Matt Sturdevant: Hello. I’m so glad you’ve joined us for our Easter celebration this year. This year’s celebration looks a little bit different than it has in the past due to the Covid-19 pandemic that we’re all experiencing right now. We’re not able to celebrate in person, but whether you’re joining us on Easter morning, April 12th, 2020, or sometime later that day or even days later, I want to welcome you to our Easter celebration from my living room to your living room.
I don’t know if you’ve had this thought yourself, but it’s occurred to me at least a couple of times the last several weeks that I sort of felt like we’re living in those early moments of the post-apocalyptic movies. You know, the ones where things are relatively normal, but things are rapidly changing and rapidly deteriorating. I kind of keep looking around, wondering if we’re going to start seeing zombies. It kind of even feels at times like we’re in those early moments of movies, like World War Z or I Am Legend. There are no zombies. I can assure you of that, but it feels like we’re at those early stages of the movie when the virus is growing and expanding and we’re waiting for guys, like Brad Pitt and Will Smith, to do something. But instead, all we can do is hunker down and shelter in place.
This is not a movie. This is real life, and part of the stress and strain that we’re under right now is that everything that we’re experiencing is very new and very different. That’s why I'm so excited to celebrate Easter with you today. Even though our Easter celebration is going to look a little bit different this year, we are still going to celebrate because we have the same risen Lord, Jesus Christ, that we can celebrate. With so much uncertainty and change all around us in the world, we can find peace and comfort and hope knowing that we serve and we worship the One who doesn’t change. In fact, it’s moments like this where I personally am comforted and given great peace when I read the words that we find in the New Testament book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 13 verse 8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
Personally, I find this truth and this perspective that’s here in this verse to be very reassuring during this season of a global pandemic that we’re all walking through as things are changing. I don’t know about you but this stay-at-home order that we’re all under has been pretty tough. In fact, I have to admit that it’s been pretty hard for me. I have discovered the hard way how much I enjoy rhythms and the schedules and the things that I am so used to doing. I discovered it the hard way by not being able to do what I’d like to do. I like to get out of the house. I like to go places. Some people are more the homebody types, and I think I’m the opposite of the homebody. I love my home, but I also love being out there. I love seeing other places and people and going places. In fact, I’ve had to cancel several travel plans that I’ve had this spring, and some of those plans are things I was really looking forward to being able to do.
Like me, your lives have also been disrupted. Some of your lives have been more disrupted than others depending on what life looked like before we found ourselves in this situation. You’ve had to adapt your rhythms and plans and your ways of doing things. There are some things that you’ve had to stop doing that you liked to do and some things that you want to do that you can’t do. Some of you are right now experiencing family members and friends and loved ones who have the coronavirus. They may be sick; they may be very sick, and some of your loved ones may even be dying because of this virus that we don’t know how to stop and that we don’t have a cure for.
Some of you are healthcare workers, and you are literally on the front lines giving of yourselves, putting yourselves in harm’s way, in order to care for and treat those who are in desperate need. I want you to know that I personally so appreciate the sacrifice that you're making to help those in great need. You are on my daily prayer list. Everyday as I pray for our healthcare workers who are a part of Hope Church, the ones that I know by name that work in healthcare or are first responders. Then, I’m also praying for healthcare workers across the nation and the entire world that God would give you the strength and the courage and the energy and the insight that you need as you care for people who desperately, desperately need help.
Some of you have lost your jobs, and you’re experiencing a time with no income. Or, your income and pay has been significantly decreased because of this situation that we’re in. Some of you, for the first time in a long time or maybe even ever, are finding yourselves that you're worried about basic necessities of life. Things, like food and shelter and water and yes, even toilet paper. This is a strange, stressful, unprecedented, and very challenging time that we’re all walking through together. This coronavirus, though, is very different than a lot of the other crises and disasters that we have experienced. It’s very different than anything we’ve experienced in the last hundred years.
