Easter Sunday
Preached at
By Pastor Dennis R. King
The Grace and Mercy
of the Lord, Jesus Christ, be with you all.
In I Corinthians 15, Paul writes, “Death is
swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your
sting?” The sting of death is sin, and power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ. Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the
work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vane. The
victory of Easter is your victory! I pray so, I hope so. I know it can be. And
if it is not, I hope you will let Jesus make it yours.
We are overwhelmed by what God has done for
us in Christ Jesus. I heard a story about a pastor who was getting ready for
Easter Sunday morning. He was still pondering about what he was going to preach
on when he decided to go out for a walk. He came across a boy who had a homemade
bird cage made out of some strips of wood he had tacked together. In that bird
cage he had a sparrow. So, the pastor asked the boy what he was going to do
with that sparrow. The boy said, “Oh, I am going to take that bird to my
grandpa’s shed and I’m going to turn him loose. Then I am going to take my BB
gun and I’m going to shoot him while he flies around in that shed.” The pastor
said, “Could I buy that sparrow from you?” The boy replied, “You don’t want
that sparrow. There are lots of sparrows.” The pastor reached into his pocket
and pulled out a twenty dollar bill and he said to the boy, “I’ll buy that
sparrow from you for twenty dollars.” The boy thought to himself, twenty
dollars for a sparrow! So he took the pastor’s twenty dollars and then this
wise young business boy said, “But you don’t have a cage. Do you want to buy a
cage?” The pastor replied looking at this beat up old cage, “Yes, I want to buy
a cage. I’ll give you twenty dollars for the cage.” The boy walked away
thinking the pastor was insane and forty dollars richer for it! The pastor
returned home and went to his backyard and opened up the cage door to set that
little sparrow free. That sparrow was victorious. The pastor, on Sunday
morning, took that beat up old cage that the boy had made and set it on the
pulpit. It was one of those really shabby items. The women from his
congregation wanted to move it from the pulpit and set it behind some flowers.
It was ugly looking and it interfered with all the Easter celebration and all
of its glory! But the pastor wanted it right there. When it came time for his
sermon, he told the story about meeting this boy and buying that cage and
setting that sparrow free. He said, “That’s just what God has done for you and
for me. He has purchased us through the blood of His own Son, Jesus Christ.
Then He had set us free that we might live abundantly - that we might be
victorious – that we might live eternally. Where is your victory?
If you read newspaper articles, magazines,
even books, you will discover that there is a lot of material out there that
says people do not live for Heavenly matters. It is as if they live forgetting
about eternal values. Most of those articles, or a good number of them, would
say to you that people live for the practical things here and now – science,
technology, gadgets, success, and happiness. Yet, we look around us and we
discover that we are reaping nothing more than decreased happiness. Lives have
come undone. Our economics are a tangled mess. With all our education and our technology,
we seem to have less wisdom. With all of our wonderful hospitals and all the
control we have over diseases, we are a people who live with poor health. With
all of our churches, with all of the organizations, we have in our world today,
we live with less peace. Violence and fear seem to be present everywhere. Where
is our peace? Where is our faith? Where is our victory? Where are the people
who are not afraid of death because they love and trust God with all their
hearts? Where are the people who have been seeking first the
That victory, remember, is now as it was then
in Jesus Christ Himself. It is Jesus’ victory and He gives it to us. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory! Because of that victory
we can have the kind of faith that does not say, “Keep your chin up.” But
rather makes the more decisive statement of our Lord Himself – “Be of good
cheer! I have overcome the world.” What He did cannot properly be described.
What a clash, what a conflict. Jesus does battle with Satan and the very
principalities and powers of evil. The answer to that horrible battle was not
rigged and the victory was not obvious from the beginning. There was indeed the
dreadful possibility that the evil of the world might win. For a few hours on
Good Friday it appeared that evil did win.
