Easter - Going from Admirer to Follower

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009

Amazing. That’s what Friday was. It was amazing as we looked at the life and the death of Jesus. There were no other words that could describe the fact that Jesus, the Son of God, the all powerful one, hanging upon a cross and, at any moment, could jump down, at any moment, could call down a legion of angels to His defense but it’s amazing that He stayed. He stayed because He wanted to make a payment for our sin and He stayed until He gave His last breath and payment was made. Incredible. Amazing.

We’re not alone in our awe and wonder of Jesus this morning. Throughout the world, millions of people are gathered as we are right now. Gathered in amazement at the fact that after three days, Jesus rose from the grave and now He is alive again and, even more than that, throughout the world, the influence of this man keeps penetrating. Even though He lived for only 33 years some 2,000 years ago, yet His teaching, His philosophy has influenced countless numbers of people around the globe. People admire Jesus for all that He has done.

But that was Friday and this is Sunday. It’s time for us to move from being amazed at Jesus, move from just admiring Jesus to following Jesus. Because there is a big difference, my friends. There’s a big difference between admiring Jesus and following Jesus. Let me try to demonstrate that for you. I am amazed at Shawn Johnson and I know that many of you are, too. Who cannot admire the little spitfire from West Des Moines who won gold at the Olympics? I just can’t help but be mesmerized by her, whether she’s on the balance beam or she’s dancing with stars. I just can’t help but admire that little 17-year-old from West Des Moines. In fact, I just found out this week, most Olympic athletes, when they’re training for the Olympics, they train for 40+ hours and then they fit in their schoolwork. When Shawn was training for the Olympics, she went to school full time at Valley and only squeezed in 20 or 25 hours of practice and she still brought home gold. Now that’s amazing to me. I have to admire the young lady.

But as much as I admire her, I know that out there, there is some young girl who was watching the Olympics and was watching Shawn. And at some point in time, something clicked in that little girl’s mind and her heart began to pound and her mind began to race and she announced to her parents, “I’m going to be just like Shawn.” And it didn’t stop there. No, no, no, no, no. She Tivoed every routine that Shawn ever did and she has watched it a couple of dozen times. She doggedly went after her parents until they finally signed her up in a gym. And unlike all the other little girls that went off to the gym and then, after a couple of months, it sort of faded away, she’s still there. In fact, she’s there two, three, four nights a week and she’s working at it. And she’s perfecting it and she’s still studying her technique and I have no doubt that one day she will stand up on the podium and there will be gold hung around her neck. You see, she went way beyond admiring Shawn. She’s following her. She’s not in amazement of her. She wants to be her. There’s a big difference between an admirer and a follower. As much as I might admire Shawn Johnson, I’m never going to put on a leotard and do a back flip. There’s a big difference between an admirer and a follower.

Jesus never asked anyone to admire Him. But He did call people to follow Him. John Ortberg, in trying to describe the difference between the two, he says an admirer is impressed. A follower is devoted. An admirer applauds. A follower surrenders.

My friends, we can be amazed at Jesus and we should. And we should hold Him in awe. We can marvel at His miracles. We can soak in His teachings but this morning, on His resurrection, He calls for us to go beyond just admiring Him and to follow Him, to be devoted to Him, to surrender to Him. After all, isn’t that what He did with the disciples on the road to Emmaus? They started out admiring Jesus. Listen to how they described Him before they recognized that it was Jesus. He says, “He was a prophet and He did wonderful miracles. He was a mighty teacher, highly regarded by both God and all the people you see.” They were amazed at Jesus. They admired Jesus. They marveled at Jesus but they weren’t a follower of Jesus yet. But by that end of the story, after Jesus had spoken with them and when He broke the bread and they recognized Him, what is it that the disciples said? “Were not our hearts burning within us as He talked to us?” You see, at some point, their hearts began to pound, their minds began to race and they said, “He’s the one. He’s the one. He’s the Messiah. He’s the one I’m going to follow. He’s the one who will lead my life. He’s the one I’ll be devoted to. He’s the one I’m going to surrender to.” They became a follower of Jesus and, this morning, Jesus is calling on you to follow Him.

