Easter 2008
Tom Shrader opens by surveying a Thursday newspaper full of economic anxiety, war casualties, and social instability, using those headlines to frame a question posed by USA Today: can Easter mean anything if we don't recognize ourselves as sinners? Drawing from Romans 3, 5, and 15, he explains that sin is the universal estrangement from God that Christ's death and resurrection alone can remedy. He closes by urging believers not to retreat in fear but to embody resurrection hope—joy, peace, and the power of the Holy Spirit—as a visible witness to a world in need.
“The wage of sin is death, and the free gift of God is eternal life.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Easter
Recorded: 2008 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 25 min
Themes: easter, resurrection, sin, hope, peace, joy, fear, witness, feeling anxious about the future, skeptic attending church, struggling with hopelessness, new believer, seeker, adult dealing with economic hardship, guest or visitor, person questioning faith
Scripture: Romans 3, Romans 5:6, Romans 5:8, Romans 15:13, John 3:16
Theological Themes: hamartiology, sin nature, atonement, justification, resurrection, holy spirit, reconciliation, universal sinfulness
Full Transcript
Welcome and Introduction
Good morning. It is great to see you here and to welcome you, especially those who are guests or visitors. We provide a little card in the bulletin, and we would ask you to complete it and drop it in one of the boxes as you leave. We would love to meet you afterwards over in the commons, where there will be some guys from area ministry who would love to say hello. And if some of you have been around for a while but have never really connected, head over to the commons afterwards — for all of you, an invitation to meet some old friends and make some new friends as well.
A Thursday Morning Conversation
Every Thursday morning at ten o'clock, almost without exception, I am at the Coffee Plantation at 24th and Camelback meeting my son-in-law. Right after he and Sarah got engaged, I started a habit — I did the same thing with Tyler — of meeting with each of the boys once a week, and I continue that even now. No agenda, just hanging out and talking and living life together.
So we were talking the other day, sitting there watching everything unfold, and he said, "What are you going to do for Easter?" I said, "Well, I think everybody's coming to our house — all the kids. We have to get naps out of the way, and then everybody's coming over a little later in the day." He said, "No, no, no — what are you going to talk about?" I said, "Well, it's somewhat thematic." I remember Les Taylor had a friend he used to invite to church, and just once a year this friend would come on Easter. Then one year he didn't come, and when Les asked why, he said, "Because every time I go, you talk about the same thing."
So we finished up our conversation, and I said to him, "I am going to go buy a USA Today right over there, and whatever is in it is what I will teach on Sunday." And so this is it — the USA Today from Thursday, March 20th.
What the Headlines Reveal
Now, before I get into this, it is not as brave or as foolhardy as it sounds. Let me tell you why. For the last three, four, five, six months, it seems almost every conversation I have had with somebody has been about hurt and pain they are experiencing at work, or a total loss of work, or trouble in the housing market. I have learned over the years that the media is faithful, even in good times, to print all the bad news that is fit to print. So I was pretty confident I would find what I was looking for — and they did not disappoint me.
The right-hand column reads: "Housing Crisis Cools Off Growth." The body of the story states that the slowdown is significant in some instances — Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix, added just 101,000 people from 2006 to 2007, more than any other county in the country, but down almost thirty percent. The center story on the front page carries the headline: "After Five Years, Ripples from the War Run Deep." It is a painful story, honestly, of absent parents, death, hurt, and injury — the effect the war is having.
On the left-hand side there is a section called Newsline, which teases other stories found in the paper. The first: "Rain Drenches Heart of USA — Flooding Reported from Arkansas to Ohio, 13 Deaths Linked to Wet Weather." Next: "FDA Connects 19 Deaths to Heparin — A Batch of Drugs Caught with a Cheap Substitute." Next: "Hackers Seeking Student Data Hit Harvard — Survey Shows Protection of Information Such as Social Security Numbers Is a Concern for Colleges." And then: "British Prime Minister Focuses on Emerging Threats — Gordon Brown's Security Plan Includes Pandemic Disease, Terrorism, and Unstable Energy Supply."
They did not disappoint me. I thought, well, surely the money section will be encouraging. The headline reads: "Jittery Stock Investors Suffer Relapse." The dateline is New York: "The good vibe did not last long on Wall Street. A day after stocks notched their best gain in more than five years amid optimism that the nation's central banks may finally be getting their arms around the credit crisis, stocks suffered a major relapse Wednesday."
Surely sports, at least, would be free from the hurt and pain we see in the world. The headline: "Baseball Screening Clubhouse Employees — Background Checks Follow Release of Mitchell Report." Major League Baseball, for the first time, is conducting background checks for hundreds of team employees whose duties take them into the clubhouse. The effort covers more than 300 people, including strength coaches, trainers, interpreters, and equipment managers — though it does not cover general managers, field managers, coaches, or players. You may want to check out some of those players.
