Sermon preached by John A. Huffman, Jr.
April 16, 2006
Copyright ©2006, John A. Huffman, Jr.
All rights reserved.

WHAT PRACTICAL DIFFERENCE DOES CHRIST'S RESURRECTION MAKE FOR ME IN 2006?

For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:16-22)

Two weeks ago, I traveled with Dr. Dean Hirsch, the president of World Vision International, to Southeast Asia to do a one-year-three-month audit of how effective we are in using the $370 million designated for relief and rebuilding. As announced at the height of that crisis, World Vision was in it "not for a sprint but for the marathon." Thus far, we have expended approximately half of that money, and we wanted to be able, with integrity, to report how we are doing in spite of all the obstacles to rebuilding.

This particular trip took us three air flights--eighteen and a half hours from Los Angeles to Singapore, two hours from Singapore to Medan and one and a half hours to Banda Aceh, the capital city of Aceh province, closest to the epicenter of the earthquake. There in that province, they recovered 110,000 bodies, and an additional 90,000 persons simply disappeared.

If you want a complete report of what I did and saw, check our website (www.standrewspres.org), and you will observe both a video and oral streaming of the report I gave last week.

I returned from that horrendous scene to a desk stacked high with staff reports, administrative decisions to be made, conflicting opinions on the state of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and voluminous correspondence, including scores of emails.

What stood out most were those communications drawing my attention to theological controversies that had taken place in my absence, attacks that had appeared in the media on the very core biblical teachings that make up the essence of the Christian faith and the message we proclaim 365 days a year and celebrate in all its glory on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter weekend.

Let me read to you one email that pretty well summarizes the other questions I've received.

Hi John,

Welcome back from your trip. Your message this morning was truly inspirational.

While you were gone, it seems that we received a little more than the usual pre-Easter attacks on Christianity from the secular world. A "scientific" study was unveiled that purported that those recovering from heart surgery actually fare worse when they are prayed for. Secondly, a fish with legs has been hailed as "the missing link" thereby proving macro-evolution and casting more scorn on creationists. Third, the "Gospel According to Judas" was rolled out claiming Judas and Jesus were best friends and suggesting they plotted together the events of Holy Week. Finally, we are all now being exposed to the previews of the Da Vinci Code due out next month in theaters.

While none of this assault has shaken my faith, it does make it harder to witness to others and to answer those who have been shaken. Can any of these issues be addressed during worship? Maybe a class on creation vs. evolution theories. I have never seen any reluctance on your part to back away from controversial issues, but I am unsure of timing. I would just like to be better equipped as a witness to others.

Thank you for listening to me. God bless you.

My friend who wrote this email is right-on. We must not let Easter go by without addressing these issues as they are on your mind. God has laid it on my heart today to first address these issues and, second, to address the question, "What practical difference does Christ's resurrection make for me in 2006?"

I.

First, let me address these controversial issues that have been swirling in the media and at least partially put to rest some of them, making reference to where more help is available if you need it.

Frankly, every Christmas and Easter since I entered the ministry back in the early 1960s has been marked by controversial cover articles in magazines such as Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report and other headline-making articles in various newspapers. There's nothing new to this. Most of the issues raised by my friend and others in addition have come up time and time again, each time catching the public unaware, causing people to think that something brand new has been discovered that once and for all demolishes the credibility of the Christian faith.

Also, let me say my friend was wrong in that the issues he wrote about didn't just happen while I was gone. They happened in real time and space worldwide, for I read and viewed all of what he wrote about in the international press, including newspapers in Singapore, Jakarta, Medan, the International Herald Tribune, and watched on CNN and the BBC. Even in Banda Aceh in my hotel that had been devastated by the tsunami and earthquake and was being rebuilt room by room in that land carved out of equatorial jungle, I was confronted by the same issues you are facing here.

For example, the whole Gospel of Judas matter, this papyrus is nothing new. It has been around for a long time. It has taken its place for many years alongside early Gnostic documents, speculative in nature, that were rejected by the early church. Its dating is many years after the biblical accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And, investigate the issue more deeply and you discover, as was finally noted on Thursday, April 13, of this week in a Los Angeles Times editorial, that the very sale of this papyrus involved an elaborate financial deal between a discredited antiquities dealer who paid $300,000 for the papyrus, despite concerns that it might have been looted, resold to her lawyer for $1.5 million plus half the proceeds from any future use and engaged the National Geographics in an elaborate deal of kickbacks and commissions surrounding the publishing of its article. The L.A. Times editorial observes, "But the gospel's provenance shows that some things don't change in a couple of millenniums--except for inflation. Thirty pieces of silver then, or $1.5 million now: It's still about money." We dare not allow a deconstruction and reconstruction of the biblical events to be made by skeptics who would enjoy manipulating history to favor their particular bias and benefit.