Followers have three great things going for them. First thing is this: Followers of Jesus know they have someone they can trust. You can’t buy trust, folks. No matter how much money you might spend, you cannot purchase trust. Trust is something that has to be earned. And it has to be earned over time. You don’t trust somebody the first time they come through. No, it’s the second time, the third time, the fourth time, then you start to trust them. You start to believe in them. For example, last year about this time, I made a trip out to Phoenix. I had a conference out there. So I got to the airport, I got my car and I said, “You know what, give me a G.P.S. unit. I’m kind of a techy kind of guy. I’ve never had one of those. It sounds like a cool little gizmo. Load me up with a G.P.S. unit. Let’s see how this thing works.” Of course, the guy was delighted to do that for me. He hooked it all up. He says, “You’re going to love it.” He says, “All you have to do is punch in the address and a map’s going to come up and it’s going to talk to you and tell you exactly what you need to do to get to your destination.” I said, “That’s cool. That’s neat.” So I got it hooked all up. I put in the address of my hotel. Sure enough, a little map popped up and then this female British voice started talking to me. You see, I figure it’s British because when you talk with a British accent, you always talk more intelligently. And I figured it was a female because, well, I’m used to having a woman tell me how to drive. I have no idea how much trouble I’m going to get in with that one. Anyway, the map pops up, a little British female voice comes up and says, “Drive ahead 500 feet. Turn left. Turn right.” Now I don’t know about you but I started arguing with the G.P.S. unit because I thought, “No, I’m going in the wrong direction. No, I should turn right here. I should have turned left there. I know what I’ll do. I’ll prove the G.P.S. unit wrong. I’ll do exactly what it says.” And sure enough, it landed me right at the hotel. The second time I used it, I punched in the address, I didn’t argue quite as much this time with it. By the third time I used it, I didn’t argue at all. In fact, it got to the point that my daughter joined me at the end of the trip and we were driving over to California to go to Disneyland and we drove there at night so we entered into California at 10:00 at night. It’s pitch black outside. I’m going through all these winding curves and up and down these hills and I’m cool as a cucumber. I’m calm. I have my little female British voice telling me where to go. It had earned my trust.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ earns our trust. The resurrection of Jesus says that we can trust Him because He comes through again and again and again. Listen to what He says to His disciples on the road to Emmaus to demonstrate that very fact to them. He says, “Wasn’t it clearly projected by the prophets that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering His time of glory? Then Jesus quoted passages from the writings of Moses and all the prophets explaining what all the scriptures said about Himself.” Jesus goes back to the very beginning of time and shows from the beginning that God has prophesied and promised the Messiah. And all of those promises and all of those prophecies come to fulfillment in Jesus. Jesus proves Himself to be trustworthy.

Let’s go beyond that. What did the angels say to the women who first got to the tomb? “He isn’t here. He has risen. Don’t you remember when He told you back in Galilee that the son of man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and that He would rise again on the third day?” And then, all of a sudden, the women remembered. “That’s right, Jesus said that He was going to do this. Jesus said weeks ahead of time, ‘I’m going to be arrested. I’m going to be crucified. I’m going to die and then three days later, I’m going to rise again.’” Folks, let me tell you something. If somebody says three days after they have been pronounced dead they are going to walk out of the grave and then they do, you can bank on that person. You know you can trust that person. If they can come through on a promise like that, they can come through on anything. Jesus said it and then Jesus did it. The resurrected Christ shows us that we can trust Him. Followers of Jesus have someone to trust, someone to guide and someone to lead them. And I have to believe, in our world, we need someone. We need someone we can trust who gives us guidance and direction as we look at our society, as we look at what’s happening in the world, we need someone to let us know what’s the right way and what’s the wrong way. Followers of Jesus have someone they can trust. Sometimes followers of Jesus argue with Him. I do. “You want me to do what? No, God, you don’t want me to go in this direction, do you?” But every time, every time He takes me just to where I need to be. Followers of Jesus have someone to trust.

Followers of Jesus have peace in their life. I can’t think of a greater gift that you can receive this side of heaven besides having peace in your life. With all of the anxiety that we have in our world, with all the stress that we have to deal with on a daily basis, to have someone give you peace in your life is a priceless gift and that’s exactly what the resurrected Savior does. In fact, that’s the first thing He offers to the disciples when He appears to them. Those who went to Emmaus, they doubled back. They went back to Jerusalem. They got together with all the rest of the disciples and the very next verse it says that Jesus appeared among them. And the first thing He said was, “Peace be with you.” He wanted to calm their nerves, settle them down a little bit. “Peace be with you.” The resurrected Savior offers us peace. He offers us peace because we can trust Him. We can trust Him to lead and guide us through these things, all the things we worry about. We worry about our kids, we worry about the economy, we worry about our jobs. We worry about our parents. We worry about so many things. Jesus says, “You can trust me. You can trust that I’m going to lead and guide you through all of that.” Jesus brings peace.

But the resurrected Savior brings more than just peace to calm our nerves and to quell our anxious thoughts.  He brings peace with our Father in heaven. In fact, that’s the most important peace He can bring to us is peace to our Father in heaven. Because, friends, I’ll tell you what, there is one thing that will ruin your happiness. There is one thing that will steal your peace and that is guilt and that’s quickly followed up by regret. Guilt and regret, they are like the cement shoes that just keep dragging us down and down and down. And all of us have them. Maybe we don’t let it show all the time but all of us have guilt, all of us have regrets. We have regrets from decisions we made and we think to ourselves, “What in the world was I thinking when I did that? Wow.” We have guilt, guilt over things we’ve done. We’ve said some hateful things to other people, mean things to other people. We’ve done some things that we knew were wrong. We’ve got all kinds of guilt and regret and that will take away your happiness. That will take away your peace so Jesus takes away your guilt and He takes away your regret. That’s what the resurrected Savior has for you.

