Overcoming Anxiety with Peace

“Without Christ, we’re in Satan’s grip. But because of His great love for us, Jesus shed His blood and died to redeem us from our sins, giving us full forgiveness. He rose”
― Dr. David Jeremiah
“Is Jesus truly preeminent in your life? Is He number one? If He’s “a good two or three,” there will be nothing victorious about your experience. In this careening culture and in these perilous days, we must say as never before: “All to Jesus I surrender, all to Him I freely give.”

Stand there for having shot your feet. Now listen to this with the preparation of the Gospel of peace.
The new living translation renders this verse for shoes, put on the peace that comes from the good news so that you will be fully prepared.
The word peace believe it or not occurs over 400 times in the Bible.
And basically, there are two kinds of peace that the Bible describes.
First of all, there’s what we might call peace with God.
And secondly, what the Bible refers to as the peace of God, peace with God, peace of God.
Now let’s talk about the first one.
The Bible teaches that when you try to live your life outside of a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, you can never achieve a deep peace in your life.
Everyone is aware of this cosmic discomfort to some degree.
But when we come to Jesus Christ and put our trust in Him. Here’s what the Bible says about us.
Listen to this. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
What that means is when we become a Christian, the hostility between God and us goes away.
You say, well, I’m not hostile to God.
Well, I hate to tell you this, but God’s hostile to you because of your rebellion against Him and His plan for your life.

And when you come and submit yourself to God and you accept his plan for your life, especially a relationship with his son, Jesus Christ, the hostility, the barrier, the closed fist that we often have toward God ends up going away.
And all of a sudden that feeling of being at odds with God is, is evaporated.
And now, you know, you’re not at odds with God, you’re in fellowship with God.
If you struggle with anxiety, life can seem like a battle.
But I want you to know that God understands the extent of your worry and because of the gospel of peace, the one thing you don’t have to fear if you know Him is losing his love, whatever goes on in your life.
If you know Jesus Christ, he will be there for you and he will be the backdrop to what’s happening in your life.
You know, it’s such a struggle when you have good friends, sometimes even family members who are going through stuff and they know what they should know, but they don’t do what they know and you watch them struggling with their problems and their issues and trying to sort them out and, and here’s God, he’s there and, and, and they know he’s there but they put him over here and they don’t acknowledge him and they keep cycling all of these problems trying to figure them out in their own strength when the one who could solve the problems is right there and they just ignore his presence in their life.
I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this because all of you know, about this peace with God.
I hope if you don’t have peace with God, you’ll make sure before this day is over, you bow your head and ask Jesus Christ to come into your life and make that relationship with God secure.
The most awful thing said to me after a person becomes a Christian.
You know what it is, Doctor Jeremiah, I just felt like somebody lifted a ton off of my shoulders.
What is that? That’s the barrier between you and God being torn down.
So that now through Jesus, you have a relationship with the Lord.
Now that’s what we know, but here’s what we need to know. There’s peace with God.
And then there’s the peace of God.
On more than one occasion, Jesus told his disciples that there’s a peace available to them and to us that is capable of calming their hearts no matter what’s going on in their life, no matter what the storm might be.
Let me just give you two of those promises.
John 14 27 Jesus said, peace, I leave with you, my peace. I give to you.
Not as the world do I give it to you? Let not your heart be troubled.
Neither let it be afraid. And later on in the same book, he said these things I have spoken to you that in me, you may have peace in the world.
You will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.
You know, I, I know that a lot of us uh we do this when, when trouble comes, do you ever pray this prayer?
Lord? Please make this go away, please make this go away.
Or Lord, I don’t know what to do about this problem. Would you just resolve this?
Because I don’t know what to do. I’ve been praying that prayer for well over 50 years.
And I want to tell you what my score is. It’s 50 to 0. God does not do that.
God allows these problems in our lives and then he orchestrates the circumstances so that He can show us his strength in the midst of it.
God’s purpose in your life. And in mind is not to make all our trouble go away, but to show us that in the midst of our trouble and in the midst of our stress and in the midst of our anxiety, he is enough.
And when we find that out, we are so rich, we could get up every day with confidence, amen.
But we can say, I don’t know what’s going to happen today. But here’s what I know.
My God is enough. Yeah.
And I fall in love with this little song by Joe D Masina called My God is bigger than this.
And uh every time I think of something in my life that’s challenging, I just sing that little song.