In fact, it’s different in four big ways. The first way is that it is invisible. A virus is a germ; we can’t see it, at least not with our naked eye. We can see hurricanes, and we can see thunderstorms on the radar. We can see them coming. We can predict tornadoes, where they’re going to be. We can see a flood rising. We can see a fire spreading, but a virus and a germ...it’s invisible. It’s also widespread. I live here in Texas, and we get tornadoes here from time to time. Tornadoes can sweep across an area, but usually it’s defined to a specific region. It doesn’t move from coast to coast or across the entire world. But because of the culture that we have of travel for work and for vacation, people are literally traveling all over the world and brought that invisible virus along with them. That’s how it spread so widely and so rapidly.
The third way that it’s different is that there is no cure. As of right now, there is no cure that we know of. There is no vaccine even though our healthcare workers and those that specialize in diseases are working as hard as they can to come up with a cure and a vaccine. There’s no known cure at this time. The fourth way is that there simply are just not enough resources at hand to deal with what is going on to deal with the challenge that we are facing. Because It's so widespread, that’s why there’s not enough resources. Resources in the physical supplies—the kind of masks, the gowns, the gloves, the ventilators. There are just not enough physical resources.
There’s also not enough personal resources in some areas in the country where things are being hit particularly hard. I’ve read and heard of stories of doctors and other healthcare workers who are themselves going from where they are, where there may be a relatively small spread of the virus, going to places like New York City and other places to be able to help. There are not enough mental resources. We’ve got some of the smartest people in the world working on this right now, and they simply have not come up with a cure or a vaccine yet.
This coronavirus is very different from what we’ve experienced in the past. In fact, as every one of the nearly 7.8 billion people on this planet walk through the pandemic together, people are asking questions, lots of questions. Questions like… “Why is this happening? Where is God? How could He let this happen? Did God send this virus or invent this virus to punish us?” Those are just a couple of questions that I have heard people asking. Perhaps you yourself have even asked some of these questions. As I’ve been thinking about this Easter, as I’ve been thinking about the message I want to give you, and as I’ve been praying and working on it, I want to give you a message of Hope and a message of encouragement for this Easter in Spring 2020.
The Covid-19 virus is just a virus, and as bad as things are right now, as bad as they are, in just a matter of time, we will have a solution to this problem, Lord willing. We will know how to adequately fight against this virus and the spread of it. Our lives will not look like this forever. One day we will know how to treat it; we’ll know how to prevent it. We know that from the way that things have worked in history. Coronavirus is not the first virus to cause devastation. It causes problems for a while, but it will not always be this way. One day we will have a way out.
Today as we celebrate Easter for followers of Jesus, the same can be said about a much more infectious disease, about a disease that is much more destructive and much more widespread than the coronavirus. That virus is called sin. Right now with the coronavirus, people are sheltering in place. They are distancing themselves from others, and they are washing their hands until they’re raw sometimes, hoping to just not get this virus, to be protected from it, to not have it come into their homes and into their lives. But when it comes to sin, we’re all already infected.
Sin is basically a refusal to acknowledge the God of the universe, a refusal to acknowledge who God is and live by His ways and do what God asks us to do. You see, you and I already have the sin virus. We’re already infected by it. There’s nothing that we cannot do to not be touched by this virus. Presently, there is no cure for the coronavirus, but there is a cure available to the greater pandemic—the pandemic that is sin. Sin that affects all of us, and that is exactly what Easter is all about. That is why we can celebrate on Easter Sunday. That is why we have hope, those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ. There’s a cure for the human condition of sin, and there’s a Rescuer who has already done everything that is needed for you and I to be saved from this virus, for us to be cured, for us to have a brand new kind of life—a life with joy, a life with peace, a life with hope, a life with meaning and purpose and peace and power not just to survive challenging days like we’re in right now but to actually be able to move forward in the middle of a crisis like we’re in right now.
