Easter Breaks Our Mediocrity
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | Well, by a long shot, Easter is my favorite holiday of the year.
00:00:09.000 | And on Sunday, we celebrate that by his resurrection,
00:00:13.000 | Jesus Christ decisively ended the terrible reign of heartbreak and sin in this world.
00:00:19.000 | There is freedom for those of us who trust in him.
00:00:22.000 | And for those believers, Easter is also a promise that Christ will break us free
00:00:27.000 | from the trappings of mediocrity in this world.
00:00:30.000 | This is a point John Piper developed in the following excerpt from his 2001 Easter sermon
00:00:36.000 | on 1 Corinthians 15, verses 12 to 20. Here's what he said.
00:00:41.000 | I'm banking everything in the rest of this sermon on the fact that
00:00:46.000 | there's something in every one of you that has tasted moments where you've said,
00:00:53.000 | "I don't want to be like the run of the mill, living for myself, making a name for myself,
00:00:59.000 | making lots of money, just shrinking into a little nuclear family with a nice TV
00:01:06.000 | or a big sound system with big screens and a lot of games."
00:01:13.000 | He who dies with the most toys wins. You know in your best moments, it isn't so.
00:01:22.000 | Here's my question. Paul lived such a life of cutting edge, sacrificial, risk-taking, perilous love.
00:01:35.000 | And I want to know how he did it.
00:01:38.000 | Let me just acquaint you for a moment with Paul's life.
00:01:42.000 | Verse 30 in this same chapter, Paul says, "I'm in peril every hour."
00:01:48.000 | He's in danger all the time. Why? He explains in the second letter he wrote to Corinth.
00:01:56.000 | "I am often in danger of death. Five times I received 39 lashes.
00:02:03.000 | Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked.
00:02:10.000 | In dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen,
00:02:16.000 | dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren.
00:02:24.000 | I have been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst,
00:02:31.000 | often without food, in cold and exposure."
00:02:36.000 | And he asks just a few verses earlier than that paragraph in chapter 11 of 2 Corinthians,
00:02:42.000 | he says to this community, "Why? Because I do not love you? God knows I love you.
00:02:52.000 | You may not know I love you, but God knows I love you. That's why I choose this life."
00:02:58.000 | So here we have a person doing what we, at our highest moments, long to do,
00:03:05.000 | namely live on the cutting edge of self-sacrificing love,
00:03:12.000 | and not just constantly thinking about maximizing our own private self-indulgent pleasures.
00:03:20.000 | And now the question is, how do you do that?
00:03:24.000 | How do you live in peril every hour?
00:03:28.000 | How do you embrace risk and beatings and imprisonments and shipwrecks?
00:03:32.000 | Why do you make choices, Paul, that put you in harm's way over and over again?
00:03:37.000 | What is it with you?
00:03:39.000 | His answer is, "Love? But how is that sustained?"
00:03:45.000 | Now, let's go back to verse 19.
00:03:48.000 | "If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.
00:04:00.000 | If Christ is not raised, and I'm hoping for a resurrection, I'm stupid, living the life I'm living.
00:04:14.000 | My life is crazy. My life is insane. My life is foolish. It's pitiable. It's nonsense,
00:04:21.000 | if I'm not going to be raised with Christ someday."
00:04:24.000 | Do you see? Are you, I'll ask you right now, are you living a life which is stupid if you're not raised from the dead?
00:04:33.000 | Wow! What an indictment of the American church.
00:04:39.000 | What an indictment of the American church.
00:04:43.000 | How are your choices? They look like everybody else in the world.
00:04:47.000 | How much is it costing you to love people?
00:04:50.000 | Hardly anything? Hardly any risks? Hardly any dangers?
00:04:56.000 | Hardly any choices that would be called "imprudent"?
00:05:01.000 | And yet your heart, I believe from God Almighty, written on your heart is,
00:05:07.000 | "Oh God, there's got to be more. There's got to be more.
00:05:10.000 | There's got to be more than this middle American way of prosperity
00:05:14.000 | that causes people to get just as sick with mental disease as all the sicknesses in the simple, undeveloped places of the world.
00:05:24.000 | There's got to be more than this."
00:05:27.000 | And Paul says, "There is more. There is so much more in this life and the next."
00:05:33.000 | You know the great obstacle to living the life you dream about and that God has put in your heart as possible?
00:05:40.000 | It's 1 Corinthians 15, 32.
00:05:44.000 | "If the dead are not raised, let's eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."
00:05:50.000 | If you believe, tomorrow we die. That's it. Zero. No resurrection.
00:05:55.000 | You will eat and drink. And you won't care about love.
00:05:59.000 | You won't care about people. You won't take any risks in order to make yourself a means to other people's joy
00:06:06.000 | because you're going to maximize your own private pleasures because you've only got one life to do it.
00:06:11.000 | But if you've got 10,000 ages of years to do it with a Christ who will never let you be bored,
00:06:20.000 | this little prelude can be spent directing people to that and taking whatever risks it takes
00:06:28.000 | to get them there and you there with maximum joy.
00:06:33.000 | So, I'm done and I'm going to make a closing appeal to you to just think and pray and seek God in this.
00:06:41.000 | If Christ has not been raised, the Christian life ought to look stupid.
00:06:48.000 | Which means that believing in the resurrection of Christ and of ourselves
00:06:53.000 | is the key to the highest, noblest, and in the long run, most joyful life.
00:07:00.000 | Jesus, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross.
00:07:04.000 | For the joy that was set before Him beyond the resurrection endured the cross.
00:07:08.000 | Same thing with Him as with us.
00:07:10.000 | And if He has been raised, there is a power in the world and in this room and in the gospel
00:07:17.000 | that can lift you, both in this life and the next, to a level of significant living
00:07:25.000 | that God has written on your heart as beautiful and right and true.
00:07:32.000 | And almost everybody in this room wants it.
00:07:35.000 | A few of you have checked out so completely right now, you're not even hearing what I say.
00:07:40.000 | I grieve for you, I pray for you, I long for you.
00:07:44.000 | But some of you, many of you, are feeling what I'm saying, namely,
00:07:49.000 | yeah, perhaps those dreams were written by God and perhaps the key that unlocks that dream
00:07:55.000 | is the Son of God and is the resurrection of the Son of God
00:07:59.000 | and is the freedom that comes from believing in the Son and the resurrection,
00:08:03.000 | my own resurrection.
00:08:05.000 | Maybe that is the key, and I just urge you to press in on Christ.
00:08:10.000 | Come to Christ. Believe in Christ.
00:08:12.000 | He is the key. He is the answer.
00:08:15.000 | Amen.
00:08:17.000 | Who else will free you from sin and heartbreak and the trappings of mediocrity?
00:08:22.000 | This clip was taken from John Piper's Easter sermon from 2001
00:08:26.000 | in a sermon titled "Pity Not Them Who Rise with Christ."
00:08:30.000 | You can download the entire message at DesiringGod.org.
00:08:34.000 | Well, we are going to break for the weekend, this sweet and holy weekend,
00:08:38.000 | to be reminded of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ
00:08:41.000 | that frees us from the shackles of worldly contentment.
00:08:46.000 | From Pastor John and from me and for all of us at Desiring God,
00:08:50.000 | have a wonderful, worship-filled Easter weekend.
00:08:53.000 | We'll see you on Monday.
00:08:56.000 | [END]
00:08:58.000 | [END]
00:09:00.000 | [BLANK_AUDIO]