My God is bigger than this and he is. But let me ask you a question.
How do you find that out? Unless you have trouble in your life?
God allows trouble in our lives to show us how strong He is in the midst of it all.
So here we are, all of us probably somewhere along the continuum and we know that we’re living a life of anxiety that is not the life God wants us to live.
So I want to give you some strategies today for peace to place in your heart where anxiety now resides.
I’m gonna ask you five questions. I’m gonna use the five interrogatives that journalists always use.
How, what, who, where and when and each of these is a strategy that you should mark down in your heart.
Number one, here’s the question. How are you praying?
There are two passages in the Bible that help us with this particular problem in our lives.
One is Philippians four and the other is Matthew chapter six.
I would call these the central passages in the Bible on anxiety.
Philippians 46 and seven, be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.
Let your request be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus Philippians 46 and seven.
In this passage, the word anxious literally means to be pulled in two different directions.
It means to have an inward war going on inside a battle going on in your inner spirit, pulling you apart.
Someone has said, if it’s big enough to worry about, it’s big enough to pray about.
And let me tell you what I’ve learned in my own personal life.
And from the scripture, when I’m facing stress and turbulence in my life, there are two kinds of prayer that are helpful that often get overlooked in most discussions of prayer.
The first one is progressive prayer and the second is proactive prayer. So let’s take them one at a time.
What is progressive prayer? Well, let me just say when we’re under pressure, what do we do?
We run to the Lord, we rush into his presence and we dump our list of stuff on him without even saying hello.
We say God, I need this, this, this and this and I need it now and tomorrow and the next day.
And if you could get ahead of time, that would be great. It even be better.
But real prayer is a lifestyle of love for God and rushing into his presence with our laundry list of needs without pausing to truly focus on Him can depress us more than if we hadn’t ever prayed at all.
Because if we talk to God and all, we talk to Him about our, our problems and we don’t see him high and lifted up in our worship.
All we’re doing is rehearsing our problems and driving them deeper inside. And prayer is not a help.
It’s a hindrance to our issues.
I’ve discovered that when I am under pressure, it’s easy for me to skip right to my issues and forget about the God to whom I am praying.
But when I pray and I worship God, here’s what happens.
God grows in my life until my problems are put into perspective.
If I only give God my problems, all I got is me and my problems.
But when I go to God first, I’ve got my problems. I’ve got God and they’ve got me.
That’s the first thing. Number two, I like to call this proactive prayer.
I learned this about prayer.
I never saw it mentioned in another book and maybe it is in a book I haven’t read, but it should be in the books because it’s in the book.
We usually treat prayer as remedial by that.
I mean, we pray when we have a need, we pray when we’re in trouble, we pray when we find ourselves in a spot, we don’t know what to do.
We’re so desperate how many times people have said to me, Doctor Jeremiah, I’ve tried everything.
All I got left is prayer.
And I often say, well, why would you put prayer at the bottom of the list when it should be at the top of the list?
I mean, why don’t you go there first? But we don’t do that often.
Do we listen to what Jesus said in Luke 18 1?
He said, we ought always to pray and not lose heart.
He didn’t say we ought always to pray after we lose heart.
He said we ought always to pray and not lose heart. How are you praying?
That’s the first thing. Number two, what are you thinking in Philippians?
Four, Paul wrote whatever things are true.
Whatever things are noble, whatever things are just whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report.
If there is any virtue, if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things, that’s in the same passage where you find the instruction about prayer.
Now, with this list, Paul is telling us exactly and specifically what we’re to think on making it clear that we get to direct our thoughts.
Or you say pastor, I can’t direct my thoughts. They just pop into my head.
Well, the Bible wouldn’t tell us to direct our thoughts if it were not possible.
Our thought life is supposed to be positive and uplifting and redemptive because our thought life is the launching pad for our outward life if you want your mind to be free of anxiety, make determined definite choices as to what you allow into it.
And I cannot stress this enough.
You are the guardian of your mind and I could give you all kinds of practical illustrations about, turn off the television.
I, I, I keep looking for a channel where something’s worth watching and I haven’t found it yet.
I mean, in our, in our city we got like hundreds of channels.
I’ve told my wife more than once. Isn’t it a pity that we got all these channels?
And when you want to watch something that’s uplifting and positive, you can’t find one blessed thing.
That’s the world we live in. So, what does that mean?
I’m not going to give you the statistics of how many hours we sit in front of that stupid box.