The very notion of a conspiracy theory is nothing new. Back in the 1960s, a book titled the Passover Plot by Hugh J. Schonfield revived the "swoon theory" that argues that Jesus never died but simply fainted and was revived by the coolness of the tomb. His disciples rigged the grave clothes and their story to pretend a resurrection from the dead that never happened.

And remember the musical Jesus Christ Superstar? Judas became the hero, the tragic figure who tries to redirect events when he sees Jesus refusing to carry out the plan Judas had in mind for Him.

Let's go easy on Judas. God will deal with him fairly. He was a close follower of Jesus who, for whatever reasons, turned on Him, betrayed Him, sold Him out and came to tragic final circumstances. But let's not allow anti-faith speculations of two millennia later to upset our worship of the crucified and risen Christ.

For example, the matter of the "missing link." God is the God of science. God is the Creator and Sustainer. There is no need for conflict between a humble scientist and a humble Christian. Beware of the cocksure scientist or Christian who presumes to have all the answers. God was free to have created in any way God chose to create, all the way from spontaneous, instantaneous creation in a short period of time in which the Hebrew word "day" means a 24-hour period all the way to a "theistic evolution" in which God took huge eras of time, which also is a responsible translation of the word "day" from the Hebrew, to accomplish His creation. The key issue is, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth!" We are created by God. We are not the creators of God. Let's make that clear.

Take The Da Vinci Code. Let me make something very clear. Dan Brown is a terrific writer. This book is a great read, a fast-moving page-turner that kept me wide awake into the early morning hours. Frankly, his previous novel, Angels & Demons is even a better and faster read. But let me remind you, both books are fiction. There is nothing in the Bible that declares that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children by her. There is nothing in the Bible that gives even a hint of any kind of sexual affair. This is fiction and, as such, is a good read. Just don't believe everything you read. Oh yes, some have put down women through the centuries. The Church has not done everything right. Let's deal with the mistakes of some traditions for what they were and are. But let's not allow misinformation, untruth, fiction to be viewed as truth.

For example, this one study of prayer declares that people not prayed for had better results in physical recovery from heart surgery than those who were exposed to prayer. Doctoral dissertations could be written on this theme. Let's stick with the main issue. The issue isn't who heals faster. Many more studies have shown the value of prayer in terms of physical recovery. But I'm not here to argue for that point. Ours is not a "wealth and prosperity gospel." We pray so as to be in conversation with God. We bring all of our concerns to Him. He is not obligated to jump at our command like a genie when we rub the lamp. Our bottom-line prayer is, "Not my will but Thine be done." And we are free to claim the promises of God's Word that He, through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, is with us whatever the struggles and challenges of life are. This recent study doesn't understand what prayer is. There are many promises of God's Word directed to those of us who pray. Sometimes God says, "No." Sometimes God says, "Yes." Sometimes God says, "Wait." But underneath is the promise of "the peace of God which passes all human understanding that keeps our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."

Every one of these questions could involve a sermon or a study session on its own. In the bulletin, I have given you some suggestions for further study. If you're interested in the Da Vinci Code or the Gospel of Judas or Gnosticism, check the website of Dr. Mark Roberts, Harvard PhD and Pastor of the Irvine Presbyterian Church, who has articles on these subjects at http://www.markdroberts.com. I would also recommend some other books: Breaking the Da Vinci Code: Answers to the Questions Everyone's Asking (Nelson, 2004) by Darrell Bock; Bart Ehrman's Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine (Oxford, 2004); and Ben Witherington's The Gospel Code: Novel Claims about Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da Vinci (Intervarsity, 2004).

But let's move on to the main theme of this morning.

II.

More important than all the controversy is our question, "What practical difference does Christ's resurrection make for me in 2006?"

The fact is not everybody in our society now even knows the basic facts of the Christian faith.

Friday morning, I was having breakfast and overheard a conversation between the waitress and a man at the next table. She said, "I guess this is Good Friday, isn't it?" "Yes," he responded. She then queried, "What's this all about? Is this the day that Jesus rose from the dead?" He responded, "I don't think so. I think it's the day that He was crucified. If I'm not wrong, Easter is the day He rose from the dead."

