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Dr. Ed Young: Disneyland and Disney World says that it's
"The Happiest Place On Earth."
I mean, who can debate that?
How many people have ever been to Disney?
Disneyland is the--almost everybody!
I would've asked, "How many has ever been to church before?"
Wouldn't have had that many hands.
Something about Disney, and it's so clean, so neat, so well
organized, all the staff so magnificently trained, the
parades, the rides, the food, all the excitement, all the
cartoon characters that we were all brought up with, walking
around, seeming to have come alive.
And the children, that's what it's about, isn't it?
It's about the kids.
You take all the kids away from Disney, and what do ya have?
All of us grumbling, "It's too hot,"
"I'm not gon' wait in line that long."
Your wife says, "I get dizzy.
Let's go.
Let's don't--" and so, but the kids!
Oh, if the kids are there, it's all the difference
in the world, isn't it?
We live vicariously through the excitement, through the sparkle
in their lives, and maybe we could say that Disney may be
"The Happiest Place On Earth."
I thought about Art Linkletter this week.
Most of us remember him.
Art, there, when I was a boy, he had a radio show called
"People Are Funny."
It's a variety show.
Later on, he was on television.
He had a wonderful career, but right in the middle of his
career, a tragedy struck the Linkletter home.
Their daughter died from an overdose of drugs.
And Art and his wife turned to God, and they met Jesus Christ,
and they had a wonderful born-again experience, and they
recognized that life did not have meaning, regardless of
success and family, without Jesus Christ.
And so everywhere Art went, he began to tell people about
the Lord, and even in his public performances,
he'd always bring in Jesus.
It got to the point that CBS says,
"Art, you better calm this down.
You're not a televangelist,
and you just take Jesus out of something.
He can't be. Just back up."
And Art did.
But he kept looking for a chance to say a word about the Lord.
And so he was on a television show, and he had this section
called "Kids Say the Darndest Things," remember?
He would interview them, totally unrehearsed.
You can't rehearse kids anyway, and it was Good Friday, and he
said, "This would be a good chance to bring in the story
of Jesus," and it'll come from the mouth of kids,
so the network can't complain.
So he went to the first little boy there, and he said,
"Well, this is Friday. Is this a special Friday?"
The boy, "Oh, yes, this the Friday when they
nailed Jesus to the tree."
He said, "That's right, son."
He went to the next one, said, "Then, Sunday, what Sunday?"
And the little girl said, "Easter."
He said, "Well, what does Easter mean to you?"
And she said, "Well, it means I'll get a new dress.
Every Easter I get a new dress."
Then he asked a little boy and said, "Well, Easter,
what does it mean to you?"
He said, "Oh, the Easter bunny comes.
I could eat all the candy I want, and my mother
can't say a word about it.
That's what Easter is."
At the end, there was a little boy
named Billy, and Billy said, "They don't know what Easter is,
Mr. Linkletter," said, "Easter is--that's right, they nailed
him to the tree, but they put him in a hole, and they covered
him with dirt, and they put a big stone over that hole, and
he stayed in there 3 days and 3 nights, and then he came alive,
and he began to kick, and he began to squirm, and he pushed
himself through that dirt and pushed that rock away,
and he came out alive."
And Art said, "I've never heard
a better description of Easter than that."
And then the little boy said, "If he had seen his shadow...
[congregation laughing]
he would've have to have gone back in 40 days and 40 nights!"
Sometimes we don't make enough of Easter, and sometimes,
perhaps, we can make too much of Easter and forget the basic
truth around which life and Easter celebration revolves.
You know what it is?
You know what the core heart fact of Christianity is?
It's simply this: Jesus of Nazareth was God.
That's it.
Jesus of Nazareth was God.
God was wrapped in human flesh, Emmanuel, "God with us."
That's the basic heart of Christianity.
I wanna ask you a question this Easter: Do you believe that?
Do you really believe that Jesus of Nazareth was God?
When he was a baby, a lot of people believed he was God.
Mary and Joseph knew that.
The angels had visited the virgin birth.
Certainly the shepherds knew that.
They were looking after the sheep,
and all of a sudden, "bang!"
there's explosion in the sky of music and light and drama,
and behold, the angels came upon them and the glory, the Shekinah
of God shown 'round about them, and they were frightened--and
said, "Fear not, for behold, there's born this day
in the City of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
The shepherds knew that Jesus, as a baby, was God.
The wise men did too.
They saw that star in the East and all the prophecy came to
belief, and they followed that star, and they came to him
with their presents: Gold, frankincense and myrrh.
The wise men knew that this baby Jesus was God.
And certainly we know it when Jesus was taken to the temple
to be presented 8 days later.
There was Anna the prophetess.
She'd been married 10 years.
