Phil 3:8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Can we say along with the apostle Paul that of all the things that this world values, nothing matters so long as we have Christ? That is what Paul is saying in these verses. The things that our world considers to be of value are like nothing compared to knowing Jesus Christ as Lord. Paul’s religious heritage, his ethnic identity, his nationality, his tribal identity, his global identity, his education, his moral accomplishments, and all of his religious zeal are as nothing compared to knowing Christ Jesus as Lord.

For all of His life, Paul has placed his confidence in these things. He had placed his confidence in his flesh (v. 4) and what he meant by that was that his identity and worth was wrapped up in his own religious heritage and personal accomplishments. The core of his life, the dynamic that fueled his life, was the do-it-yourself, moral improvement of Pharisaism. The fuel of his life was the belief that he could earn God’s love through self-effort and moral behavior.

He was better at it than every one of his age but he came to see all of his accomplishments, all of his self-made religion as worthless; and He came to view Christ as the most valuable thing in the universe. He walked away from everything he once held dear and he was left with nothing but Jesus, and he found Jesus to be more than enough.

What happened? What changed him? The dynamic force of Paul’s life shifted from self to Christ, from religion to the gospel. When Paul came to God he brought his religion, his moral resume, his list of good works. But when God came to Paul he brought the resurrection of Jesus and this changed everything.

Everything changed for Paul when he saw Jesus for himself. He saw the risen, resurrected Jesus with his own eyes and on that day the earth-altering dynamic of the resurrection changed Paul’s life. The gospel and the resurrection of Jesus wrecked Paul’s normal, moral and religious life. Maybe you can identify with that. Maybe you need to identify with that. Maybe you need to have your life wrecked, turned upside-down by the power of God. I know I do.

Transition…

What difference does the resurrection make for our lives today? Sure, we have some idea of what it will mean for us in the life to come, but how does it affect our life today? How does the resurrection of Jesus affect our heart, our life, our relationship with God, and our thoughts about death? Here in Philippians 3, God is going to help us answer these questions

Sermon Focus…

I. The Resurrection of Christ affects our hearts (V. 8)

The word resurrection is not a common term in the OT, in fact, it’s not a very common term in the NT. When ancient religious people thought about life after death they didn’t think in terms of resurrection. Pagans believed in a spiritual existence after death but not a bodily resurrection. Many of the Jews, the Sadducees in particular, rejected the resurrection because they claimed Moses hadn’t said anything about a bodily existence after death. They were wrong, of course, and Jesus pointed that out to them in Mark 12:26-27.

Resurrection refers to something that happens to the body. Most religions identify that the soul will live on after death, but Christianity teaches that our bodies will be raised from the grave. The followers of Jesus might have lived long and happy lives if they had simply stated that Jesus lived on in the spirit after his crucifixion, but they didn’t. They taught that Jesus’ body was raised and brought back to life by the power of God.

They taught this because they saw it with their own eyes. They walked in the empty tomb just three days after they saw Christ die on the cross. They saw Jesus in the upper room, saw the scars in his hands and on His side. They touched those scars. They saw Jesus again on the shore in Galilee and they ate breakfast with him. They watched outside of Jerusalem as His body was taken up into Heaven right before their eyes.

When Jesus’ disciples preached the resurrection, they weren’t referring to Jesus’ soul being raised, or his spirit living on; they were claiming that His dead body had been raised to life. To the Romans this was nonsense and to the Jews this was a scandal, but the resurrection is at the heart of the gospel. Our salvation depends on the reality that Jesus not only died on the cross for our sins but also that He was raised from the dead three days later.

Paul had believed all of his life that in order for him to be loved by God all he needed to do was to try his best and have a good moral resume to show for it. Which is not all that different from what most of us believed. We have this innate sense that if we want God to love and accept us, then we are going to have to earn it. It’s in our heart. We naturally assume a debtor’s ethic and that is why legalism comes so easy to us.

