Pastor Leon Seaton

Do you know Jesus or just know about Him?

William Willimon, the Dean of the Chapel at Duke University once received a phone call from a very irate father. The caller told Will furiously, "I hold you personally responsible for this!"  He was angry because his graduate school-bound daughter had decided to (in his words) "throw it all away and go do mission work in Haiti with the Presbyterian Church."  The father screamed, "Isn't that absurd! She has a B.S. degree from Duke, and she is going off to dig ditches in Haiti!  I hold you responsible for this!"

Willimon said, "Why me?"

The father said, "You ingratiated yourself and filled her mind with all this religion stuff."

Willimon was not easily intimidated. He asked the father: "Sir, weren't you the one who had her baptized?"

"Well, yes," said the irate father.

"And didn't you take her to Sunday School when she was a little girl?" asked Willimon.

"Well, well, yes," replied the father.

"And didn't you allow your daughter to go on those youth group ski trips to Colorado when she was in high school?"

"Yes. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Sir," said Willimon. "You're the reason she's throwing it all away. You introduced her to Jesus. Not me!"

"But," said the father, "all we wanted was for her to be a Presbyterian."

Willimon replied, "Well, sorry, sir, but you messed up. You've gone and made a disciple!"

The father was a "Yeah, but...." follower, and didn't know quite what to do when his daughter said, "Yes, and...." How about you? What is your response to God today? I pray that like those early disciples, your response is, "Yes, and...."

Luke 24:1-12   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.  They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.  While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.  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?  He is not here; He has risen! Remember how He told you, while He was still with you in Galilee:  'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.'"

Then they remembered His words.  When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others.  It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.  But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.  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.

The women believed… the men just wondered what was going on!

Isaiah 6:5-9, 10  The Lord said, "Go and tell this people: 'Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.’"

One Peanuts cartoon shows Charlie Brown telling Lucy they have to stop fighting and find a kinder way to resolve their conflicts. He says, “The planet is filled with people hurting each other and I believe that we, as children, can make a new world order.”  Lucy listens for a minute and the, POW!  She slams him to the ground and walks away saying, "I had to hit him quick, he was beginning to make sense."

Billy D. Strayhorn writes, “Apart from God's purpose in and through the Cross, I've often wondered if that wasn't part of the reason the Sadducees and Pharisees reacted like that did to Jesus' teaching. It was beginning to make sense. And if it made sense then it meant their faith was inconsequential, their lifestyle without purpose and their whole life had been without meaning.

“Rather than repenting, renewing their faith and embracing God's purpose for their lives, they protected their life and lifestyle by eradicating the One whom they thought was the threat. Whatever their motive, through their manipulations, Jesus was arrested, tried, condemned to death and crucified. With his death, darkness descended on Israel and in the hearts of followers of Jesus.”

It is imperative that we learn to listen to and to follow Jesus. He really is God and He really does have a better plan for our lives. The truth is that the Israelites would never had to go through all that has happened to them through the past few thousand years if they had simply acknowledged Jesus Christ as the Messiah and then walked in complete obedience to Him.

Personally this pastor is sick and tired of all the current political feuding, fussing and fighting in this nation! It is time to walk in the love explained in 1 Corinthians 13. 

Don’t be easily offended!   Accept the shortcomings of other people… don’t take their actions personally.

Proverbs 19:11, “A man's wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.”

You have to feel sorry for those early disciples. For the most part they were young men – perhaps ranging in age from 18 to their middle twenties. When Jesus died, their hopes, dreams, and visions for the future died with Him. All of their plans were locked in that tomb with Him!

John 20:9 states, “They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.”

Instead of searching the scriptures and asking God for directions, they hid in fear. Their spirits were crushed. Their faith was dead and buried. The only thing they could cling to was each other.

But that was on Friday. Everything changed on Sunday…

Fear does strange things to us!  Christianity is a faith walk – and fear and faith cannot coexist together. You have one or the other!  Just as oil and water do not mix, neither do fear and faith.

If you have been really sick with the flu you can better understand. For awhile you are sweating with a fever; then you have a big chill. After this goes on for an hour or so you are so exhausted you cannot function.

So on that first Easter morning, the men hid and worried about their future; the women, who did not feel threatened, headed for the tomb to finish the embalming process. They did not have a clue as to how they would open the grave. They would worry about that when they got there.

You know the story… God had a wonderful blessing awaiting them!

John’s version of this story focuses on Mary Magdalene. He has her going to the tomb, then running back to tell Peter and John saying, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put Him!”

Peter and John ran ahead of her and checked things out. They saw the strips of linen lying on the stone where His body had laid… along with the cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. Jesus had taken it off and carefully folded it and put it in place. At that point the two men “saw and believed.”

The men went back to their homes, but Mary Magdalene stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look at the tomb and saw two angels (that had not been there before!) in white, sitting where Jesus had been; one at the head, the other at the foot.

“Woman, why are you crying?” they asked.

“They have taken my Lord away, and I don’t know where they have put Him.” (The angels apparently did not impress her; she was focused on finding her Lord’s body!)  As she turned away, tears streaming down her face she saw a Man – and assumed that He was the gardener. “Woman, why are your crying? Who is it that you are looking for?”

“Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have put Him and I will get Him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

How on earth can we explain her feelings as she realized Jesus was alive and well! She reached out and hugged Him – big time!  Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me – I haven’t returned to the Father.” In other words, He was still going to be around for awhile – but by the same token she would have to learn to communicate with Him through the Holy Spirit.

The disciples saw and believed – we believe even though we have not seen. God honors that!

Sometimes it is hard to believe and not get skeptical – and this is hard because of the church's failures and misguided practices; after all the attacks on Christianity and all the attempts to debunk and ridicule the veracity of the Bible, but we still believe.

Why is that? Because every day we walk and talk with God!  It is hard to talk someone out of a real experience. The people that get tripped up are the ones that know about Jesus but do not know Him personally.

 Indeed, Jesus Christ has risen from the dead… you know that… but do you know Jesus personally?

 Easter, April 4, 2010