She'd been a widow most of her life, and she spent all the time
in the temple, praying to see the Messiah,
to see God in human flesh.
When she saw Mary and Joseph come in, 84 years of age,
she saw that baby, and she said, "Zip!
That's him.
That's the one."
She believed he was God as a baby.
And what about Simeon?
That prophet there was told by the Lord that he would not
die until he saw the Messiah.
The Messiah would come, and he went and--can you imagine?
he held God, divinity, in his arms and said, "This is he."
And certainly as he began to teach, they began to see:
"No one has ever taught like this."
He fulfilled the law.
He took the commandments, and he put them on steroids,
and they were far beyond and more than anyone had thought of.
He took all the words of the law and just filled them up with
divine truth, and people said,
"Nobody's ever talked like this individual.
This must be the Messiah, God."
What about his miracles?
Man, the dead came alive, the blind could see, the lame
could walk, the deaf could hear.
Those who were troubled and disturbed and filled
with demonic spirits, they were liberated.
My goodness, the miracles.
People said, "Surely this God acting in human flesh."
They believed that.
And certainly all the fulfillment of prophecy.
Let me tell you something, ladies and gentlemen.
You take all the prophecy written in the Bible thousands
of years before as what the Son of God, the living Lord,
would do when he came, the fulfillment of prophecy,
people began to see.
"Surely this man is God himself."
Look at the prophets:
To be rejected by the Jews, to enter Jerusalem triumphantly,
adored by infants, betrayed by a dear friend, betrayed for
30 pieces of silver, silent to accusations, spat on and struck,
to serve as a vicarious sacrifice, to be crucified with
criminals, to be pierced through hands and feet, to be sneered at
and mocked, to have his clothes distributed by gamblers.
The Messiah had been spelled out as coming from the seed of
a woman, a descendant of Abraham a descendant of Isaac,
a descendant of Jacob, from the tribe of Judah, heir to
the throne of David to be born in Bethlehem, to be born of a
virgin, to flee to Egypt, to be preceded by a forerunner, to
minister in Galilee, to speak in parables, to bind up the
brokenhearted, to be forsaken by God, to be killed bones intact,
to be pierced in the side and buried with the rich, to be
resurrected, and to be ascended to the right hand of God.
Listen, ladies and gentleman, for all of that to be truth and
come to realization, written thousands of years before, you
come to the logical conclusion that this is indeed God
in human flesh.
When he was a baby, a lot of people said, "This is God."
As a man in his life, fulfilling prophecy,
they said, "This is God."
But it was Easter.
Paul said if the resurrection is not true, all of our faith
is foolishness, but, ah, we see the evidence that this man who
was crucified and dead was alive is absolutely overwhelming.
We could recite it and spend hours dealing with the stone
that was rolled away, all the grave clothes that were intact,
the witness of the guards themselves, and what about his
appearances over a period of 40 days, 11 different appearances
to people who believed in him, the people who rejected him.
And of all the appearances all those 40 days, Billy Graham said
the one that sealed it for him was when he appeared
to his half-brother James.
He said, "You can fool everybody, but you can't fool
your brother." And then he appeared over with 500 people.
There would be 500 men.
In the Bible they counted only men.
So there'd be 500 men.
How many women and children?
Over a thousand people.
He who was dead, buried, crucified,
appeared to them alive.
I'm not a attorney, but I'd love to take this case into a court
of law to bring those 500 men out and let them testify
for 6 minutes, including cross-examination.
Does anybody wanna compete with me in a jury case like that?
The evidence is absolutely overwhelming.
Christ is risen!
Now, what does this mean to us?
I think of one word, the word "confidence."
It gives us confidence.
I want you to see it in Hebrews.
Great, great word. Hebrews chapter 4.
Listen, "Therefore--" I love that word, "therefore."
When you see "therefore" in the Bible, just hold on.
"Therefore," you're gonna have something.
"Therefore, since we have a great high priest who
has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God,
let us hold fast our confession.
For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our
weaknesses," thank goodness, "but one who has been tempted
in all things as we are, yet without sin.
Therefore let us draw near with," here's our word,
"confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive
mercy and find grace to help in time of need."
Easter gives us confidence.
It gives us confidence, first of all, in the presence of God.
Let me tell you something: This book is not so much a self-help
book as you hear in so many pulpit for so many Sundays.
It's like it's a book of formulas.
We say we come to Christ through "The Four Spiritual Laws."
I'm a sinner.
God died for sin.
Those who receive him become members of his family.
Certainly there are steps that we take there,
or "The Roman Road" or "Life's Greatest Discovery,"
there's steps that we take there.
But if we have taken those steps and Jesus has come in your life
and my life, and I have given him my old life and he has given
us his life, then guess what?
This book is about relationships.
It's not a book of formulas.
