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A Living Saviour!
Acts 2:22-36
The mother of a nine-year-old boy named Mark received a phone call in the middle of the afternoon.
It was the teacher from her son's school.
"Mrs. Smith, something unusual happened today in your son's third grade class.
Your son did something that surprised me so much that I thought you should know
about it immediately."
The mother began to grow worried.
The teacher continued,
"Nothing like this has happened in all my years of teaching.
This morning I was teaching a lesson on creative writing.
And as I always do, I tell the story of the ant and the grasshopper:
The ant works hard all summer and stores up plenty of food.
But the grasshopper plays all summer and does no work.
Then winter comes.
The grasshopper begins to starve because he has no food.
So he begins to beg,
'Please Mr. Ant, you have much food. Please let me eat, too.'
Then I said, "Boys and girls, your job is to write the ending to the story.
"Your son, Mark, raised his hand. 'Teacher, may I draw a picture?'
'Well, yes, Mark, if you like, you may draw a picture.
But first, you must write the ending to the story.'
"As in all the past years, most of the students said the ant shared his food
through the winter, and both the ant and the grasshopper lived.
A few children wrote, 'No, Mr. Grasshopper.
You should have worked in the summer.
Now, I have just enough food for myself.'
So the ant lived and the grasshopper died.
"But your son ended the story in a way different from any other child, ever.
He wrote, 'So the ant gave all of his food to the grasshopper; the grasshopper lived
through the winter. But the ant died.'
And the picture?
At the bottom of the page, Mark had drawn three crosses."
Easter is a wonderful day of celebration.
But the celebration is without meaning if we don't understand what Jesus Christ did for us
by dying on the cross!
He had it all.
He left it all to come to earth.
He gave His all.
He died for us for it was our sin that nailed Him on the cross.
People don't want to hear about the cross.
The cross represents complete sacrifice for others.
Our world doesn't want to think about sacrifice.
I read where a company, called the Church Advertising Network, developed a campaign
to attract people to church during the season of Easter.
They suggested that the cross be removed from the altar.
According to the author, a survey has revealed that the cross is one of those symbols
that the new generation of church goers considered too "churchy."
One pastor interviewed for the campaign gave his whole hearted endorsement.
"We are going to attempt to concentrate on the resurrection,
and not the death of Jesus."
There are those who think they can have a Christianity that suits them.
It is God's Salvation.
He made the rules.
Jesus is the sacrifice for our sin and not our servant to be at our beck and call.
The greatest news the world has ever heard is that the tomb is empty!
Christ has risen from the dead.
Jesus demonstrated His great power over death.
Easter is about His victory over sin and death and hell.
Easter is about the sacrifice that the Son of God made on our behalf.
A generation of young people, even young adults, do not know anything of sacrifice.
They know about inconvenience, but a very, very few know about sacrifice.
When we talk about the sacrifice of Jesus, they have no clue what that means.
We should be so thankful that Jesus Christ was victorious over death!
My physical death is coming.
Your death is coming.
Soon all of us will leave this world for eternity.
Many do not want to face the matter of their impending death.
We do everything we can to put it aside.
We jog. We diet. We pump iron. We play golf.
We try to ignore it, knowing all along that we can only postpone it.
One day my name will be called!
One day your name will be called.
It was impossible for death to hold Jesus.
Easter is the proof that our death is not final.
There is a wonderful eternity for those who accept Jesus as the Christ
and submit to His Lordship.
Dr. Seamands tells of a Muslim who became a Christian in Africa.
Some of his friends asked him, "Why have you become a Christian?"
He answered, "Well, it's like this.
Suppose you were going down the road and suddenly the road forked in two directions,
and you didn't know which way to go, and there at the fork in the road were two men,
one dead and one alive -- which one would you ask which way to go?"
-- Warren Webster
Is the person you are trusting as your savior alive today?
Will he be alive in 50? Will he be alive in 100?
Christ is Risen.
He is risen indeed!
Margaret Sangster Phippen wrote that in the mid 1950s her father, British minister W. E. Sangster,
began to notice some uneasiness in his throat and a dragging in his leg.
When he went to the doctor, he found that he had an incurable disease that caused
progressive muscular atrophy.
His muscles would gradually waste away, his voice would fail, his throat would soon
become unable to swallow.
Sangster threw himself into his work in British home missions, figuring he could still write
and he would have even more time for prayer.
"Let me stay in the struggle Lord," he pleaded.
"I don't mind if I can no longer be a general, but give me just a regiment to lead."
He wrote articles and books, and helped organize prayer cells throughout England.
"I'm only in the kindergarten of suffering," he told people who pitied him.
Gradually Sangster's legs became useless.
His voice went completely.
But he could still hold a pen, shakily.
On Easter morning, just a few weeks before he died, he wrote a letter to his daughter.
In it, he said, "It is terrible to wake up on Easter morning and have no voice
to shout, 'He is risen!' -- but it would be still more terrible to have a voice
and not want to shout."
Sermon by Dr. Harold L. White
Email Dr. White at hleewhite@aol.com
