What Life Does to You

Introduction
He is risen. He is risen indeed. It was so good to see all your faces this Sunday in that video and I just want to celebrate Jesus Christ today. What a Savior we have!

Friday we remembered the death of Jesus Christ on a cross and while tragic it would be no different than any of the hundreds of thousands, even millions of other unjust torturous deaths in the history of the world were in not for what we are celebrating this morning. JESUS CHRIST, yes died…. BUT….. has risen from the dead. And that, my friends, changes EVERYTHING.

EVERYTHING is different because of that.

Now to get at why that changes everything and why everything is so different we are actually going to start by look at the resurrection through a text that was written roughly a 1000 years before Jesus was born. We are going to grab this unique perspective that Solomon has given us in the book of Ecclesiastes.
The Limitations of Wisdom
On Palm Sunday we looked at Wisdom as described in Ecclesiastes 7. And here’s what Solomon says: Wisdom is an amazing asset in life. It really does allow a person to live a quality of life much better than the one who does not possess wisdom because wisdom is looking ahead, anticipating problems and making corrections long before those problems are realized. Wisdom is a problem solver.

If we have a headache, wisdom says, drink water, get rest, take a tylenol.
If we are running low on money, wisdom looks for spending leaks, gets creative with extra income.
If we feel our job is threatened, we will try to make ourselves valuable in the company in as many ways as possible, we diversify, we start putting in applications for other jobs.

And because wisdom is such a great problem solver, it is a tremendous asset to the one who possesses it. But here’s the problem we observed: wisdom has limitations.

You see the longer you live, the more you realize how little wisdom can really help you. This sermon is entitled, "What Life Does to You.

I’ve heard it said, simple answers come from simple minds. That’s why when you’re young you have all the answers. "But have you ever noticed that over time you grow more and more uncertain? The only thing you are certain about is that there aren’t answers. And then that humility can of morphes over time to being jaded about the problems of the world? You grow more and more despairing that this world is just jacked up and we can’t do anything about it. The longer you live the more you realize how powerless you are to fix these systemic problem of the world.

Solomon ended last week by saying, even if you solve all the external problems in the world, the internal problem of the heart are still there.

You can see this in our world everywhere. For example, HIV is a deadly virus and people with incredible scientific wisdom have applied incredible effort to fight this disease. And scientist have been largely successful. There are drugs that can be taken that allow a person to live an almost entirely normal life.

Great news right? A cure exists and yet the majority of the world will die of HIV because those drugs will never reach the people in need because of greed, corruption and politics. So wisdom creates a solution but then sin instantly deforms it. The internal sin problem destroys whatever external solution wisdom offers up. And to put a sharp point on this, long before the chemical solution existed, there is of course God’s solution to the HIV problem that is 100 percent effective. Worldwide abstinence except in marriage would eradicate the disease in one generation. Wisdom can identify that solution but good luck trying to enforce that one. So you see that wisdom, as good as a problem solver as it is, has some limitations.

What does life do to you? The longer you live, the more convinced you should be that you can’t fix sin.
The Problem of Death
Now if you think that’s a problem, try overcoming death. You want to talk about a limitation of wisdom? This is the grand daddy of them all. At least wisdom can apply itself to trying to solve HIV or coronavirus or some other medical condition, but man… death? *Imagine graduating from Harvard Medical School top of the class and then getting hired on John Hopkins University with a starting salary of 500k a year as a research and development scientist and your boss walks in and says to you, “Okay, we’ve got a very special project for you.* We want you to discover a cure for death.”

The absurdity of that. I don’t care how smart you are, wisdom doesn’t even have the foggiest idea where to start. What reference book are you going to pull out that gives you some leads? There’s not even a whisper of an idea. No plant lives forever, no mammal, no fish. Nothing. That’s a pretty tough nut to crack. Death is a pretty significant problem.