And as we've already seen, there are those who simply do not believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Not everyone will believe not only the fact of the resurrection, but the rest of the facts surrounding the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Some two hundred years ago, August Tholuck observed:

@QUOTIND = Nothing but godly wisdom must be the substance of our preaching, although to one it may be a stumbling-block, and to another, foolishness. . . . The word of the gospel is not weakened by age, it is an eternal gospel, and neither shall the fear of man, nor yet the wish to please men, hinder us from making this (after the example of St. Paul) the center of all our preaching, the alpha and omega of the whole gospel; viz. "Jesus Christ, and him crucified, who was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification." That the government of the world is given into that hand which was pierced, is not this still to the Greeks foolishness, and that not for the works which we ourselves have done, but through faith in the crucified, we must be saved, is not this still a stumbling-block to the Jews? Nevertheless, to us who are saved, it is the power of God.

From the first century to the present day, there have been those who have simply refused to accept the Gospel message. They have either belittled the biblical claims or have recast Jesus as an ethical teacher, a great moral philosopher, a wonderful example. I must once again quote those insightful words of C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity as he writes:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Today, our final word must not be caught up in defensive talk. No, not everyone will believe, but the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ does make a most substantial, practical, life-transforming difference for you and me in 2006 for at least three among many more reasons.

Reasons #1: The resurrection of Jesus Christ makes a practical difference because it addresses my imperfections and those of others by offering complete and total forgiveness.

I wish that I could claim perfection. I cannot. All you have to do is have a brief conversation with my wife and my daughters. In some ways, they know me better than I know myself. But I've lived with myself long enough that I would have to agree with them that, even in my best efforts, I'm still not perfect.

No one is. No one can be. The Bible makes clear that, from the time the first two human beings, Adam and Eve, disobeyed God, every human being has done likewise. This does not mean that all of us are all bad. Certainly, none of us is all good. It does make clear what Paul so clearly articulated in Romans 3:22-25, "For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith."

Some people have enormous guilt. You may be one of them. You've done things you know you should not have done. You've left undone things you know you should have done. You are painfully aware of the hurt that you've brought on others and on yourself. In fact, some of us have over-sensitized consciences. We feel guilt for things for which we bear no responsibility. Nonetheless, the Bible says that, "None is righteous, no not one."

Some of us feel very little guilt, if any at all. We have been influenced by our therapeutic society that causes us to minimize individual responsibility, urging self-esteem and healthy positive self-image. Taken to the extreme, one can begin to blame everyone else, including God, for what goes wrong, seeing one's self as simply a victim of circumstances.

Whichever of these would be your inclination, the Bible makes it clear that no one is without sin. Romans 6:23 declares, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Jesus declared, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in Him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God" (John 3:16-18).

You see, Jesus, the only Righteous One, took our sins upon His body on the cross. The apostle John declared, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us" (1 John 1:8-10).

The apostle John wrote, "But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:12-13).

And the apostle Paul nails this thing down with finality when he declares, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death" (Romans 8:1-2).

I recently received this email from a young man who has been visiting St. Andrew's. He writes:

I am 24 years old and recently graduated from UCI. Lately I have been troubled with finding my beliefs and whether I am right with God. I would really like to be baptized and am not sure how to go about doing it. I know you must be very busy and am humbly asking for a few minutes of your time so that we could meet face to face and hopefully you can help me find some type of direction. I can meet you almost anywhere and if you give me a time that is convenient for you I will try my best to meet you. Thank you very much and I sincerely appreciate your time.

This week I met with Brian. He opened his heart to Jesus Christ. He prayed the sinner's prayer of repentance, putting his trust in Jesus Christ. And last night at the 5:30 contemporary service, Brian stood up, publically confessing his faith in Jesus Christ, and we baptized him in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit into the universal body of believers, past, present and future, called the Church.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ has existential dimensions for you and me right now. What difference does the resurrection of Jesus Christ make in a practical way in 2006? It addresses your and my imperfections, offering total, complete forgiveness. If you've never received Him as Savior, do it now. Pray the sinner's prayer: "Dear God, I ask your forgiveness. I know I cannot save myself. I put my trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. I'm sorry for my sins. I accept your free gift." Make this decision now and celebrate along with all the rest of us His forgiveness!

Reason #2: The resurrection of Jesus Christ makes a practical difference because it addresses my apprehensions about dying, promising me life in Heaven with Jesus Christ.

The New Yorker magazine is one of my favorite publications, and one of my favorite writers is Calvin Trillin. In the March 27, 2006, issue he writes a long and insightful article musing on the life and recent death of his wife Alice. There's a full-page picture of them emerging from the London registry office where they were married on August 13, 1965. What an attractive couple! He chronicles their early life together in the literary world of New York. He describes the birth of their two daughters, and then, the way in the mid-70s at age 38 Alice was operated on for lung cancer. She gallantly fought to live, yearning to raise their two daughters. In an essay titled "Of Dragons and Garden Peas," she wrote about how having cancer is "an embodiment of the existential paradox that we all experience: we feel that we are immortal, yet we know that we will die."