But legalism is theologically ignorant because it assumes that the way to solve your problem is to have more of your problem. Legalism claims that we have a weakness in our flesh and it tries to remedy that by relying on that same week flesh to do enough good works to make us acceptable. But the gospel comes and tells us that our problem is not just a weakness of the flesh, but a deadness in our soul.

Eph 2:1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Our problem is not that we are weak, it’s that we are dead. Let me illustrate it this way, we don’t naturally seek God, we naturally believe that a little sin will be fun. We naturally think that a little sin will spice up our weekend. We don’t naturally think that a little righteousness will be fun. Our hearts are captive to sin in this way, but our hearts aren’t captive to God in this way.

What does this mean, it means we don’t just have a little problem with sin it means we are dead in our trespasses and sins. We don’t just need to straighten up a little bit, we need God to resurrect our hearts from the dead

Our hope lies outside of ourselves. Jesus didn’t come to show us a new way to God, He came to be the way to God. He died in our place to free us from our spiritual deadness. He lived the righteous life that we could never live. He died the death that we deserved and His resurrection from the dead is proof that God accepted His sacrifice on our behalf.

Here’s what that means for our hearts today. It means that we can and should say along with Paul,

7 Whatever gain I had, I count it as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

The resurrection of Christ shows our hearts that we can abandon our self-salvation mission and put all of our hope in the one who lived, died and rose from the dead to save us from our sin.

But the resurrection of Christ does more than affect our hearts it also affects our lives.

II. The Resurrection of Christ affects our lives (V. 8, 10)

V. 8 For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

In verse 8, we read that Paul not only counted all things as loss, but he also suffered the loss of all things. The flesh that he once put all of his hope in, was now something that would endure persecution. Paul suffered for his faith in Christ and part of that was his choice. Not that he was longing to get beat up everywhere he went, but he believed it was worth it.

As a servant of Christ, he suffered imprisonment, countless beatings and was often near death. Here is an account of Paul’s suffering in 2 Corinthians 11.

24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.

Now why did Paul endure all of this suffering? V. 8 – For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. This verse is one of the most shocking verses that Paul ever wrote. Paul’s suffering was for the sake of Christ and much of it was at the hands of the Jews. They persecuted Paul because he came to see his old way of life, his old way of life as rubbish or quite literally dung.

All his life, Paul had viewed his Pharisaism, his legalism, as something valuable to God. But now that he had come to know Christ he looked on his old religion as disgusting. It was less than worthless and who wants to carry around a handful of dung, much less to hold it up to God and say, “This is why you should love and accept me.” Paul came to see that compared to the gospel, his religion was wretched. So, he tossed it aside and began to serve Christ. This brought persecution.

But the gospel didn’t leave him empty-handed. He tossed away his man-centered religion and in its place, he gained everything. The gospel doesn’t call us to renounce everything and become empty, boring, dull people. The gospel says let go of what will rob you of greater joy, lasting joy and embrace the Truth that will set you free to truly live.

The resurrection made Paul see that he could give his life away and he wouldn’t lose a thing. He lived with unstoppable faith and fearless hope. His faith in Christ caused him to sacrifice everything on the altar of the gospel, and in the end, he got God.

Dear Christian, don’t live a timid, fearful life. God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and love and fearless faith. Let’s be willing to suffer the loss of all things for the sake of Him. Let’s be willing to give our lives away for His sake.

The Resurrection affects our heart, our life and our relationship with God.

III. The Resurrection of Christ affects our Relationship with God (V. 9)

At the end of verse 8 Paul writes, “…in order that I may gain Christ.” Now what does that mean? the answer comes in verse 9. Gaining Christ means…

V. 9 being found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—

Gaining Christ means that I have obtained, through faith, the righteousness of God. Or you could say it this way, it means to have the righteousness of Christ credited/imputed to your account. Now, why is this better than obtaining righteousness on my own?

This verse compares two types of righteousness. The righteousness of my own that comes through my obedience to the law or the righteousness from God that comes through faith in Christ. Paul looks at both of these and says, “I’m walking to the gates of Heaven with the righteousness from God.” This is the confidence that the gospel gives us.