Move forward in a way that brings the cure to people who are infected, to people who need help, healing and hope. I’d like to take just a few minutes and look at this sin problem and then look at the cure that is available to us. Literally, going back to the beginning...if we go to the very beginning of God’s Word, the Bible, we learn that God is the One who created this world and everything in it. When He did, He created it perfectly. There were no germs. There was no sickness; there were no diseases. The people that He created were also perfect. They followed His ways perfectly. They were in perfect fellowship with Him, and they enjoyed this perfect life and this perfect world. But, our first parents chose to go their own way. They rebelled against God and did the very thing that God said not to do, and that’s rebellion. That’s sin, and this has changed things. Again, we read about this in the first three chapters of God’s Word.
You and I can look throughout human history, and we can see that there have been some good things and even some great things that we as humans have done. But, we can also look and see the trail of destruction and devastation that has happened because of sin. We may want there to be more. We may even be aware of the fact that there can be more, but it’s sin, the sin in our lives, that prevents us from living the full, abundant life that God intended us to live. You see, our sin and our rebellion against God has three outcomes for us. The first is that we are guilty and separated from God because of our guilt and our sin.
The prophet, Isaiah, in chapter 59 verse 2 says, “It’s your sins that have cut you off from God. Because of your sins, he has turned away and will not listen anymore.” The first outcome is that we’re guilty, and we’re separated from God. Next, our rebellious bent is what keeps us messing up in our life. Galatians 5:19-21 says, “When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these…”
You see, it’s because of our rebellious nature, the rebellion in our hearts, that we just keep messing up in life. There are things that we want out of this life—things that we desperately want but can’t get them because we keep messing up. There are relationships that we want to be right, and we want to be able to enjoy, but we just can't because of our sin and perhaps the sin of the other person.
The third outcome of our rebellious ways is that we may live forever separated from God, our Creator. Ephesians 2:3 says, “All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very own nature, we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.” You see, our infection—the source of all of our problems—is our sin. It’s our rebellion against God. So, what is the cure? Right now, everyone is asking, “What’s the cure to the coronavirus? How do we stop this? How do we change the way that we’re living? How can we come out of sheltering in place and go on to living life maybe closer to the way that we used to?”
The good news is that there is a cure! As we look back at Ephesians 2, starting in verse 4, we can find out what that cure is. “But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.” You see, the cure is this; the cure is what Jesus Christ has done. That’s the cure. There’s a set of verses in the New Testament book called Romans that really do a good job of laying out our problem and the solution. I’ve listed them there on the handout for you, but I want to walk through those verses with you here and take a look at what the problem is. What is the solution God has provided? What is the cure that we have to the greatest pandemic that we are all dealing with and that we are all living with? That pandemic is sin.
Our problem is this: we’ve all sinned. “As it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.’” “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That word, all, means “all; everyone.” There are special cases. There are no exemptions. When it comes to sin, we were all infected from the moment that we were born into this world. But, Christ died for us anyway. “But God showed his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Sin leads to eternal death. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.”
But, if we choose to follow Christ, we will be saved. Romans 10:9-10 says, “Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Just like the word, all, in Romans 3:23 means that everyone has sin. In Romans 10:13, everyone means that everyone who calls on the name of Jesus will be saved. There’s not some super strain of the sin virus that you have that you could possibly not be saved from or cured from. It doesn’t work that way.
No one can say, “You just don’t know how bad I am. You don’t know what kind of life I have lived. You don’t know the kind of things that I have done.” Christ’s death was sufficient for all of us. It was sufficient for me, and it was sufficient for you. We’ll continue with Romans 5:1: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Then, to wrap things up, God’s love will stay with us. Once we have accepted God’s love and we have decided to follow Jesus, His love will stay with us.