But I’m gonna tell you it’s too many, learn the power of shutting off because all that is, it’s dragging all the negative stuff of the world right into your house and then right into your mind and it’s pretty hard to overcome that.
I mean, the political wars and the political fighting and the nastiness of the political arena on both sides is just so discouraging.
You got to get away from that.
You got to get away from all this stuff in your mind with the ugliness of the world in which you live and you have to be proactive about getting the right stuff in your mind.
It is not going to come by itself. I love Max Lucado.
He’s a friend of mine and got one of the freshest pens out there. Here’s what he said.
You probably know this, but in case you don’t, I’m so thrilled to give you the good news.
You can pick what you ponder. You didn’t select your birthplace at birthday.
You didn’t choose your parents or your siblings.
You don’t determine the weather or the amount of salt in the ocean.
There are many things in life over which you have no choice but the greatest activity of life is well within your Dominion, you can choose what you think about.
You can be the air traffic controller of your mental airport.
You occupy the control tower, you can direct the mental traffic of your world.
Thoughts circle above coming and going and if one of them lands, it’s because you gave it permission and if it leaves, it’s because you directed it to do so you can select your thought pattern.
Turns out that our most valuable weapon against anxiety weighs less than £3 and sits between our ears.
Think about what you think about. That’s a really good word.
And I’m here to tell you that God wants your mind to be so saturated with his truth that you learn to see life the way he sees it.
He’s certainly at peace. I mean, did you ever read in the gospels?
Where Jesus came and everybody was hungry and he was so filled with anxiety. He didn’t know what to do.
And we’re to get into Jesus and let Jesus get into us.
So we respond to the world the way he did learn to rest your thoughts on the Almighty.
Here’s a great verse that most of us know Isaiah 26 3.
You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.
First question, how are you praying? Second question, what are you thinking? Third question.
Who are you following to overcome anxiety? You can’t just think about what is good.
You also have to begin to live it out.
And often that means you need a mentor or someone that you can depend on to help you.
That’s why Paul wrote to the Philippians church.
He said to them in the same passage in Philippians, the things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me do these and the God of peace will be with you.
Paul’s message to the Philippians.
Was this take the lessons I’ve taught you practice the things you’ve seen me do and you too will begin to experience the presence of the God of peace.
Maybe you’re one of those people who’s a worrier, get a friend that you meet for coffee, join a small group at your church of people.
You really trust, pick up and read an encouraging book about someone, maybe even the apostle who learn how to hand their anxious careers over to the Lord.
Let God’s peace in their lives influence the anxiety in your life.
We learn from others, don’t we always reading the book? Are you always reading the book?
I, I got two books for you right now. I’m, I’m gonna get to them before this week is over.
These books are meant to help me to encourage me.
You’re never too old to learn from others how to do life better. Amen.
So how are you praying? What are you thinking? Who are you following? Here’s the fourth one.
Where are you living? We’ve seen how, what and who now it’s time to examine where, where do your thoughts live?
Where are you living? I’ll tell you there’s only three possibilities.
You’re either living in the past, you’re living in the future or you’re living in the present.
Jesus said, therefore, do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow.
We’ll worry about its own thing sufficient for the day as its own trouble. Think about it.
The past exists only as a mere memory. The future exists only in the imagination.
Only the present exists in true reality.
So why do we ruin the only moment of existence we have by pulling trouble from non existent places like the past and the future.
Here’s what happens when you borrow trouble from the future. Now you got double trouble.
If you live in the past and you live in the future, you’re allowing two thieves to rob your life.
But if you live in the present, the Bible says that God is sufficient for every day.
There’s a wonderful verse in Deuteronomy 33 25. Here’s what it says as your days. So shall your strength be?
I love that verse. That means Lord, I don’t know what’s going to happen on Wednesday or Thursday.
I got this and that and all that.
But all I know is this for this day, I got the strength you want me to have as my days.
So shall my strength be? I live on that?
I mean, I, I got so much stuff going on in my life right now.
If I wanted to sit back and worry, I could be a professional warrior, I could get, I could get awards, but I chose not to do that.
Here’s what I’ve learned. I don’t know how God is going to deal with tomorrow, but I know he’s sufficient for today and I’m going to rest in the promise that he has always kept.
He’s never ever out promised himself. So how are you praying? What are you thinking?
Who are you following? Where are you living? And finally, when will you find the peace?