Let’s do a thought experiment and imagine that you do 1 act of pure righteousness everyday of your life. 1 act per day done in obedience to the law of God that is not fueled by some selfish motive, or sinful ambition. 1 per day and I believe that is being crazy generous. I remember a stretch of years between high school and college that wouldn’t have produced anything to my credit. But let’s be generous and give ourselves credit for 1 good deed each day of our lives.

If we live to 80, that is just over 29,000 good deeds in a lifetime. But the math really doesn’t matter all that much, because for each good deed there is a counteractive bad deed.

We have to consider the other side of the scale. Can we assume 1 act of unrighteousness every day of your life? Can we assume 1 lie, or 1 act of deception, or 1 angry thought, or 1 lustful thought, or 1 hateful thought, or 1 act of greed, or 1 act of pride, or 1 act of impatience, or 1 act of gossip, or 1 thought of vanity? 1 unrighteous act per day, which again is being generous. If it’s 1:1 then it is a wash and we have nothing to show for the entirety of our life.

But this is just a thought experiment. The reality is that the numbers aren’t even close to being in our favor.

Gal 3:10 For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law and do them.”

Rom 3:20 For by the works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight

The law cannot save us. Our imagined righteousness will never make us right with God. Imagine standing before God and having tallied up the balance of our good deeds and our sin, and then presenting that to Him as justification for why He should accept us. We have no chance of pleasing God in this way.

But now, I want you to imagine the righteousness of Jesus. I want you to imagine all of the righteous deeds that Jesus ever did on any given day. There is no need to subtract the unrighteous deeds of Jesus because there are none. He was tempted in every way as we are, but He was without sin (Heb 4:15). Now, which righteousness would you put your hope in?

Whose obedience are you trusting in? The resurrection of Jesus is evidence that when Jesus came before the Father, His obedience and His sacrifice was fully accepted. God raised Him from the dead because nothing remained. His righteousness paid the bill for all the sins of all who would believe. Our relationship to God rests not on our righteousness but on His.

IV. The Resurrection of Christ affects our Eternity (V. 11)

10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

When the resurrection takes hold of our hearts and our lives and our relationship to God; then death just doesn’t seem so bad anymore. I think that is what Paul is getting at in these verses. He is so overwhelmed by the security that the gospel brings that he doesn’t really care about anything but Jesus. He says, “I just want to know him and the power of his resurrection. I’m willing to share his sufferings and die a death like His. I don’t really care what happens to me in this life…I know that I will experience the resurrection from the dead, like Him. So, whatever comes, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

I think that is the spirit of what Paul is saying in this chapter. To be a Christian is to be made like Christ and to be made like Christ is to experience in some measure what He experienced. If we desire to live like Jesus we can expect the trials that He faced. The persecution that He faced.

1 Pet 4:12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.

Do you want to be made like Christ? Do you want to follow Him in this life? His road is the Calvary road, His path is narrow and difficult, but it leads to life. What Paul wants us to understand is that no matter what the road ahead entails, the end result is that we will be there to share His glory. Death will not be the final page in our story. We will rise with Him and live with Him forever.

Conclusion…

There has been no more important event in human history than the resurrection of Jesus. Easter is not about the celebration of Jesus living on in the teaching of His followers; Easter is about the celebration of Jesus being raised from death to life.

One day everything was normal. The world was filled with pain, sorrow, hopelessness, and doubt. One day everything was just as it had been for thousands of years and the expectation was that it would always be that way. But the next day came and everything changed.

Jesus came and turned the world upside down. He made the world look different, sound different, feel different. He spoke of a Kingdom that was already here and yet still coming into the world. He spoke about spiritual re-birth like it was some supernatural change that took place inside of us. He told stories about the heart of God that no one had ever heard. He changed all of Judea in 3 years and His followers had hopes that He was going to change the world…but His enemies nailed Him to a cross.

He came to His own and His own people did not receive Him. He came as the light of the world shining into the darkness, but the world preferred the darkness over His light. He was put to death, crucified on a Friday, and all of the hope that came with him was taken away. The disciple's joy had been torn away from their hearts leaving them empty, shocked, and fearful. Everything went back to normal.