Not so much creeds and doctrine, though that is important.
It is a book about a relationship.
So we know and we have confidence that we have his
presence in our lives.
If we receive Christ, he is a living presence.
He is our Savior.
Also, he is our Lord, and everywhere he goes,
there he is with us.
He is ever present with us, and that's what we need, isn't it?
In times in sorrow, in times when life has bottomed out,
what do we need?
We need his presence because we know that he is with us
and he is for us.
We don't need so much a map.
If we're gonna go from here to on a high, high mountain climb,
somebody gets some-- "Here's a map for ya.
Just follow this map, and you'll get to the top of that mountain
that's 14-, 15,000 feet high."
No, we don't just need a map.
That would be nice, but better off, we need someone to train us
and get us into condition and someone who would go with us and
be present with us till we get to the top of the mountain.
So the book is not so much a map.
It tells us about a relationship of how we can be present
with him and he is present with us.
So Easter tells us we have that presence.
How we need that.
A member of our church, a few years ago, lost his daughter.
He was there in the funeral home, sitting by himself
when a man came and sat by him.
The man began to quote Scripture, tell him his daughter
was in heaven and tell him all kinds of things for assurance.
Everything was true.
And finally, after he stayed there a long time talking to
this man going through great sorrow, he led in a long,
long prayer, and he got up.
And my friend said, "I was glad when he left."
He said but in a little while,
another friend came and sat down by him, and
this friend didn't say a word.
He just sat there quietly.
"Finally," he said,
"I asked him a question, and he answered it simply."
So "Time went by, maybe 30 minutes or so,
and I asked him another question, and he answered it.
And soon after a good period of time, he led in a simple prayer
and he got up and left," and he said,
"I hated to see him go." Presence.
Someone not only for us but with us, not just a map, but saying,
"I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."
"Yea, I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
I'm not afraid because thou art with us."
And because of that, we can look at the bully of death
and say, "Death, you're dead.
You have been defeated because the living Lord Jesus Christ
is in me and with me and for me and with me now and forever."
You see, Christ is risen!
Christ is risen!
And not only does Easter tell us of his presence, it also tells
us in our Scripture that he is producing glory within us.
"Doxa" is the Greek word, "glory" within us.
How does that glory happen?
It happens when God prunes us.
That's what happens.
You know anything about a fruit tree?
I remember the first time I saw a fruit tree in my backyard,
and it had beautiful leaves and a few pieces of fruit,
but somebody came and said, "You gotta prune it."
And they came, and they cut off the major limb,
and they cut all the leaves out, and they cut it back and cut it
back and cut it back and cut it back.
I said, "Man, you killed it!"
He said, "No, no, I've pruned it," and I'll tell you, that
tree began to grow stronger, produce more fruit
because it'd been cut.
It'd been harmed.
It had been pruned.
That's what God does to yet you and me,
filled up something of his glory.
That's the weight of his glory through this minor time of
afflictions we're goin' through.
That's the way "glory" has to do with the word "weight."
It is heavy.
It is "gravitas."
The first funeral I ever attended,
I was a presiding pastor.
You see, my family, they hid death from me as a boy,
as a teenager.
A member of the family would die,
and I would never go to the funeral.
First funeral I ever attended, I was a preacher.
I was on the staff.
It was in the summer.
And I'll tell ya, I didn't know anything.
I went to the funeral director, and I said, "Where do you stand?
What do you do?"
I mean, I didn't know a thing in the world.
I'd never witnessed a funeral, and there I was,
presiding over one.
But, I'll tell ya, that's been a long time ago, and through
the period of years, I've walked through pain and pressure
of many people's lives.
I've been there when someone went to prison,
who I knew and love, and I felt they were innocent.
I've been there when my mother died, my father died,
my younger brother died.
I've been there when families had been totally broken
by immorality.
I've been there.
I've been there when a beautiful teenager daughter
goes to her parents and says, "I'm pregnant."
I've been there.
I've been there when a person took their life, and I had to
take the suicide note back and explain something to the--I've
been there through all of these years, and what happens?
In the pruning of my life, there's become a glory.
There's become a reality.
There's become a gravitas.
Until now, we have something to say because we've been there.
We've been bruised. We've been hurt.
God is preparing us in these little light afflictions to
experience the weight of his gravitas, the weight of his
glory to flow through our lives.
Well, that's what God is doing.
Easter tells us that death is not the end.
It's only the first step.
And that's also what we get from Easter: We get the promise of
life now and life everlasting.
You see, Christ is risen!
Christ is risen!
Let me tell you something.
What if God had made the world perfect, and all of us who lived
in the world were perfect from the beginning,
all the way till now?
Now, we know there will come a day in which there'll be a
new heaven and a new earth and perfect will be reestablished
in the created order in the lives of all of those
who are in Christ.