You remember the graphic photo of the Napalm girl from the Vietnam War. Remember that?
It’s a painful picture to see.
It’s a naked nine year old girl running down a dirty street with her arms flapping face twisted in horror.
Other Children are running with her and behind them are billowing clouds of Napalm wafting toward them and burning their skin.
That girl’s name is Kim Fuk fan and she was caught in a South Vietnamese bombing raid of a route used by the Viet Cong rebels.
And the photographer who took that photo was a guy named Nick put down his camera which she had instinctively picked up and quickly transported that little girl to a hospital and saved her life.
Here’s the rest of the story, Kim endured decades of physical suffering for many years. She prayed to the gods.
Her family, traditional religion had taught her, she prayed for healing and no answers came.
Her dream was to become a doctor and she actually began studies in that field.
But the world knew her in a different way and her government forced her to leave school and be available to speak and tour devastated and desperate seeking answers.
She went to Saigon’s central library and she started pulling Vietnamese books of religion off the shelves, one by one and the stack in front of her contained a copy of The New Testament.
After thumbing through several books, she opened the New Testament and began to read in the gospels and she was gripped by the sufferings of Christ as he bore our sins on the cross.
Shortly afterward, on a Christmas Eve in 1982 Kim gave her life to Christ at a worship service.
The message that day was about the prince of peace, Jesus Christ.
She wrote later, how desperately I needed peace, how ready I was for love and joy.
I had so much hatred in my heart, so much bitterness. I wanted to let go of all my pain.
I wanted to pursue life instead of holding fast to the fantasies of death. I wanted this Jesus.
So when the pastor finished speaking, I stood up, stepped into the aisle, made my way to the front of the sanctuary.
And I said yes to Jesus Christ.
And there in a small church in Vietnam, mere miles from the street where my journey had begun amid the chaos of war.
On the night before the world would celebrate the birth of the Messiah. I invited Jesus Christ into my heart.
When I woke up that Christmas morning, she said I experienced the kind of healing that can only come from God.
I was finally at peace. Many years later, Kim married and immigrated to Canada.
She reconnected to the photographer whom she calls Uncle Nick. And they talk every week today.
Kim’s life’s purpose is to heal others through the love and peace of Christ.
Most remarkably, Kim ultimately forgave everyone who had harmed her.
She rose above her physical and emotional scars and made a choice to embrace the hope of salvation through forgiveness.
She understood that unless she could forgive, she could not grow closer to Christ or bring others into his fold.
So the question is, when will you find peace?
When will you make the, how, what, who were of his piece? Your priorities?
Look at how you’re praying, what you’re thinking, who you’re following where your thoughts are living.
When you embrace these steps, let the Lord fill your overcomer heart with his peace.
Here’s the verse that is my prayer as we close this session.
Now, may the Lord of peace himself give you peace always in every way.
Second Thessalonians 3 16, our greatest enemies sin Satan and death. Jesus overcame these enemies personally.
He overcame them powerfully and most importantly, he overcame them permanently.
And that is the great message of the resurrection.
Those of us who have heard the story of the resurrection, all of our lives may forget how wondrous and joyous and life changing it is.
But in this message, I ask you to keep the resurrection of Jesus Christ fresh in your mind.
If you want to be an overcomer, you have to start with the overcomer who overcame death for all of us.
Let’s begin where some people want to begin to disprove the resurrection that Jesus Christ truly was dead.
And if you’re one of those who struggles with the fear of death, you’re not alone, venture capitalist.
Bill Morris is haunted by his father’s death from a brain tumor.
And he said my thoughts can turn to dark things when I’m alone, Marris has convinced investors to launch Google’s billion dollar super secret effort to cure aging Peter Field.
The billionaire behind paypal, and the first outside investor in Facebook intends to live to the age of 120.
He told the Washington Post, I’ve always had this really strong sense that death was a terrible, terrible thing to free us from the fear of death.
Jesus. First of all had to experience death. Jesus took death in his own body.
His death took six hours. It was witnessed by thousands. He didn’t simply swoon or lapse into a coma.
He was as dead as dead man can be.
The Roman soldiers confirmed this as we know by inspecting his stiffening corpse on the cross.
They knew death when they saw it, Jewish officials could not tolerate crucifixion victims hanging on crosses on the Sabbath day.
So they would often break the legs of those who were crucified to hasten their death.