People of the world say that everybody is
selfish and is out for number one. They say that evil has a strangle hold on
the world. People still commit murder. People, then, committed murder and Jesus
was the victim. But Easter came! With Easter God won a
decisive victory over all the forces of evil that are raging in the world and all
the evil that is hidden in our hearts.
A group of people wanted to do some
missionary work. So to help them explain the powerful message of the Gospel, they
asked an artist to sketch a picture. That artist drew a picture of broken
world, bombed out buildings, rumble and ruin everywhere. There were church
steeples that had fallen. The brokenness of the world was apparent in that
picture, but in the very midst of that picture towering above all the
brokenness, the artist painted the Living Christ with His arms outstretched
both as an invitation and as a benediction. There Jesus was towering
over the wrecks of time.
Now because of that victory, where do you
cast your lot in this world where evil still attempts to cross out the thrust
of God’s goodness? Just suppose that all of the accumulated and mass power of
the world goes in one direction, the direction of this constant, selfishness,
and violence. Add up all the power, add to it the vast military powers of the
world including all the nuclear powers, add to that all the political powers of
the world that are so massive. Add it all together and just suppose it all goes
one way – the way of evil. But suppose, also, that the will of God goes in the
opposite direction, the direction of His Victory, the direction of faith and
hope and love. Which one do you think sooner or later will have to crack?
We look back in history and we see Alexander
the Great, we see all of
There is a story told about a father who in
his home taught his children catechism. One evening as he was talking with his
youngsters about the meaning of the Apostles Creed, one of the children broke
in with a remark and said to his father, “Why are we doing this? It is useless.
The evil in the world is so great and Jesus is so small. Really! Jesus is King
of kings and Lord of lords. Who lives and reigns eternally?” And this wise
father said, “He has outlived all of the mighty things that have ever mocked
Him.”
Where is the victory? There it is in the
presence of Jesus where it has always been. We can nail Him to the cross, we
can mock Him. But He will endure! You can pierce His side, but He will turn it
into your healing. You can deny Him, but He lives on. You can run from Him, but
you can not escape Him. You can even oppose Him, but you cannot get rid of Him.
Thanks be to God that gives us the victory in our Lord
Jesus Christ.
Today we have gathered to remember that
victory in the lives of people. Look around and you can see it happening time
and time again. We can hide in God’s heart and be healed. Or we can flee from
God and be broken. In either case God rules. If you look around you, you can
see instance upon instance where those people who hide in God’s heart are
healed. When you see it you know that it is the victory. I have seen that
victory in the lives of those who have been sick and come to realize that the
only life there is, is the life that God gives us. The only word that has
lasting meaning in the entire English language is the word Jesus. I have seen
the victory in the lives of those same people who after being sick, get well
and want to share something that God has done for them. There is the victory.
I was fortunate that I grew up in a home
where that same kind of victory was obvious. Our family had its problems and
squabbles and reasons for anger as any other family on earth. Yet, our family
consisted of a loving mother who cared for her children in a special way.
Through her constancy and faith, she gave us emotional stability, she showed us
love and care, she taught us basic lessons in faith
that helped us to understand that there is a victory. It is ours in Christ. Go
back to the early Disciples, they on that first Good
Friday were distressed, despondent. Some people thought they would have stole
the body of Jesus – I don’t think they had enough sense at that point to even
think about that because they were totally defeated. The promise of God’s
upward thrust – they had experience for three years in Jesus and now all of a
sudden it was gone. Yet, suddenly they were preaching a Gospel of Grace and
Victory! They were hurrying through the ancient empire, not so much concerned
about their problems as they were aware of the power and possibility that they
had. They based everything on the claim –“Jesus is Alive!” They found it all to
be true. As they were singing hymns to this Lord, they found He was breaking
old habits, bringing forth talents and giving strength to them. They called
their life in Him the Newness of Life. The evidence of this victory is all
around us. We just need to open our eyes and see that Jesus Christ is alive! He
arose to set us free. He paid the price. He bore the burden that we might know
how much God really loves us. Where is your victory?
Amen.