The Point of It All
This is exactly what I expected, and here was my plan. My plan was to say: here are these things, and they reflect what I see in the conversations around me. There is a sense of nervousness, of trepidation, perhaps fear — and the result is a kind of uneasiness, bordering on worry, anxiousness, and despair. And then I wanted to talk about the empty tomb and the resurrection, and the hope we find when God says to us again and again —
The Question of Sin
Do not be afraid — why? Because He who is in you is stronger than he who is in the world. I was all prepared to talk about hope. Someone has said we can live forty days without food, three days without water, three minutes without air, but not a single second without hope. So I wanted to talk about hope.
But then I looked at the life section of the paper. The last thing I read was a headline — and I want you to see this — "Is Sin Dead?" Under that, it says, "No, not by a long shot." And then here is the setup: as Easter approaches, some pastors and theologians worry that Christians break Jesus' commitment for their sins and the promise of eternal life in His resurrection if they don't recognize themselves as sinners. That's a great question. It's USA Today, and they're talking about sin and sinners and eternal life and resurrection.
There's a little idea buried in there worth sitting with: if I don't know I'm a sinner, does any of this stuff make any sense at all? The article unpacks exactly that. One world leader says the world is losing a notion of sin. Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says this: "All the Easter eggs and the Easter bunny are even more extraneous to the purpose of Easter than Santa to Christmas. I wonder whether even some Christian churches are making the connection between Christ's death and resurrection and victory over sin — the linchpin doctrine of Christianity."
What he's saying is that on some Easter mornings, across churches everywhere, people aren't even talking about this. One group here in Phoenix did a study, and 87% of adults questioned believe that sin exists. That's good. But then they begin to define it — and that's what the whole article is about.
How We Define Sin
As the man who conducted the survey reports, a lot of this is relative. We tend to view sin not as God views it, but as we view it. David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, says that's exactly what's going on. People are fine talking about sin in the abstract, but they don't interpret it as a reality that's very personal to them. "I have to do what's best for me, and I'm not as sinful as most" is generally everyone's conclusion.
That, by the way, lines up with the next statistic: 65% of US adults say they will go to heaven when they die, and only 0.05% think they'll go to hell. Tim Keller — and next week I'll have a couple of cases of his new book over in the bookstore, you can pick it up this morning — talks about ministering to young people in a metropolitan area like New York City and about how sin has been branded and rebranded, meaning it has been redefined down to something like casual bad behavior.
Michael Horton asks this question: if you can solve your own problems, if you can solve sin yourself, what difference does the crucifixion of Christ make? And the answer is absolutely none. So here is what I want to do. I want to tie together the idea of sin, answer this question about whether we need to recognize it, and connect it to those front-page stories.
What Sin Actually Is
I went to Webster for a definition of sin. He says this: it is an offense against religious or moral law, a transgression of God's law. And then there is this striking subset of that definition — a state of human nature in which one is estranged from God.
Paul writes in Romans chapter three about sin, and he says first of all that it is universal. All of us, without exception, have sinned. We all fall short of the glory of God. And he says the wage of that sin is death — and death simply means separation. It is the very idea Webster had: an estrangement from God.
Here is what the Bible teaches: we have sinned. Sin means failing to do what God says, what God clearly commands or prohibits in His Word. And that is all of us. Some of you recognize that and have readily acknowledged it and responded to it. Some of you — especially on a day like today with so many guests, some here for the first time, some on a more sporadic basis — may be thinking this is something you probably ought to deal with, but you came in not wanting a discussion about sin. That's fine. I'm okay with that.
Something Is Wrong With All of Us
But here is what I want you to see. Something is wrong with you and me and us. Something is wrong with you, isn't it? And it's not just casual — it's deep. It's rooted in you. It's systemic. And it manifests itself not just in the big things, but in the little things.
This is how you know how serious it is: the little things. When you're at home at night and you don't want to be disturbed and the phone rings, your impulse is to say, "Tell them I'm not home." That's no big deal, is it? No — but it represents exactly what's in your heart. It's the same thing at work in the larger patterns of your life.
The Reality of Sin
There are tasks you just don't want to do, and you keep putting them aside. All of a sudden the phone rings, you pick it up, and it's the person waiting for it. Almost without knowing where it comes from, you say, "I was just getting ready to call you." That may not look like a big sin, but it reveals how sinful we are.
Consider the question again: How can we celebrate Jesus' atonement for our sin and the promise of eternal life in His resurrection if we don't recognize that we're sinners? The answer is, we can't. That's why the Bible tells us over and over again that there's something wrong with us. It's not just an economic problem, or an educational problem, or a sporadic one. It's not just that we blow the big things — we miss the little things, and those little things have separated us from life itself, meaning God. He is removed, disconnected, separated from us.
The Good News of the Gospel
Here is the good news. Romans 5:6 says, "While you were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly." God demonstrated His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that if you believe in Him, you have eternal life."
What does it mean to believe in Him? It means believing you are who He said you are. You are a sinner. There is something wrong with you, and it's not just the world that's messed up — it's you. You will never experience life, forget eternal life, you'll never experience life here, because something is missing. What's missing is Christ, and He will make you whole.