This would prevent the person hanging on a cross from being able to push up with his legs in order to breathe.
And when his legs were broken, he would ultimately die in just a matter of a few moments.
But when the soldiers came to Jesus, if you remember the story in the gospels, they did not break his legs.
The prophecy of the Old Testament said not a bone would be broken, but they didn’t break his legs because they saw he was already dead.
Had you been in Jerusalem that day?
You would have seen the Lord’s body taken down from the cross wrapped tightly in a shroud and laid in a tomb.
But the good news is that Jesus didn’t stay in that tomb and there’s a whole lot of evidence to prove it.
The historian Luke said that Jesus presented himself alive after suffering by many infallible proofs.
These proofs are so important to us in our culture today.
And if we do not really believe in the resurrection, we cannot be over commers because Jesus is the one who empowers us to overcome through the power from which he himself was resurrected from the grave.
So I want you to let me be Easter for you a little bit today and talk about this central doctrine of the word of God.
Because if we do not understand and believe and really process the power of the resurrection, we are powerless ourselves to deal with the issues we face.
So if you’d been in Jerusalem that day, and you had come with the women to the tomb that first morning, the first thing you would have noticed was the soldiers.
You see a Roman guard had been assigned to guard the Lord’s tomb day and night.
You remember that from the Gospels and this guard was a security force of 16 soldiers.
Each of them trained to protect six ft in front of them.
Four stood immediately in front of what was being protected.
The other 12 slept in a semi circle in front of them.
And every four hours, another four was awakened and those who had been awake went to sleep.
So they worked through the night four on duty and the others asleep to steal the corpse of Jesus, which is what some people said happened.
Instead of the resurrection, grave, robbers would have had to walk over the sleeping soldiers then get past the alert.
Well, armed soldiers, clearly the stolen body idea is absurd, but it was the best spin.
The Lord’s critics could concoct in the fog of events around his resurrection.
So some people said, no, he didn’t come back from the grave. He was stolen by his friends.
Just stop and think about that for a moment and you have to deal with the soldiers and once you have dealt with the soldiers, you have to deal with the seal.
The seal according to Matthew 27 was put over the tomb of Jesus to secure it.
Officially, this seal was a cord.
If you have ever seen this in some of the movies of the resurrection, it was a thin cord that was stretched out across the stone that was in front of the grave.
It was sealed with wax here, it was sealed with wax here and it was stamped with the official sign of the Roman governor.
For someone to have stolen jesus’ body.
They would have had to evade the soldiers, they would have to have broken the seal, which would have incurred the wrath of the entire Roman Empire.
Once you get past the soldiers and the seal, you got to deal with the stone.
If you had witnessed the scene, you’d have noticed the giant stone that covered the tomb.
I can’t tell you how vital this piece of information is.
Matthew 27 says when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his new tomb, which he had hewn out of the rock.
And he rolled a large stone against the door of the tomb and departed Mark’s account in the New Testament says this stone was extremely large.
Now, I don’t know how a frightened group of disciples or a dispirited group of women could overcome the Roman guards and roll away the stone.
But critics don’t want to deal with that one. I did a little homework on this stone.
A stone big enough to cover the opening of the tomb.
It weighed over two tons, which is why when the women were coming to the tomb on Sunday morning, they were surprised to find it gone.
Here’s what Matthew says. And behold, there was a great earthquake for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat on it.
When the women came that day, they saw the stone.
But here’s what I believe the scripture uses some very special words that give you the impression that the stone wasn’t even in the slot.
It was over in the field by itself.
So when they came and saw the tomb, there wasn’t any stone in front of the opening and the stone wasn’t even where it would have been.
If it had been rolled back up the slot, it was in a place by itself.
Somebody said, why was the stone rolled away from the tomb? Not to let Jesus out.
But so that we could see in Jesus didn’t need us to roll the stone away for him to get out.
Remember he was in his new resurrection body.
He could transport himself any place he wanted, but the stone was rolled away so everybody could look in and see that the tomb was empty and that brings us to the astonishing discovery that shook Jerusalem on that history bending day.
Everyone agrees that the Selia was empty. Paul said this thing wasn’t done in a corner.
This was done right in the middle of a Jewish population.
Thousands of people in Jerusalem for Passover could see for themselves that Joseph Ob Maia’s tomb so recently occupied by the body of Jesus of Nazareth was now vacant.