Romans 8:38-39 says, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” You see, this is what the cure is; the cure is that Jesus is God who came to take the punishment for the guilty. The punishment for the guilty is death, according to Romans 6:23. 1 Peter 3:18 says, “Christ suffered for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. He suffered physical death, but he was raised to life in the Spirit.”
Jesus is the only One who was not infected with this sin virus. Because of that, He’s the help from the outside, just like those who right now may have the coronavirus desperately need the help of our medical and healthcare workers. They can’t fix it on their own. Jesus is the Help from the outside who came to help us. He came to take our punishment. Jesus is God and came to connect us with God. I love that phrase in 1 Peter 3:18; we already read it, but it says, “...to bring you safely home to God.”
You see when God created this world and everything in it perfectly back in the beginning before our original parents decided to sin and rebel, they had one big fellowship with God. We were created so that God could relate with us. He created us to love us, to relate with us. He wants to have a relationship with us, but because of sin, we have been separated from Him. Because of what Jesus did, we can be reconnected. Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection paid the price so that you and I can be reconnected to God.
The third thing is that Jesus is God, who came to empower us to live a brand new life forever. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to you and I today. When Jesus was about to return to heaven, He told His followers, “I’m going to send you a Helper. I’m going to send you a Comforter. I’m going to send you Someone that will be a Helper, and that Someone is the Holy Spirit. For everyone of us who’s a follower of Jesus Christ already, the Holy Spirit resides in us. He comes there the moment we decide to be a follower of Jesus, and it’s the Holy Spirit that gives us the help and the power and the peace and the comfort that we need in life to walk through times like we’re walking right now and help us in other challenges that we face.
I want you to listen specifically to what the Holy Spirit does. Galatians 5:22 and 23 says, “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things.” This list here in Galatians 5:22 and 23 is very different from the list we looked at earlier in Galatians 5:19-21. When we accept the cure that’s available to us to our sin problem, there’s a new kind of power that we have for life that’s just not there before. Accepting the cure though doesn’t mean a perfect life. It doesn’t mean that everything is going to be perfect and all your problems are going to go away. Actually when we accept the cure, we begin a process of learning and growing that takes place from the moment that we accept it for the rest of our life here on this planet.
I would like nothing more than for you to become a follower of Jesus Christ, but I want you to know the reality is that if you decide to follow Jesus right now, you're not suddenly going to wake up from a horrible dream just like they do in the movies. Then, this coronavirus thing has all just been a bad dream, and there are no problems, and life will go back to the way that it was before. That’s not going to happen, but what will happen is you will have the help and the power and the strength that you need to be able to walk through this time that the whole world is walking through right now. The cure is available, but the choice is yours.
A follower of Jesus Christ is someone who has accepted the cure and realized that they’re blocked from real life because of their rebellion against God. The Bible calls that sin, and because of that sin, we’re on track for a spiritual death for eternity. But out of love, out of His great love for us, God made a way for us to be able to come back to Him to be able to be reconnected with Him. It’s our sin and our rebellion that separated us from God, but Jesus Christ, His death on the cross, paid the penalty that you and I owe for our sin and our rebellion. It’s because of the death of Jesus Christ that we can be reconnected to God.
What we have to do is we have to trust Christ; we have to trust Him to the extent that we obey Him. That means that we yield our lives to Him. His death removed the penalty for our rebellion, and then God enters into our lives, and we have a new life that we can have because of what Jesus Christ has done. Jesus has already done all of this. It happened over 2,000 years ago. But as Romans 10:13 says, we must make a choice. We have to call upon the Lord in order to be saved. It’s a call that we have to make, just like if you were going to call your friend on your phone. You have to pick up your phone to dial the phone to call them. We have to call upon the Lord to accept this cure to be saved.
As we walk forward in life as we walk through the middle of this Covid-19 pandemic, I want you to meet some people from my church, Hope Church, who are followers of Jesus Christ. I want you to hear how following Jesus is making a real and practical difference in their lives right now, how following Jesus is bringing them help and encouragement and hope.