But on Sunday, the power of God was unleashed. The tomb was empty. Jesus was alive. All that He had ever said was true, truer than anything ever spoken. The world has truly been turned upside-down and you can get in on this today.

This is your moment to turn from your sin, to turn from yourself to God. Turn from your sin, turn from hoping in yourself, turn from this world and receive God’s gift of forgiveness. He will not leave you empty handed but will fill you with His grace, His mercy, His love and Himself. He will make you more alive than you have ever been and in Jesus, you will never die.

He will raise you up, He will raise us all and seat us with Him in Heaven. And in the ages to come, He will unfold for us the immeasurable riches of His kindness to us. That is God’s promise to us, to you, if you will receive Christ.

April 16, 2017

Justin Wheeler

Messages

Resurrection Hope

April 16, 2017

Justin Wheeler

Messages

Topic: The Resurrection

Speaker: Pastor Justin Wheeler

Scripture: 1 Peter 1:3

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This morning we are celebrating something that is absolutely essential to the Christian faith, to the degree that if it is not true then Christianity is pointless.

1 Cor 15:17 If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins…19 If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone.

What we are celebrating is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We call it Easter, which is an old English term identifying the Christian festival of the resurrection. I prefer to call it Resurrection Day because that cuts through all the cultural and religious confusion to get to the heart of what this day is all about.

· We are celebrating the historical reality that a first century Jewish rabbi named Jesus, who also happens to be the one and only Son of God, was crucified in Jerusalem during Passover week and then three days later he was raised from the dead.

· We are celebrating the theological reality that by His death, burial and resurrection we who believe have been saved from our sins and have been granted eternal life.

· We are celebrating the present reality that because of Christ’s resurrection from the dead we of all people have reason to live our lives with indestructible hope no matter how good nor how horrible the circumstances of our life happen to be.

· We are celebrating the supernatural reality that the founder of our faith went through death and came out the other side.

And because of these things we worship Jesus Christ as our risen Savior and our God.

The worship of God is the ultimate purpose of our lives and the ultimate purpose of the church and it is also the goal of today’s sermon. In 1 Peter 1:3 we read this, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!” The word bless means to worship or praise. It means to express gratitude toward God and to express joy in what He has done. Which begs the question, “What has God done?”

I Peter 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead

Transition…

Now, if we miss the first few words of this verse, then we will miss the point of all that we are going to learn in this passage. It is not Peter’s goal to simply expound on Christian theology so that we will marvel at theology itself, but that we would praise and worship the God who has revealed Himself in that theology. The result of these truths is that we must worship God. So working backward from the response of worship we need to understand the truths that motivate us to worship. IOW, why do we bless God?

My purpose in preaching this morning is to help us understand how the resurrection of Jesus Christ leads us to love, worship and serve God.

Sermon Focus…

I. We worship God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because He has shown us mercy.

I Peter 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy

Mercy happens when someone shows kindness to another even though it is within their power and right to punish them. When our kids get in trouble they want us to show them mercy. When we do something wrong we want to be shown mercy. When we are pulled over for speeding we deserve the be held accountable, but we would much rather our crime go unpunished.

Now, there is something that we need to understand about the God of the Bible and it is that He shows us mercy every day. God shows us mercy when He withholds from us the punishment we rightly deserve because of our sin against Him. God owes us nothing but judgment, and yet He shows us mercy every day by holding back that judgment from us.

God’s mercy is the divine restraint that keeps Him from unleashing the righteous wrath our sinful rebellion demands.

Notice in the text that God’s mercy toward us is great. We are the recipients of His abundant mercy. Our God is merciful and this means that His desire and ability to withhold what we deserve is like a storehouse so full that it is constantly overflowing (Lam 3:23). The mercy that God has for His people will never run out and we praise Him for this.

(Illus…Most of us would like to think of ourselves as merciful, showing kindness instead of judgment to others. But this tends to fall apart when we actually try it. Try to be merciful toward your children, your rude co-workers, that person who cuts you off on the road…And you come to see just how difficult (or impossible) it is to be merciful. But our God is so filled with mercy that He never stops showing us kindness.