So as you walk down to the tomb on that first day, and you’re trying to find out, did Jesus really come back from the grave?
You see the seal is gone and the stone has been moved and the Selia is empty but not quite, the Selia was not quite empty.
There was still a shroud in the Selia.
In fact, it’s a detail that often gets left out of the resurrection story.
Peter and John heard the rumors of the resurrection and they ran to the tomb and the Bible says, when John leaned over and looked into the grave, he saw something so startling that he didn’t even enter the tomb where the body of Jesus had been placed.
There were the grave clothes in the form of a body slightly caved in and empty like the empty crystal of a caterpillars cocoon and seeing that would make a believer out of anybody because you could tell immediately that Jesus hadn’t unwrapped the grave clothes to get out.
He had come through the grave clothes and the grave clothes were still there like a body.
And not only that the clothes that went around his head, the Bible says they were in a place by themselves.
In other words, where the head would have been here was the head clothing.
I mean, that would really take your breath away, wouldn’t it?
So the soldiers and the seal and the stone and the Selia and the shroud and then the scars.
Let’s fast forward this story a little bit.
On the evening of that first Easter Jesus appeared to his disciples as they hid behind locked doors for fear of the Jewish leaders when they came to this meeting, as you remember from your study of the New Testament, Thomas wasn’t in the meeting, he wasn’t there.
And when he heard the reports that Jesus was alive, Thomas said, unless I see in his hands, the print of the nails and put my finger into the print of the nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.
And one week later, the disciples gathered again. And this time Thomas was there.
And according to John 20 Jesus appeared in their midst again and he said, peace to you.
And then he looked at Thomas and he said, Thomas reach your finger here and look at my hands and reach your hand here and put it into my side.
Thomas don’t be unbelieving, be believing. And Thomas response represents the climax of the gospel of John.
He said, my Lord and my God, my Lord and my God, the scars of Christ were still visible on his risen and glorified body and they were indisputable proof of his identity.
Thomas never doubted again. And according to our best traditional sources, he was a missionary who gave his life for the expansion of the church in India because of the resurrection.
And do you know what men and women when we get to heaven?
And we see Jesus and he holds out his hands to welcome us.
Those scars are going to still be in his hands and those wounds are going to be in his side throughout all of eternity.
Every time we see Jesus, we’re going to be reminded of what he did so that we could be in heaven with him.
The scars were a testimony. And then finally, there were the sightings of Jesus as the resurrected Lord.
Had you been alive? In those days, you would likely have seen Jesus as the resurrected Savior Acts.
13 says he presented himself alive after his suffering.
And we know of approximately a dozen post resurrection appearances of Jesus. One of those was to 500 people.
At the same time. The variety of his appearances is one reason why those who have studied the resurrection say it’s absolutely confirmed.
Now, you say Pastor Jeremiah, thank you for making me think about Easter today and reminding me of the resurrection.
And it’s pretty sad that in most of our churches, we never preach on the resurrection except on Easter weekend.
And it’s the cornerstone of our faith.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is really in many respects more important than the death of Christ for this reason if Jesus died, but he didn’t come back from the grave.
We have no reason to believe that he was any different than any other martyr who ever died.
But his resurrection proves that he was who he said he was, he came back from the grave.
He did exactly what he said he would do and because he rose from the grave.
We know for sure that the Gospel is true and that our faith in Jesus is not faith in vain.
So what does that mean to us now that Jesus is resurrected?
The results of life, overcoming death are very interesting.
And I’m so grateful that I get to finish my time here in New York by sharing these with you.
Our knowledge of Christ resurrection isn’t merely an intellectual exercise because he lives.
You can live too in the fullest sense of that word because he is alive now and forever more.
He has the authority to give life eternally and abundantly.
And there are four profound and highly practical implications of this truth.
And I want to leave them with you today because Jesus Christ is risen.
You can live a forgiven life before his death on the cross.
Jesus watched his disciples stumble from one mistake to another, culminating in their desertion and denial of him.
But somehow all of their failures were swallowed up in the empty tomb of Christ.
Take Thomas for instance, had he not messed up and stalked away in bitter unbelief.
We wouldn’t have his triumphant exclamation of the next week.
As I said, John used those words as the climactic moment of his gospel.
For Jesus can turn our failures into acts of faith and faithfulness.
Jesus does that for you and for me and for those we love.
The Bible uses a wonderful phrase in Deuteronomy 23 5.