Tyler: It’s times like this when you really find out who you’re putting your trust in—your job, a salary, relationships, maybe your status. For me and a lot of other people, those things have changed. They’re not as reliable as they once were, but what I can put my confidence in is my relationship with Jesus Christ because I know that Christ is unchanging. He’s going to be my Rock, and I can continue to rely on Him even as all those other things become uncertain.
Amy: Give me 30 seconds on Instagram or Facebook, and I am either annoyed, confused, discouraged, you name it. Give me 30 seconds in God’s Word, and I know that God is who He says He is, that He loves me, that He’s in control, and there’s peace.
Sarah: One of the things that I’ve been really thankful for during this time is that I can really be rooted in Christ. One way that this has shown up is that though I may be tempted to really hope in the day when circumstances change and things go back to normal or hope in the day when jobs seem more abundant and plentiful. Really, I can choose to trust in Christ and put my hope in Him instead.
Aaron: I’ve been reading in Hebrews 11 a lot recently, and it’s been super encouraging to see that no matter what the circumstances are, God can be trusted. He comes through for us no matter what it is, and that’s really been helpful these days.
Song Who Am I? was performed here
Matt Sturdevant: In John 10:10, Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.” To be alive is one thing, but to have real life is something very different. Perhaps you’re watching right now and you’re saying to yourself, “You know, I am alive, but I’m just alive. I haven’t really been living an abundant life. I haven’t really been experiencing real life.” If that’s you, I want to invite you to accept the cure. I want to invite you to yield your life to Jesus Christ today, right now, there in your living room or your bedroom or your car or wherever you may be watching from. Jesus Christ came, He died on the cross, and He rose again so that you and I could live abundantly, so that we could have real life here and real life for eternity in heaven with God, our Father. Through yielding our lives to Him, that’s where we get the help and the hope and the encouragement that we need in order to face times like we’re all facing right now.
Would you bow with me in prayer? Father, thank You that despite the wickedness and rebellion that resides in all of our hearts You love us. Father, thank You that Your great kindness to us was making a way so that we could know You even though we’ve rebelled against You. Jesus, thank You for doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Thank You for taking our sin and our guilt and our punishment upon Yourself and making a way for us to be reconnected to our Father. Father, I pray for those who are ready right now to yield their lives to Jesus. I pray for those who are considering yielding their lives to Jesus.
If you're’ watching or listening to this message right now and you say, “Yes! That is me. I want to follow Jesus,” then what you’re saying is, “I believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross, and I believe that He paid the price for my sins and proved that He was God by coming back to life. I want to accept God’s free gift of forgiveness for my sins. I’m ready to switch from my plan to God’s plan. I want to express it right now by inviting Jesus to come into my life and to be my leader, to be the Boss of my life.”
If that’s you, would you quietly pray along with me in your heart? Pray these words. “Dear Jesus, thank You for making and for loving me even when I have ignored You and gone my own way. I know that I need You in my life, and I realize that I have rebelled against You. I ask You to forgive me. Thank You for dying on the cross for me. Please help me to understand it more. As much as I know right now, I want to follow You from now on. Please come into my life and make me a new person inside. I accept Your free gift of salvation. Please help me to grow now as I learn to follow You and walk with You.”
Father, I thank You for those who’ve just prayed along with me right now. I thank you for the new life that they are experiencing in Jesus Christ. Please help them to grow; help them to know more and more how to follow You each day. And for the rest of us who have already yielded our lives to Jesus Christ, thank You for the new life, Father, that we’ve already experienced. Please help us to choose to follow Christ in every way each day. Please help us to take this cure that we’ve already received and share Christ with others who need the cure. Thank you for the peace and for the comfort and for the help and for the hope that is found in Christ alone as we choose to follow Him and walk through the challenging days we have ahead of us. We thank You and love You. It’s in the name of Jesus Christ that I pray. Amen.
