Happy Easter and welcome to The Journey Church. I'm Pastor Paris Pasch.

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I’d like to welcome our guests this morning to our Easter service.  We’ve pulled out all the stops in order to make sure you get the most inviting Sunday service with as much focus on God as possible so you can determine if it is worth coming back for more at another time.  We’d love to have you return so that you could absolutely know how much God loves you.

 

We’ve been focused on a simple and singular topic “The Cross” for a couple of weeks and here we are at Easter.  We started with “The Cross Promised” which acknowledged that God knew all along in order to rescue you and I, His son would have to sacrifice Himself in our place.  Palm Sunday has taken place where it was all about the amazing Jesus being proclaimed a coming king.  Next came the “The Cross of Suffering” where sadly very shortly the fickle public shifted to demanding that Jesus be crucified and so we looked at what the church calls Good Friday.  The crucifixion has happened and now it’s time to see what all the results are for Jesus dying.  Today we are focused on the results of the cross, His resurrecting to life eternal for us.  Today we see “The Cross of Triumph”.

 

If we consider the “Plan A” that God has been reminding us of for weeks, we remember that Jesus knew full well about the agony and suffering of the cross that lay ahead for Him long before He was nailed to it.  He understood with great clarity what the pain would become and the overwhelming brutality that the sinful, God-rejecting heathen along with His own countryman, would inflict on Him and yet He willfully embraced it all because of you and I.

 

 

The cross was designed to be the big finale but God’s plan took the death as a precursor to the resurrection.  Now because of the resurrection, the truth is that the cross actually culminated in a moment of triumph not defeat as Satan would have had it.  God knew what He was doing when He sent Jesus to rescue His creation.  He knew full well what the cost to get humanity back from Satan would be and He carried through with the plan even at such a great cost because He knew the results.

 

1 Corinthians 15:20–22 (NIV) But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For since death came through a man (Adam), the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man (Jesus). 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

 

God knew that the death of Christ was not the conclusion, it would be miraculously followed by the resurrection of His Son in order for the plan to move on to the next phase.  No resurrection, means no life, no born again possibility, and no entrance into heaven for any of humanity.  So God had a supernatural card up His sleave

 

Colossians 2:13–15 (NIV) When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

 

You and I must choose to share in His death by choosing to die to our own plan as well as share in his resurrection by being born again.  In fact we cannot separate the cross of Jesus from the resurrection of Jesus or it becomes useless for us from an eternal perspective.

 

Romans 4:25 (NIV) He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.

 

The Bible hits this six ways to Sunday.  It drives this point home on multiple fronts because without this cross of triumph we would still be dead in our sin and subject to eternal separation from God The Father.

 

Romans 6:8–11 (NIV) Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

 

So how can we apply this miraculous gift to our own lives?

 

Romans 6:12–14 (NIV) Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

 

You are covered under the cross of triumph and no longer subject to Satan’s destructive plans.  Triumph, victory and overcoming are not words God uses lightly.  God wants to move you from depression, discouragement, dissatisfaction over into triumph and victory.  God has lifted you out of the miry pit and placed you on high ground.  He wants to help you grow out of the need for medicating your depression with external stimulus, to believing His word above the destructive voices in your head.  Now don’t jump off your meds until you’ve exchanged the lies in your head for God’s truth, but peace and power is available to you as His very own child.

 

John 16:33 (NIV) “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

 

1 Corinthians 15:56–57 (NIV)  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Maybe you missed it first go around so I’ll revisit the text again.  The next time you feel defeated, weakened and discouraged remember this.

 

Colossians 2:13–15 (NIV) When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

 

The cross brought us triumph.  We are now more than conquerors no longer subject to the father of lies.  When I was young in my faith a preachers spoke these very powerful words to me “ I am triumphant because of Christ on the cross” and over time I began to believe them.  Over my lifetime I have had to remind myself regularly of this truth.  The cross brought us triumph because of these truths.  The resurrection sealed the deal that God had completed plan “A”.

 

Romans 8:31 (NIV) What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

 

Romans 8:37–39 (NIV)  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

This Easter God wants you to fully grasp that the cross reminds us that God’s promise of the cross was plan A, it would be a cross of great suffering, but it would also culminate in overwhelming triumph.  Go live your life as a victorious Christian and not a whining, fussing, weak minded, Church goer.  Proclaim the truth in the face of this world’s lies and be bold in your convictions.  Jesus did it all on your behalf, so you could live the life I’m speaking of today.

 

2 Corinthians 2:14–15 (NIV) But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15 For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.

 

We must choose to live the Easter life that sees every battle every hurdle as a place for God to prevail.  He will never leave you fight this world and it’s culture alone.  He will be present and alive not some dry old religion of ritual and feel good gibberish.  He has given us every word in the Bible to reveal to us exactly who He is and reminds us regularly that we are His children if we choose to follow Him.

 

The world around you has sold you a bill of goods that everything concludes at your life’s end so live for self and get all you can while you can.  This world propagates the survival of the fittest mentality that is divisive and destructive to our fellow man.  However life goes well beyond this earth existence.  God has made a place that is full of peace, joy and goodness for us to walk into by following His path laid out by His Son Jesus Christ.  Get on the journey and meet the savior of the world.

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Next week Pastor Ben Tims is on deck and ready to preach.

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      Message Questions

1. The cross was Satan’s plan to stop God, but what did God do instead?

2. How should we relate to Christ’s death and resurrection?

3. Why does the bible often speak of a triumphant life for us who believe?

4. Why does Pastor Paris make Easter such a big deal in our church?