But there is another side to God’s mercy. Divine justice demands that our sin be punished, which means that for God to withhold punishment (show us mercy) is to short-circuit His justice, unless the punishment we deserve is poured out on another. That is where Jesus steps in. Friends, this is what makes the gospel so beautiful.

Jesus stepped in to receive the justice of God that we deserved. He bore the wrath for you and me, so that we could be free. That is what He was doing on the cross. He wasn’t dying because He deserved to die, He was dying because we deserved to die. He took our place so that God’s justice would be upheld and so that God’s mercy would overflow toward us, and for this we Praise our God.

I. We worship God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because He has shown us mercy.

II. We worship God because He has caused us to be born again (v. 3)

It was Jesus, in John 3, who told us that in order to enter the Kingdom of God we must be born again. In our first birth we were stamped with the image of Adam, but the new birth emblazons us with the image of Christ. This new birth is given to us as a gift from God. He is the cause of our new birth.

But why do we need to be born again? Because our nature is totally corrupted by sin and we are powerless to overcome that nature on our own. The Bible teaches that by nature we are dead in our sins and children of wrath. This is what our first birth in Adam has afforded us. We need to be brought from death to life and Paul tells us how this happens in Titus 3.

Titus 3:4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,

We weren’t born again because of our good works; it was God’s mercy that fueled our new birth. The new birth is not the result of your prayer, or your baptism, or your trip down the aisle to talk to the pastor. The new birth is the work of the Holy Spirit in you. The Spirit brings life where there was death. He opens our eyes to see the truth of the gospel that we hadn’t seen before. He gives us a new heart of flesh replacing the heart of stone, and the result is that those who possess new life will respond with faith and repentance.

(Illus…Let’s imagine that a man is pulled from the water having just drowned and someone present begins to administer CPR. The man’s heart has stopped, there is no air in his lungs, and his brain function has ceased as well. But when the first responder begins to work he is able to bring all of those dead functions back to life. He compresses the heart to make it beat again, he fills the lungs with air in order to make them breathe again, he does all this in order to call the dead man back to life.

When that life finally rushes back it is only natural for the man to begin breathing new fresh air into his lungs, his heart begins to beat again on its own and his brain function jumps into high gear. The first responder has done his job and now the revived man has to do his job, which is to live.

The Holy Spirit is like a first responder who works within us causing us to be born again and the signs of our new life are faith in Jesus and repentance from sin. Faith and repentance are not the cause of our new birth; they are the evidence of it, meaning that we praise God and not ourselves for our new birth.

II. We worship God because He has caused us to be born again (v. 3)

III. We worship God because He has given us a living hope (V. 3)

What does Peter mean when he tells us that we have a living hope? What He means is that the source of our hope is not an idea it is a person. Let’s think back to the events of this past week some 2000 years ago.

On the night when Jesus was arrested, Peter was by His side and at first it seemed that Peter was willing to go to war in order to remain by Jesus’ side, but that is not how the night ended. Before the night ended, Peter denied that he even knew Jesus. And to make matters worse, Jesus told Peter that it was going to happen.

Earlier in the night Jesus told His disciples that the Jews would seek to put Him to death and that His followers would run in fear. When Peter heard this he jumped out of his seat to confess his commitment to die at Jesus’ side. But the Lord knew Peter better than Peter knew himself.

By mid-morning the next day Peter had denied His Lord and Jesus was hanging on a Roman cross atop Golgotha’s hill. Jesus was dead and Peter was devastated. Jesus’ death on the cross dashed Peter’s hopes. His death made Peter’s denials all the more bitter. It meant that there was no possibility of making amends or being restored to the one Peter had come to love. The crucifixion robbed Peter of hope.

But when the girls came in from the tomb on Sunday morning and told Peter that it was empty, can you imagine what this did to his heart? His hopes had been dashed to pieces, but this news was enough to cause hope to flicker in his heart again. Peter heard this news and then flew out of the door to go and see for himself and when He saw Jesus His hope was restored. But it was a new kind of hope. It wasn’t a false hope, a misplaced hope, a blind hope, a fond hope; it was a living hope.

