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| Rev. Brent Russett |
Pastor of Sunnyside Wesleyan Church in Ottawa:
http://www.sunnysidechurchottawa.com/ _______________________________________________________
PODCAST LINK to CFRA broadcast - Sunday, April 16th, 2017:
Broadcast Notes:
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Good morning. And welcome to good news in the morning. Happy Easter – He has risen – He has risen indeed. And a special welcome to those of you who are making your way to Parliament Hill right now to celebrate an Easter Morning Service, with the church in the city.
My name is Brent Russett. I am the Senior Pastor at Sunnyside Wesleyan Church. It is my pleasure to talk about Jesus on this Easter Sunday morning.
This is a special morning. It is the morning of the greatest celebration on the Christian Calendar. It is the morning where we celebrate life. Resurrected life. The life of Jesus.
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This morning’s sponsor, Bruce Newman, salutes Jericho Road Christian Ministries. Jericho Road is a local registered charity that exists to serve the poor, the addicted, the mentally ill – they do an outstanding service for our community. Thanks, Bruce, for recognizing them!
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The resurrection is the heart of the gospel, it is the fount of our hope, it is the focus of our faith, it is the foundation of all we believe. By it we see, salvation to be possible, the gospel to be true, and Jesus to be God.
The Bible says that Jesus was raised to life for our justification. The Bible says that we have a living hope through the resurrection. The Bible says and that the power of God that was demonstrated that first Easter morning when the stone was rolled away. This morning I want you to know that the resurrection was not only a historical event that verified who Jesus was, but that the resurrection was meant to be personal to you. If you let it, will transforms your life.
Come again with me to that first Easter Sunday. Let’s hear the story.
1 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 `The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.'" 8 Then they remembered his words. 9 When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10 It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11 But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. 12 Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
On this Easter Sunday morning I want to call your attention to the fact that the resurrection of Jesus was not only a historical event but it is meant to be a personal event in your life as well.
Listen to the words of the apostle Paul found in
.(Galatians 2:20 NIV)
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.(There it is the resurrection made personal The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
This morning I want to consider these two passages of scripture together. For my contention today is that Christianity only makes sense when we experience that the power of the resurrection in the present.
But sometimes we miss the resurrection. We see it as an historical event that put Christianity in motion. But it becomes more about tradition and remembering history rather something profound, present and personal.
The Angels at that first Easter asked the women "Why do you look for the living among the dead? We do the same thing
The angel's words were plain. If you are searching for the body of a dead person, you would search in a cemetery. If you are searching for a living person, you may search the market place, the city streets or a person’s home. But the last place where you would expect to find a living person is buried in a tomb with dead people.
So the angels ask the women, why are doing that which does not make sense. Jesus is alive, and you are looking for him in a place where only dead people reside. Remember what he told you. This is the third day. He has risen from the dead. "Why do you look for the living among the dead?
We can make same mistake. We can look for the life of Christ that is to infuse and empower us amongst dead tradition.
One of my favourite tourist attractions in the national capital area is Upper Canada Village. This is a village in the Prescott area that has been reconstructed to resemble a town in the 1860's.
Different trades people, in costumes imitate what it would have been like to be a carpenter, or a blacksmith, or a horseman in the middle of the 1860's. There is a school room, and a farm, and a tailors place. All of these places are created to give us an idea about what it would have been like back in that period of time. Of course all the people who lived in the 1860's are dead now. What is there is just recreated history.
Upper Canada Village is a place where history lives. People who go there can imagine what it must have been like to live in that period of time. But it is not real. The people in costumes go home to their modern house, and drive their modern cars, and live their modern lifestyle.
Sometimes I think that. Sometimes I think people try to live their Christian lives that way. We dive back into history. We create in our minds eye the circumstances that surrounded the early church. We become intimately acquainted with the lives of Peter and Paul, and James and John. Then we remember the traditions of the church we grew up in. We remember the hymns we sung and rituals we had.
And we start to think if we can just create the good old days then everything would be better. If we could just get back to the New Testament Church or the traditional church – those were the good old days.
And sometimes we even try. We get stuck in our traditions, that harken back to what we think was a better time. It is kind of like Upper Canada for religion
If I get to know how they lived. If I put on a time period costume, by using the right idioms of speech, getting the right church structure, and if I can imitate the life of the disciples and if we as a group seek to imitate the early Church, then we will be good Christians.
But to those of you who would live that way, I will ask you this one question. "Why do you look for the living among the dead?
The message of the resurrection screams out against this kind of Christianity. Our Lord who came back to life that first Easter Sunday still lives. Our resurrected Lord, is not an event like the 1860's that has come and gone. But it is an event that happened and continues on to this day.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (Galatians 2:20 NIV)
If Christ lives in you, then the resurrection is both personal and current. If Christ lives in you, it is not about a dying tradition, it is about a living relationship with the living God.
The Lord Jesus Christ who was resurrected that first Easter Sunday, lives out that resurrected life in each one of us who have responded to the gospel. Because of this the resurrection is not just an event in history. The power of the resurrection reverberates down through the centuries and is just as forceful now as it was back then.
The risen Lord has not come and gone, he still is. And that resurrection life is demonstrated through the lives of believers even in 2017. Christ lives in me.
Those people who would like to boil Christianity down to a philosophy, or a creed, miss the point. The gospel is simply this, that we were separated from God by sin. We could do nothing to get rid of our sin. But God loved us and sent his son Jesus Christ to get rid of our sin. He did it by taking it upon himself when he died on the cross. Now when we put our faith in Jesus Christ our sin is forgiven, taken away, and we become Christians. We are made alive in Christ. We are made new creations, the old has gone the new has come. Jesus lives in us.
That is the plan of salvation.
