He loves you so much, and to make sure that you never forget that, He had His hands nailed in place just like that.  You can go ahead and sit down.

Jesus endured all the agonies of the cross, the scourging, the beatings, the spit, the mocking, the humiliation…all because He thought you were worth it.  He looked at all of our sins, and He knew the only way for those to be forgiven is the perfect sacrifice, so Jesus said, “I’ll do it.”  Why?  Because He thinks you’re worth it.  We find purpose for today, because of what He did for us over 2,000 years ago.

So through the Easter message, we find forgiveness for the past, power and purpose for the present, but also when we gaze into the empty tomb…We Find Hope For Tomorrow.

A preacher once began to preach and with ferocious fervor he told the congregation, “Every member of this church will die one day!”  And as he said this a man in the front row began to smile from ear to ear.  So again the preacher with increased fervor slammed his fist onto the pulpit and told the crowd, “Every member of this congregation is going to die one day!”  And again that same man began to get so excited he could barely contain it.

Well the preacher couldn’t stand it any longer, “Young man, why are you so happy!  What about this truth that every member of this congregation will die do you find so amusing!”  The man said, “I’m happy because I’m not a member of this church… I’m just visiting.”

Well whether you are a visitor this morning or you are a member of a church somewhere, all of us will die one day.  We can do all we can to avoid it, we can prolong our life with better living, medicine, and technology…but death is an enemy that we all must face one day.  I saw an amazing statistic that said that 1 out of every 1 persons will die.  I’m starting to think that my chances are pretty good.  We all will die.  Death takes the powerful and the meek, the actor and the banker, the rich and the poor, and both young and old alike.

But when we come to Easter, we hear the wonderful words I started off with, “He is not here, He is risen!”  Because of the empty tomb we know that this life is not all there is, there is something beyond death’s door.

As I begin to wrap things up this morning, I understand that a possum is supposedly an intelligent animal.  Now we may disagree with that with the number of dead possums on the road.  Someone once asked, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”  And the answer was, “To prove to the possum it could be done!”  But really, a possum is an intelligent animal.  When it comes up to a hole, it will not go in to that hole unless it sees 2 sets of tracks, 1 going in and 1 going out.

If there’s only 1 set of tracks then that means that whatever was inside there is still there, but if there are 2 set of tracks, then it knows that it is safe to go in.

When we come to the scriptures about the grave of Jesus, we see 2 sets of tracks if you will.  1 going in and 1 going out.  And now we know that it’s safe to go in, and Jesus has conquered not only death, but the fear of death as well.  Hebrews 2:15 says that Jesus came to, “…free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”

That’s the offer that Easter gives to us. And I invite you to take Jesus up on His offer.  Some things sound too good to be true.  I have a $1 bill here, and I want to give it to the first person who will come up here and accept it.  (Give out $1)

Now for the rest of you, why didn’t you take my offer?  Some might say that you’re too embarrassed or the pain wasn’t worth the gain.  Maybe you feared a catch, a trick, or something.  Or maybe your wallets are fat already.  What’s a buck to someone who has hundreds?

Now let me ask you this, why don’t you accept Christ’s free gift? The point is this, we talked about these great offers this morning that God gives to us through this Easter message.  But, even though it is available to all, it’s accepted by few.  Many choose to sit and wait while only a few choose to stand and trust.  With today being our Easter celebration, I would encourage you to stand and trust today!

Let’s Pray