In order to be able to affect change and overcome death you need keys to a vault which no human possesses. Yes, we can make the slightest modifications.
- Perhaps you can learn about the benefits of diet and exercise to prolong health, - perhaps some special creams or ointments to stave off the wrinkles, - perhaps drink some extra water to cleanse out all the toxins,

but the tide of death is rising and spooning away buckets of water from a rising ocean is not going to stop the ocean.

This is the problem of problems.

And Solomon, all through the book of Ecclesiastes, talks about this problem of death. Solomon in his wisdom looks ahead and he sees, no matter how you live your life, it’s coming. Listen to how he says it in chapter 9.

What event is he talking about? DEATH! Solomon in his wisdom says, sure time heals wounds but also kills every living thing. And his wisdom can do NOTHING about it.

What does life do to you? The longer you live, the more dead you become. The longer you live, the more convinced you should be that you will die.
Giving Up Trying
Now, of course no person will deny this. In fact, it doesn’t matter what stripe or color or shade of person you are. You could be religious, irreligious. Atheist, agnostic, Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, all agree, this is the GRAND DADDY of all problems. That’s about as obvious as mud.

Now if we all admit that DEATH is the GRAND PROBLEM and if the collective wisdom of all mankind through all the ages confesses that we can do nothing about it, here’s the ONLY remaining question, "Is there a force, BEYOND OUR WISDOM, that can solve the problem?" The Christian faith says yes, there is a power. And if you are here listening and you don’t yet believe that, thank you for listening. We want you to continue to listen and engage with the historicity of this claim.

The Christian faith says yes, there is a power beyond our wisdom. And yet, here’s the point we are driving at, psychologically, I think most of us answer, no. Many think, you know there is no solution to the death problem that practically changes anything. I’m not talking about our formal theological formulations. If you visit satisfiedinjesus.org, here’s our theological formulation regarding the resurrection:

If you are a Christian you agree with this. But I’m not talking about intellectual affirmation. I’m talking about psychologically. I think psychologically, most of us resign ourselves to the fact that there is no solution to the problem. We resign ourselves to the fact that death is this monster that will gobble us up and it really isn’t possible to solve the death problem.

Let me clarify what problem we are talking about. Of course, in one sense, everyone must die. Christians and non-Christians will all have to stop breathing and their lifeless bodies will have to be dealt with in some way. The resurrection does not claim to solve that part of the problem.

So what problem does it claim to solve? Let me give you an example of what I mean. Everyone is willing to talk about death and consider death in ways they never had given coronavirus.

Imagine if you were given a shot today that guaranteed that not only would you recover from coronavirus, but the shot would transform the virus and make you permanently immune to all other viruses. Now for the shot to work, you still had to get the virus, and you still had to lay in bed racked with fever and sweat it out but there would be no fear of the outcome. In fact it would be through the sickness that new life would come.

Would that not totally transform the way you look at the virus, the fear you had as you considered getting the virus, the comfort it would give you when you contracted the virus? You would actually just welcome it. Bring it on. Only better things can happen on the other side. Man, let’s just get this over with so I can never be sick again!

Now, if we as Christians really believed that death has been conquered by Jesus Christ and that we will be resurrected to life we should look at death, not the end of life, but the beginning of a better life. Death is merely an annoyance that we must endure but something through we must pass to be given life.

I want to propose that many of us, psychologically, don’t believe this. And it’s tragic. Because if the resurrection isn’t a reality in your psychology then something else will. You see if you don’t believe in resurrection, life will do something to you.

What does life do to you as you realize you can’t stop sin, you are haunted by lack of meaning, and you can’t stop death? Here’s the answer: It will deform you into a fatalist.

What do we mean by that? Fatalism is the belief that all events in life are predetermined and therefore inevitable. It’s the belief that I can’t change the future and that it is a complete waste of time to expend any energy in wishing that events would transpire differently.

And I want to propose that many, many here who call themselves Christians, who affirm orthodox theology, many of your soul’s have been deformed and you are shackled by Fatalism.

So with our remaining time, I want to talk about 3 things.