For the next two and a half decades, Alice lived life to the fullest, dreaming of the day that she could see her two daughters graduate from college and ultimately be present at their weddings. As persons without any deep religious faith, they thought deeply about life and death. Without any specific assurances of a life beyond this life, Alice did her best to make a positive impact on her daughters and husband. In the spring of 2001, ten months after Sarah's wedding and a month or so before Abigail was to be married in New York, a routine x-ray prompted a doctor to recommend that Alice have an angiogram. The angiogram made it obvious that she had to have a bypass operation immediately. That day, as they wheeled her away, she was smiling. They were going to fix her heart. But Alice's operation took much longer than expected. The surgeon said that radiation had made her arteries difficult to work with and had caused more damage to her heart. She got out of the hospital about six hours before Abigail's wedding and was able to stay late enough at the reception to witness a twenty-minute or so rendition of the hora that left the Chinese waiters staring in amazement.

Then, a few weeks later, she died while waiting in the heart failure unit of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital to see if she would be eligible for a heart transplant. At her memorial service, her daughter Sarah said, "I know my mom's main goal in life was to protect my sister, my father, and me. She wanted to protect us from worry, from sadness, from loneliness--things her parents had not been able to protect her from. Mom, I know you're listening somewhere, waiting patiently to hear me say these words: You were the coolest girl I ever knew."

How touched I was as I read this lengthy article. How I yearned for her and her husband to be able to claim the concrete promises made available by Jesus Christ.

This week, we've heard those heart-tugging recorded words of passengers upon those ill-fated 9/11 aircrafts, confronting the reality of their impending deaths and the heart cries of persons gasping for breath in the twin towers saying, "I don't want to die now. I'm not ready to die now." We all are reminded of our mortality. For some of us, it may be a long time until death. For others of us, it may be much sooner than we dream.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ promises me life beyond this life. He has said that He has gone to prepare a place for us. When it comes our time to die, we can see His glance as did that repentant thief on the cross, and we can hear His words, "This day shalt thou be with me in paradise." We can claim those words of the apostle Paul, "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord."

As painful as it was and still is, to have had to let go of my daughter Suzanne in that San Diego hospital room on September 12, 1991, I have the privilege of claiming the promises of Jesus Christ that someday I will be reunited with her in heaven. Between now and then, I will live with one foot in heaven and one foot on earth.

Yes, the resurrection of Jesus Christ makes a practical difference for me in 2006, as it addresses my apprehensions about my own death and the death of my loved ones. This, too, can be your experience.

Reason #3: The resurrection of Jesus Christ makes a practical difference because it helps me cope with the tough realities of life now.

I thank God for the privilege of living each day in the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He promised before He entered into heaven that He would give us the gift of His Holy Spirit. Let me assure you, what a privilege it is to both know and experience that reality.

The resurrected Christ gives those of us who have put our trust in Him meaning for living. You and I know where we came from, why we're here and where we're going. We came from God. We're no accident. We are here to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. And part of that forever is in the now, and the other part of that forever is when we go to be with Him in heaven.

The resurrected Christ is, to those of us who have put our trust in Him, an understanding that life at its best is difficult. Jesus said in John 16:33, "In this world you will have trouble. Take courage; I have overcome the world!" In fact, He asks us to get our hands dirty with the grit and grime, exertion and sweat of helping Him help others. The most unhappy people I know are people who have everything and want more. The happiest people I know are people of modest circumstances and resources, who accept every positive in their lives as gifts from God and who are living lives not for self, but for God and others. When I myself begin to whine about difficult circumstances, I stop and make a phone call to someone I know who's hurting, or drop by the hospital to visit someone in pain or rejoice in the privilege of being a pastor who weekly counsels men and women in need. As I give, I receive. My greatest joy comes not in the getting, but in the giving and in the understanding that life is difficult.

And the resurrected Christ gives to those who put their trust in Him the strength to live creatively. Philippians 4:13 declares, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." That doesn't mean I can do anything I want to do. It means that everything I do I do in the strength of this One who loves me and cares for me and, in Him, you and I can be more than conquerors.

Let me conclude by this succinct statement, which is our text of the day. The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:16-22 declares, "For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ."

Question: What practical difference does the resurrection of Jesus Christ make to me in 2006?

Answer: All the difference in this world and the next!