But, you see, because we have been through the valley of sin
and suffering and the fallenness of man in that period of
imperfection, if we hadn't gone through that with his grace and
through his resurrection, a world that will be totally
perfect always would not be as beautiful and magnificent
as a world that had been recovered to its perfection.
Do you get that?
If everything had always been perfect, guess what?
There'd be no such thing as bravery.
There'd be no such thing as sacrificial love.
There'd be no such thing as grace.
There'd be no such thing as patience.
A lot of the wonderful attributes that we know and
experience, it came through that sin and fall.
God used it and then restore it.
And let me tell ya something:
Christianity is a very physical faith.
Eastern religions say that life is just a vapor and we'll be
absorbed into the holy other and float out
as vapors throughout all eternity.
That's Eastern religion summed up.
Western religion, Plato, Socrates, his boys,
talks about the soul, the important things as the soul.
We're all about the soul.
Let me tell you what Christianity is.
You ever go to a graveside service and somebody says,
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust"?
That's not New Testament, folks.
That's Plato.
It's the idea, the body dies, and the soul lives.
Easter tells us that the body lives, the soul lives, the soul
live, and the body live, and we'll have a resurrected body
and a resurrected life, and we'll live on this world forever
and forever in a new heaven and a new earth, greater and better
in the new perfection than it even was in the moment of
the pristine beginning.
That's the truth of Easter.
It tells us about life, the fullness of life.
Lou Little was a great football coach of the last generation.
He coached in the Ivy League schools,
and he ended up coaching Columbia.
They had a championship team.
And if they won the game
on Saturday, they'd win the championship.
A young player on the team who was on the second team, he had
the size, the weight, the skill, the athleticism, but he just
never quite was good enough to start, be on the first unit.
His father died.
On Monday of that week, they called the coach.
The coach told the boy, and he went home to his dad's funeral.
They knew how close he was to his father because, when his
father came to campus, they'd see the father and son
walking around arm-in-arm together, all smiles.
Now, the boy came back from his dad's funeral on Friday
and went to the coach and said, "Coach Little,
I wanna start the game on Saturday."
He said, "Well, son, you never started,
and you're a second teamer. We've gotta win this game."
He said, "Coach,
I just really wanna start and just wanna start.
Would you let me start?"
And coach said, "Well, you know, kickoff.
What can it hurt?
I'll put him in for a play or two."
So they kicked off, and high, high kickoff went down.
They guy took it on the 5 yard line.
He got to 10.
All of a sudden, there's an explosion.
"Bam!"
Flattened the runner.
Coach looks at-- "Who in the world?"
That was that young man.
He said, "Hmm, I'm gon' leave him in for another play or so."
And the next play was a sweep around the end, and he just
crashed through, "bam!"
Took the runner down.
"My goodness!
What's got into him?"
Make a long story short, Coach Little said he played
the entire game magnificently.
He was all over the field.
When the game was over, they won, and the team went to him
and said, "Look, we won primarily because of you!"
I mean, today, Little said, "You're an all-American.
Where've you been?"
The boy said, "Coach, you didn't know it.
See, my dad walkin' around arm-in-arm," said, "my dad
didn't want anybody to know it, but he was totally blind."
He said, "This is the first football game
he ever saw me play."
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen!
Dr. Young: We have all felt alone.
Even Jesus experienced loneliness during
his time on earth.
But God did not create us to live in
a constant state of loneliness.
We need a community and fellowship with others
for our emotional and physical well-being.
Listen, if you're experiencing loneliness today, we have
created a booklet that will help you overcome
the lonely seasons in your life.
Within its pages, you'll find some practical steps to overcome
loneliness and to live in fellowship with others.
male announcer: To get your copy of Dr. Ed Young's booklet,
"Loneliness," call the number on your screen or go online
at winningwalk.org.
It's our gift to you for your financial support
of this ministry.
Call today and experience freedom from
the prison of loneliness.
Dr. Young: Before my freshman at the University of Alabama,
I worked in a tunnel.
In those days, I thought I'd be an engineer.
We were boring through an Alabama mountain where
a big water conduit #was to be placed.
One contractor bored from the east, and the other came in from
the west, and they had to meet.
And we knew they were getting close, and we were running the
lines and the grade to make sure they'd meet, but we weren't
sure, sure, sure.
I remember one morning asking, "Have they broken through yet?"
And then they answered, "Yes, they broke through last night on
the graveyard shift" because they worked that mine 24/7.
They broke through on the graveyard shift.
Years later, it hit me.
Jesus worked the graveyard shift at the cross.
He broke through the tunnel of death and
defeated death forever.
For those who receive him, we can be confident in our future,
knowing that Jesus Christ will carry us all the way through
this life, and then he'll carry us all the way to heaven.
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