The Chains of Fatalism
The Power of Resurrection
The Freedom of Christ

Listen closely:

Would it not be the largest triumph of the enemy to cause all of us in the room to believe that we could never change? That we are fatalistically bound to an outcome we cannot control?
Would it not be a victory among victory to believe that there is nothing that can be done about the purpose and meaning problem?
Would it not be the greatest victory to believe that death, our greatest enemy, will ultimately win and there’s nothing we can do about it?

Fatalism believes this. And I think many of us are living totally and completely chained to this terrible taskmaster. Our souls have been deformed to believe a terrible lie that chains our minds. And because these chains are mental they are invisible. You’ve likely heard about how south Indians train their elephants. When they are young and restless they bind them with strong chains so they eventually come to believe that the leash that binds him cannot be broken and once the elephant’s mind has accepted it, his master carries him about by a tiny string. The real chain is in the mind.

To live fatalistically is a chain of the mind.

Many of you believe that living life as a stay at home mom cannot have purpose of meaning and must just be endured. You are living as a fatalist.
Many of you believe that your job cannot bring you fulfillment and there’s nothing to be done about it. It must merely be endured. The enemy has you by a string.
Many of you believe that your marriage is stuck in a pattern and simply can’t change. The enemy has you by a string.
Many of you may have struggled with sins of anger, sexual, substance abuse and you truly don’t think you can change. The enemy has you by a string.

If only a different reality could be believed, you could toss your neck and break that tiny thread that so securely binds. I want to show you how fatalism expresses itself in this church and how it’s related to not believing in the resurrection:

Years ago a writer by the name of Christian Smith wrote a book in which his goal was to capture the belief structure of the young people who were living at that time. He was trying to capture in a few bullets what young kids raised in the church believed. And here was his conclusion:

After conducting more than 3,000 interviews with American adolescents, the researchers reported that, when it came to the most crucial questions of faith and beliefs, many adolescents responded with a shrug and “whatever.”

And so he coined a phrase to summarize this worldview: “Theraputic Moralist Deism.” Therapeutic - Christianity helps feel good about ourselves. Moral - Morality is generally the path toward feeling good. Deism - God made us but is not really involved in our lives directly.

That was 15 years ago. Now all those kids have grown up. And those kids are now adults in our churches, in this church. And, I think this has degenerated even further than what you see here.

Here’s my take. I think this the adults who grew up with this frame of reference have morphed from Therapeutic Moralistic Deists to Therapeutic Immoral Fatalists. In other words they are still operating out of the assumption that the goal of life is to be happy and have a good self image. But they’ve clipped the moral moorings and fatalism has replaced deism. Deism at least acknowledges a God who exists. Fatalism takes that a step further and says, “I have not idea what powers exists out there; maybe there’s none, but it doesn’t matter because I can’t change the future. It’s predetermined by forces outside my control.”

So they just kind of coast along, because after all, hardly anything is even knowable and even if it was knowable it’s not controllable. I think many are living this way.

Those are chains which will destroy you. Now that my friend is why Easter changes everything. Let me show you the power of the resurrection.

What Christianity claims is not that God can resurrect your moral life, or your bad circumstance, or make you feel better about yourself, although he certainly has the power to do all that.

Christianity claims that Jesus Christ, was physically DEAD and lifeless which means everything that involves being dead happened to him. Before we move one inch here, stop and think about that claim. Stop and think about what it means for Jesus to have been raised from the dead.

What happens to a person, when they have clinically died (as if there is any other kind of death). We can make a list of things. Whatever happens at the moment of death happened to Jesus.

His heart stopped.
His body dropped 1.6 degrees per hour till it reached room temperature.
The cells in the body begin to die because of lack of oxygen. So that means the heart cells, the brain cells, the muscle cells, the bone cells. They were all living and now they are dying off, very quickly. The body, which is made up of billions of individual cells, is literally dying a million deaths. Millions of cells a second die. Those cells soon leak and begin the process of putrification. This happened to Jesus.
Calcium builds up in the muscles causing them to tense resulting in rigor mortis. This happened to Jesus.
The bowels loosen and any urine in the bladder or feces is released. This happened to Jesus.
Bacteria kept at bay by acids in the stomach now come to life and start to feast. This happened to Jesus.
the skin shrinks as it dries out. Gravity pulls the blood down and there are splotches that occur. This happened to Jesus.