You cannot even be fully human without Jesus. Those things you want so desperately — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control — are all produced by the Holy Spirit living in you. That Holy Spirit comes into your life, opens your eyes, and changes your heart so that you recognize you're a sinner. Why would anyone need a Savior until they understand they're lost? And to understand that that lostness is sin, and there is nothing we can do to fix it. But Christ changed it all. He came, He lived, He died, and He rose from the dead.
The Evidence for the Resurrection
You may be here today as a guest or visitor, and I'm going to do something unusual — I'm going to give you homework. Go home, pull up Google, type in "resurrection facts," hit search, and spend fifteen or twenty minutes looking at what comes up. At the end of that, there is only one conclusion you can reach.
The tomb is empty — not because somebody stole the body, not because He resuscitated Himself, not because they went to the wrong tomb, not for any of those human explanations. The tomb is empty for one reason, and it's a supernatural explanation: Jesus rose from the dead. Five hundred people saw Him and were eyewitnesses. You have an empty tomb and a living Christ. What does that mean to us two thousand years later? It means Jesus is who He said He was, and we would be foolish not to believe Him.
A Life Transformed by the Resurrection
I did a funeral yesterday afternoon for a godly old lady. I had done a funeral for her husband twelve years ago, and that's when I first learned this truth. She had a sister, and these two sisters had married two brothers. She had been sick for a long time, and she was the last of the four to die. It was a wonderful service, with a whole legacy surrounding it, and everyone in the room seemed to be a Christian — talking about hope, heaven, and all that goes with that.
In no way do I want to minimize that. Jesus is the hope, the hope for eternal life. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." The wage of sin is death, and the free gift of God is eternal life.
But we miss something if all we talk about is an empty tomb and heaven. Is that true? Yes. Is that real? Yes. Do I look forward to it? Yes. But I want you to understand that the empty tomb has everything to do with life on the front page of today's newspaper as well.
Living as Light in a Dark World
I acknowledge I keep trying and I work hard at it, but I can't get there on my own. I am just as pessimistic as the next person. I do believe the cup is half empty and leaking. I don't think things are getting better, and that lines up with what Jesus says is going to happen anyway.
Some of my Christian friends, and I think this is absolutely wrong and an incomplete understanding of why Christ died, are so afraid — wringing their hands and talking about how bad everything is. Let me tell you something: these are great times for those of us who know Christ. It's getting darker, so you get to be light. People are afraid, and you get to bring hope. People are worried, and you get to say, "It's going to be all right."
I asked a friend of mine the other day how it was going. His answer is the new right answer to that question. He said, "Everything that's important is okay." And you get to take that message to the world. It's about living the resurrected life — not talking now about Christ, but about us as followers of Christ living that resurrected, transformed life now, here, in this place, so that you begin to impact your neighborhood, your workplace, your world.
Living as Salt and Light in a Broken World
As Paul is closing the book of Romans, he writes in Romans chapter 15, verse 13: "Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." The word "hope" here speaks of something in the future that will absolutely, for certain, take place. We would say today, for the hope of noon that is set before us, we know we will get there.
Consider what Paul says God will fill you with: all joy and peace. As Christians, we ought to be filled with joy. The world ought to look at us and say, there is something different.
I understand that in this church there is huge pain, turmoil, and anguish. Nor does Jesus say He is going to take that away — that is not the promise. The promise is, "I am going to climb in there with you. We are going to live a life that is distinct and different and unique."
The world is going to look at you and see Him. Isn't that what He said? "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." There is something visibly different about you, and that is because of the resurrection. Because of the resurrection and the forgiveness of sin, we are not exempt from suffering, but we do not merely survive in it — we thrive in it. Why? Because Christ lives in you.
We abound in hope not by self-will, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. To those of you who know Christ, it is time for us to be salt and light in the midst of this world. East Valley Bible Church ought to be a beacon in the middle of everything we see around us.
The Hope of the Empty Tomb
One day, your tomb will be empty. You will be with Him forever. But until then, you are to be His salt, His light, His hands, His feet, right here and right now. He has a world so prepared for you, if you have the courage to live this way.
If you are willing to sacrifice, willing to invest, willing to suffer, and willing to handle change, you are in the greatest place you can possibly be.
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*Closing Prayer:*
Father, thank You for this wonderful truth. Thank You for the empty tomb, and thank You that for those of us who call You Lord — for whom You are our Lord and Savior and Master — that one day our tomb will be empty and we will be with Your Son, Jesus, forever. Till then, God, we pray that we would be faithful, that You would use us in a significant way. We are not asking You to remove the pain and the suffering and the hurt and the difficulties from our life. We are asking You to allow us to be salt and light in the midst of that. We pray that as we suffer, as this world begins to unravel around us, we stand tall — not in our own strength, but in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. As Your people, we cry out to You, thanking You for what You have done and pleading with You to continue to work in our life. We praise You and worship You, in Jesus' name, amen.