This is how St. Paul put it. He wrote to the Church at Colossi, “Then God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all of your sins.” Now this is it here: “He canceled the record that contained the charges against us.” Wow. He took it and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross. He took the charges that were made against us and He canceled them and He destroyed them by nailing them to the cross. He’s saying that if there was a list of all the things we’ve done wrong, all the lies we’ve told, all the anger we’ve had, all the bitterness, all the gossip, all the things we stole, if there was a list of all the things we’ve done wrong, God canceled it, hit the delete button. He destroyed it by nailing it to the cross. He’s saying that when Jesus hung upon the cross, He paid the debt, the punishment for our of our sins and then when He comes out of the grave, that says the Father accepted it. The payment was made on Friday. The Father accepted it on Sunday. Jesus takes away your guilt. It’s been canceled, the whole record wiped out. Followers of Jesus have peace. They have peace because they have someone they can trust. They have peace because the record’s been canceled and they know that each time they mess up again, because we will, and each time we sin, we come back to the cross and we know that sin’s been destroyed on the cross. Followers of Jesus have peace.

Followers of Jesus know they’re going to live in heaven. That’s the ultimate, right? Followers of Jesus know they’re going to live in heaven for eternity. When you think about it, the life we live in comparison to eternity, it’s just a blip in the whole thing. If you’ve lost a loved one this past year or if you’ve had a brush with death, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It brings it right back into perspective. 50, 60, 70, 80, 120 years, it’s nothing in comparison to eternity and the followers of Jesus know where they’re going to spend eternity. They know they’re going to spend it in heaven. I want to tell you something about heaven. Heaven is perfect. No, I’m serious. Heaven is a perfect place. You can’t even imagine how perfect heaven is. There’s no sickness in heaven. There’s no sorrow in heaven. There’s no pain in heaven. There’s no regret in heaven. There’s no guilt in heaven. There’s no sin in heaven. That means in heaven, no one will ever lie to you. That means in heaven, no one’s ever going to cheat you. That means in heaven, nobody’s ever going to steal from you. In heaven, no one’s ever going to be angry with you. Heaven is a perfect place and it is filled with perfect people. It has to be. If it’s going to be a perfect place, then it has to be filled with perfect people.

And I know what you’re thinking right now. You saying, “Now wait a minute, you probably misstated that because then there’s not going to be anybody in heaven because we just covered the fact that nobody’s perfect because we have all this guilt and we have all this regret.” Right? Most people, when you ask about heaven, you say, “Do you think you’re going to go heaven?” Ninety out of a hundred people will say, “I hope so.” Not “I know so,” “I hope so.” And if you ask them why, they’ll say something like, “Well, I’ve tried to do the right things. I’ve tried to do unto others what I’d have them do unto me. I’ve done my best to live as I think I should live and, after all, I’m only human.” So as long as we try hard, we get an A for effort, then we’ll be in heaven, right? I’m sorry, no. Heaven’s a perfect place. If anything imperfect comes into heaven, it’s not perfect anymore so only perfect people will be in heaven.

Now here’s what I want you to know more than anything this morning. Followers of Jesus are declared perfect. Followers of Jesus are declared perfect. It’s not that we are perfect. We’re not. Followers of Jesus are no different than anyone else. They sin, they cheat, they lie, they do all the rest. But followers of Jesus are declared perfect. That is the ultimate news of Easter: God declares us to be perfect. He paid for our sins on Friday and when He rose victorious from the grave, He shares that victory with us and He declares us to be perfect so we can live in heaven. Jesus opens up the gates of heaven. St. Paul put it this way when he wrote to the Church at Rome, “For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. Now since we’ve been united with Him in His death, we will also be raised as He was.” What Paul is trying to say to us there is those who believe in Jesus, those who look at Jesus as our Lord and Savior, those who follow Jesus, it’s as if they were nailed to the cross, as if they paid the debt of sin. It’s as if they went into the grave for three days and it’s as if they came out of the grave. That’s what Easter means.

The resurrected Jesus says that heaven is open to those who believe. Heaven’s a perfect place. Followers of Jesus are declared perfect. Jesus wants all people to be in heaven. That’s why He calls you to follow Him.

We can admire Jesus and we should. We should be amazed at the things He’s done for us and the love that He has for us but now it’s time to move off the sidelines and to get into the game, to go from just amazement and admiring Jesus to being a follower of Jesus. When we see the resurrected Lord, our hearts should pound inside of us, our minds should race and we say, “He’s the one. He’s the one. Of anyone in all of time, I can follow Him. I can surrender my life to Him.” Because, friends, Jesus never asked anyone to admire Him but He calls all of you to follow Him. Amen.

Copyright 2009 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church