If death means anything, this happened to Jesus. This is what it means to die. I hope I’m not being unnecessarily graphic, I’m just trying to get into our heads what we mean when we say that Jesus died. I think because we know he was raised from the dead we almost put it in the category of, "Oh, he went to the hospital and was in intensive care but pulled out of it. NO. What I just described, these universal physical processes associated with dead all happened to him. Now if you are a doctor standing over the body of Jesus and his skin is cold and grey and stiff and still and all these processes have been unleashed, and the mourning family says to you, what can you do?

The answer is obvious: This is a one way ticket. This is a one way street. There is no undoing this. I can’t bring to life billions of cells that are now dead.

This is why the resurrection is so amazing. These processes were reversed. God raised him from the dead. He broke the power of DEATH. The calcium in the muscles, the bacteria, the destroyed cells, all of it reversed such that Jesus breaths a resurrection breath, his heart pumps a resurrection beat. And billions of cells awaken at the voice of the creator and giver of life.

Now that happened.

And here’s the logic of the Bible. Given that reality, there is an ripple that was created in that event that surges into April 12th, 2020.

Here it is: The same power that raised Christ from the dead is available to raise you from the dead if you trust in Christ. Those physical processes of decomposition can be reversed in you in the same way as they were reversed in Jesus.

You see, Jesus actually has access to the vault that controls death and through HIS resurrection he has thrown the gates of death wide to release those who have been imprisoned by it.

And all through the NT this message is repeated over and over and over again. It was the foundation of the Christian faith from day one. Listen to how it’s described in Acts chapter 2. We haven’t even left Jerusalem. This is just weeks after the resurrection. This is Peter’s great speech at Pentacost. He speaks to onlooking, incredulous Jews.

Jesus broke the chains of death. And the theological implications of this begin to bleed all over the NT. It’s literally everywhere in dozens and dozens of places. Listen to how that is stated in Romans chapter 8. There are many, many points to make about the resurrection, but keep in mind the point we are making here. Jesus is the model, so whatever happened to Jesus, we can expect to happen to us based on these Scriptures.

And perhaps even more clearly stated in 1 Corinthians 4.

Do you see how JESUS CHRIST is the model for our resurrection story. What happened to Jesus will happen to us. We are not talking about some sort of allegorical or metaphorical resurrection. We are talking here about literal resurrection.

Since Christ was raised from the dead, we now have been given life. The resurrection changes everything. So now it’s time to re-ask this question through a new lens.

What does resurrection life do to you? When you know that you are going to be raised from the dead and given new life, resurrection life, the life that has already been given to Jesus and is promised to you? How does the knowledge that eternal life is being offered transform you?

Answer: It gives you absolute freedom.

We all want freedom. And there is a very popular notion that religion enslaves. True freedom is to cast off religion.

You see people have been trying for the past several hundred years of Western Civilization to cast off God. All the intellectual forces of the globe have tried to push us away from what was perceived as Religious Fatalism to free us. They’ve tried to pull us out of church and into the laboratory to prove that God doesn’t control atoms, we do. God doesn’t control genetics, we do. God doesn’t control health, we do.

And so modernity has tried to offer up a world in which we are in control. No longer do we have submit to a cosmic force beyond us, a force outside our control that determines our fate. There is no such force and therefore we are free to determine our own destiny. At first it sounds so liberating.

But here’s the grand irony:

If there is no life after death.
If there is not a God who is more significant or important than you.

Then you must find purpose in yourself (because there is nothing higher than self) and you must find meaning in this life only (because there is no other life). So no higher power is telling you what to live for. You have to determine that yourself. And the fulfillment options are all contained in this life, and therefore necessarily, disappointing because death is coming. And what I have just described is a secular FATALISM far worse than the FATALISM secularism thought they were overcoming. The anaconda of Fatalism loosened it’s grip only to choke to death the life out of its victim.