Peter’s hope was not based on an idea it was based on a person, a person that is alive and for whom death has no hold. So when Peter writes to us about our living hope he writes from personal experience. His hope is alive because his hope is in Christ and Christ is alive. The resurrection of Jesus was not a mythical tale for Peter, it was a life-changing reality.

III. We worship God because He has given us a living hope (V. 3)

IV. We Praise God because He raised Jesus Christ from the dead (v. 3)

The Roman crucifix meant one thing death. It signaled the end of rebellion. It was the great silencer of those who dared to stand against the power of Rome.

The men who cried out to Pilate for Jesus to be crucified trusted that if they were successful Jesus would be no more. They were voting NO to Jesus and His Kingdom, but the resurrection shows that God voted YES.

N.T. Wright says,

Death is the last weapon of the tyrant, and the point of the resurrection, despite much misunderstanding, is that death has been defeated. Resurrection is not the re-description of death; it is its overthrow and, with that, the overthrow of those whose power depends on it.

An earthly court sentenced Jesus to death but a higher court reversed his sentence. Death couldn’t hold Jesus because death had no claim on Him. He did not die because of His own sin He died for the sins of His people. Therefore, death could not hold Him.

Now, it’s one thing to claim that Jesus was a great rabbi worthy of our attention. It is quite another to claim that Jesus was raised from the dead, but that is exactly what Peter is doing here. He is claiming that Jesus, the man crucified on a Roman cross was raised from death to new life by the power of God.

The resurrection of Jesus is proof that He was the Christ and the God appointed Savior of the world. Friends, there is no reason nor is there any hope that you will find peace in this life and the next unless you receive Jesus Christ as Lord. And the most powerful evidence that Jesus is worthy of your worship and devotion is the resurrection.

All of the things that we praise God for (His mercy, our new birth, our living hope) are only made possible through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection was absolutely necessary; otherwise none of these gifts could be ours. If Christ had somehow failed, then His sacrifice would not have been accepted by God as a sufficient ransom for our sin. If Christ had somehow failed then there would be no reason for Him to be raised from the dead, because His work was not complete and acceptable to God. If there was no resurrection then we would receive death and not new life, wrath and not mercy, despair rather than hope.

The Apostle Paul makes this clear in 1 Corinthians 15 when he writes,

V. 14 If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

V. 17 If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

V. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

If it weren’t for the resurrected life of Jesus we would have nothing to celebrate, nothing to rejoice in, nothing to hope for and no reason to want to praise God.

V. 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead,” which means that all of these things, all of these gifts are ours and they should result in praise to our God. Because of the resurrection we have received the Father’s mercy. Because of the resurrection we have been born again. Because of the resurrection we have a living hope.

Conclusion…

I. We worship God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because He has shown us mercy.

II. We worship God because He has caused us to be born again (v. 3)

III. We worship God because He has given us a living hope (V. 3)

IV. We Praise God because He raised Jesus Christ from the dead (v. 3)

Here in this text, Peter is leading us to praise God because our salvation is His work and not our own. We couldn’t begin to accomplish it and we do not in any way deserve it. For Peter, praise is not a religious duty that earns us God’s love, rather it is the overflow of our joy in what God has done for us through Christ.

One of the things that today should force us to do is to look upon the empty tomb and ask ourselves what must I do with Jesus? It is easy to come to church on Easter Sunday and celebrate a cultural holiday. It is easy to get together with family to hunt Easter eggs, wear new spring clothes, and go to church. But we’ve gotten really good at ignoring the earth shattering truth that this day is all about.

Jesus Christ a man attested by God with signs and wonders died in the place of sinners and was raised to new life on the third day. The power of God in his life, death, and resurrection is the un-ignorable truth that we must all reckon with today.

So my plea for you is that you run to Jesus, that you would see the weight of your sin before God and that you would see Jesus as the only one who can wash that sin away.