Rev. David Holwick N Easter 2003
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
April 20, 2003
Luke 24:13-35
DEFEAT THE DENIAL
I. When the bottom falls out.
A. Arab world's stunned disbelief at the rapid fall of Iraq.
1) Outlandish news conferences - Arab "street" believed them.
Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
announced on 7 April:
"The infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds
on the gates of Baghdad...
Be assured, Baghdad is safe, protected.
Iraqis are heroes."
"As our leader Saddam Hussein said, 'God is grilling
their stomachs in hell."
"There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!"
"My feelings - as usual - we will slaughter them all."
April 9 - Remark of al-Sahaf to John Burns of NY Times:
"I now inform you that you are too far from reality."
April 10 - al-Sahaf takes "administrative leave."
He hasn't been heard from since.
2) Arab commentator - we have a culture of denial.
a) Rosy image of ourselves.
b) We have to demonize our enemies.
3) After collapse, many Arabs were too angry to be interviewed.
B. We are not strangers to disappointment.
1) Career doesn't turn the world on fire.
2) Marriage doesn't measure up to our dreams.
3) God lets us down.
a) Unanswered prayer.
b) Unreasonable tragedy.
Email I get on Friday: pray for Pastor Gary Welling of
Grace Baptist Church, Syracuse, New York.
On Friday he conducted a double funeral for two
accident victims.
Yesterday he did a funeral for a 23-year-old man who
was murdered this week.
Tomorrow he drives to Salem, Massachusetts, to attend
a memorial service for his oldest sister, who passed
away this past Monday.
Today, of course, he is leading his church in the
celebration of Christ's victory...
C. Is our faith a delusion or the essence of truth?
1) Observation by Mark Buchanan:
Most Christians I meet feel stuck.
They started a journey, but somewhere, somehow, got
stranded.
They feel like they're living on the border.
There they sit, swapping rumors about God.
Or they just stop talking about God at all.
They feel that the most their faith amounts to is just
that: mere talk.
They've joined a talking cult.
Where is this huge, exultant freedom for which Christ
set us free?
Why do I still fret over downturns in Asian markets, get
irked by reckless drivers, harbor grudges over petty
slights?
Why do I care more about my rhododendron bush than about
the soul of the boy who broke its branches playing
street hockey?
#4911
2) We may wonder if Christianity is true.
3) Even if we can know it is true, is our experience of it
genuine, or a sham?
II. The turmoil of the first Easter.
A. Disciples had been pumped up to expect Kingdom at any moment.
1) Miracles had been performed.
2) Bread had been multiplied. John 6:14-15
3) Dead had been raised.
4) Triumphal entry.
5) Only pecking order remained to be sorted out. Mark 9:34
B. Then disaster descended.
1) Too-rapid trial, condemnation, death, nighttime burial.
2) They flitted away, crestfallen.
C. All their hopes where dashed.
1) Two disciples to Jesus: "We HAD hoped..." Luke 24:21
a) There were rumors of a different ending, a miraculous
one, but they didn't seem to give it much heed.
2) Comment by Charlie Brown cartoonist, Charles Schulz:
"In all this world, there is nothing more upsetting
than the clobbering of a cherished belief."
#18948
III. Come to grips with reality.
A. The myth of fulfillment.
1) The fullness of all you need and desire awaits you on earth.
a) A great Hollywood myth.
b) A popular Christian myth as well.
2) No one seems to have it but it's just around the corner.
B. What it takes to get fulfillment:
1) One significant experience...
2) If you pray more...
3) If you attend a marriage retreat...
4) If you go on a missions trip... then you will be fulfilled.
C. It ain't promised in the Bible.
1) The Bible promises peace and joy.
2) But it also promises tribulation and soul-piercing.
a) Pain and disappointment are a normal part of a good
Christian's life.
b) In Hebrews 11, chapter on the heroes of the faith,
not one of them received what had been promised.
c) The portrait of the faithful is not a portrait of
the fulfilled.
d) What defines them is HOPE.
IV. Slow hearts or burning hearts?
A. They had slow hearts. 24:25
1) The disciples' problem was a lack of perception.
a) They didn't see things as God does.
b) They saw the outward events but not the significance
behind them.
2) Jesus set them straight on God's program.
a) Ancient prophecies had just been fulfilled.
b) Some of them they had not even anticipated - a
resurrected Savior.
B. They gained warm hearts.
1) As Jesus talked with them, unrevealed, they felt different.
2) Really knowing Jesus makes a difference in your life.
a) Your problems don't all go away.
b) But your perspective on them changes.
c) This life is temporary - only resurrection is eternal.
It was early morning, Iraqi time.
Crouched in a modified tank, NBC News correspondent David
Bloom picked up his phone and played back his messages.
One was from Jim Lane, a New York financial manager and
devoted Christian
The two were sharing a daily, long-distance devotional time
using Oswald Chambers's classic, MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST.
Lane read the message for April 5, based on Matthew 25:
"Because of what the Son of Man went through, every human
being can now get through into the very presence of God."
Moments later, Bloom climbed out of the tank, took a few
steps, and collapsed.
Soon after, he was ushered into the presence of God.
David's death from a pulmonary embolism devastated his
family, friends, colleagues, and millions of TV viewers.
At age thirty-nine, David was a rising star at NBC.
Viewers looked forward to watching Bloom file his reports
while bouncing across the desert on his "Bloom-mobile,"
his face streaked with dirt, his hair snapping in the wind.
He loved his job, and everyone knew it.
But what most viewers did not know was that David was a
committed Christian.
David had grown up in a Methodist home.
And while he had a strong understanding of the Gospel growing
up, it wasn't until two years ago, according to Lane, that
Bloom "effectively came to a saving knowledge of Jesus
and started a real faith journey."
Bloom joined the New Canaan Society, a weekly men's
fellowship group.
Charles Colson met Bloom several times as a guest of that
fellowship, and they became friends.
Colson was struck by the sincerity of Bloom's Christian faith.
He was hungry for knowledge of God and how his faith ought
to play out in his life.
On the day he died, Lane says, "David was in a very good
place, at peace with himself, his faith, and his family."
That peace was reflected in the last message he would ever
send to his wife, Melanie.
The message reveals that, in the middle of a desert battlefield,
his own mortality was very much on his mind.
Bloom wrote: "When the moment comes in my life when you are
talking about my last day, I am determined that you and
others will say,
'He was devoted to his wife and children; he was admired;
he gave every ounce of his being for those whom he cared
most about -- not himself, but God and his family.'"
Yesterday Lane spoke at a memorial service at St. Patrick's
Cathedral in New York.
Speaking before America's most powerful media figures, Lane
told a simple story about a man who loved and served
Jesus Christ.
It was a side of their colleague that many of them had never
really known -- a side scarcely mentioned in the
volumes of media coverage of his death.
At the end of his April 5 devotional reading, Oswald
Chambers writes: "The cross of Christ was a ... sign that
our Lord had triumphed ... to save the human race."
#14929
C. What is the temperature of YOUR heart?
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
# 4911 "Stuck On The Road To Emmaus: The Secret To Why We Are Not
Fulfilled," by Mark Buchanon, Christianity Today, July 12,
1999, page 55.
#14929 "Into The Very Presence Of God: Remembering David," BreakPoint
Commentary by Charles Colson, April 17, 2003.
#18948 "Peanuts Cartoonist On Clobbered Beliefs," by Charles Schulz,
Bits & Pieces, April 11, 2001.
These and 23,000 others are part of a database that can be downloaded,
absolutely free, at http://illust.holwick.com
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