Now I want you to understand the freedom of Christ. I want you to break that chain that is in your mind where you operate in such a fatalistic manner. It’s one of the worst lies that can bind you. Resurrection is FREEDOM. How? Think about it.

If you are a believer in Jesus you are not living for yourself. That is far too small of a thing to live for. Of course, many who don’t believe in Christ agree with that.

Nor are you living for a cause in this world. You care about this world but You aren’t living for the world. So you can care about the environment, but that’s not what gives you meaning. You can care about politics, business, social reform and international trade deals but it’s not your ultimate thing. All these things, while larger than you, will still ultimately disappoint you because they will one day be stripped away from you either through change or death.

You are living for God who is not bound by space or time or corrupted or distorted by sin. That’s a good starting point.

So we are living for a perfect, loving God. But it gets better. Because the major portion of that life lived for God is yet to come and will never end. So now, suddenly, we find purpose in this life by understanding the life to come. We find meaning for ourselves by understanding that meaning comes by living for God.

We ran into the limitations of wisdom. Wisdom can’t solve the sin problem, the meaning problem or the death problem.

Wisdom can’t solve those problems. But the power that raises Jesus from the dead can:

Here’s what the Bible teaches. The Bible says, “Look there at Jesus Christ hanging on the tree, bloodied and dying.”

Why is here there? Because he loves you. He’s dying to save you from the consequences of your sin which is death.

Now look at him in the grave. Feel his cold hands. He is dead. Why is he dead? Because without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.

Now look at him coming out of the tomb! How did that happen? Love conquered death. God has raised him from the death. There is a power working there that ought to cause you to shudder. There is power that is working far beyond our wisdom to accomplish such an act.

Now comes the staggering part. That SAME POWER that raised Jesus from the dead is alive in you and working in you right now if you are a follower of Jesus Christ and have placed your faith in him.

By ourselves, absolutely, we are shackled by FATALISM. We are truly and most assuredly shackled by the limitations of our wisdom. We have lost our footing and fallen off a cliff and the only thing our wisdom can do is determine what angle we splat into the ground. Truly, if left to the limitations of wisdom we are absolutely and TOTALLY destroyed.

But can you not say with me right now, thanks be to God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ that there is a power beyond your wisdom? That there is a power beyond any strength you have. What does that mean? You are not bound by the limitations of wisdom!

You are not FATALISTICALLY bound to do only what your wisdom can do. You can change. Not by an ACT of wisdom. By an ACT of the resurrection power of God.
You can live a life of purpose even in the most mundane chores of life. Not by an ACT of wisdom. Not by changing circumstance. By and ACT of the resurrection power of God giving you meaning beyond the this life.
You can change the parts in you that have contributed to your broken marriage. NOT by an ACT of wisdom or skill on you part. By and ACT of the Spirit of God who raised Christ Jesus from the dead.

It is the power of God who raised Christ from the dead working in you!

Do you simply live your life psychologically having accepted that death has defeated you and that the only resource you have at your disposal to fix your problems is your own power and wisdom.

You see if you live a life of fatalism and merely accepted the fact that death is ultimate and cannot be reversed, that it is unsolvable, then what that will mean is that any meaning you extract, must be in this life and this life ONLY.

OR do you accept the limitations of your wisdom but see that there is a power working in you that is far BEYOND your wisdom, a power that raised Christ from the dead and will raise you from the dead as well? That there is something to live for that is giant and huge and satisfying and extends far beyond this life. That your body has a future. That your life is hid with Christ. This changes EVERYTHING.

If you realize that this entire life is the prelude to the grand story that is unfolding, and that the power that will transform your body to be prepared to experience that grand story is working in you even now, it changes everything.

What does life do to you. What does the resurrection life of Jesus Christ do to you? IT CHANGES EVERYTHING!