God turned the curse into a blessing and that’s what he did on the cross.
That’s what he did through his resurrection. He turned the curse into a blessing.
The life of every Christ follower is a miracle that comes from the miracle of the resurrection.
I run into people all the time and say, oh, yeah, I know Pastor Jeremiah.
I know God has forgiven me, but I can’t forgive myself.
And I first of all want to tell them, there’s no place in the Bible that I’ve ever been able to find where we’re told to forgive ourselves just for whatever it’s worth.
And secondly, if we could forgive ourselves and we put our forgiveness of ourselves up against God’s forgiveness of us, which one would you choose?
So if God has forgiven you, you need to quit worrying about forgiving yourself.
You’ve already been forgiven by the most powerful God who’s forgiven you of your sin.
So don’t be, don’t spend all your life beating yourself up over sins that God has already forgiven except His forgiveness and get on with your life because Jesus Christ came out of the grave.
You and I can live a forgiven life. He who has overcome the world believes in the Son of God.
Number two, because he has risen, we get to live a meaningful life.
This was the primary point driven home by the Apostle Paul in his great chapter on the resurrection.
If you read first Corinthians 15. This is what he said.
He said therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, unmovable. Always abounding in the work of the Lord.
Knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
You know what the resurrection does for those of us who are Christians, it gives meaning to our lives.
The reason I preach the reason I do what I do and travel and do all the stuff on television and on radio is because I believe the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most important truth in the whole world.
And that when we preach that and people believe it, it not only changes their life here on this earth, but it gets them to heaven, which is what our whole purpose is.
So if you believe in the resurrection and you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as your savior, you have meaning immediately, you know what it is.
Tell somebody about it, let them know that Jesus Christ can make a difference in your life.
Thirdly, because he has risen, you can live a powerful life.
Jesus resurrection was a display of unimaginable power, power that the Bible says is available to us in our world today.
That’s the core message of the book of Ephesians.
The beaming light of the empty tomb illuminates every sentence and word in Paul’s letter to Ephesians, listen to this paragraph.
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people and his incomparably great power for us.
Who believe that power listen to this is the same mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead.
The power that raised Jesus from the grave is the same power you have in your life as a Christian.
If you’re not using it, you don’t know it, but it’s there.
And the Bible says it’s available and then because he has risen, you can live a never ending life.
First Corinthians 15 20 says Christ has risen from the dead and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
Our Lord’s resurrection, men and women is the guarantee that when you put your trust in him just as he was resurrected from the grave, you too will be resurrected from the grave.
When the Bible says he was the first fruits, that means he’s the down payment.
Jesus is the down payment on all future resurrections. John 11 says I am the resurrection and the life.
He who believes in me though he may die, he shall live and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.
Do you believe this Jesus triumphed over death? He will triumph over evil.
You can have certain hope concerning the future.
And as a pastor having presided over many funerals, I can tell you there is a creative difference when the person who has died is a believer.
You can tell the difference.
You can see the media, you can walk into the room and know this person in this room.
Uh they, they may be in heaven but there’s no despair in the room.
There’s sorrow, there’s sadness, there’s crying and some people say, well, the Bible teaches that Christians shouldn’t cry.
No, it does not. The Bible says, we sorrow, not as others who have no hope.
We still sorrow but not like others who don’t have any hope because we have hope.
And our hope is in the gospel.
I can’t overcome the things of my life and my own power.
But I have a risen Christ and he lives within my heart.
And when I have things, I don’t know how to deal with, I just take them to him.
And I tell it to Jesus as the old he writes and I know that the Jesus who lives within me is the same Jesus who was crucified that Friday and the same Jesus who came out of the grave on that Sunday and nothing is impossible with him.
If he can overcome the grave, he can overcome whatever we face, whatever we deal with, whatever comes across our path.
Jesus, he’s the greatest overcomer who ever overcame and I hope you know him.
But if you don’t know him, I recommend him to you and I promise you whatever it is you got going on in your life, that’s overwhelming you right now.
If you put Jesus in the equation and he’ll make all the difference in the world.
I trusted him now and walked with him now for over 50 years. He’s never disappointed me.
He never out promises himself whatever he says he will do. He does and you can count on him.
Jesus is enough. And I hope, you know him and I hope, you know, as you leave here today, that the most important message I have about all the stuff we’ve talked about is the message of Jesus.
Jesus Christ, the savior of the world. Hallelujah.