It is not our system of belief that saves us, although what we believe is important. It is not our traditions that save us although there is much to be learned from tradition. It is not our religious practice that saves us although there is a lot to be said for church attendance and prayer.
We are saved we are given new life, when Jesus comes into our life. It is Jesus, and Jesus alone who saves us. What is required of you is to put your faith in Jesus.
Faith is only as good as that which you put your faith in. Some of you went skating on the canal this winter. You believed that the ice was thick enough to hold you. You had faith in the ice. What held you up, you faith or the ice. The ice of course. Faith is important, but more important is what you put your faith in.
The gospel, the plan of salvation, only works because it is centred around the person of Jesus Christ. It is not the creed that saves us, or the plan that saves us, but the Lord that saves us.
Now some of you may think that I am splitting hairs here. But there is a vast difference between these two ways of approaching Christianity. Christianity is more than a system of belief, it is the experience of the resurrection in our lives, in our time. Today we do more than celebrate an event in history, we celebrate a reality in our lives.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20 NIV)
MUSIC – I Serve a Risen Saviour 3:48
Jesus said, apart from me you can do nothing. He meant what he said. You cannot live out the Christian life as a philosophical system and call it Christianity. True Christianity is the life of Jesus Christ living within us. You ask me how I know he lives he lives within my heart
This is Easter Sunday, and we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord. We see that this was not only a historical event but one that is meant to be lived out in our lives right now. But the question is how. How do I live out the Christ life?
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20 NIV)
The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God,
If you have given your life to Christ, if you have invited him into your life to forgive you of your sins and give you his righteousness, if you have invited him in faith that he would do what he said he would do, then Jesus lives in you. But the way that is the best definition of a Christian, - one, in whom Jesus dwells.
So if he is in you, what does it mean to live by faith. Well how did you become a Christian. You believed that Jesus would do what he said he would do.
You believed that you were separated by God because of sin. You knew that you had broken God's laws. You heard the words of Christ that spoke of forgiveness. You believed that Christ would be true to his word, and forgive you of your sin when you asked him to. You believed that he would come into your life because you asked him to.
In other words, you took Christ at his word. You believed that he would do what he said he would do. And you asked him into your life to forgive you of your sin and to make you his child. And he did exactly that. You became a Christian.
People the rules for living our the Christian life are the same as those for becoming a Christian. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, You believe that Christ will do what he said he would do.
We believe that if we lose our life, if we choose to live for Christ rather than ourselves, then Christ will fulfil his end of the bargain, and teach us how to really live. That is what it means to live by faith. We do what Christ tells us, and we trust him to fulfil his promises.
We believe when we choose pray rather than be anxious, bringing our specific needs before God, and learning to give thanks for the things that God has already done, that God will keep his end of the bargain and grant us his peace. For he said,
(Philippians 4 NIV)
6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
That is living by faith. We do what Christ said we should do, and we believe that God will do what he said he would do.
But whether it be the power to really live, or peace, or the power to love our enemies, or really joy, or patience in trial, or strength in suffering, or the confidence that all things will work together for good, we live by faith. We do what Christ said we should do, and then we trust the power of the resurrected Lord with in us to fulfil God's promises.
The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God,
The Christian life becomes a moment by moment question of, What does God want me to do, and then doing it, and leaving the results up to God.
People, that becomes very freeing. For those of you who are students who are heading into exams, some of you who have been spending a lot of time worrying over exams. If you would spend your time saying God what do you want me to do now, study, OK I'll study, Rest, OK I'll rest. Then he will get you the grade that you need to fulfil his will and calling. Walk by faith. The life you live in the body live by faith in the Son of God who love you and gave himself up for you.
People, the resurrection speaks out against living Christianity as a philosophy. The risen Lord is to be a reality. Too often we are slipping towards a faith that merely grants assent to the right things, rather than seeing the power of God lived out in our lives.
People as I have been talking this morning, there are some of you who have been feeling the tug of inviting Christ into your life. You can do that by praying this prayer after me.
“Lord Jesus, you died for me, please forgive me of my sin and come into my life. I trust that you will do what you said you would do. I give my life to you. Help me to follow you. Help me to live out your life in me. Amen”
I want you to know that when you put your faith in Jesus, he will do what he said he would do.
There are some of you listening to me who have given your life to Jesus, but you are not living by faith. This morning I would urge you in the quietness of your own heart to say, “Jesus, forgive me for not living out your life in me the way you want me to. Help me trust you with every aspect of my life. Show how to do that.” Jesus responds to prayers like that.
The message of the angels 2000 years ago was "Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen! This is not just an historical fact it is to be something that each one of us can experience right now. I trust that you will be able to say with Paul and with us --Christ lives in me.
LET’S PRAY:
Lord Jesus, Thank you for the fact that your resurrection, that happened so long ago, still reverberates today --- and I ask that you would help people to find life in you. I ask this in Jesus’ name, AMEN.
“ If Good News in the Morning has been a factor in your journey of faith, we would love to hear your story. Nothing could encourage us more in this work. Contact us by e-mail or Twitter via the website –goodnewsinthemorning.ca
And Thank you for listening this morning.
This program is on the air by the grace of God and donations of many faithful people. A special thanks to Bruce Newman, who gave a shout out to Jericho Road Christian ministries.
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May you know Jesus Christ personally and profoundly. May the Holy Spirit reside deep within your heart . And may the heavenly Father surround you with His constant and abiding and accompanying love
We are going to go out listening to a choir sing this great…
MUSIC – Christ the Lord is Risen today. - 3:09
By Rev. Brent Russett
Pastor of Sunnyside Wesleyan Church in Ottawa:
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PODCAST LINK to the CFRA broadcast:
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